Many guitarists just starting out find the idea of music theory to be boring, and hence don't invest much time in studying it. While words like "pentatonic scales" and "transposed keys" may not conjure up exciting imagery, the truth is undeniable: even the basics of music theory can prove to be endlessly useful, and can help guitarists improve their compositional and performance capabilities. In this article, we'll take a look at how music theory can be used to transform any rap song into a country song. Now that, my friends, is pretty exciting stuff.

How it Works

Once you have a basic understanding of music theory, learning how to transform a rap song into a country song is a fairly straightforward process. In case you need to learn or review music theory, the links in the steps below point to articles that can help explain the concepts intuitively.

1. Identify your target rap song. As you might expect, if you want to transform a rap song into a country song, you first need to identify what rap song you want to transform. Try to pick one that you genuinely enjoy; your country song will end up much better that way.

2. Pick a seventh chord to serve as your root chord. The root chord is the starting point of your chord progression; it's sort of the anchor that that the other chords in your song can be based around. Seventh chords have a country twang to them, so they are perfect for this exercise.

3. Once you've got your root chord, identify your fourth (IV) and fifth (V) chords. All the chords should be seventh chords; for instance, if I chose A7 as my root, D7 and E7 would be the fourth and fifth, respectively. If you're not sure what all this root/fourth/fifth chord business is, check out this article on intervals as well and this introductory lesson on music theory.

4. The root-fourth-fifth (I-IV-V) chord progression will be the foundation of your song. You can play it for both the chorus and the verse. The trick is to switch up the rhythm and picking style so that the song sounds unique.

5. Add vocals. This is the fun part! Rap the lyrics or sing along to the seventh chords -- experiment with what you think will work.

And that's it! Congratulations -- you've transformed a rap song into a country song.

The Big Secret to Making This Work

Remember, the key to making this sound original and fun is to have a unique vocal delivery layered over a unique rhythm structure and a simple I-IV-V chord change.