gemmacide

Hey Tune-Smith, Yeah I realise Im not being too helpful without having anything for people to hear. Good advice though, I've progressed slightly with it and have come up with a little chord progression which Im playing around with, which uses a minor barre chord structure but Im only strumming the 3rd, 4th and 5th string, which is sounding pretty sweet. Im basically enquiring about the chords I should include - here is my thinking: My guitar teacher has just taught me how to harmonise the major scale, so for any given key you can work out the Major-minor-minor-Major-Major-minor-diminished chord pattern that you could safely utilise in that key. So my thinking is that my starting riff and chord is in B (the blues scale used for the riff and the first note on the bass/rhythm guitar), so do I take that as my I chord and work the scale around that, or do I use it as my relative minor (Im thinking this because my riff is in B, and Ill most likely write a solo/some kind of hooky extra riff around that) and therefore my root chord will be D, and I will harmonise using that as my starting point? Does this even make any sense haha? Im halfway through this sort of chord theory with my teacher and racing ahead to try to use it in songs, so I may be barking right up the wrong tree. Sorry if anyone reading this is crosseyed by now

Hi all, I wonder if you guys can help any... So I have a riff which Im really liking which is based on an ascending B minor pentatonic scale (actually I think its more of a blues scale but it sounds good either way!) and Im wondering which chords I should be using. Im getting really bogged down in whether it should be used in the chorus or as the intro, and I've laid down a bass line which uses B, G and E, which sounds nice but Im looking to expand on it. My issue is not really knowing enough music theory yet - do I take this riff to be in the relative minor of the key that I should be writing in (therefore needing to find out which key Im in, then drawing the chords from that), or am I writing in the key of B minor and therefore derive all my chords from that key? I know many will say I should just go with what sounds good, which is what I do usually when writing songs, but I'm starting to try a mixture of that method and including some theory as well as I think I could save a lot of time when writing if I know the basic rules! Thanks! Gem