Music existed for a long time before there was written theory, and millions of musicians have made music quite happily to this day without reading any. We can all take things in intuitively, by listening to recordings and playing with other people, and we can learn by working things out for ourselves. (Some people can do this much more quickly than others!)

‘Music theory’ is simply a language for explaining things in music easily and precisely. With a very small grasp of this language we can explain things quickly to each other; we can also see the ‘short cuts’ from one musical situation to another. So a small amount of time spent picking up a little of this language can save us a huge amount of time in the future.

This introduction to music theory has been written with a heavy emphasis on how theory relates to bluegrass, and how it can help you to play better. You may know some of this already, but we recommend you read from the beginning to make sure there’s nothing you’ve missed – you can always slow down once you get to the bits you’re unsure of. Making sure that you understand each building block before moving on to the next is very important. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. (In order to keep things simple early on, some ideas are explained in greater detail later.)

We recommend that you read this in conjunction with the mp3s, (marked with a ), and that you have your instrument handy so that you can check things out before you move on. It’s also a good idea to know where all the notes are on your instrument.

How Music Works

There are two – only two - basic elements to all music, pitch and time. If you like, written music is a graph of where a particular pitch occurs in the time-line. Melodies are series of notes played along that line in a particular order, sometimes with differing length values. Harmonies and chords are series of notes all played in the same place on the time-line. Music is all about the relationships between the notes in terms of both time and pitch.

(If you are unfamiliar with written music, there is a short explanation in Appendix A.)

Time is different from tempo. Tempo is the speed at which you play the relationships – the relationships remain the same regardless of the tempo. Pitch is different from ‘key’. As we will see, the same relationships between the notes exist whatever key they’re in.

Time – Holding The Music Together

In many ways time is the more important of our two elements. Without the time-line to show us where the notes are placed in relation to each other, it would be impossible to tell one tune from another, because all the notes could be sounded simultaneously or in any order.

Playing bluegrass is something we do with other people, and whilst any mistakes in pitch – wrong notes – can be easily forgotten, mistakes in timing, particularly when playing rhythm under a tune or song, make it very difficult for everyone else; and a great lead line played with bad timing can sound very weak indeed.

‘Good’ timing is the glue that holds everything together.

Understanding the mechanics of the ‘time’ makes it a lot easier to do a good job of playing both rhythm and lead, so here is the beginning of how it all works.

When we listen to a piece of music we can hear that it is divided into phrases, and that there is a pulse running through the piece, and the pulse has accents.

	Don't	fall	in	|	love		with	me	|	darlin'		I'm	a	|	rambler
1	2	3	4	|	1	2	3	4	|	1	2	3	4	|	1	2	etc

In written music the pulse becomes the beats, and the beats are grouped together into measures (also called bars). The number of beats in the measure is all about where the accents fall naturally in the music, and we usually put those accents at the start of each measure.

Bluegrass almost always uses either four beats in the measure, or three. Written music and tab let us know which one we are using by starting a piece with what is called a Time Signature. If there are four beats in a measure it is 4/4, if there are three beats in a measure it is 3/4.

We’re going to start by looking at four beats in a measure.

Each beat in a measure is known as a quarter note (shown above) *. All quarter notes will have the same length value on our time line. We can cut a quarter note in half – ‘eighth notes’ – or half again - ‘sixteenth notes’ - and beyond, but the length value of the measure, and the beat, remains the same. So four beats in a measure can have four quarter notes in it, or two quarter notes, two eighth notes and four sixteenth notes (see below) – but it will still be the same length measure, and the main beats will still fall in the same places.

(* This is highly misleading since it is only a 'quarter' of a measure of four - it is a third of a measure of three! They're called 'crotchets' in classical music… we'll stick with quarter notes though….)

Understanding where we are in a measure, and keeping that in our heads, is as important as understanding where we are in a song. In bluegrass, the bass plays mostly on the 1st and 3rd beats of a measure of four, the ‘on beats’, and the ‘chop’ plays on the 2nd and 4th, the ‘off-beats’.

The music will quickly fall apart if we don’t keep that together. Accidentally ending up on the ‘wrong’ beat (the bass playing 2nd and 4th or the chop on the 1st and 3rd) will make it almost impossible for the people we are playing with to continue, and it mostly happens because we don’t know we’re doing it.

Practising with a metronome which puts an emphasis on the first beat of each measure will not only keep us in time while we play, it will get us used to hearing where the beats are against what we are playing.

