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Soul chord progressions for beatmakers

The movements soul leans on, why they feel the way they do, and how to use them without sitting through a theory course first.

Most producers working with soul samples never need to name a chord. But knowing roughly what is happening underneath a sample tells you which section will hold up under repetition, where you can cut without breaking it, and what to play if you want to add something of your own that fits.

This is written for that purpose rather than as theory for its own sake. If you can hear whether something feels settled or unsettled, you have everything you need to follow it.

1.The whole thing in one idea: delayed resolution

Soul harmony runs on tension and release, and its signature move is to make you wait.

A simple pop progression sets up a tension and resolves it quickly and cleanly. Soul sets up a tension, then goes somewhere else first, then somewhere else again, and lands on the resolution two bars later than you expected. That delay is the feeling. It is why a soul progression can sound yearning or unresolved even when nothing unusual is happening.

Practical consequence for a producer: when you find a section where the resolution arrives late, you have found a section that will stay interesting on the eighth repeat. When you find one that resolves immediately, it will be boring by the fourth.

That is the same test as picking a section in the first place, covered in how to make a beat from a soul sample.

2.Sevenths are the actual difference

If you play a chord with three notes, you get something plain. Add a fourth note a seventh above the root and the same chord becomes warmer and slightly unsettled, because that added note wants to move somewhere.

This is the single largest reason soul sounds like soul rather than like a folk record. Almost nothing in it is a plain three note chord. Everything has a seventh on it, and often a ninth on top of that.

What it means in practice:

• If you are playing something over a sample and it sounds thin against it, you are probably playing three note chords over four and five note ones. Add the seventh.
• If a sample sounds lush and you cannot work out why, it is usually the extra notes rather than the instrument.
• If you are layering two samples and they clash, one of them may have a seventh the other does not, which puts two notes a semitone apart. There is more on reconciling material in making two different packs sound like one record.

3.The two chord vamp

A great deal of soul, and almost all of the soul that works best in hip hop, is two chords going back and forth.

This is not simplicity for its own sake. Two chords cycling creates a groove you can sit inside, and it leaves the movement to the bass, the drums and the vocal rather than the harmony. It is also, not coincidentally, exactly what a producer wants: a repeating section that does not fight being repeated.

The common shapes, described by feel rather than by name:

1. Home, then the chord a step below, back to home. Settled, then a slight drop, then settled again. Warm and circular.
2. Home, then the chord that leans hardest towards it. Tension and release every two bars, which drives forward.
3. Two chords neither of which is home. The whole vamp floats, never lands, and the resolution only arrives when the section changes. This is the most useful of the three for a beat, because the unresolved quality is what stops it getting dull.

If you are chopping a vamp, the third kind is the one to be careful with, because there is no home chord to land on and reordering can leave it completely adrift.

4.The bass is doing its own thing

This is the part most often missed, and it is a large share of why soul feels alive where a soft synth playing the same chords does not.

In a lot of soul, the bass is not just playing the root of each chord. It walks between chords, arrives early or late, and sometimes sits on a note that is not in the chord at all, which creates a passing tension that resolves as the chord changes underneath it.

Two consequences worth knowing:

• When you high pass a sample to make room for your own bass, you are removing this. Sometimes that is fine. Sometimes it is why the sample suddenly feels static, and the answer is to keep the original bass and not add your own.
• If you are writing your own bass under a sample, a walking line will sit more naturally than a line that hits the root of each chord and stops. Movement between chords is the idiom.

5.Where soul and gospel part company

These get treated as the same harmonic language and they are close, but the difference is useful.

Gospel moves more. It uses passing chords between the main ones, chromatic steps that exist purely to get from one place to the next, and it modulates more freely. That gives it lift and constant motion, which is what it is for.

Soul tends to stay put longer and let the groove carry it. Fewer chords, held longer, with the interest in the rhythm section rather than the chord sequence.

For a producer, that means gospel material is generally harder to chop and reorder, because the passing chords only make sense in sequence, and easier to use as a long played section. Soul material is the reverse. The full version of the gospel side is in gospel chord movement for beatmakers.

6.Using this without playing anything

If you do not play keys, you can still use all of the above by listening for three things in any sample:

1. Where does it settle? Find the bar that feels like home. That is your landing point for any reordering.
2. Does it settle at all? If not, you have a floating vamp. Good for beats, risky to chop.
3. Is the bass moving independently? If yes, think twice before filtering it out.

That is enough to make good decisions about which sections to use, where to cut, and whether to add your own low end, without naming a single chord.

The short version

Soul harmony delays its resolution, and that delay is the feeling. Sevenths are what separate soulful from plain. Two chord vamps carry most of it and suit beats because they bear repetition. The bass frequently moves independently of the chords, so think before filtering it out. And the whole thing is usable by ear, without theory, if you can tell settled from unsettled.