The How and Why of “Guitar Player’s Building Blocks” ii-V-I

It can be a chore to remember lots of interesting chords. It can be even more work remembering to pull them out in the heat of playing and put them together in good sounding sequences. And it’s tougher still to quickly find the right chord nearby, not six frets away.

What to do? I wanted a way to get good sounding and useful chord sequences in my head and under my fingers automatically. (Well, semi-automatically. Still need to think a bit.) What I did was to choose the most frequently used patterns in all of popular music, the ii–V–I’s, and work on them in some memorable way. I wanted these ‘building blocks’ of music to be so easy to remember that I use lots of variations more frequently.

How to do it? I chose to organize my thinking around the I’s, then add ii’s and V’s that work well with them. The I's are going to be unadorned major chords, 6ths, major 7ths, 6/9’s, and so forth.

Where on the guitar neck to play them? In what inversion? The easiest way to organize things, and the easiest way to remember, would be to use the CAGED chord forms.

(If you need a refresher on the CAGED chord forms, see my Journal posting “What Does CAGED Mean?”

So, I worked in CAGED order and chose the C form as a place to begin, my first ‘I’.

Where to put it? Best place would be somewhere in the middle of the neck. That allows us to get at ii's and V's that are both below and above it on the neck without running into the nut or getting too high on the neck. I picked the 5th fret. Doing that, putting the C form chord on the 5th fret, makes it an F. And that means, for now, we are working in the key of F.

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F Major Chord at the 5th Fret

Part of the goal here is to not have to reach very far for a needed chord. So I'll look for versions of this F chord that can act as I's in a ii-V-I that cluster around this spot. That is, I'll search for the Fmaj7's, F6's, Fmaj9's, and so on, that are on or near the 5th fret.

The next step is to find the ii's and V's that are also on or nearby the 5th fret. I chose the F as the I, so the ii's will be versions of G- such as G-6 or G-7b5. And the V's will be versions of C such as C7#5, C9, or C7sus4. (Now there may be many more inversions of these chords elsewhere on the neck, but they're too far away for our purposes. Remember the goal is to keep everything near at hand. We'll use those other inversions when we get to another 'I' based on a different CAGED form.)

Capturing all of these chords might give us, say, sixteen or so of each ii, V, or I. That is an awful lot of possible combinations for a ii-V-I, just in the key of F, and just near the 5th fret. If there really are sixteen ii’s, sixteen V's, and sixteen I's just here near this 5th fret location, that would be 16 x 16 x 16 = 4096 possible chord sequences.

Think about it like a big menu at a Chinese restaurant. For your combo dinner you can have one from column A, one from column B, and one from column C. Here we get to have one from column ii, one from column V, and one from column I. Four thousand ninety-six combo platters. (And there are four other CAGED forms, too.)

That's a lot. BUT, not all of the combinations sound so great. Some are pretty awful. Just because a C7#5 in one inversion sounds great moving to an F6 in a particular inversion doesn't mean all inversions sound great together. A ton of them don't.

On top of that, just because a particular pair of chords do sound good together, it doesn't mean someone can get their fingers around them quickly and accurately. The combo might be the fingering equivalent of a tongue-twister. Sounds OK, but players will wind up never using it.

Having collected all these chords, I gave myself the task of testing them all out. Test all the combinations to see what works and what doesn't. Ton of work. And this is just the C-form of the CAGED forms. Four more sets of chords to work through. (Hey, that's why I wrote the book for you. You don't need to do all of this. For a few bucks you get the fruit of my labor.)

So what exactly is in this publication “Using the ii-V-I Sequence for Useful Chords and Progressions”?

First, I divided everything into five sections, one for each of the five CAGED forms we're using for the I's, the roots.

Second, I chose a root key to use for each CAGED form that places it, like I explained above, near the middle of the neck. So, for the C form I chose the key of F, A form is Eb, G form is C, and so on.

Third, I have laid out all the ii's, V's, and I's that are near each CAGED form. I've tried to place these chords on the page in a way that makes them easy to remember. (And at this point, if you choose, you can test out any combination you like. You can build and test your own ii-V-I combinations based on these chords. Using just my selected chords there are over 32,400 combos, sooooo it might be a bit of work.)

Fourth, I assumed you didn’t really want to get lost in the weeds like that. So, in each CAGED section I mark the one most basic ii-V-I version. That would be the I in it's simplest major-chord form, the nearest ii as a minor or minor 7, and the nearest V as either a straight 7th or just the major, no fancy alterations. Like this:

A very basic ii-V-I, key of F

Why? Well, you can practice these basic combos to the point that they become automatic and simply fall under your fingers naturally. Then getting fancy is easy to visualize as just alterations to the basic pattern and easier to pull out and use in the heat of playing. Say, like this one:

A more complex and better sounding ii-V-I. key of F

Fifth, The payoff. I give you the results of my testing. I actually did go through all of the tens-of-thousands of possible combinations. For each of the CAGED forms I developed 120-180 good sounding ii-V-I combos. That is almost 800 in total, but not tens-of-thousands of so-so ones. And, by moving any of these groups of chords up or down the neck, you have good ii-V-I’s for every key.

There are a few ‘border disputes’ where one CAGED chord form may reach up for a combo chord while the next higher CAGED chord is reaching lower for the same chord. I went ahead and put the combos in both sections, so you will find a (very) few duplications to handle overlap situations.

These ii-V-I combinations have different uses based on how they sound to you personally. You may find some are best as comping chords behind a horn or singer. Others make your chord solos more interesting. A few might inspire your song writing to head in a new direction. Still others make great intros or ending sequences. You decide, it’s your music.

Now have fun with it.