Another way to help understand where the beats are is to listen to a recording and count the beats. Count one, two, three, four through the first verse and chorus – these are the quarter notes.

As confidence grows with that, keep the one, two, three and four in the same place and say ‘and’ between each one – one-and-two-and-three-and-four; these are the eighth notes.

Keys And Scales And Chords

A key is a set of note relationships, which go together to make a particular sound or mood.

For the last two thousand years or so our understanding of harmony and note relationships has developed in a particular way in the West (differently in other cultures), and that understanding is embedded in a way that means we find some relationships more ‘satisfying’ than others, and some more ‘tense’ in a way that needs ‘resolving’ for us to find satisfaction. It’s the tension between these relationships that makes music exciting. (There are also physiological reasons why this is the case. Appendix B looks briefly at music and physics, and why our ears find some sounds more pleasing than others.)

The notes that make up a key, played in ascending or descending order are a scale. A major key uses a major scale and the rules surrounding that set of notes never change, whether it’s G major, Bb major or F# major.

The major scale comprises eight notes. The gap between any two notes is called an interval. We will look at the scale of G, as it is a very common bluegrass scale. To get from one G to the next G – an interval called an octave - we find there are twelve half steps (one fret each). In order to end up with eight notes rather than twelve, we need to use a series of some half steps and some whole steps.

(If you didn’t already check out Appendix A, it would be worth looking at it now.)

The major scale goes: a whole step (2 frets), a whole step, a half step (1 fret), a whole step, a whole step, a whole step and a final half step. This relationship is the same for every major scale. In G major this is:

G A B C D E F# G.

Now let’s look at Fireball Mail. This tune is in the key of G major and mostly uses the notes from the above scale to make up the tune.

Just like a scale, the root (key note) major chord, or triad, in any key also has the same fixed relationships in every key: the root note - in this case G, the 3rd of the scale – B – and the 5th – D. You can work this out easily by writing down the notes in a scale, and counting along from the root to the 3rd and 5th notes. It’s called a triad because it has three notes.

Fireball Mail has a melody whose notes are not just from the scale of G major, they are mostly from the chord of G major. The most important notes in a melody - the ones that fall on the natural stresses, which we’ve put at the beginning of a measure – usually define what the chord underneath it should be.

If you can hum the melody to Fireball Mail, try doing that and playing a root chord all the way through. Because this is a very simple melody whose notes focus around the notes of the chord (G, B and D) this works perfectly well. You’ll notice, however, that it doesn’t seem to ‘go’ anywhere.

We like music to feel as if it is ‘going somewhere’ rather than standing still. So first we must establish our ‘home’, our root chord, also called the I chord, as its root is note 1 of our scale (see More about Chords below). Then we can go away from it and come back (*). So where do we go?

(* There are many examples of pieces of music that start with a different chord to the I, instantly creating tension, but we have to start this explanation somewhere!)

The second most important chord in our harmony is the V chord, so called because its root is note 5 in our scale. This always comprises the 5th, 7th and 2nd notes of the root major scale (not always in that order).

The seventh note of the scale is only a half step below the root, and sounds like it needs to ‘resolve’ up to the root – in other words, take us home.

Here’s the chord chart for Fireball Mail:

Putting the V chord in the appropriate places takes us somewhere else and brings us back, creating some tension and release. The V chord in G is D major, and we hit the D chord when the melody hits a D note in an important place in a phrase - not every time though in this case, which is the composer’s choice. So we have six measures of I and two measures of V – then back to the I for the second set of 8 measures. And since we want to feel we’ve ‘come home’ at the end of our second 8 measures, we put the V chord a bit before the end – the 6th measure in this case – so we can have a couple of measures of I at the end.

Learning and understanding scales and their related chords helps us when we are trying to fit the chords underneath a melody when we don’t ‘know’ what they ‘are’. Learning to recognise these musical patterns makes it much faster to work out how to play new things we hear.

More About Chords

In bluegrass there are many occasions when some players in a group are using capos. If we put a capo on the 2nd fret of a guitar, dobro or banjo and play a G major chord, it is really an A major chord (two half steps up).

If we are using a capo and calling out the chords to a tune or song, it’s no use to those without a capo if we call out G, and very confusing for us to say ‘A’ whilst playing G. To avoid this confusion, we refer to the root chord in any key as I. There is a corresponding chord for every note in the scale, so a D chord in the key of G is the V chord because D is the fifth note of the scale. All of the chords are referred to in terms of where their root note occurs in the scale.

