Fundamentals of rock

Key learning points

1. 1960s rock built on the foundations of rock 'n' roll and blues.
2. British bands were key to the growth of 1960s rock, including The Beatles and Rolling Stones.
3. Key features include riffs and instrumentation featuring distorted electric guitars, vocals, bass guitar and drum kit.
4. Riffs and melodies are often based around the blues scale and played in a unison texture.
5. We can extend riffs by using transposition.

Keywords

• Rock - Rock is a broad category of music that developed since the 1960s.

• Riff - A riff is a short recurring or repeated musical idea that forms the basis of a pop or rock song.

• Unison - When in unison, instruments play the same rhythm and pitches together (this can be in different octaves).

• Transposition - Transposition is a group of notes up or down in pitch so the intervals between the notes are the same but the pitch is different.

Common misconception