Chord progressions – what do they mean and how do they work?
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Music theory is like math or physics. You don’t necessarily need to understand Bernoulli’s Principle or F = GMm/r^2 to make a paper airplane, but that math is still there to describe what is going on regardless and your airplanes gonna still fly.
Chord progressions are kind of like that. You don’t need to know Roman Numerical Analysis to play some music, but the math is still there to describe it if you want.
There’s an infinite amount of ways that you can string chords together; some of them sound subjectively “better” or “more mathematically simple.” Truly, though, there are no wrong answers; it’s simply words we use to mathematically describe what is happening.
That’s really all of theory– the term “chord” just refers to any 2 or more notes played at the same time, and “chord progression” just refers to any 2 or more chords played in succession.
So if you see something that says a C major triad going into a G dominant chord is an Inperfect Cadence and can be represented as a I V chord progression, just know all of those words are the math behind the music
However, if you’re looking for explanations of why certain chord progressions sound more subjectively “corect” or what roman numerals are for– such as a I IV V or a blues progressions, that’s something that requires a fairly complicated description… Not hard to learn, but maybe a bit much for this sub!
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