This is also very useful when explaining how chords work. If we use the chord names it is harder to understand that the relationships between the chords will be the same in every key. If we’re told that the V chord IS D then it’s very confusing to be told in the next tune that the V chord is A or E. If we know that the V chord is 5 notes up the scale from the root note then when we need to change the key of a song, for example to fit the singer’s range, it’s a straightforward job to work out what the new chords will be (see Appendix C).

As we have already said, chords are a series of notes sounded simultaneously. Any combination of three notes or more is a ‘chord’, but for now we’ll confine ourselves to basic major triads. (Two notes can be used to imply a chord, but they don’t give us the full picture – more of this later.)

We have seen that any major triad comprises the keynote or root, the 3rd and 5th notes of the scale - in this case G, B and D (our I chord) and that the V chord is the 5th, 7th and 2nd notes of our scale, in this case D, F# and A.

Let’s look at the V chord from a different perspective. If we were in D major, D would be our I chord, comprising the root, 3rd and 5th of the scale of D major. These are the same notes as the 5th, 7th and 2nd of G major. Take a minute to check this out.

Understanding the ability of the same chord to be two or three different things – a I in this key, a V in another and so on – is crucial to being able to fit chords to songs and melodies.

It’s a good idea to make sure this has sunk in before you move on.

More About Keys, Scales And Chords

There are many types of scales. There are major scales and minor scales (see Part 3) all of which use eight notes. There are also pentatonic scales, which only have five notes.

Bluegrass is a form of music based on individual improvisation around the melody (breaks). In order to improvise melodic ideas over chords we need to know which notes to use. By looking at the notes in a scale and its corresponding chords we can build up a set of notes around which to play. This is a lifelong exploration of endless possibilities, and requires patience and an ear for the ‘style’.

The major pentatonic scale in G is G A B D and E - leaving the notes out of the major scale that you reach with a half step (C and F#).

Fireball Mail in its simplest form is comprised entirely of notes from the major pentatonic scale. As we’ve already seen, groups of notes create a ‘sound’ or ‘flavour’, and the major pentatonic scale has it’s own flavour; it is part of the major scale, but it feels less ‘complicated’.

Let’s take this a little further. The G major pentatonic scale is G A B D and E. In G the V chord is D major. All of the notes in G major pentatonic are also found in the D major scale. This means we can improvise around the melody using the pentatonic scale of G on both the I chord and the V chord, and almost everything fits. The more we play around with it, the more we get a feel for what works and what doesn’t.

If we look at the V chord, D major, and its major pentatonic scale (which we can work out by applying the same relationships - 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 6th notes of the major scale), we see that four of the notes are the same as for G major pentatonic – we leave out the G and put in an F#.

Now we can improvise with these six notes, getting used to which ones work with which chords. Many bluegrass melodies are heavily based on the pentatonic scale, and that makes it a very good place to start, though it is by no means the whole picture.

As we start to add different chords and scales into our repertoire, the same rules will continue to apply. As long as we can see the relationship between the notes of one chord and another and their corresponding scales, moving between them is not a problem.

Don’t forget, music rules ALWAYS apply in any similar key. There are no exceptions. Anything you learn about the key of G major will work in any other major key.

The IV Chord

We need to move away from Fireball Mail now and find a tune with a third chord. Let’s try Ground Speed.

The more notes that scales and chords have in common, the closer their relationship – and the more likely they are to be used together. The scales of the V chord and the IV chord have only one note each that is different from the root note scale (in the key of G major this is D major and C major), so they are the ‘closest’, and the major chords associated with those scales are therefore the most likely to be used.

If we lay out the notes for a C major pentatonic scale C D E G A we’ll see that, as with D pentatonic, these are all notes in the G major pentatonic scale with one half step change; in this case, B changes to C.

So the next most common chord after the V is the IV chord. In G major that will be the chord of C major, C being the 4th note in the scale. The IV chord always comprises the 4th, 6th and 8th notes of the root major scale.

If we imagine C as our root for a moment, we can see that these notes are, as always, the root, 3rd and 5th of C major.

Still with C as our root, we can also see that the same relationships exist between the notes of a C major chord and a G major chord as exist between a G major chord and a D major chord. In other words, G is the V chord of C as much as C is the IV of G.

