Fundamentals of rock

Hello, and welcome to today's lesson entitled "Fundamentals of Rock." My name is Mr. Norris, and today I'm gonna be taking you through as we take a really detailed look at the fundamentals of rock music, the things that make it such a distinct style, and then have a go at some creative tasks, exploring some aspects of that style as well. Let's get on with it. Our outcome for today's lesson is I can describe the key features of rock and can create and develop a riff. Some keywords. Rock, and this is a broad category of music that developed since the 1960s. Riff, a riff is a short, recurring or repeated musical idea that forms the basis of a pop or rock song. Unison, when in unison instruments play the same rhythm and pitches together, and this can be in different octaves. And finally, transposition. Transposition is moving a group of notes up or down in pitch so the intervals between the notes are the same, but the pitch is different. So there's a few terms there, some that might be familiar, some less so, but we'll learn them all in a bit more detail through the lesson. The first part of today's lesson is looking at the fundamentals of rock. Rock is a broad category of music that encompasses many subgenres. Emerging in the 1960s, it has become one of the most successful and influential popular music genres. So although we might think of rock music as one single style, really, it's a very broad category of music. There are lots of different styles that fall under the umbrella of rock music. The subgenres of rock are diverse, but have some shared characteristics. So although there are differences between all those subgenres, there are some things that will link them that make them all rock music of a sort. So what similarities do these three rock excerpts have? So we've got a clip of some progressive rock, some grunge, and some Celtic rock here. All quite different styles, but what are the similarities that they share? You pause my video and have a listen to those three clips. Let's pick these apart then. So they all use riffs. That's a really key point to remember here. They all use riffs. The electric guitar is prominent. Again, a really key point about rock music. Instrumentation includes the bass guitar and drum kit, as well as that electric guitar. So we've got three key instruments there, electric guitar, bass guitar, and drum kit. And although those styles, those songs sound quite different from each other, they all use these features. And finally they have a 4/4 time signature. So most rock music is in 4/4. That's not to say that all rock music is, but certainly the vast majority is. And those three examples were too. Well done if you picked up on any of those four points. And there might have been some other things you picked out that they had in common as well. The key defining characteristics of rock music then are: the use of riffs, so repeating or recurring musical ideas; prominent electric guitar that's often distorted, often has distortion or drive put onto it; a driving drumbeat. And it also uses some typical pop music conventions or features as well, such as the use of vocals, bass guitar, and drum kits. So many of the instruments are common to both pop and rock. A 4/4 time signature most of the time. And a verse-chorus structure. So a structure that's based on alternating verses and choruses. Which of these is not a common feature of most rock music? Is it a 4/4 time signature, prominent electric guitar, walking bass, or use of riffs? I'll give you a few seconds to pick out the one that's not a common feature of rock. And the correct answer here then is walking bass. That's not really a common feature in rock, but those other three are all really typical features. Prominent electric guitar, use of riffs, and 4/4 time signature most of the time. Rock 'n' roll in the 1950s paved the way for the emergence of rock in the '60s. So rock 'n' roll was the sort of predecessor of the style that all led to the emergence of rock. What differences can you hear between the rock 'n' roll song and early rock song we're about to listen to? I'd like to focus in particular on the instrumentation and the drum groove, the drum beat. So there's our two clips. You can pause my video and try and pick out differences in instrumentation and drum beat. Let's have a look then. The key differences here then are that the electric guitar is more prominent in the rock clip and also the rock song doesn't use a shuffle groove. There's two key differences, but I imagine you probably picked up a lot of similarities as well in terms of the way the two songs were related. Because rock in the '60s slowly evolved from rock 'n' roll, it didn't suddenly change overnight, it was a gradual development, and as it developed, it developed distinct characteristics of its own. The British Invasion is a term that refers to a number of British bands who became hugely important and shaped 1960s rock. So while the vast majority of the successful rock 'n' roll artists in the 1950s and early '60s were American, in the '60s, we had this phenomenon with some really key British bands who shaped the way that the music developed in that decade and beyond. The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were two bands who played a key part in the British Invasion. And you might have heard of these two. They're massively famous bands, hugely famous bands, and they were so formative and so important for the development of rock in the '60s. We're going to