Michael Anderson – Three Chords and the Truth
Three Chords and the Truth
By Michael Anderson – http://www.MichaelAnderson.com
© 2010 All Rights Reserved. Used By Permission.
As you’ve probably noticed by now, I am a foundational guy. I like getting to the bottom of something and understanding how it works.
The basic principles you learn about songwriting will stay with you from your first song to as far as you can go in your career. Hopefully those basic principles become second nature, you incorporate them as a matter of course in your craft and build on them with experience.
In my opinion the fundamental music form of American music is the three chord blues. I am not going to explain it here because you can’t learn it by reading about it. It is like sex or Zen; so basic it defies literal, accurate description in words–but once you do it, you get it.
To understand songwriting, from blues to country (defined by Harlan Howard as “three chords and the truth”), to soul to gospel and most anything contemporary, a songwriter should have at least a rudimentary understanding of the three-chord blues form. Most American pop music is a direct copy, descendant or some variation or derivation of this fundamental form.
Get a Chuck Berry record and have someone show you the chords if they’re not obvious to you, or get them from a chord book. Learn the basics and put them to work over and over and over. Make the form yours, because you will find it at the root of nearly every American style and genre. It is the basic American music structure–what everything else is built on.
I was initiated into the knowledge and taught the basics by a grizzled old bar band guitar player when I was a teenager. He started me on bass because it was easier than learning how to play chords on a six string guitar. On bass I could play one note at a time – it was fundamental. He showed me how American bar band blues and rock music was built on the three-chord form, and how almost any song could be conformed basically to the style.
There are endless variations on the form, but the simple three chord Chicago blues, or especially Chuck Berry rock and roll, can give you hours of practice time and open a world of practical music theory. The basic 12 bar blues will get you started not only in writing, but understanding the musical form of American music.
If you cant find a grizzled old guitar player to teach you, I would recommend finding a basic blues and/or rock and roll guitar or piano book and getting that form down. It is very simple, yet endless in possibilities of stylistic and structural variation. And the structure can be so simple that at an early stage you can work on feel.
Now this study usually leads to a discussion of what is and is not original. When does borrowing from influences become copywrite infringement, and when does using a basic form, like the three chord blues, become imitation, theft, or just mining a traditional form?
Stealing
I sometimes advise people to practice songwriting by taking the chord structure and melody from a song they like and writing their own lyric to it to see how the pieces are put together. One advantage in that method is if something’s not working you know it’s you. If you are lucky you may come up with something new that sounds different.
Study the structure of your favorite songs. Figure out why you like them. Use the things you learn. There is a reason why certain conventions work, why certain chord progressions are repeated song after song, why certain tempos feel right in certain genres and get used repeatedly.
Steal those.
Now I say that with this disclaimer: I am not philosophically opposed to stealing for commercial gain if it somehow improves on the original and in the process creates something new and different. But putting a pedestrian lyric over the melody of “Yesterday” and calling it a new song isn’t going to impress me (and it will get you sued).
I once read an interview with Keith Richards in which he said the Rolling Stones were always just imitating Muddy Waters as best they could, but they weren’t good enough at it so it came out sounding different, i.e. as themselves. If they had been really good musicians they might have ended up playing in Holiday Inn lounges. Ray Charles started out by imitating Nat King Cole. Elvis Presley wanted to be like Dean Martin. Paul McCartney does a great Little Richard. You might define a whole new genre by not being good enough to imitate your hero.
Michael Anderson: Award-winning Artist/Songwriter who wrote the #1 Country hit, “Maybe It Was Memphis,” for Pam Tillis. Michael also has cuts with John Fogerty, Juice Newton, and many more. As an artist, he released two albums on A&M, and has five #1 Contemporary Christian singles. Check out “Michael Anderson’s Little Black Book of Songwriting” available at michaelanderson.com.