When we move from I to IV (G to C) it is as if we are moving from V to I with C as our ‘new home’.

Every chord can be the I chord in one key AND the V chord in another AND the IV chord in another. This is part of a musical sequence called the circle (or cycle) of fifths: C – G (five notes of the scale); G – D (another five) and so on. A diagram of this sequence can be found in Appendix D.

Let’s look at the chord sequence for the first half of Ground Speed:

There are two 8-measure phrases, which subdivide into four 4-measure phrases. In the first 4 measures we are establishing the I chord; in the second we are ‘going somewhere’ – to the V chord for two measures. We go back to the I at the beginning of the next phrase ready to ‘go somewhere else’ - the IV chord, and finally we go quickly back to the V and the I, so that we’ve ‘come home’.

We need the IV chord in Ground Speed, because unlike in Fireball Mail, the melody lands on a C and/or E at the beginning of a measure, and neither of these notes occur in the I or the V. Both appear in the IV - the melody is ‘dictating’ the chords.

Finally, there is a very different feel to the change between IV and I and the change between V and I. This is because the IV chord doesn’t contain the F# note, the note a half step away from the root note of the I chord. There isn’t the same feeling of preparing to return to the I. This short sequence shows IV to I then V to I.

A Slightly Different Scale

Let’s look at the G major scale again. If we change only one note by one half step, F# to F, we’ll find that we now have all the notes of the regular C major scale.

Now we can start to play with the different relationships between notes in scales and their chords to create tension. If we play a G chord, and improvise over it with the notes of the C major scale, the only new note we have introduced is F. Playing an F in a G scale or chord gives us a G7 scale or chord.

(This name is a bit confusing, because the 7th note in the scale of G is in fact F#! Sadly this is simply a ‘convention’. When we change a note in a scale we have to call it something else. The root, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh are the regular names. If we lower a note by a half step we refer to it as flattened. If we raise a note by a half step we refer to it as sharp, or sharpened. See Note Names at the end of this section.)

G7 hints that we might be moving from G to C by using a note from the C scale that isn’t in the regular G scale. We can use it as a ‘preparation’ chord to provide some tension, which we resolve when we play C – temporarily making C our new I chord. The ‘7’ turns our I into a new V.

In the same way, we can use D7 to get back to G, our ‘real’ V to I. The scale we need to create a D7 flavour is EXACTLY THE SAME as a G major scale.

So we can say the major scale in any key IS THE SAME as the major scale with a flattened 7th of its V chord.

Take another look at the Circle of 5ths diagram (Appendix D). It is a circle of 5ths heading clockwise, but it is a circle of 4ths heading counter-clockwise. Starting anywhere in the circle, the chord to the left is always the IV and the chord to the right is always the V. Since we can start anywhere, with any note as our key note, it follows that any chord can be a I or a IV or a V chord.

While it may have a principal role in a given key – D is the V chord in G, C is the IV chord – aspects of a chord’s other potential roles will always be implied. Here’s the second half of Ground Speed:

Since a 7th chord is a ‘leads to somewhere else’ chord, we don’t want to go from G straight to a D7. We want to hit a nice big D to show we’ve arrived somewhere else; but we could use a 7th for the second measure of D to show we’re going back to G. Then in the fourth measure we can use a G7 to imply that G has become the V to take us to our new temporary I - C. Then we move back to our real V – D – to take us back to our real I – G.

More About Time And Rhythm

We have seen in Part 1 that when we have four beats in a measure, very simple bluegrass parts place the bass on the 1st and 3rd and the ‘chop’ from the mandolin, and sometimes the fiddle, banjo and dobro, is on the 2nd and 4th. (This is not a hard and fast rule.)

All of the instruments in their different ways stray from this rather rigid rule for different reasons - to emphasize the first beat of a measure on the mandolin, to ‘walk up’ to a change of chord on the bass, and so on. Here’s the bass and mandolin having fun together.

So far we’ve looked at time as a separate aspect to pitch; now let’s look at where they collide!

The role of the bass shows us something very interesting. The bass will play the two ‘on beats’. Under most circumstances the bass plays the root of the chord on the first beat of the measure and the 5th on the third beat. Why don’t they always play the root note?