listen to two clips, one of a Beatles song and one of a song by The Rolling Stones. What common features do they share? And in particular, I'd like you to listen to the instrumentation, the time signature, and what the guitar plays as well. So you can pause my video, try and pick out the common features. So are a few key similarities there, and some of them relate to our key features of 1960s rock. Some typical features are simple instrumentation. So traditionally your rock band would be formed by vocals, electric guitar, bass guitar, and drum kit. And in both of those clips we just listened to, that was the instrumentation. Repeating riffs, so a short recurring, repeated musical idea. And these are often based on the pentatonic or blues scale. In both of those clips we just listened to, there was a repeating riff going throughout. And a 4/4 metre or time signature. Again, both of those songs use a 4/4 time signature, and that's really quite a typical feature of the style. There were melodies and riffs that are often based on the blues scale and blue notes. And use of distortion on the guitar as well. So those are some key features of '60s rock that are really typical and were demonstrated in those two songs we just listened to. Let's check your understanding. When did rock music start to develop? I'll give you a few seconds. The correct answer is rock music started to develop in the 1960s. That's the key decade for the development of rock. Before then, it had its roots in rock 'n' roll in the '50s, but really it became rock in the '60s. Which of these would you not typically hear in a 1960s rock band? Piano, electric guitar, bass guitar, or drum kit? I'll give you a few seconds to come up with your answer. And the correct answer here is piano. Our typical rock band is vocals, electric guitar, bass guitar, and drum kit. You will get piano in some examples of rock music, absolutely no question about that. But more commonly you would expect the guitars and the drum kit and vocals. What was the British Invasion? Was it a series of British bands who shaped 1960s rock? The bands who created rock music? Or a style of British music? I'll give you a few seconds And the correct answer here is the British Invasion was a series of British bands who shaped 1960s rock. They were quite a diverse group of bands. It wasn't one narrow style of music. And they certainly didn't create rock music. And they were key to how it developed in the '60s and beyond. So well done if you got that one correct. For task A, I'd like you to listen to the clips and the questions below. For the first example, you're gonna explain which two instruments are playing the riff, what scale is the riff based on, and how is the instrumentation typical of 1960s rock. For example two, what effect is used on the electric guitar, how many different pitches is the repeating riff based on, and when the chords change, how does the riff change? So you can pause my video and give this task your best shot. Let's review that task then. The two instruments playing the riff in example one were the electric guitar and bass guitar. Well done if you picked up on both of those. The riff was based on a blues scale. The instrumentation is typical because it uses vocals, electric guitar, bass guitar, and drum kit, and that's our really standard rock band in this period. The effect used on the electric guitar was distortion, or you might have used the word drive. That means the same thing. There were only two different pitches in the repeating riff, which might be surprising to think that you can create such an effective riff based on only two notes, but that's a great example of that. Well done if you picked up on that. And finally, when the chords change, the riff changes pitch, but it keeps using the same rhythm and pattern. So it sounds familiar because the same rhythm, the same shape, but the riff changes to match those chords. And we'll look more later on at how that actually works. Well done then if you've got those answers correct. And now we're gonna move on to the second part of the lesson, which is looking at creating a riff. Riffs are a key feature of 1960s rock. They can be melodic, chord-based, or part of the bass line. So remember, riff is a repeating or recurring musical idea, and they're usually short ideas. So it could be melodic, it could be a high-pitched melodic part, it could be a series of chords that form the riff, or it could be a bass line, a bass riff. There are different forms of riff. There's two riffs I'd like you to listen to here, and what do they have in common? I'd like to think about the type of riffs. So is it melodic, is it cord-based, or is it part of the bass line? Think about the instrumentation, and think about the scale that's used as well. So pause my video, have a listen to these riffs and try and pick out those things that they have in common. Let's review that then. So both riffs are melodic riffs, they're not based on chords and they're not purely the bass part. They're played in unison by the electric and bass guitars. So both of the bass guitar and the electric guitar are playing the same riff at the same time, creating a unison texture. Again, something we'll look at a bit later on. And they're based on the blues scale, so you might notice that as a link between rock 'n' roll and blues and rock is there's this recurring theme of some of the scales that are used in the blues scale is a common theme, a common link between the styles. And a common feature of