Chord Structure of a Pre-Chorus in Rock Songs

Video Transcript

"Now remember, we're writing rock music. That means that as opposed to the many other genres, you don't have to really stick with a lot of the chords. Your chord structure doesn't ever even really have to be chords. It can be notes, it can be single notes, it can be guitar riffs or something like that. It can be whatever you want. And especially if you are going to go and use more chords like in the verse or the chorus, your pre-chorus, as far as your chord structure go, maybe shouldn't be chords at all. Maybe it should just kind of be notes. And remember, even though I'm using an acoustic guitar and even though you might be writing your songs on an acoustic guitar, ultimately we are going to be wanting to transition them into something that sounds really great and works well on the electric guitar. Because of that, I'm going to use something that is not a chord structure. I'm going to actually just use kind of a riff. It's not a true riff because it's not really for the sake of melody, it's for the sake of kind of deconstructing the chords. However, this is a good way to kind of use maybe some of the general chord things that you're doing in the verse and transitioning them into the chorus. So for example, I'm just going to be doing the walk down from the six, five, four, to the minor two. And I'm just going to be using the notes or something like that. And what this will do is not only am I transitioning from the feel of the verse, but it's picking it back up and preparing the listener chord wise and music wise for the chorus. It's building anticipation and that's what your verse and pre-chorus are supposed to do. Especially the pre-chorus. So chorus structure wise, that's one way to write it. You can write it with chords, you can write it other ways but I would say, depending on what you're using for your verses and stuff like that, within rock music, maybe go and strip it down something or maybe speed it up, or change it. not necessarily change it suppose but maybe go double time or something like that. And that'll do really well in building the anticipation for your chorus."