Product Description

Money Chords is a comprehensive reference book of popular chord progressions. It identifies the eighty most popular chord progressions that have been used time and again to write hit songs and twelve tools to create them. The book is the result of the compilation and analysis of a representative sampling of over two thousand popular chord progressions that took several years to compile. Chord progressions are categorized both chronologically and by progression type. Chronological listings identify progression types common to a specific time period and the evolution of various progression types. Progression type listings compare how the best songwriters and performers have utilized similar chord progressions. Money Chords is intended to be a songwriter’s tool box to help stimulate the creation of many more great songs in the new millenium.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #403346 in Books
• Published on: 2000-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

About the Author
Richard J. Scott has been a guitarist/songwriter for 35 years, an analyst for 25 years, and holds a Bachelor of Science in Education. Prior writing work includes the Residential Construction chapter of Credit Considerations published by Robert Morris Associates.

Customer Reviews

Great waste of paper!
This book is thick! And there probably is good stuff within. Well hidden though. Problem is that more than anything it is like reading some statistical analysis of pop music the last 50 years.

I bought this to get ideas for new chord progressions. Hmm, no frankly I'm not very happy with it. The website www.moneychords.com is great however - and the information there is free!!

Logic-Defying Presentation of Progressions. Disappointing.
Just got my copy. Wish I had taken a look at the book before I bought it. Sure, it's a hefty 450 pages but once you scan through the book you come away with the same thought you do as a guitarist thumbing through a book promising 20000 guitar chords (realizing that there are, at most, 20 different chord forms that are mechanically and unnecessarily incarnated in every key): What's the point?

Here, the author does a similar thing by presenting all of the progressions with respect to specific keys (E for _half_ of the book and then a retelling of a subset of those progressions in the other keys). What's the point? It would have been MUCH more useful -- and, frankly, obvious -- to present each chord progression in the key-independent numeric form (e.g., "I-ii-V-I"). The publisher would have killed 50% less trees going that route and would have produced a book with immediate and lasting value.

And if not purely that approach, the author could have at least accompanied each progression with the key-independent equivalent. That's a no-brainer. And given that each page is 80% white-space it's not like the publisher was scrambling for content space!

Had I known that I could have charged [for] a book for reading off and reprinting the exact verse and chorus chord progressions from a bunch of different songs (granted, hundreds) I would have gone to the library and done so myself.

I had very high hopes for this book but it falls way short of what a songwriter/composer REALLY needs--of what I need. I wanted a book that facilitates spontenaity and fuels the creative spark. That's what the book promised, but not what I received.

Despite the sheer volume, it's a lazy effort. The book lacks the level of exposition, analysis, and insights that 450 pages would seem to indicate. And, content aside, the book's design, presentation, typography, and organization are EXTREMELY poor (I'll go so far as to say stark, ugly, sophomoric, and unusable as well considering the powerful desktop publishing tools available to anybody with a computer; one would think by this book that Writers Club Press only has a single manual typerwriter at its disposal). Bottomline is these deficits successfully short-circuit the promised usefulness of this book. The book is a disappointing effort and I cannot recommend it to anyone.

Good Stuff
The introduction alone was worth the price of admission. What separartes this book from others I've seen is the discussion of descending, ascending, and static (pedal point) progressions. The appendix included nine pages of common and uncommon descending bass lines alone. These were categorized by bass note runs so any budding songwriter can review what has been and can be done with this type of progression that is used to create romantic moods. Good Stuff.