Hail Hail Rock & Roll – A Tribute To Chuck Berry

It's always dangerous trying to make a case for such-and-such a musician being “the father of rock & roll” or similar- there's always some smart alec who will point out the trio of hitherto unknown musicians who really started the genre sometime back in the 12^th century BC. That said, I think you'd have to work pretty hard to deny the undeniably great and now very sadly late Chuck Berry's influence on the development of rock & roll music.

My first exposure to Chuck was indirect, and I think a great many guitar players of... “a certain age” will join me in this – the 1985 classic “Back To The Future”, where Michael J Fox grabs a very fetching red Gibson ES 355 and invents rock & roll. 

To my 12 year old self, his version of “Johnny B Goode” was far and away the greatest thing I'd ever heard and that red Gibson was the epitome of cool – I was hooked. Of course, it didn't even occur to me that it was a cover of a real song, I thought it was written specially for the film!The innocence of youth...

As a tribute to Chuck and the incredible legacy he leaves us with, this month's post will be a potted history of the great man and a brief overview of his playing style.

Humble Beginnings

Born October 18^th1926 in St Louis, Missouri to building contractor and Baptist church deacon Henry William Berry and public school principal Martha Bell – the fourth of six children – the young Charles Edward Berry began taking an interest in playing music during his early teenage years, taking inspiration from the blues legend T-Bone Walker in both guitar licks and showmanship (gifts which he would later pass on to one James Marshall Hendrix, but that's another story).

Chuck's school years at Sumner High School, St Louis, saw him develop a keen interest in music and give his first performance aged 15. In 1944 it also saw the first of several occasions when Chuck would fall foul of the law, robbing three Kansas City shops at gunpoint with a group of friends before stealing a car. He was convicted and sent to to the Intermediate Reformatory for Young Men at Algoa, near Jefferson City, Missouri, but even there he was still able to continue his musical activities, forming a vocal group within the prison.

Chuck was released on his 21^st birthday, and just over a year later married Themetta "Toddy" Suggs on October 28^th 1948. During this period he worked a variety of jobs – janitor, car factory worker, even a spell training as beautician! By 1950 he was able to buy a "small three room brick cottage with a bath" on Whittier Street, which is now listed as the Chuck Berry House on the National Register of Historic Places, and on October 3^rd of that year, the Themetta gave birth to Darlin Ingrid Berry.

After Darlin's birth, Chuck began looking for ways to use music to boost his income, and began working with a variety of local bands, including blues legend T-Bone Walker and took lessons from longtime friend Ira Harris. Both these artists would have a massive influence on Chuck's unmistakeable guitar style, and by 1953 Chuck had cemented a firm partnership with legendary blues pianist Johnnie Johnson which would go on to yield some of his biggest hits.Critical to their success as the combination of blues and R&B with country music, appealing to audiences across the racial divide.

Style Analysis

Chuck is famous for two aspects of his playing – first, the classic 5th-6^th boogie rhythm pattern, copied by innumerable artists (not least Status Quo), this relies on a steady straight 8^th rhythm, using a standard root-5^th powerchord voicing and stretching two frets over to get the 6^th with the little finger on the downbeats of beats 2 and 4. Although not part of a normal triad chord, the 6^th provides a sweetness and a sense of movement that helps drive a rhythm part along, and it's presence on the downbeats of 2 and 4 echo the "backbeat" idea with the snare drum.

This, in common with many of Chuck's guitar ideas, was copped from boogie piano players and adapted to fit the then still very new electric guitar. You'll see a heavy piano influence in much of Chuck's playing, for the simple reason that there were very few guitar players and very little recorded music (compared to today) to learn from. His genius here was adapting vocabulary from other instruments to fit the nascent electric guitar.

The second aspect is his dynamic, ballsy lead style that prioritised attitude and energy over technique. Chuck frequently professed admiration for T-Bone Walker and jazz legend Charlie Christian (amongst others), and you can see some elements of their playing in his jazzier single note lines, but his lead style was primarily focused on raw energy.

