Gary Larson, who created the classic cartoon “The Far Side,” was brilliant. In fact, he still is a genius … although he’s retired now, and probably off on some beach sipping piña coladas. And if you ask me, he totally deserves some relaxation. Every one of his cartoons is pure gold. Plus, he could use

After playing through each major scale progression, you might have noticed something cool. For some crazy reason, Mother Nature totally loves us. Instead of throwing us some curveball, she decided to make things easy. When it comes to chord progressions, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Because they’re really just based on the same,

Musicians are always creating cool, new sounds by using different chord patterns in a song. Together with scales and melodies, chords and progressions are like the nuts and bolts of music. All we have to do is combine these patterns, and we really start to see the payoff of everything we’ve learned so far. You see, it

The nice thing about seventh chords is that they have just four notes … which means they’re as easy to play as our old friends, the basic triads. And while you’ll sometimes see different types of seventh chords in music, the most common one is definitely the dominant seventh chord. For some reason, notes “1-3-5-b7” just sound good together.

In most of the music you’ll play, each chord will have only three notes. The average song includes only basic major triads and minor triads. And occasionally, you might see a few augmented triads and diminished chords. But for the most part, musicians keep it simple … and they stick with the major chords and minor

With a little bit of practice, we’ll be rocking out in no time. We just have to get our hands working together. And for most people, that means sitting still at the keyboard … and staying focused on which notes to play. After all, every music teacher in the world will tell you to sit still

Because all four basic triads are similar, they’re all easy to play. Each one has just three notes … and each one is pretty common in music. But the major triad and minor triad are (by far) the most popular. Together, they just sound more pleasant to the ears. So musicians use them a lot more often. To see what

You’ve got to admit … music just sounds better with chords. And in our last song, it was pretty fun to move between two different chords. But things would have been a lot easier to play if our left hand didn’t have to move so much. I mean, when we go from playing a C major

After you’ve had a little practice, it’s easy to add chords to any melody. You just have to play the melody with your right … and hit the chords with your left hand. It’s as simple as that. And this combination of notes makes our music sound a lot more interesting. But things get even more

Has anybody noticed how cheap black-and-white TVs are these days? It’s crazy. A new color TV can cost thousands of dollars (USD). But you can get an excellent black-and-white set for … well, for nothing, actually. Because nobody sells that stuff anymore. I mean, who would by a black-and-white television? Unless they were living in the 1950s.