rock riffs is a unison texture, as I just mentioned. This is where different instruments or performers play the same melody or the same riff together. Now you might hear that and think, "Well, that's just a homophonic texture," but it's not necessarily the same. In a homophonic texture, performers might play different notes but use the same rhythm. So in a homophonic texture, the key is that they play the same rhythm. In a unison texture, everyone is playing the same notes, the same pitch, and the same rhythm, so they're effectively playing the same part. To create a unison texture with this guitar riff, another instrument needs to play the same notes at the same time. Let's just have a listen to that guitar riff, see what it sounds like on its own. (guitar riff) And now if we wanna create a unison texture, we're gonna get another instrument to play that same riff at the same time. And here we're gonna use the bass guitar. So it's here now with both the electric guitar and the bass guitar playing this riff together in unison. (guitar and bass riff) We'll agree then that both parts are playing the same notes, the same rhythm at the same time. That creates that unison texture. And you might mention that the bass is playing an octave lower, which is absolutely true. But that doesn't matter in terms of creating a unison texture. They can be playing in different octaves, but it's still the same notes and the same rhythm. I'd like to listen to this riff again. I'd like to focus in this time on what makes it a successful and memorable riff. So what is it about this that you think makes it a successful and effective riff? Here we go. (rock 'n' roll riff) Just pause my video while you have a think about, what is it that makes that such an effective riff? Let's take a look then. The riff is simple. So it only uses four different notes, and that's a key feature of many of the famous riffs and the most effective riffs in rock music. If we think about that riff we listened to earlier on, it was only based on two notes. It's incredibly simple in terms of the note choice. It's short. In this case, the riff is two bars long, and typically riffs might be one bar, two bar, or maybe max four bars long. But generally we want to keep them nice and short. It's based on notes that are fairly close together. It's not jumping around all over the place. It's based on a smallish range of notes. And it's developed from one short idea or motif. We've got that motif at the start (vocalized riff). And then it's developed slightly in the second half of the riff where the rhythm is adapted slightly, so it's a little bit repetitive within the riff itself, and it's got that developed idea that makes it feel really catchy and memorable. Let's check your understanding. Which of these is a unison texture? Here's example A. (rock 'n' roll riff) Example B. (rock 'n' roll riff) And example C. (rock 'n' roll riff) Make sure you've got an answer. And the correct answer here then was example A. Let's just hear that again. (rock 'n' roll riff) And that's because both parts, the bass and the guitar are playing exactly the same pattern together, the same pitch, and the same rhythm. In example B, the bass was playing a totally different bass line. And in example C, it was just the guitar on its own. So there was only one line, one melodic line. That was a monophonic texture in C. Well done if you picked up on A. Which three of the following are features of successful riffs? They're short. They generally use notes that are close together. They develop from a few different ideas. Or they use only a few different notes. So I'll give you a few seconds to pick out your three answers here And the correct answers here then are they're short, they generally use notes that are close together, and they use only a few different notes. So the general theme there is keeping it quite simple, isn't it? All those help us to make our riffs short, simple, and catchy. The blues scale is a popular starting point for creating a typical rock riff. There's a A blues scale there starting on the note A. Let's have a quick listen. (A blues scale music) As we know, A blues scale has six notes in it, including that blue note, which is the E flat in the middle there. Songwriters improvise different short ideas until they find one that's catchy and memorable. They'll often record lots of different ideas, then listen back to find the most suitable for their song. So most bands and most rock artists won't all of a sudden just come up with their riff and that will be it, ready to go. They'll do lots of experimentation and improvisation and even recording of ideas until they choose one that they want to go ahead with. We're now gonna look at how we put that process into play. Let's watch this and see how we improvise rock riffs. We're gonna create a unison rock riff based on the A blues scale. The unison texture is quite common in hard rock and heavy metal as well as other rock styles. This is where the electric guitar and the bass guitar both play the same riff at the same time. Often the bass guitar will be doing it in a lower octave. That gives it real depth. The effect of this texture is it creates a really strong and powerful riff because we have both parts playing it together at the same time. We're gonna do this using the A blues scale, and we've used this before, but to remind you we've got A, C, D, D sharp, E, G, and then we're back to A. (scale playing) And obviously we could use higher octaves as well if we