Rock Music Guitar Notes

Everyone knows how awesome rock music guitar notes sound when they hear them. From Jimi Hendrix's psychedelic performance at Woodstock to Eddie Van Halen's swinging guitar solos, great rock guitar players are experts at finding the right notes to create the perfect combination of tension and resolution. So, what exactly are those notes, and how can a beginning rock guitar player understand how and when to play the right notes on the guitar? This article will cover the essential notes that comprise most rock guitar music.

What Are Rock Music Guitar Notes?

As Muddy Waters famously said, the blues had a baby and they called it rock and roll. Rock and roll came straight from the blues, and although Jimi Hendrix might initially seem to be a far cry from someone like Mississippi John Hurt, the fact of the matter is that the two styles are inextricably mixed. Behind the distorted guitars, feedback and flashy guitar solos of rock and roll music is a successful musical formula that was borrowed from the blues.

The I, IV, V Progression

Rock music is, in many ways, just experimental blues music. It is essential to understand the I, IV, V (or one, four, five) progression in order to understand how these styles work. The term progression refers to the order of notes that are played in progression to compose a song. Most blues music (and much of rock music) is comprised of this progression. Oftentimes in rhythm guitar playing, guitarists play chords that are built around the notes of the I, IV, V progression. The chords help lay the foundation for the song.

In its purest sense, the I, IV, V progression works like this: say the song is in the key of G. A G chord is the I chord of a song in the key of G, meaning it is the first note, or root note, of the key.

Any song in the key of G will usually begin and end with the note G. When playing a I, IV, V progression, the I note is typically played for eight beats before switching back to the IV note.

The IV note of a I, IV, V progression in the key of G is C.

In the key of G, the C note is called the IV note because it is the fourth note in a G major scale. In the I, IV, V progression, the IV chord is usually played for eight counts as well, before the progression switches back to the I chord for eight counts.

At this point, the progression introduces the V note. In the key of G, the V note, or chord, is D.

Again, the D note is called the V in the key of G because it is the fifth note of a G major scale. In the progression, the V note is played for four counts. Next, the progression walks down to the IV chord for four more counts before resolving to the I chord for eight counts.

So, the complete progression is eight counts of the I note, eight counts of the IV chord, eight counts of the I, four counts of the V, four counts of the IV and eight counts of the I. This pattern repeats itself for the length of the song.

While not all rock songs follow the exact same progression as described above, nearly all songs will rely heavily on the I, IV and V notes. The I, IV and V are essential rock music guitar notes because they provide the foundation for songs that allow for the feeling of resolution and release that rock music is known for. However, any fan of rock music also knows that there is a tension created in the music that needs to be resolved. That tension is supplied by the minor 7 and the minor 3 notes.

Minor 7 and Minor 3

For all guitar players, the most important place to look for rock music guitar notes is the pentatonic scale. The reason for this is the pentatonic scale has within it the two essential notes that make rock music sound like rock music. Those two notes are the minor III and the minor VII (or minor three and minor seven).

To understand the concept of the pentatonic scale, it is important to first look at the major scale. Returning to the example in the key of G, the notes of the major scale are G, A, B, C, D, E, F#, and G. The third note in this scale is B and the seventh note is F#. The pentatonic scale takes this major scale and makes a few important changes to it. The notes of the pentatonic scale are G, Bb, C, D, F, and G.

The first thing you will notice is that the pentatonic scale has fewer notes than the major scale. Penta is Greek for five, so penta-tonic means five-tone scale. The other thing you will notice is that the third note and the seventh note (B and F# in the major scale) have been flattened, or made minor, in the pentatonic scale. Those minor notes, the Bb and the F are what gives rock music its famous tension.

To Summarize

Guitar players use the pentatonic scale and its minor III and minor VII notes to create tension. They then use the I, IV and V notes to resolve that tension. That is the basic recipe for rock music. No matter what key the song you are playing is in, knowing what the I, IV, V and minor III and minor VII notes are is essential to playing rock and roll.

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