ROCK & ROLL THEORY FOR BEGINNERS
Although you might think that theory and rock or blues playing don’t have much in common, it’s surprising how useful a bit of basic music training can be when learning any style of music, however much that style relies an a "feel". I have met many great rock and rhythm & blues saxophonists, and all of them had a surprisingly good knowledge of theory and used it along with highly developed ears and a masterful knowledge of the genre (all of which can be learnt you will be pleased to know). To follow this lesson, I suggest you get hold of a keyboard, it doesn’t matter whether you can play piano - you just need to play a few notes with one hand. You also need a very basic knowledge of music theory (e.g. that there are twelve semitones in an octave and seven notes in a major scale).
The first thing you need to think about is how each note of a major scale can be thought to correspond to a number, and how those numbers are used to define the inetrval between different notes of the scale. Note that the number "1" is always the root, whatever key. So in C, the root note C is 1. In Bb the root note Bb is 1. You always count up from the root:
| Notes | C | D | E | F | G | A | B | C | |||||
| Interval | I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | I |
Note that in this table I have used roman numerals rather than the more familiar arabic numerals (1,2, 3 etc). There is a good reason for this which I will come to later. For now you just need to count and follow the notes on a keyboard.
As you may know, the total number of notes in an octave is 12, of which only 7 make up the major scale. We call the notes that are in the scale diatonic, and the notes that aren’t we call chromatic (black notes in the key of C).
OK, so let’s look at a simple 3 note chord (triad). This is a C major triad and consists of the Root (1st) 3rd and 5th notes:
| Notes | C | D | E | F | G | A | B | C | |||||
| Interval | I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | I |
- The root to the 3rd is called a major 3rd interval (a 3rd because you count the steps inclusively - 123). This is made up of two whole tones (ie 4 semitones)
- The interval between the root and 5th is a perfect 5th (two tones, a semitone and a tone, or 7 semitones)
- The interval between the 3rd and 5th is a 3rd, (3 - 4 - 5) but is not the same as the major 3rd between C and E. Have a look at the table above and play the notesd on a keyboard - you will see it has only one whole tone and a semitone - (or 3 semitones). We call this a minor 3rd.
We are now going to build a chord based on the 4th note of the C scale. This chord is F major:
| Notes | C | D | E | F | G | A | B | C | |||||
| Notes | I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | I |
Things now look a bit more complicated. As well as numbering the notes in relation to the the tonic note of the key (C), we now also need to be able to number the notes relative to the root of the chord (F). To do this we use two numbering systems which can be easily differentiated - arabic and roman numerals. We use roman numerals for the notes relative to the tonic (or key centre of the tune), and arabic numerals to count up from the root of whatever chord we are talking about. This may seem complicated at first, but if you look at the next table, you should understand why this actually makes things clearer:
| Relation to tonic (key centre) | I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | I | |||||
| Notes | C | D | E | F | G | A | B | C | |||||
| Relation to root of chord | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
As with the C chord, the interval between the 1st and 3rd of an F chord is also a major 3rd and the interval between the 1st and 5th is a perfect 5th. These two intervals define this also as a major chord. As with the C, we only have three notes so this is also a triad
With a very standard 12 bar blues sequence there are often only three chords. We now know chords I and IV. The final chord to think about is chord V, built on the 5th degree of the C scale. This is the chord of G, and if you look at (and listen to) the intervals between the 1st and 3rd, and the 1st and 5th, you will discover that this is also a major triad:
| Relation to tonic (key centre) | I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | I | II | ||||||
| Notes | C | D | E | F | G | A | B | C | D | ||||||
| Relation to root of chord | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
As you can see, these two systems of numbering actually make things easier as we will need to think about chords in two ways:
- The root (1st note) of the chord in relation to the key we are in. (chord IV, chord V etc. of the key of C)
- The notes of the chord relative to the root of the chord (1st, 3rd, 5th etc.).
In these examples I have been talking about the key of C but the same principle applies to any key. Of course, you will need to be able to play in more than one key - all of them sooner or later - so I suggest you get back to the keyboard (and your own instrument) and start learning the I, IV and V triad chords in different keys. As well as counting the intervals and working out the theory, make sure that above all, you listen.
The next parts of this tutorial are now on Sax On The Web