Chord Theory I

This lesson series also includes:

1. Lesson Series 1 - Foreword
2. The Basic Elements of Music
3. From Theory to the Groove I
   
4. Chord Theory I
5. From Theory to the Groove II

Chord Theory I

It all starts with C major scale
To understand the chords and chord progressions it is good to start with a major scale. (If you have forgotten what a scale is here is a reminder). Lets take C major scale as an example. C Major scale consists of the notes C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. In the following example you hear these notes played up and down with a full note long break in between to make playing along easier.

Advanced tip: When playing a major scale, play the root note (in this case C) with your middle finger. This means that when you are moving up the strings you have to slide your middle finger when going from step 6 to 7 (see the notation). The goal is to make this slide as silent as possible.

Lets start with a major chord. When building any major chord, simply take the first (the root note = C), the third (= E) and the fifth note (= G) of the major scale and these three notes played simultaneously form a major chord. The root note gives the name for the chord, in this case C.

Chord Progression Theory

You can figure out what chords might go with a certain key by building chords from the scale notes as the root note of the chord. Lets start with the first 5 notes of a C major scale. The chord created from the root note of the scale is a C major (I = C), the second chord is D minor (ii = Dm7), third one is E minor (iii = Em7), fourth one is F major (IV - Fmaj7) and the fifth one is a dominant seven (V = G7). We will go the rest through in the next Chord Progression Theory -lesson. If you know that the song is in key C, it is very likely that you will run into the above mentioned chords.

Three chord symphony
If you wondered what the upper and lower case Roman numbers in the previous paragraph were, here is the explanation. In western classical notation this is commonly used method to represent the relationship between the chords. This way the chord progression is not tied to a certain key and can be easily transposed the song to any key. You can read more about this subject on Wikipedia.

Lets take this straight into action and start with just three simple chords. One of the most common chord progression is I-IV-V, in the key of C that would mean C-F-G. Believe it or not, there are hundreds of hit songs written using this very basic chord progression.

HOMEWORK 1: Practise left hand finger technique with C major scale and slow tempo.
HOMEWORK 2: Play the song with the backing track and with the first two grooves learned earlier.
HOMEWORK for the advanced: Try to memorize the basic I – IV – V chord progression in two different keys. Where can you find the root notes of these chords on your bass neck? Try them with the grooves learned earlier.

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