Music, especially pop music, has a fairly limited way of conveying emotions. This isn’t a jab at pop music, but in order for it to be popular, it has to be limited. If every song was completely unique, it would require a lot from the audience to interpret, and then it wouldn’t be popular. It’s easier to use standard conventions which musicians and audiences intuitively understand.

It’s fairly easy to learn to identify these conventions, except “learning music” falls under the trap of being a common hobby. Therefore, you have a million people and businesses competing for your attention, telling you to do this or that. All you really need are two things: ears, and patience. You need time to learn what the conventions sound like, and then you need patience to let those conventions sink in.

All the theory you need to know before starting

You probably don’t even need this theory before starting, but it may help you understand why I’m saying the words I’m saying. In any case, here are six pieces of information which build upon eachother, and they are simple enough.

  1. A note is one sound (e.g. pressing one key on the piano)
  2. A chord is a collection of notes (e.g. pressing three keys on the piano)
  3. In pop music, things are structured around “chord progressions” (e.g. playing one chord, playing another chord, then playing the first chord again)
  4. We name the chords after the numbers 1 - 7. These are typically in roman numerals e.g. I, II… VII.
  5. The number tells you the relative location of the chord, where 1 is the “home”, or “root”. Things feel like they want to come back to this chord.
  6. The way you write the chord is important: II is a major two or major second. ii is a minor two or minor second. Uppercase = major, lowercase = minor.

I’m not talking about specific notes

In music, everything is relative. When we sing the song happy birthday, it’s not as if everyone remembers the exact pitch of the notes, they just kind of remember where the next note is, relative to the note they’re singing. This is true of chords too. The “one” is not a specific set of notes (e.g. C + E + G), but rather, you feel the “one” relative to everything else you’re playing. Therefore, i’m not going to mention any specific notes (e.g. A, or C# or 440hz) because they aren’t important to what we’re learning. I also won’t talk about scales, or modes, or anything like that. You can learn that later if you’d like.

One brief note on feeling okay with not knowing everything

Whenever you learn a new thing, there is going to be a period where nothing really clicks. If you don’t allow yourself to feel uncomfortable, you’ll never be able to actually understand the thing you’re trying to learn. Languages (natural, musical, programming or otherwise) are particularly fuzzy, and they take a long time to understand. Indeed, rushing to understand them will often lead you to make believe that you’ve understood things, and you’ll not be able to grow. So, if you find yourself feeling lost, please understand that everyone before you has felt the same. With enough time (and that amount varies between people), things will be less fuzzy, and make more sense.

The “one” or “I” chord

The rest of these posts will be about chord progressions, or particular chords which modify a progression we’ve learnt. However, it’s important you take some time and really internalise the idea of the “one” or the “root” or “home”. This chord has names like “home” and “root” because that’s what it feels like, it feels like it’s the centre of the song. The song might move around a lot, but it’s going to come back to some place that feels stable and resolved, and that’s what we’ll call the “one”.

Here’s a small video demonstrating the sound of it.

Case Study: Hank Williams - Hey Good Lookin'

You could choose almost any song, but a great thing about old country music is that it’s structurally very simple. It uses pretty simple chord progressions, and so it’s easy to feel when the song is at home. That home is the “one chord”. I would encourage you to just get a sense of where the chord is in the song. There are only three or four chords in the song, and the thing about the “one” is it’s the part of the song that feels like it doesn’t need to go anywhere in particular.