Acoustic Instrument
Primers
What Kind of Guitar
Should I Start On?
What Kind of Banjo
Do I Want?
Evaluating and
Buying Used
Guitars
Setting Up
Fretted Instruments Whatever Happened
to the Banjo?
Beginning Five-
String Banjo
6-String Banjos
Banjo Pickups
Axes in my Life
What is a
Bluegrass Banjo?
Dean "Backwoods
Six" Shootout
Music Theory
Primers
Introduction
to Scales
Introduction
to Chords
Circle of Fifths
Other Articles
About Music
How to Give
Guitar Lessons
Musician or
Wannabe? Did God Really
Give Rock &
Roll to You?
Are You a
"Brand Bigot"?
Who Owns Folk Songs?
Popular Music Theory: An Introduction
| Written by Paul Race for Creek Don't Rise™ and School Of The Rock™ |
Rock, Country, Gospel, Urban, Folk, Bluegrass, Worship, and just about anything else you'll hear on the radio share the same basic musical scales, chords, and other structures. I call this "popular musical theory" to distinguish it from the things classical composers do, which go way beyond the scope of the genres named in the first sentence.
When I've attempted to teach musical instruments, I've always pointed out that you really don't understand your instrument until you understand music. Sadly, there are millions of wannabes out there who know a few chords, or a few songs, or a few licks, but think learning anything that takes real work at is for suckers. And when they fail miserably to make any kind of impact and blame everyone but the person in the mirror.
Learning the basics of popular music theory will help you:
We have several articles in the works that should help you get started. But these three are the only ones ready to publish, even in draft form, at the moment. Stay tuned . . . :-)
We have also found a free downloadable Berklee Music handbook you might find helpful. Click here to sign up for their newsletter and get a free download - although this is a limited offer, so don’t wait too long.
To return to the CreekDontRise.com™ Home Page, click here.
Whatever else you get out of our pages, I hope you come away with some great ideas for "sharing the joy."
And please stay in touch!
- Paul Race
All material, illustrations, and content of this web site is copyrighted © 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006,
2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 by Paul D. Race. All rights reserved.
Creek Dont' Rise(tm) is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising
program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.
Note: Creek Don't Rise (tm) is Paul Race's name for his resources supporting the history and
music of the North American Heartland as well as additional kinds of acoustic and traditional music.
For questions, comments, suggestions, trouble reports, etc. about this page or this site, please contact us.
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