The root is our most important note, and the first beat is our most important beat. It is right that they go together. The third beat is not so important so we must make it less so. The next most important note is our scale is the 5th… so we play that; it is still part of the G chord. As we have seen, the feel of a V chord or 5th note is to want to take us home, and the next bass note we play is another root. Which gives a nice heavy emphasis to both the chord AND the beat.

If we play a root all the time on the bass we are UNDERMINING the importance of the first beat of the measure.

When moving from the I chord to the V chord, bass players often play a note other than the 5th for the third beat of the measure of I, so that they don’t undermine the first beat of the measure of V by playing its root note before it should be there.

In G major a measure of G will have a G and a D from the bass. If there’s a D chord next (the V), it will need a D note and an A. The bass player will often find an alternative note – B perhaps (the 3rd, and still part of the G major chord), or a run of notes leading to the next chord change; they’re making a choice to emphasise an aspect of the music.

In the same way, when we have a chord chart in front of us, we have seen how it’s possible to substitute a G7 for a G, or a D7 for a D. This is also done to help with emphasis, and is a player’s choice.

The only way to develop this kind of ‘choosing’ skill is to listen to other players. When downloading Lessons, always listen to the Performance Tempo backup mp3s. All of the great instructors on bluegrasscollege make choices about what to play where; this is what gives them their distinctive sound.

The more you understand about how the music works, the easier it will be to understand what they’re doing when you listen to them.

Waltz Time

Waltz time, or three beats in a measure, is the other most commonly used time signature in bluegrass. On the tab or music this is denoted as 3/4.

In 4/4, there are two ‘on beats’, the first and third, and two ‘off beats’, the second and fourth. In bluegrass this is clearly illustrated by the bass playing the on beats, and the chop playing the off beats. In 3/4 there is only one on beat – the first. Beats two and three are both regarded as off beats. So in very simple terms the bass will play the first beat, and the chop the second AND third. Here’s White Dove.

A very interesting thing about 3/4 time in bluegrass is how the quarter notes subdivide.

We have seen, counting along with Rambler in Part 1, that when we have a 1,2,3,4 (4/4) feel it usually subdivides naturally into 1-and-2-and-3-and-4-and. Listen carefully to the fiddle break in White Dove.

We can count 1,2,3; but the natural subdivision is not 1-and-2-and-3-and; not in an equal way anyway! The natural division is that each quarter note is cut into three, giving us a diddle-y, diddle-y, diddle-y feel. These threes are known as triplets.

In 4/4 we can divide a quarter note in three (triplets), but it is used for special effect, since the natural division is two. Here, the mandolin plays a whole succession of triplets.

In 3/4 in bluegrass, the triplet is the natural division of a quarter note. This certainly makes a difference to guitar and mandolin players whose natural up-down approach to picking leaves them constantly on the wrong stroke if they don’t think about it quite carefully.

We’ll talk about divisions of three notes further in Part 3.

Minor Keys And Pentatonic Scales

Let’s go back to the pentatonic scale in G major. Without changing a single note, let’s play it starting on the E. With E as our root note, these same five notes now sound like a minor scale.

We’ve made this change of flavour from major to minor not by altering the notes themselves, but by altering the root and their orientation to it (more of this in a minute).

The biggest difference between a major scale and a minor scale is that the 3rd is flattened. Starting from E, we go whole step (F#) HALF step – G. When an E minor chord (in G the VI minor) is played we can use this minor pentatonic scale to improvise. Since this is identical to the major pentatonic in G we can see that these keys are very closely related. In fact they are called ‘relative’; E minor is the relative minor of G major, G major is the relative major of E minor.

We can always find the relative minor of a key by counting down three half steps, and the relative major by counting up three half steps.

These keys are so closely related that an E minor chord shares two of the notes of a G major chord – G and B. (We build a minor chord in the same way as a major chord with the root, 3rd and 5th.) They also share the same Key Signature (Appendix A).

This means that when we play a break, we can use this pentatonic scale to cover a chord change from a I to a VI minor, in this case G major to E minor.

The pentatonic scale is only a small part of the story of minor keys, however, as it only provides us with the five note ‘uncomplicated’ version of the scale. Now we need to fill in the gaps to get the whole minor scale.

Minor Scales And Modes

We’ve already seen that one difference between a major scale and a minor scale is the 3rd note. In a major scale this is a whole step up from the 2nd note; in a minor scale it is a half step up. The 4th note of the scale remains the same, as does the 5th. After this however, there are alternatives, and these alternatives for the 6th and 7th notes provide different ‘flavours’ in a minor key.

