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Yeah 3 chord shuffle in E, been chipping away at it for years and years. You can turn it into rock&roll by moving to A as the root and a change of rhythm/feel.

jeremyb wrote:Now that I'm in a band and writing music I wish I knew some more theory, however theres always the accidents / fooling about which lead to cool melodies etc, often if it sounds good theres a technical reason why, but I don't need to know why it sounds good because it just sounds good (if that makes sense??)...

Yeah, ok.

But

I used to play with a classically trained keyboardist and I'd pull out these weird chords where I myself had no idea what I was playing. And not knowing what I was playing, finding the next chord was a major pain. But I'd tell her the notes and she'd say something like "Oh! That's an Amin7Sus3, the next chord would be [some name]... " and she'd play that chord. "Unless you try these inversions, which could be more interesting!" and so on.

Stuff that I found accidentally and could have spent years trying to evolve was sorted in a matter of minutes.

Yeah ! had a bit of breakthrough with understanding the theory at last. Understanding intervals and scales *before* putting the note names (letters) on and it suddenly started to fall into place.

Chord theory was a sticking point until I realised that even though a major chord is built from the root of its major scale, it will still fit in other keys but won't be the I chord, maybe the III or IV chord etc.

sizzlingbadger wrote:
Chord theory was a sticking point until I realised that even though a major chord is built from the root of its major scale, it will still fit in other keys but won't be the I chord, maybe the III or IV chord etc.

Yep, and knowing that is handy when you want to write a big key change into a song. Or even work out what some band is playing.