wanted. Now the technique that we're gonna use to compose is a really common technique amongst songwriters and composers. We're gonna improvise lots of different ideas, and we're gonna record them, and then we're gonna come back and listen to them and choose one that we want to use. And this is often how songwriters work when they're collaborating and writing music together. So I've got my A blues scale, I've got my drum backing track here. I'm gonna improvise lots of short ideas, making sure I keep them to one bar or maybe two bars max. And then I'm gonna come back and listen to them and choose one that I like. Here we go then. (A blues scale riff) (A blues scale riff continues) Now let's have a look at taking those improvised riffs and choosing one that we want to go ahead with. Okay, so there are lots of ideas there, and what you'll notice is that I'm either starting or finishing on the note A in each idea, and that's because it really grounds it in the key of A. If we're creating this music in the key of A, we need to have it centered on that note. So we've got A blues scale, but I'm starting or finishing, or in many cases, starting and finishing those riffs on the note A. So now the next step is to listen back through to my riffs and choose one that I like. I'm not gonna listen to them all just now, I'm gonna listen to a few. But when you're doing this, you might wanna do this process a few times. You might record lots of different riffs and see what you can come up with. So I'm gonna listen to a little bit and find one that I like. Here we go. (A blues scale riff) I'm just gonna stop it there actually, because I quite like this first one that I came up with there. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna shorten it to isolate that riff, and I'm making sure there that I've got a two bar riff. So I've not shortened it to 1. 5 bars or 1. 75 bars. I've made sure that it's either one or two bars. And because the way I've recorded this, it needs to be two bars long. If you don't do that, you'll find that when you then repeat it, it won't fit in time with your drums and with your other parts. And now all I'm gonna do is I'm gonna loop it so that it'll last for eight bars like that. So now we can listen to just that riff with the drums. (A blues scale riff) And it repeats two more times there. And now let's have a look at creating a unison texture now that we've created that riff. To create the unison texture, all I'm now gonna need to do is to add that riff into the bass guitar as well. So the first thing I need to do is create a bass guitar track. I'm gonna choose a new instrument and select the bass that I want. And then there are a couple of ways I can do this. If I wanted, I could rerecord that riff separately into the bass track. I need to make sure that I know exactly what notes are there so that I can record it exactly the same. So that'd be one way I could do it. The second way I can do this is I can just copy and paste this riff into the bass track. Now depending on how high pitched my guitar riff is, I might need to adjust the bass riff a little bit to make sure it's really nice and low. In this case it's worked okay. But do go in and check in your bass track that all the notes are nice and low. And if they're not, you can select them all and drag them down and octave to give them a nice bassy or low octave. So you'd move them like this. (notes lowering) As you can hear, that's far too low here. It's already low enough where it is on mine. But double check to make sure that the bass riff is nice and low pitched so that it really adds that depth to the unison texture. So it's hear what the bass riff sounds like. (bass guitar riff) With the guitar. (bass and guitar riff) With the drums. (rock 'n' roll riff) So you can hear there that bass really adds some depth to the sound and makes the riff really strong, really powerful. Let's just summarize those steps. If you're creating a riff, start by choosing a distorted guitar sound and practice moving around the notes of the A blues scale. Record a few improvised short patterns, starting or finishing on A. And make sure the riff lasts for either one or two bars. We're keeping it short. Choose one riff that you like, and we'll loop it to last for eight bars. And then copy it into a bass track to create a unison texture. So we're going from the stage of creating the riff to then having unison texture with guitar and bass. Let's check your understanding. Which of these riffs is based on a blues scale? Here's option A. (riff music) Option B. (riff music) And option C. (riff music) So quickly finishing your answer. And the correct answer there was option C. That was this one. (riff music) If you said option A, that one was actually based on a minor scale, and option B was based on a pentatonic scale. So if you said that, that's a very understandable error to make. It's a very closely related scale to the blues scale, and the only difference was that option C had that blue note in there in addition to the pentatonic notes. Well done if you said C. For task B, you're gonna compose a unison rock riff using the A blues scale. There's the notes of our A blues scale there and some success criteria. The riff should start or finish on an A. It lasts for either one or two bars, and it's repeated to last for eight bars. It's simple, and it uses only a few notes which are close together. It uses a distorted guitar sound. And it's copied into the bass guitar track to create a unison texture. So