Much of Chuck's technique relied on two note "doublestop" ideas, often drawing inspration from the blues and stride pianists of the day – a perfect example is the iconic lick that kicks off the "Johnny B Goode" guitar break. This makes absolute sense for a number of reasons – pianists could capture the sheer high energy fury of a rock and roll tune far better than the guitar vocabulary of the day could (because at this point there was no such thing as a rock guitarist, just blues and jazz players). Also, the guitar amps of the day were very clean affairs, designed to reproduce the sound of the guitar as clear and distortion free as possible. This was great for jazz and to a lesser extent blues players, but failed to convey the energy needed for rock and roll, so by using two string ideas, Chuck was able to create "natural" distortion, thickening the sound of his guitar breaks and ensring that none of the rhythm was lost when he took a solo (in the process, eliminating the need to hire a dedicated rhythm player and thus split the money more ways... always a onsideration for struggling musicians!). Check out Eric Clapton's take on Chuck Berry's playing here, from the 1986 documentary Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll: 

When you analyse a song like Johnny B Goode, it's important to realise that Chuck wasn't really thinking in the same terms as we might, using scales and pentatonics. Lacking the massive musical educaion infrasructure that we now take for granted, Chuck took the eminently logical approach of visualising the root chord of the key he was playing over. For example, Johnny B Goode is a blues in Bb (legend has it, it was actually recorded in A and the tape sped up as a marketing ploy to make Chuck sound younger, but nevertheless it sounds in Bb) – so Chuck would visualise the outline of a Bb and Bbm barre chord (E Shape). Note the use of both major and minor – this is a key element of blues, like much of the blues vocabulary it would find itself sped up and used as the basis for rock and roll. Seen in this light, the Johnny B. Goode intro and guitar solo is an elegantly simple use of chord shapes and tones to create a hugely memorable, genuinely iconic rock & roll moment.

Other favourite Chuck Berry ideas that have become part of the accepted lexicon of rock & roll include doublestop bends – using a partial barre across two strings to get a dirty, gritty, guttural sound – unison bends and unusual chord ideas such as the augmented triads simulating car horns in “No Particular Place To Go”

It's hard to overstate Chuck Berry's contribution to rock & roll, and by extension, to the modern world of rock and metal, and the myriad offshoots of those two genres. His parting gift – an album dedicated to his wife, released this year and recorded at age 90 – is all the more inspirational for showing that he never, ever lost the drive to write, perform and create right to the very end.

RIP Charles Edward Berry – the world would sound very different had it not been for you.

Tuning By Ear - And Why You're Probably Doing It Wrong

It all starts with being in tune (and in time, but that's another article for another day). And yes, I'm aware that basically every mobile phone can also be a tuner, that clip on tuners are cheap and ubiquitous, that tuners are built in to every modelling amp and multi FX.. I'm just – old. Indulge me.

Anyway, if you've got any experience tuning by ear you're probably familiar with the “fifth fret” method – match the pitch of open higher string to the fifth fret note on the lower string (except for the G and B strings where you tune the B to the fourth fret of the G) – and the harmonic method, whereby you match the seventh fret harmonic on the higher string to the fifth fret harmonic on the lower one, excepting the G and B strings.

Both these methods are flawed, however, and for one simple reason. They tune in pairs, E to B, B to G and so on. This means that any slight flaws in tuning will be picked up and amplified as you go across the strings, meaning that by the time you're finished tuning the whole thing can be just out by enough to set your toes curling.

So, a better alternative? One that doesn't require batteries – we're being purist here. Well yes, and the idea is incredibly simple – tune everything from ONE single reference point. We can also cross reference to ensure good intonation (ensuring that the guitar is in tune all the way across the fretboard).

Start with the high (in pitch) E string. Get this one roughly right and we'll go from there. We usually find higher notes easier to hear, so it makes sense to start at the top.

To tune the B, match the 5^th fret to the open E string and then cross reference using the 12th fret harmonic on the B matched to the 7^th fret on the E.

For the G, match the 9^th fret to the open E and cross reference with the 12^th fret G harmonic with the 3^rd fret E.

For the D, you want the 14^th fret note matched to the open E and cross reference with the 5^th fret D harmonic with 10^th fret E.

For the A, pitch the 19^th fret note against the open E and cross reference with the 5^th fret harmonic on the A string against the 5^th fret top E.

Lastly, for the low E, the simplest reference is to check the open string, 12^th and 5^th fret harmonics against the open top E.

The result? Perfect tuning with a side order of intonation accuracy too. Check the whole thing with an open G chord – it's instantly recognisable sweet melodic sound will reveal any inconsistencies, and the fact that the voicing covers all six strings means that there's nowhere for any sour notes to hide!

