CompRock
Return to: Raymond Weiss Mini-Course | The Chord Map | Voice Leading | Instrumentation | Music_Composition
Rock Music
Note: Students who wish to practice their skills learned in this unit are encouraged to access this site for an opportunity to practice composition.
Rock music traces its beginnings back to blues in early 20th century America. The first musician to truly be recognized as a Rock and Roll figure was Elvis Presley, who coined the term and, by doing so, defined a genre of music. Rock music is truly varied, but the most familiar ensemble to play rock music includes guitars, a bass guitar, drums, and a vocalist. Some of the biggest acts in Rock's history include Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones.
In this unit we will readdress the various topics learned in the preceding units by recognizing harmonic movement, voice leading principles, and instrumentation practices. These three skills should give you a base understanding for music composition, and should provide you with all the tools you will need to begin composing for yourself.
Quick Overview
To begin, we'll review the chord map again. If you need further review, return to The Chord Map
Rock music, like many other genres of music, often relies on typical chord progressions throughout an entire song. In this course, we will briefly take a look at one of the most popular chord progressions used in rock music. By looking at a single typical chord progression, we can minimize our efforts on analysis and focus instead on voice leading, instrumentation, and harmonic tendencies.
The chord progression we will be looking at here is: I-V-vi-IV. This chord progression can loop back on to itself, can be started at any chord in the progression, and is used in countless rock songs. Below is the chord progression in the key of C major:
While the chords here are laid out in a nice progression that allows for good voice leading techniques, rock music often does away with voice leading principles in their compositions. However, it is important to recognize the reason these four chords go together in the order that they do. If you've forgotten, please review Voice Leading.
Quick Quiz - Part One
Below are two quick examples of this chord progression being used in popular rock songs. See if you can guess the name of the song, and make sure to understand the chord progression being used.
| 1. Name the song. | 
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|---|---|---|---|
| Answer: Journey's Don't Stop Believing. | Media:Final2.mp3 | ||
| 2. Name the song. | 
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|---|---|---|---|
| Answer: The Beatle's Let it Be. | Media:Final3.mp3 | ||
What you've seen above are piano reductions of the songs in question. What that means is that the important parts of the song have been played by a single piano. If you'll recall from Instrumentation, musicians often use a wide variety of instruments in their compositions. It just so happens that the Beatles and Journey did use a piano in their songs, but both compositions utilized other instruments as well. The next two songs did not use a piano in their composition. See if you can name the song and identify other instruments used in the original song.
Quick Quiz - Part Two
Identify the song and other instruments that were used in the original piece's composition:
| 3. Name the song and identify other instruments used in the song. | 
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|---|---|---|---|
| Answer: U2's With or Without You. Other instruments used include the guitar and bass guitar. | Media:Final4.mp3 | ||
| 4. Name the song and identify other instruments used in the song. | 
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|---|---|---|---|
| Answer: Men at Work's Land Down Under. Other instruments used include the pan flute, drums, and bass guitar. | Media:Final5.mp3 | ||
Review and Conclusion
Rock music is not unlike other genres of music. Conventions and common practices often dominate the genre, giving rise to a familiar "feel" to the music. However, these conventions are almost always heavily influenced by very old traditions such as chord progressions, voice leading techniques, and instrumentation choices. Understanding how the three components of composition interact with each other is crucial to composing your own works of music in any genre.
It is now highly recommended that you use what you have learned briefly here to practice your own compositions at this site. There are still many details in music theory that can help you compose a greater variety of musical compositions and understand more musical compositions composed by others. If you seek further knowledge, access this site for more lessons and exercises.
Resources
1. Apple Inc. (2000-2017). MusicTheory.Net. Retrieved from: www.musictheory.net
2. Noteflight LLC. (2008-2017). Noteflight.Com. Retrieved from: www.noteflight.com