In Parts 1 & 2 we looked at the regular major scale and the slightly different scale we produce when we flatten the seventh (in G this will give us the ‘7’ of G7).

There is another way of describing these different scales – Modes.

The regular major scale is also called the Ionian mode, and the major scale with the 7th note flattened is called the Myxolydian mode. They are both G major scales, but they do slightly different jobs, so it is necessary to have some way to refer to them separately.

This is very important in the context of minor keys, because there are subtle variations of minor keys found in the notes of melodies, and we need to understand how these variations work in order to play the right chords, and the right notes when we improvise.

As we know, a major scale is made up of a set series of note relationships - root, whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step and half step. If we start this sequence of notes somewhere else than the root, the orientation of the relationships is altered. We’ve seen this already; if we play a G major scale with a D root, it’s a D7 scale.

If we play the notes of the G major scale using A as the root, we have what sounds like a minor scale. It is also known as the Dorian mode. The sequence now goes root, whole step, HALF step, WHOLE step, whole step, whole step, HALF step and WHOLE step.

There is a different mode for playing the notes of a major scale using each different note as the root, since each starting place will give us a new orientation, but we will confine ourselves to four: the major scale (Ionian), the flat 7th scale (Myxolydian), and the two most common minors, Dorian and Aeolian.

If we use E as the root, we have what sounds like a minor scale, but it doesn’t sound quite like the one that started on A. This is the Aeolian mode. The first five notes have the same relationships as in the Dorian mode (root, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step), but the 6th and 7th notes have changed. In the Dorian mode the sequence continues whole step, half step, whole step; in the Aeolian mode it continues half step, whole step, whole step.

We can find these modes using any major scale - our four modes are available in every key. For example Em can be Dorian or Aeolian, we simply need to find which major scale does the job. Since the G major scale gives us the notes of A minor Dorian, E minor Dorian will be the notes of D major – the major scale of a whole step below.

When we learn a minor tune or song we need to check the melody. If it has a 6th note half a step from the 5th it’s Aeolian, if it is a whole step, it’s Dorian. This will make a big difference to the chords we play (see below) and the notes we use to improvise.

Finally, neither of the two minor modes we’ve looked at has a sharp 7th note – in E minor this means that neither mode has a D# - the note that takes us ‘home’ to our root. The introduction of this sharpened 7th gives us the note we need to make a powerful major V chord in a minor key. If we want to use this sharp 7th in our five chord we may need to introduce it into our scale at the right points in order not to get a half step clash between melody and chord when we improvise. E.M.D. is in E minor, but uses a B7 chord at the end of each section. You may notice that when the B7 is being played, the fiddle deliberately doesn’t sharpen the 7th, causing a clash of D against D#. It works here, but it’s a very deliberate stylistic choice.

Minor Chords, And Major Chords In Minor Keys

A root minor chord is still made up of the root, 3rd and 5th; the difference between it and a major chord is that the 3rd in a minor scale is a half-step lower, and so it is in the chord.

When we go to the IV and V chords in a minor key, however, we have alternatives – depending on which mode we are using.

The Dorian mode in the key of E minor has a 6th note that is a C#. This means that if the melody dictates it, the IV chord will be A MAJOR.

The Aeolian mode in the key of E minor has C as its 6th note. This tells us that if the melody dictates it, the IV chord will be A MINOR.

And we have seen above that we need to check whether the 7th is flat or sharp in a minor melody so that when we get to the V chord we know whether to play a minor or a major. (Not forgetting that we can sometimes choose to improvise with a minor 3rd over a major chord; it is very rare that we would improvise a major 3rd over a minor chord. We need to listen to other players to find out when this might be appropriate – and then use our own judgement.)

Minor Chords in Major Keys

We can also use minor chords in major keys. There are many songs that use a II minor instead of a IV chord. In the key of G, this means we use an A minor chord instead of a C – its relative minor. Check out the notes that make up the chords. A chord of C major has a C, an E and a G; A minor has a C, an E and an A. If we play an Am7 it also has a G in it – it is in fact very nearly the same chord, but with a changed root.

Try playing Ground Speed using Am instead of C. It doesn’t sound terribly wrong, but it does sound different – gentler, if you like.

