Understanding some basic chord theory can only help your playing.

Here at Blues Guitar Unleashed, I don’t like to throw big amounts of chord theory your way. I will say that understanding theory can help your playing, but we’ve been proven time and time again by some of the biggest names in the blues that it isn’t essential to be able to play blues guitar. Nonetheless, I came across an article recently that simplifies how roman numerals work in chord theory. If you’re interested in learning a little more about basic chord theory and how to read and understand roman numerals in music, then read on.

I found this short article at Blues Guitar Institute. I think the author did a pretty good job of explaining how roman numerals work in basic chord theory. Check out the full article at http://www.bluesguitarinstitute.com/roman-numeral-analysis.

The Essentials of Roman Numeral Analysis

To say it simply, each chord in a key is assigned a Roman Numeral.

Let’s breakdown roman numeral analysis in the key of A.  We’ll start off by Harmonizing the A Major scale (A – B – C# – D – E – F# – G#) to determine the chords in the key:

(A – Bmin – C#min – D – E – F#min – Gdim)

There’s a cheater’s way around the steps of harmonizing any major scale to get the chords in a major key.  Just remember the pattern major – minor – minor – major – major – minor – diminished) and plug in the chords sequentially.

Back to Roman Numerals…

Assigning a Roman Numeral to the chords in the key of A looks like this:

(I – ii – iii – IV – V – vi – vii)

Notice that some of the numerals are uppercase and some lower.  The upper case numerals represent major chords and the lower case are for, you guessed it, minor chords.  Well, except for the “vii” which is diminished and altogether different.

If you get used to writing the roman numerals this way, you will reinforce the whole ‘major – minor – minor – major – major – minor – diminished’ pattern.

Feel free to dig in a little deeper to chord theory because it can only help your playing and your creative juices. The more you know about what’s happening harmonically in a song, the more ideas will come to mind when you’re playing rhythm or lead guitar. There’s more coming your way at Blues Guitar Unleashed, so stay tuned.

Thanks,

Griff


    6 replies to "A Simple Roman Numeral Theory Lesson"

    • JANSI

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    • cowboy

      nice explanation….I’ll have to check out the link…later.

      cowboy

    • Chuck

      Being “Spoon Fed” little bits of theory as I progress seems to work better for me than hitting it all at once! Thanks Griff! (And John, the author of the article!)

    • John

      Griff, thanks for sharing my site with your audience! Glad you liked it. Really dig what you’re doing here!

    • jim

      Thanks for the lessons, never thought about it before.

    • Chris L. Babcock

      Nice lesson…good information….

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