Chord Progression Secret: MELODY FIRST 

I wanna make an album and call it “Everything I Learned From Trevor Wong” and it’s gonna be sick

FACT. This is everything, and something we guitarists often overlook. Thanks Trevor!

My favorite chord progression is Amaj7-Emaj7-F#m7-F#m11-E7-Emaj7. I made it up myself and I think it flows quite nicely.

So you're basically building a song around a melody and adding the notes to accompany that melody. That way you can accentuate whatever arrangement you'd like around your original melody and it gives your song a stronger presence and you can fill in the song that way. Probably best for those who never read music but know a good feel and vibe for a song and build around that sound and make it more fun for the songwriter. Very nice

that's what i've always done. When i started learning guitar, i wasn't taught the usual basic chords right away so i kinda grew up with them as less of a priority. When i compose, i hum a melody in my head and them try to get it right on guitar or piano. I get all kinds of weird chords i never studied or never even knew existed but it sounds good in the end.

Lost me at “be aware of the key you’re playing in” 😂

This guy has helped me more than any other youtuber. I am grateful that you chose to share your knowledge with us.

Man i must say you have transformed my playing with your chord ideas and scales. Thanks man

After practicing for about a year, I feel really nice being able to understand 80% of the video

this video has helped my (piano) playing instantly more than any other i've ever watched. thank you

I love this. I am a bassist, and the stuff I can learn from this is fantastic. It's like figuring out how to find a new root note. If it goes well as a 3rd or 7th, then I can base everything around that sort of dynamic and it'll lend itself to the root it wants.

I've been playing guitar for over 10 years and I've never found a video like this which is so simple yet it shows a clear and alternative perspective on chord writing. I reckon you should do a part 2 exploring this idea with modes and borrowed chords too. Big ups

I never understand any of the vocabulary or music theory you’re talking about but goddamn I love these videos

thank you!! i started watching a few of your videos when i was first picking up guitar and the concepts were way over my head, now i think i’ve learned enough to put some of this in to practice. lovely sounds and great explanation as always!!

This is great for any genre of song writing, not just math rock. You're up there with my top guitar teachers on RU-vid

I’m so grateful for your passion for music and for sharing

great stuff, I asked this on a forum recently. I've had a nice vocal melody knocking around my head and I've been wanting to put chords to it. This explains it perfectly!

even I, a self studying pianist learns a lot from this got yourself another subscriber!

Quality. Every upload. Thanks brother!

This is true. Sometimes we get lost in the chord analysis, while we know that we can change the chord to almost anything as long as the melody remain the same, it's just matter of taste and style.

I just founds gold here excellent explanation, it makes everything easy to digest. Keep it up!

God that is so amazing. Thank you for sharing. Really encourages me to focus on theory too.

Oh my god, this is amazing, you have no idea how much you've helped me.

Wow...this made a lot of sense. I kept trying to look at it from a "you need to know this standard chord progression" technique, but this is just building on what you can sing!

Really wish I had stuff like this back when I first picked up my guitar in middle school.

Wow, this is such an awesome concept. Thank you for posting this!!

thanks man, in the clutter of youtube guitar lessons, this one is a shining example of no faff all value! keep such videos coming. new subscriber here!

Very strong concise video lesson!!!! Thank you!!!🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾

Bro this is the best guitar content!

Wow! Gonna write my new song using this technique for sure! Thank you so much🙏

mind blowing! Even if it goes fast, I like the short video, you can get the overall idea within 5 minutes and then dig in. Thanks a lot!

Very underrated channel giving us great content for free. Thank you sir.

this is a really interesting approach to writing a song, and honestly melody is the most important thing in a song

New subscriber! This is exactly what I was looking for! I ALWAYS start off with a melody - that's what I have stuck in my head. I've gotten really good at finding that melody on guitar. Now the struggle has been to find the chords to go with that melody so I can harmonize it. I see my mistake - I was trying to use chords using the melody note as the root where I should have been using the third or maybe even the sixth. Gotta go - gotta put this to use!