Learning to tune by ear will also help you to control your bends better, and highlight any technical errors (for example, a common mistake is a poor thumb grip causing strings to be pulled down towards the ground when the player plays a barre chord, causing the notes to be pulled ever-so-slightly sharp... just enough to put the listeners teeth on edge!

So, here's wishing you accurate intonation and perfect tuning until next month!

The Historical Perspective

So you're making progress. Got power chords and barre chords down, cracking on with major and minor pentatonic scales and starting to pick up speed and accuracy with sequencing ideas, maybe a few string bends here and there and nailing the legato approach through hammer ons and pull offs.

But here's the problem. All that stuff sounds brilliant in your bedroom and it's great fun watching your fingers wiggle around like crazy, but when it's time to get up and strut your stuff it just.. doesn't happen. There's a disconnect there.

This is where the incredible wealth of guitar music and guitar education can actually work against you. With so much... stuff.. on offer, it's really hard to work out what you should be learning, where you should go first. For example, I had a student a few years ago who had decided he was going to learn the classic Van Halen solo “Eruption” for a talent show.

In two months time.

Never having played guitar before.

Mm.

What could possibly go wrong...

So, in this instance, unfortunately I had to talk him down. Short of downloading the skills straight into his brain, a la Matrix, there was no way that was going to happen. So, let's follow the path back through history.

Eddie Van Halen has stated many times in interviews that one of his biggest influences is Eric Clapton. In many ways, he sees himself as having taken Clapton's legacy and built on it, evolving the techniques employed by him and his contemporaries (in fact, EVH once said he first got inspired to develop his iconic tapping technique when he learnt the solo to Led Zeppelin's “Heartbreaker” and wanted to find a way to make Jimmy Page's cascading pentatonic licks move around the fretboard). Now, in turn, Clapton drew his influences from the first generation of blues guitar heroes – chief amongst them, one B.B. King.

Now, as regular readers of this blog will know, B.B is also one of my heroes, but his style is very much minimalist as far as technique goes. There are very few notes, but each one is perfect. Elegant, deft phrasing, with that instantly recognisable vibrato, but there are plenty of his solos that a rookie could get down with a couple of month's (disciplined and intensive) practice. And in doing so, learn an awful lot about taste, phrasing, timing and feel. And once you've got the King down, try out his brothers – Albert and Freddie. And then through to the 60's – Clapton, Page, Beck and Hendrix...each generation building on the shoulders of the last.

There's a parallel to be found here with martial arts. As the student works his way up by levels, he learns discipline to partner the techniques. So by the time he's learned how to punch through a man's chest, pull out his heart and show it to him before he dies (that is a real thing, right?), he'll have the discipline not to do it unless he really has no alternative. In the same way, a student who has followed the chronological development of guitar playing won't simply throw in sweep picking or tapped licks arbitrarily, they will evolve those techniques into their style organically, pulling them out when and only when the musical situation demands it.

So – the moral of the story? You want to play like Avenged Sevenfold (or whoever) – go find out who they listened to. Then find out who those guys listened to. Then – well, you get the gist. With all that you learn along the way, not only will you be better able to emulate your heroes - you'll be better able to create something of your own too.

2017 Resolutions!

So 2016 is over and done with, and beloved celebrities across the world can breathe a little easier. But a new year brings with it the tradition of new year's resolutions, so I'm going to lay mine on the table.

I'm a firm believer that if you're going to be able to teach, you have to ensure that you can do – and more than that, I believe you have to be willing to continuously learn. If you as a teacher have fallen out of step with the learning process, how are you possibly going to engage students and get them learning?

So with that in mind, I'm going to present to you my plan for 2017- this is what I'm going to be practicing and learning over the next twelve months. And pay close attention, students of mine, because there's a strong chance I'll be inflicting it all on you guys!

I've divided this regimen up into two parts – fundamentals (ie, scales, arpeggios etc) and study pieces – that is, tracks I'm planning to learn to a performance standard.

One tip – I change the key for my fundamental every week using the circle of 4ths, I highly recommend this to keep things fresh and master the fretboard in all areas and registers.

January – Major scale and modes. 3 octaves, played in 3rds, sequenced in 3s and 4s. Piece – Yngwie Malmsteen, “Blitzkrieg”

February – Arpeggios (triads). 3 octaves, played in 3rds, sequenced etc. Piece – Malmsteen continued.