you can pause my video now and give it your best shot at creating a rock riff. Let's move on to the second part of this task. And here I'm gonna play you a clip. I'd like you to identify, is this a unison texture? And why is it or why is it not? So justifying your answer. Here we go. (rock 'n' roll riff) Pause my video while just quickly finishing off your answer. And the correct answer here then is, no, it is not a unison texture. And the reason is that the rhythms are slightly different, and the electric and bass guitar are playing different pitches, so they're not unison at all. There's some similarities in the rhythm and some of the pitches are the same, but it's not unison because they're not identical. Well done if you said that. For the final part of our lesson, we're looking at transposing a riff. Developing our ideas is important in musical composition. Some of the ways that rock musicians develop their initial riffs include: extending the riffs or making it longer, adding or removing notes to change it slightly, repeating the riff but transposing it by playing at a different pitch to fit with a different chord. Let's have a look at that in closer detail. So this riff is based on the A blues scale, that scale that we've just been using. Let's have a quick listen to what it sounds like. (A blues scale riff) And it works with an A minor chord because it's based around the note A, and it uses A, C, and E from the A minor chord. So if we were to play an A minor chord over the top of that, it would sound absolutely fine because a lot of the notes fit with that chord, and there's a lot of repetition of the note A throughout that riff. To develop this, we can change the chords and transpose the riff to suit the new chord. Let me explain what I mean by that. If we transpose it, we move it to base it on the notes of a different chord in the A blues scale. So we can move it to D minor by moving all the notes up so that it starts on D. Let's have a listen to what that sound like. (Dm transposed riff) Compare that to the original in A. (A blues scale riff) You can hear it's the same rhythm, the same melodic shape. The only difference is we've moved all the notes, so it starts on D instead of A. We can also transpose it to E minor. So we just move all the notes so it starts on E. Let's have a listen to what that would sound like. (Em transposed riff) Compare that one to the original. (A blues scale riff) So again, the same shape, the same intervals, the same rhythm. The only difference is we've moved all of the notes up by the same amount so that it starts on a different note. Using this technique, we can take a simple riff and build an interesting extended pattern. So we've got two bar riffs there, but we can make them into a much more extended pattern by transposing. This riff in this clip uses transposition to extend the pattern by going up a fourth and then back to the tonic, back to the first note of the scale. So I'd like to pause my video and have a listen to this clip. Focus in on the riff and try and notice when the riff is transposed up, it moves up by four steps, and then when it comes back to its original tonic as well. You can pause my video and do that now. Hopefully you managed to pick out there the transposition of the riff from the tonic up to the fourth and back. In this second excerpt that you're gonna listen to in a second, I'd like to work out how many times the riff transposes in this excerpt. So how many times does it move to be based on a different note? And can you work out the intervals of each transposition? So in that first clip we just listened to, we identified it moved up a fourth and then back down by a fourth. Can you work out the intervals that this one transposes by? So you can pause my video, have a listen to this. Really well done if you correctly identified that this riff transposes twice, so it moves up twice. First up a tone, so a second, and then up by further fourth. So we've got three different versions of that riff. They all sound very similar because they use the same rhythm, they have the same relationships between the pitch, but they're starting and based on different notes because they've been transposed. Well done if you've got any of those points there. Let's look at how we transpose a riff. We're gonna develop our riff through transposition. This is quite a common technique in lots of different rock styles where the guitarist and bass guitarist would be playing a riff in one key based on one chord, and then instead of changing it by changing the rhythms or by changing the pattern of notes, they would simply transpose it to be based on different notes. That means move it so that instead of being based around an A minor accord, for example, it'd be based around a D minor chord or an E minor chord. So if you taken the same idea but just moving or down in pitch to base it around some different notes. And that way it develops, but it still maintains the riff and it still keeps the sort of identity of that riff as well. So this is quite an effective technique when we're working with riffs. Now in order to do this, first of all, I'm gonna mute the bass tracks. I'm not gonna be using that at the moment. And then in my guitar track I'm going to get rid of the loop so that I've only got one repetition of the riff, my first two bars here, because that's what I'm gonna be working with. Now when we're doing this transposition, we don't actually need to rerecord anything. We can work just by copying and