Two weeks worth of White Ripple Community Band! (part 1)

White Ripple Community Band played an acoustic jam at the Fox Gallery Festival this past Saturday. It was a beautiful, and HOT, but beautiful time getting to make music with good friends.

I was on vacation last week, a glorious computer-free time, so now I'm going to catch up on two weeks worth of work on my lunch hour. Here goes....

On July 18th's class we talked about song structure, demonstrating with three different songs that have the same chord progression.

Song 1: Careless Love
Song 2: Red River Valley
Song 3: Mama Don't Allow

The chord progression looks like this:

I               V             I               I

I               I               V             V

I               I               IV            IV

V             V             I               I

I think of chord progressions as something like song skeletons. Chord progressions are the bare bones of the song that we can add melody, harmony and rhythm to. Once you know the chord progression, and then the key, you're off to the races!

For example, here's Careless Love. We did it in the key of A. In the key of A, our I chord is A. Four up from A is D, our IV chord. Five up from A is E, our V chord.

A            E                          A             A
Love, oh love, oh careless love
A            A                         E
Love, oh love, oh careless love
A            A            D          D
Love, oh love, oh careless love
        E            E                         A        A
You see what love has done to me.



Here's another example: Red River Valley. This time our I chord is D.

                 D               A                D                     D
From this valley they say you are leaving
              D                         D                     A         A
We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile
               D                   D            G                       G
For they say you have taken the sunshine
               A                     A                 D                D
That has brightened our pathways a while


So while I think of chord progressions as song skeletons, I think of our I chord (pronounced "one chord") as home base. When we change home base, we change the relationship of the notes to one another.

So now that we're in the key of D, now D is our I chord. We've changed home base, so now the relationships to the other notes will also change. So now, four up from D is G, our IV chord, and five up from D is A, our V chord.

                                                         I                  IV   V                (the octave)

D,   E,   F,   G,   A,   B,   C,   D

Skeletons, home base, music's got it all!