Progression
A chord sequence with characteristic movement.
What it means
Progression designates a sequence of chords that has a recognizable movement or a goal. The word is current above all in the English-speaking world and in jazz and popular music, where one speaks of a chord progression; in German, chord sequence or chord progression (Akkordfolge, Akkordfortschreitung) are also used for it. The term stresses that the sonorities do not merely stand side by side but lead toward one another.
Musical use
The movement of a sequence results above all from the relation of the roots. Progressions by falling fifth, such as underlie the cadence, work most strongly: every sonority acts as the dominant of the next, and the sequence pulls forward with direction. Progressions by third seem softer and more colourful, because the sonorities have two notes in common. Second steps of the roots connect sonorities without shared notes and create distinct changes.
Certain sequences have become established as patterns. In Baroque music the descending-fifth sequence is a basic model; in jazz and popular music, short recurring progressions form the framework of whole pieces, and musicians communicate about them in scale-degree designations, so that a progression can be transferred into any key.
Progression is to be distinguished from the cadence, which designates a sequence with a concluding function, and from the sequence (in the musical sense), in which a pattern is repeated on other degrees. A progression can contain both but is more general.
In jazz and pop music one speaks of chord progressions; well-known patterns are the II–V–I connection and the sequence I–V–VI–IV. In classical harmony, one speaks rather of chord sequences or progressions. The term stresses the directed movement from chord to chord, running toward a harmonic goal.
Performance practice
When playing a chord progression, watch the direction: where does it aim, where does it rest? Lead the voices from sonority to sonority by the shortest path, instead of regripping every chord anew. And learn recurring progressions in scale degrees rather than in absolute chords — then they can be transferred into any key.