March – Chords (triads and inversions, closed and open voicings). Piece – Satriani, “Flying In A Blue Dream”

April – Pentatonics and modes (Dorian pentatonic – R b3 4 5 6). Piece TBC

May – Harmonic minor & modes. Piece TBC

June – Arpeggios – 7ths. Piece TBC

July – Chords (7ths and inversions, closed and open voicings). Piece TBC

August – Pentatonics (Pentatonic no 4^th add2 R 2 b3 5 b7). Piece TBC

September – Melodic minor and modes. Piece TBC

October – Arpeggios – 9ths. Piece TBC

November - Chords (9ths and inversions, closed and open voicings). Piece TBC

December – Pentatonics (Minor pentatonic b5 Rb3 b5 5 b7). Piece TBC.

So, what will all this give me? Who knows, but it's going to take me down some interesting paths.. maybe I'll find ideas I can use, maybe not.. but at least it'll keep me from getting stale!

Hopefully this will inspire you to break out from your comfort zone and use 2017 as the year when you make a real leap forward in your playing, whatever your level. Good luck!

#TUNEICEF 2016 LIVE - Review

So Christmas has been and gone for another year, and with the taste of turkey, stuffing, and brandy butter still on the lips, it's time take a look back at this year's #TUNEICEF project. From French riviera-style acoustic instrumentals to absolutely BRUTAL heaviness from Loughborough's own hometown metal heroes The Relinquished.

As is our custom over the last couple of years, we scheduled the gig for the last Sunday before Christmas, and before we go any further may I say HUGE thank you to The Beacon for hosting TUNEICEF for free in 2015, 2016 and 2017! Credit to Sharon & Ian, we couldn't have done this without you – and neither could we have done it without the legendary members of Dave The Rock Band providing PA, drums, bass and vocals.

I kicked things off with a few tunes from my acoustic set – more than a little intimidating, if I'm honest, given that come kick off there were only a half dozen guys in the audience, none of whom knew the gig was happening and were totally focused on the football on TV behind me...

But I'm still here to tell the tale, so it can't have been all bad ;-)

I handed things over to the one and only Jonezy, who... oh look, you just have to see him. Rock and hip hop fused together with some phenomenally catchy riffs and an out and out ballsy energy that has to be seen to be believed! Suffice to say everybody had their hands in the air like they just didn't care by the end of his set – an awesome performer!

Next up, Dave took to the stage for a few Christmas favourites and were joined by two of my students – Billy Edwards and Tom Hetzel from Track 95. Billy has written tracks for the 2013, 2014 and 2015 iterations of our charity project, and Tom has added the basslines to several of the album tracks – still finding the time to ace his Grade 3 with a staggering 93%!

They were followed by The Relinquished, a band I must confess I'd never heard of until singer and songwriter Lewis Sawyer contacted me on Facebook and sent me a couple of YouTube links – now, I can't claim to be a huge metal fan, but quality is quality whatever the genre, and after what I'd heard these guys HAD to be on the album and in the show! Sure enough, they didn't disappoint – blisteringly loud, but they performed a tight, dynamic, energetic set. It's very easy to let that sort of music devolve into a wall of noise, and it's a testament to their musicianship that they kept everything clear and precise, delivering crushing riffs and blazing solos with total accuracy. AND they threw in some Dio – all around win!

Then it was time for our headliners, Dawn Of Anubis – also known as The Bench That Rocked, depending on whether they're performing original material or covers. I've known these guys for a while and was lucky enough to have Tom, Billy and Luke as students back as year 7 younglings at Castle Rock. Watching them now, the progress they've made is incredible, the band craft some superb songs packed with hooks and dynamics and harmony, and performed with energy, style and confidence. The boys are well and truly grown up!

I'd like to thank all our artists and everyone who came down, hope you all enjoyed the show as much as we did, and don't forget to head on over to https://tuneicef.bandcamp.com/releases to order your copy – all proceeds go to UNICEF and you're supporting top notch local artists.

And do yourself a favour – next weekend, instead of putting on X Factor and complaining there's nothing but crap in the charts, go and see one of these bands, or the hundreds like them, who flog up and down the country trying to find the few venues who support original music and the few people who are willing to go out and appreciate it. Each year I've run this project I've been genuinely astonished by the level of talent that's out there that doesn't get any exposure. If you don't want your listening ruled by Simon Cowell and Kiss FM, make yourself a resolution to go and see at least one band you've never heard of in 2017.