pasting using the tools in our DAW. So I'm gonna double click on this to open up the notes here, and this is where I can see my riff. Now as we know, I started on A, and I finished on A, and that's because I was working in the key of A minor. But what I can do if I wanna transpose it is I can select all the notes, and just drag them up or down to start on a different note. So an effective one quite often if we're an A would be to move it up to D. So if I drag them all up (notes transposing) so that my first note is D, we can now hear that riff in the key of D. (rock 'n' roll riff in D) And let's compare that to the riff with the key of A. (notes transposing) (rock 'n' roll riff in A) Now the ones that work most effectively tend to be in this case, D, E, or G. So I'm gonna try some of those. I'm going to take it down a step to G. (notes transposing) See what that sounds like. (rock 'n' roll riff in G) And E works effectively, so I'll take it up to E. (notes transposing) (rock 'n' roll riff in E) Now let's take those transposed riffs and develop them into an extended riff. So we've heard it in those four different keys now. And what I'm now gonna do is I'm gonna create an eight-bar pattern that is based on that riff, but moving it between different chords. I'm gonna start on A minor (notes transposing) and then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna copy and paste. And in the second version, so there's my A minor version there, in the second version, let's move it to, let's try maybe G. (notes transposing) Then I'm gonna do the same thing again, copy and paste. So now I've got 3, 1, 2, 3, and my third one, I'll maybe try D. (notes transposing) And then maybe for my fourth and final one, I'll go back to A, so I'm starting and finishing with A. Let's see what that sounds like. It might not sound good. I might decide to move these, but let's have a lesson. (extended rock 'n' roll riff) I'm actually quite happy with that. I think that works quite well. So I've taken the original riff in A, I've moved it then down a step to G, then I've moved it up to D, then my final one is in A, and that way I've developed the riff as well. And then the final thing I can do is I'm then gonna copy that into my bass so that we have that unison texture with the new riff. Let's see how this sounds. (extended rock 'n' roll riff in unison) So that's my developed riff based on transposing between different notes. Let's summarize those steps. If I wanna extent a riff with transposition, move the guitar riff up or down to start on a different note. Choose chords that sound effective. So if we're working in a minor key, chords four and five often work well. If we're an A minor, that'll then be D minor and E minor. Create an eight-bar sequence starting with your riff in A minor, and then record in your riff following that chord sequence. And then finally just copy the new developed riff into your bass part so you create that unison texture there as well. Let's check your understanding. When we transpose a riff, what are we doing? Are we moving the first note to match a different chord, moving all the notes to fit a different chord, or moving some of the notes to fit a different chord? I'll give you a few seconds. And the correct answer is that we're moving all the notes to fit a different chord when we transpose a riff. if we don't move them all, we're not transposing the riff, we're just changing the riff. For task C, develop your riff through transposition. Some success criteria. The guitar riff is transposed to other chords such as four and five, keeping the same melodic shape. The new sequence last for eight bars starting on A minor. And then the developed riff is copied into the bass guitar track to create a unison texture. So best of luck with this. You can pause my video and give this a shot. Let's move on to the final part of this task. And here you're gonna listen to this riff composition. I'd like to see if you can identify, how does this meet the success criteria? Compared to that success criteria from the task, how successful is this? Here we go. (extended rock 'n' roll riff) (extended rock 'n' roll riff continues) So pause my video and try to you finish your answer. Let's review that one then. This riff is played in an eight-bar pattern and it repeats, and it's played in unison with the bass guitar. We've got that unison texture, and we've got that eight-bar pattern. It's transposed once, and in this case it's transposed to chord seven at the end of the pattern. It might be more effective if this pattern transposed more, if there's some slightly more transposition. And generally chord four and five would tend to work better as well. So that could be a consideration there. Well done if you made any of those points. Let's summarize today's lesson. 1960s rock built on the foundations of rock 'n' roll and blues. British bands were key to the growth of 1960s rock, including The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Key features include riffs and instrumentation that features distorted electric guitars, vocals, bass guitar, and drum kit. Riffs and melodies are often based around the blues scale and are often played in a unison texture. And finally, we can extend riffs by using transposition. That's the end of today's lesson then. Hopefully you feel like you've got a good grounding in the basics of rock, and have managed to get your teeth stuck into that composition task as well. Thanks for taking part, and I'll see you in another lesson.