Some melodies play with the tension between major and minor and are somewhat ambiguous, like Clinch Mountain Backstep. It can be a good idea when accompanying them to leave this ambiguity in the hands of the lead instrument. In a simple triad made up of a root, 3rd and 5th, the only note that tells us whether our chord is major or minor is the 3rd. To leave the ambiguity in the melody, try finding chord shapes that don’t include the 3rd – in A this would mean only playing As and Es.

Implied Chords

We mentioned in Part 1 that two notes imply a chord; they just can’t tell us the whole story. We can see above that by playing the root and fifth we are stating a key (A) without giving the detail of whether it is major or minor by leaving out the 3rd. We have also seen (see Minor Chords) that the root and 3rd of any major chord are also the 3rd and 5th of its relative minor.

Even though two notes don’t tell us the whole story, they can help build a picture. The fiddle often plays ‘double stops’ (two notes at once), and when we have a bass defining the root, or a guitar playing a whole chord, it doesn’t matter that the fiddle isn’t giving us every detail.

A Final Word About Keys, Scales And Chords

Learning how to play scales fluently helps us to know what, and where, the notes on our instrument are in the context of a key. We have already had a small glimpse of the idea that a set of notes can do more than one job, being useful in several different keys and modes. Learn them!

Very small changes in what we know can give us a whole new set of tools. The G major scale has given us notes we can play over the chords of G major, A minor (Dorian) E minor (Aeolian) and D7. If we play G major with the flattened 7th (the Mixolydian mode), we can use these notes over a G7 chord; and since they are also THE SAME notes as the scale of C major, we can use them with C major, D minor (Dorian) and E minor (Aeolian). (We can also say that the Mixolydian of a key is the Ionian of its IV chord.)

This means we have a whole new set of scales and modes from one small, half step change.

Whole sections of one scale are the same as in another scale. Notes in one chord are often very similar to the notes in another chord. Seeing how the notes in the scales and chords go together, and how they are the same as many of the notes in a melody helps us to fit runs of notes from the chords and scales into our improvisations.

We can ‘borrow’ licks and pieces of other people’s breaks – it can be a very useful way to see how other players manipulate the notes of a scale in the context of a particular song or tune, we can even use the pieces from one song in another – but understanding why the notes are being used the way they are is the only way to start building our own ‘vocabulary’ and style.

A Final Word About Time And Timing

Groups of Three Notes

A triplet is a group of three notes of the same value that have an equal value to the one note they are replacing, whether it’s a quarter note or an eighth note and so on.

Bluegrass, however, is full of groups of three notes that are eighth notes (where TWO have an equal value to a quarter note), but because they are played in groups of three the emphasis of the phrase falls in a different place.

The two most obvious examples of this are the banjo ‘roll’, and ‘cross-picking’ on the guitar and mandolin.

We’ve seen how ‘tension’ can be created in harmony with the use of a 7th chord; tension which is released when we play the next chord. Tension can also be created with rhythm. If most of the players in a group are playing on beats and off beats, when we play ‘groups of three’ over the top we will be placing the emphasis ‘in between’ those beats until it all catches up with itself. Playing groups of three eighth notes in 4/4 we’ll catch up mid way through the second measure, but we won’t all hit the first beat of a measure together with the same emphasis for three whole measures. More often than not groups of three notes will be mixed with twos so that we ‘catch up’ sooner. When we finally do it provides the much needed ‘release’ of tension.

Which leads us neatly to the final point:

It is very important that we understand what the other musicians are doing so that we can support them, and help to create a ‘total sound’.

We must always listen to what everybody else is doing. If we are aware of the different roles played by the different instruments, and what they are likely to play, we won’t get thrown off course – and neither will they. If someone starts cross-picking and the emphasis of the beat starts to shift, it is crucial that we understand what is going on and support it.

Musical notation dates from a time when the most important instrument was a keyboard. The white notes on a keyboard are called A B C D E F G A B and so on.

(Although the layout of a keyboard, and the use of ‘black’ and ‘white’ notes are of little interest to string instrument players, it’s the best way to explain how notation has evolved.)

There are five lines and four spaces on a line of music – a stave – and the ‘white’ notes appear alternately – line, space, line, space.

Some of these notes are a half step apart and some a whole step, because these are only the white notes on a keyboard, and there are black notes in between some of them. We signify the ‘black notes’ using the signs # and b to signify ‘half step up’ and ‘half step down’ – sharp and flat.