And for everyone involved in this year's TUNEICEF, I say thank you, Happy Christmas, and see you same time next year!

#TUNEICEF 2016

You'll have to forgive the lateness of this blog post, I've spent the last two weeks stockpiling tinned food and digging a bunker in the garden.

But in between preparations for the ascendance of the God-King Of The Oompa Loompas to leadership of the free world, TUNEICEF 2016 has been taking shape and gaining momentum. For those of you unfamiliar with what has become an annual tradition since 2013, my students and I have been writing and recording songs for an album of original music to be released digitally at Christmas with the proceeds going to UNICEF. Check out our Bandcamp page:

https://tuneicef.bandcamp.com/album/tuneicef-2016

So far we've got acoustic pop from Phil Matthews (aka The Village), French-inspired instrumental from local composer Zoe Felton, guitar pop from those lovable scamps The Formidable Ale society, a cod-Satriani instrumental from yours truly and standout metal from One S0ul and The Relinquished.. and this is before student tracks are added!

Thanks again must go not just to students but also Matt Chubb, Wayne Cooper and Amanda Williams for contributing vocals as well as drum teacher and local legend Steve Ward for his drum tracks.

Interested in finding out more? Check out these links:

Phil Matthews - https://www.facebook.com/PhilMatthewsa.k.a.theVillage

http://musicbythevillage.wixsite.com/the-village

The Formidable Ale Society - http://www.theformidablealesociety.com/

The Relinquished - https://en-gb.facebook.com/TheRelinquishedOfficial/

If you fancy contributing a track or two, drop us a line at jmguitartuitionuk@yahoo.co.uk, the more the merrier! Meantime, you can help out by “liking” us at https://www.facebook.com/TUNEICEF/ and following us ( @TUNEICEF ) on Twitter – we've also got a hashtag (#TUNEICEF) even if we're not entirely sure what we should be doing with it... Likes, shares, retweets – it all helps, we're making this happen on a budget of literally nothing, so help spread the word and raise some money for a worthy cause while promoting local talent!

#TUNEICEF 2016 LIVE will be held on Sunday December 18^th at The Beacon, Loughborough, so get on down and check out our contributing artists!

PS – don't forget to check out our previous efforts!

2015 - https://tuneicef.bandcamp.com/album/tuneicef-2015

2014 - https://leicestershiremusiccollective.bandcamp.com/releases

2013 - https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/songs-for-syria-ep/id786780236

Excellence Is The New Black Pt. 2 - Theory

After astonishing Olympic and Paralympic successes in Rio, maybe – just maybe – it's going to start to become cool to be really really really stupidly good at something in this country. We've proved without a shadow of a doubt that when it comes to athletes, able bodied or otherwise, our best rank alongside the world's best – let's see if we can extend this spirit of excellence down to musicians, and in particular, guitarists.

Last month we discussed technique development – something which, when I got started in the mid 90s, was considered almost a dirty word. This month we're going to focus on another aspect that polarises opinion – theory.

Now, those who've studied with me and endured my rants on the subject will know this, but for everyone else I'm just going to blow apart the biggest myth surrounding music theory.

Theory is NOT difficult. Theory is, in fact, stupidly simple. There are, after all, only 12 notes in the chromatic scale, in the entire lexicon of music. That's IT. But looking at terms like Lydian Dominant, Superlocrian, m7b9#5, tritone substitution.. you'd be forgiven for thinking theory is an utterly impenetrable discipline.

It's not, of course. We just like to make ourselves look cleverer than we actually are. Why say “gets louder” when we can say “Crescendo”? Why say “chord played one note at a time” when we can say “arpeggio” and get passers by swooning at our phenomenal vocabulary?

We may wrap up different combinations of notes in fancy sounding Italian and Greek names (due in no small part to the influence of Pythagoras in the early development of the 12 – tone system we use now), but at it's heart music theory has evolved incredibly elegant solutions to the problem of creating and organising sounds into repeating and evocative patterns that can be performed by groups of musicians playing different instruments together. Theory exists so that when you play C,F and G, the bass and keyboard player can play the same C, F and G.

I'm not going to try and encompass the whole of music theory in one blog post. I've got to get up in the morning, for one thing. But I do want to make a couple of quite important points.