Saved - this is absolute gold. Such a great way to create progressions - you've earned a sub from me :)

Smooth. Great guitarist that looks like a great human being. Thanks trevor.

Thanks for the video! It helps to write the chord names you're playing to better understand

You can seriously teach, I’m kinda blown away :)

This is gold!

Thank you …I wrote 80 songs and recorded on RU-vid, Spotify etc. ..half written on piano half on quitar . The chords you are playing are lovely. I tended toward seventh chords . I wrote my songs and taught the chords to the studio session quitar player . There are different ways to play the same chords . It depends on the musician..thank you !

Damn that's a good idea! Usually I like to come up with chords first, but then alternate one or two notes per chord before each chord change to create my melodies.

Nice melodies 🔥 i've been playing jazz a few months and i've always wanted to get into this sort of lofi sound without it sounding out, thanks!

this needs a million views. im dead certain you just unlocked a fragment of my brain.

Great video, man. I hope to understand all of it one day. Keep it up, Trevor! (Also, that's a SWEET ax!)

Yep, 7th chords are my friends.

Great teaching and fascinating information. Thank you!

OMG this is life changing.

Really interesting video ! Thank you for sharing !

Excellent. Thank you

Thanks man, been looking for help on this 🙏🙇‍♂️

Thank you Trevor!

Excellent instruction. Thank you!

Fantastic! Love it. Thanks you.

a melody is so much more fun than a chord progression to create, its freer, 10000 times more creative and inspiring,, and even simpler.

Amazing lesson, thank you!

This is something I’ve been exploring lately. It’s freeing because I can just start with a melody even if it’s not in a key center and just start building a harmonic context around it with lots of options in terms of reharmonization

Absolute gold

This was very informative. Thanks so much.

thanks for the vid. it helped me a lot

Thankyou for sharing a good lesson 👏🏻👏🏻

DEFINITELY gonna try that melody on 1 string thing! That's genius.

Super well explained man. Love it.

Thank you, greetings from Argentina

Just found this channel, great explanations. An in depth video about all the kinds of chords shapes you can use to stack a note would be awesome!

This was incredible ❤️

Thanks for sharing! Another tool to add to the toolbox

Just discovered your vids and probably gonna watch several

Nice vid, Trevor! Cheers 🍻

I’ve probably watched like 1000 music YT videos but I think this is the most useful one yet, lol. I’m pretty average at writing music and my chord knowledge is hella basic so this seems like it makes the most sense to me, to reverse engineer progressions.

This is amazing.

Dis basically jazz chord melody style, I too thicken my lines like this. Jens Larson does good video on this too, but you explain it in a different way, the two videos help me understand it very well.

Much needed

thank you! very helpful

Thank you for your video!

This was so helpful

Thanks for your videos and this one in particular. I wish i knew your channel waaaay earlier

Thank you this was brilliant and really helpful, loving your content :)

Thank you!

You're all right Trevor! Good video. Not too much at once and keep it loose. Nice.

This was amazing

MY EARS HAVE BEEN BLESSED?!! Wow

Brilliant!

Lovin the hand movement

great video, super helpful!

This is SO Good. Thank you sir

Great video, Sir.

This helped me so much

Awesome bro, tnx

Muchísimas gracias por este video !

Great video. Thank you

Very nice... Well done. I subscribed.

Cool video! You always inspire me! I've wrote my own version of your example. 😁

awesome!

this went from 0 to advanced in less than a minute

Thank you- I’ll give that a go as I grow.

Love it

Cheers, that is useful!

Superb tutorial dude. ✌️

Seeing you play those chord voicings makes me realize how much easier and more visual showing/playing chords on the piano is compared to the guitar tbh, nevermind how difficult those voicing are to play in sequence. I know your instrument is the guitar, but it doesn't really translate to me. As a side note, functional harmony may not be the answer to anything outside of western classical music, but the underlying concepts of leading tones for example should still be considered imo.

Great 😊 lesson