We will discover in Part 1 why we use certain notes in certain keys; here, we can say that when we need to use the same sharp or flat note over and over again, we say so at the beginning of a piece of written music to keep the appearance uncluttered. In the example below, the sharp at the beginning tells us that every time there’s an F written in the music, it’s actually an F#.

If we need to play an F instead, we use a sign called a ‘natural’. In this example we can see that the key signature tells us always to play an F#, but the ‘natural’ sign tells us on this occasion to play an F.

These flat and sharp signs at the start of a piece of music are called Key Signatures.

When we sharpen or flatten a note, we change its name; it is no longer B, for instance, but Bb. Why Bb and not A#? and since they appear to be the same thing, does it matter? There is a convention about the naming of notes that should help clear this up.

In Part 1 we explore which notes are needed in a scale, and quite simply, you cannot have two notes with the same name in a scale. If we look at G major, there is one of each note:

G A B C D E F#

and then we are back to G. If we flatten the third (lower the B by a half step) to make a minor scale (Part 3), we find the note that is sometimes referred to as Bb and sometimes as A#. In this context we must call it Bb so that we have

G A Bb C D E F#

If we called it A# we would have no B in the scale

G A A# C D E F#

We need the name A# though, because in the key of F# the scale is

F# G# A# B C# D# E#

If we were using an F# chord in a song in G, we would refer to that note as A# because it occurs in an F# context.

When a musical note is played it on an instrument, the instrument vibrates, and these vibrations travel through the air and vibrate our eardrums. These vibrations are very fast oscillations in air pressure which our ears detect as sound.

Every note has its own specific oscillating frequency; many of us know that A=440 cycles per second (hertz) because it says so on our tuner! To get the A an octave higher than this the frequency is doubled, and to get an octave lower the frequency is halved (a ratio of 2/1).

Each interval can be described as a ratio. A 5th has the ratio 3/2, a 4th, 4/3, and a whole tone, 9/8 – the difference between a fourth and a fifth.

Single oscillating frequencies (one note) can be represented as wave patterns; when two notes sound together they create a new wave pattern. The simple ratio of 2:1 creates a very simple new wave pattern, and we perceive notes an octave apart as very consonant.

The more complex the ratio of the interval, the more complex the resulting wave pattern, and the more we perceive the sound as dissonant. (The ancient Greeks, most notably Pythagoras and his followers, were the first to associate the consonances - intervals that seem to "concord" or blend smoothly - with simple integer ratios.)

When two notes very close to each other in the scale are struck together – for example a half step apart – the resulting wave pattern produces audible ‘beats’. (Check this out by playing two of the same note on your instrument, slightly out of tune with each other, on different strings.) Our brain perceives this ‘beating’ in a very similar way to the way in which it perceives a strobe light. It has the ability to excite us, not always in a good way, and we experience a great deal of relief when it stops.

This is a very simplified explanation of why some intervals and chords and melodic patterns are ‘easier on the ear’. There is plenty of information on the Internet if you wish to find out more….

I	II	III	IV	V	VI	VII
G	A	B	C	D	E	F
A	B	C#	D	E	F#	G
C	D	E	F	G	A	Bb
Bb	C	D	Eb	F	G	Ab

This chart illustrates with a few examples how chord numbers relate to the notes in the scale in any key. If we need to change the key of a song, we can take any root note and having found the notes in the scale work out what the new set of chords would be.

For example, if the chords in our song are I, IV and V, and the original key is G, we know that they are G, C and D. If we need to change the key to Bb, we can see that they will be Bb, Eb and F.

We can use minor chords if necessary in the same way. If our song in G contains an Em chord we can see that this is the VI minor. If we change the key to Bb this becomes G minor.

(NB In Part 2 we talk about the 7th chord – eg G7 – and the fact that there is a convention in music when referring to the 7th of meaning the flattened 7th. This usually applies to chord names as well. In bluegrass it is much more likely in the key of G that there will be an F chord than an F# chord. So if someone shouts out VII in a jam, they probably mean flattened VII. We can find this by moving down one half step from the true major 7th as shown in the chart.)

In this diagram, we can see the circular nature of chord movement. Wherever we start, the IV chord is always to the left (counter-clockwise), the V chord to the right (clockwise). There is a fuller explanation in Part 2.

At the end of Part 2 we also touch briefly on the subject of Key Signatures. You can use this chart to check what key a Key Signature is referring to; for example, if the key signature has two sharps we can see that this signifies D major.