Firstly – learning the rules of music theory is not like learning the rules of a game or the school/ college/ workplace rules. It doesn't mean that if you play an F# note over a C minor chord the Theory Police will come and take your guitar away. It just means you'll get a fairly odd sound you can describe as a Cmadd#4. It's similar to the laws of physics – if you jump off the roof of a tall building, you'll fall to the ground and probably die. Not understanding that won't stop it happening, but understanding it will mean you probably won't jump off the roof in the first place. So a guitarist who doesn't want to “constrain my creativity with rules” and decides to eschew theory is probably going to be stuck playing the same 3 or 4 chords and pentatonic licks forever, because they'll be what he's used to and what “feels right”. The guitar player who does learn some theory, however, will probably have his curiosity piqued and will try and combine sounds he may never have previously connected and will progress, evolving his sound and improving his ability to express himself.

Secondly – theory is often very badly taught, in my experience. If you're going to understand what's going on, you need to get things in order.

The Chromatic Scale.

This is where it all begins. The chromatic scale is our alphabet – 12 notes, each separated by a semitone. When you get round to the 12^th note, the sequence begins an octave higher – the octave being a note that is exactly twice the pitch of the original root note, allowing our brains to perceive it as a higher version of the original note. The semitone is taken as the basic smallest unit of musical difference because it's the smallest gap that can be consistently modelled from instrument to instrument. For example, we can achieve subtle microtonal differences with slight string bends, and so can a violinist – but good luck doing that on a piano or a tuba.

So with our basic lexicon sorted, let's proceed to the next step.

The Major Scale

The major scale is a very important scale in the sense that it's the one our ears and our brains are naturally tuned to. It makes us happy, on a visceral level it simply sounds right. And it's very simple to construct. Pick a note from the chromatic scale to serve as your root note (starting point) and then build as follows:

Root – tone - 2^nd – tone – 3rd – semitone - 4^th – tone - 5^th – tone - 6^th – tone - 7^th – semitone – Octave.

And job done. I recommend starting to familiarise yourself with this scale by playing it along one string (for the uninitiated, semitones are represented on the guitar by one fret, tones by two). For example, the E major scale can be found along the E string like so:

Root – open string, 2^nd - 2^nd fret, 3^rd - 4^th fret, 4^th - 5^th fret, 5^th - 7^th fret, 6^th - 9^th fret, 7^th - 11^th fret, Octave - 12^th fret.

Next, try finding some simple melodies – for example, “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” can be found using the pattern Root-Root- 5^th - 5^th - 6^th -6^th - 5^th - 4^th - 4^th - 3^rd -3^rd -2^nd -2^nd – Root.

What's interesting is that this pattern of intervals holds true, giving you the same tune no matter where you start it from – whether it's from an A, E, B, F# or wherever root note, the tune will be the same. You can literally play the same tune with different notes, insane as that may initially sound!

So what does this tell us? Well, it tells us that the notes themselves aren't actually that important – it's the context that matters. The pattern of intervals, not the pitches.

Now, if we can do this with single note melodies, we can also do it with chord sequences. Many songs use predictable chord sequences which can be easy to recognise – and therefore easy to figure out. The 12 bar blues is one such example.

Welcome to the Nashville Number System.

Basically, the way this works is we build a chord from each note of the major scale and then assign it a number (in Roman numerals) based on what note of the scale it's built from. For example, the E major scale has the notes E (root) F# (2^nd) G# (3^rd) A (4^th) B (5^th) C# (6^th) and D# (7^th) .

This leads to the chord sequence E (I) F#m (ii) G#m (iii) A (IV) B (V) C#m (vi) D# dim (vii).

Notice as well that only the I, IV and V chords are major – the ii, iii and vi are minor and the vii is a positively evil sounding diminished chord. Why so?

Simply, the major scale hasn't got the right notes for the chords to all be major. An F#, for example has the A# note as its 3^rd – that note isn't present in the E major scale, so A has to be substituted, making it a flattened 3^rd and therefore a minor chord. For a D# chord, F## and A# need to be present for th 3^rd and 5^th – they're not, so F# and A have to be substituted, meaning flattened 3^rd and 5^th which creates the diminished sound.

Right here, in this article, we've covered probably 70% of the theory that you as a rock/ blues/ pop guitar player are ever going to need. Theory is nothing to be scared of, and investigating these sounds, combining them in different ways, can open up many new creative avenues to explore. Fear not the theory, for it is just big words for little things!