Is music theory necessary?

John Broughten · From: Minnesota, USA

I'm 52 yoa and just started playing Dobro and lap steel two years ago. Before that, I had never picked up an instrument before and have no musical background what so ever. My method of learning so far has been memorizing tabs and buying a few online song lessons. I seem to be learning the songs okay but it has not taught me anything about theory, scales, or making chords. I have tried to learn some theory basics but it has only frustrated me that I can't grasp the knowledge. To be anything more that just a beginner player, will it be necessary to learn about theory?

basilh · From: United Kingdom

In short, YES..
Not necessary if you aspire to be a "Parrot Style Player" but to understand music you need to speak the language.. Idea

Jim Cohen · From: Philadelphia, PA

As with most things in life, it is a matter of degree. Playing just by copying tab, as Basil suggests, is much like speaking a language phoenetically, without really understanding what you are saying, and not knowing how to say anything on your own that someone hasn't already written down for you. The more you are willing to learn about "theory", the more fluent you can become in the language of music, and the better a player you will become, with the ability to create your own musical ideas. Certainly you should learn how major and minor chords are constructed and where to find them in a few different places on the neck. And learn how to play at least a major scale in a few different places, and how to harmonize that scale. If you would just tackle those three things as learning objectives, you will have come a very long way from where you are presently.
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John Allison · From: Austin, Texas, USA

Don't be intimidated by theory. It's just numbers linked to a consistent series of steps and half step tone increments, when it comes down to it. Just try to figure out a little as you go and you'll be surprised at how the whole system unfolds and builds on the foundation of a simple, basic scale.
You just don't need to know what makes a diminished or 13th chord to play a very fine version of "Your Cheatin' Heart", but it doesn't hurt to know why the 7th chord sounds different from the majors and minors, for instance.
Hang in there and have fun with it!
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basilh · From: United Kingdom

You're right John, I think of Music Theory as nothing other than mathematics, and other than the notational diacritics and symbols, it's just mental arithmetic ... and MEMORY...IMHO..

Brad Bechtel · From: San Francisco, CA

John Broughten · From: Minnesota, USA

Thanks for the responses. It's very obvious that theory is a "need to know" and I might as well just get started. I guess I knew what the responses were going to be but maybe just needed confirmation to give me a push. As it was mentioned, I'm going to start by learning some scales and going from there. I'm hoping that as time goes by, something will click and just make sense.

Geoff Cline · From: Southwest France

Get yourself SGF member Mike Perlowin's book "Music Theory in the Real World." It is GREAT and the most accessible material on this subject.

Don McGregor · From: Memphis, Tennessee

Theory teaches you the names for the different sounds you hear when certain notes are played in relationship to others. As is said above, you don't have to memorize the whole dictionary or vocabulary at once. Start off by learning something about intervals, scales, and simple chords that are made from them. I'm sure you can already hear major and minor intervals and major and minor chords, as well as 7th chords, and possibly others. Learning some basic theory will teach you the names for what you are hearing, and help you to understand the differences.
I was lucky to have a very fine Theory teacher in high school, too, but I will never learn it all. I have never stopped discovering new ways of looking at harmonic relationships.
Lately, I have enjoyed following Mike Neer's online theory tutorial,
"Understanding Harmony In A Month".
It's helped me to follow him back through the basics, and also, bit by bit, to follow his lessons even farther, into a few territories that I had never fully mapped out.
Theory is intimidating like a computer can be when you first sit down in front of one. You don't even know what questions to ask, because you don't know the language.
Here's a link to Mike's site.

http://tinyurl.com/4kgb2ro
Good luck. Just remember, take the time to fully understand each step before going ahead to the next.
Take the baby steps first, and you'll be running before you know it.
Good luck.

Mike Harris · From: Texas, USA

Theory first puts names and labels on things you've been hearing and doing for years. From there you can communicate better with other musicians and you can understand newer ideas that might have seemed beyond your grasp before.

Alexa Gomez · From: San Francisco

Welcome John,

Once asked if he studied music theory, Jeff Beck remarked, "Only enough to not hurt my playing". Theory is this bottomless pit modes, scales, triads, inversions, etcetera, ad nauseum.

Don't get me wrong, I'm eternally grateful to professors and musicians who've let me learn my way around the board. Yet, it's like one of my students, recently celebrated turning 21 getting tipsy, something she'd been doing all along anyway, only now street legal. Similarly anything you play employs theory, thus understanding it merely defines what you already do.

True, theory compliments your music yet, despite having a good command of theory, I opt the late Frank Zappa's sage advice to simply "Shut up and play your guitar".

Rant over and I hope this helps a bit. Very Happy

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John Davis · From: Cambridge, U.K.

John, I don`t know a thing about theory and its always intimidated me, I have been playing about 40 years (maybe to a very low standard) but I can play all the tunes I want to play and people come to me asking for lessons.
My advice would be don`t let your lack of knowledge in that direction spoil your enjoyment of the instrument...... or, if you start playing at 9 years old then learn the theory (while you still have a sponge for a brain...) if you are the wrong side of 50 learn some toons and get some pleasure out of it....cos you ain`t got the time!! Confused

Please don`t shoot.....just my humble opinion Sad

Leon Brannan · From: Royal Palm Beach, FL

John, Theory is just simple math. In grammar school, your teacher didn't just give you a pile of numbers to memorize. Your teacher taught you the processes of adding,multipling,dividing & subtracting so you could arrange this pile of numbers into something useful. Using theory you can realize WHY you have put your bar in the right place & picked particular strings. It may seem Greek now, but when you've learned, you will be proud you did.

Steinar Gregertsen · From: Arendal, Norway, R.I.P.

There's 12 notes, anybody can count to 12. Music theory is explaining what happens when you shuffle those 12 notes around.
Just don't try to take it all in at once, the most important is to understand basic scales, how to build chords, and how to apply scales to a chord sequence.

I've never been much good at aquiring knowledge through reading theory books, I've mostly learned through "doing". Many times I've come across stuff on the guitar that sounded good and made me go "wow, what's that?!" - and since I know my basic elementary theory and can count to 12, I was able to figure out what caused that "wow" moment.

It's quite fun, actually.....
Cool

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Robert Jette · From: Dallas, Tx.

I think that many people feel that in order to learn theory, they have to memorize the whole "Book of Theory" before they can play anything worthwhile. It's not like that at all. You can play a whole lot of stuff knowing that I, IV, and V go together. Make learning theory part of your practice while you're learning tabs. You'll be pleased with the results.

L. Bogue Sandberg · From: Chassell, Michigan, USA

For years, I muddled along, playing bluegrass and country without any "theory" knowledge other than being able to read music. My son is a pro jazz/R&B sax and flute player. As I tried to learn some of his tunes, got interested in Western Swing and Hawaiian and tunings other than bluegrass G, I started to pick up some theory out of necessity. As others have stated, it isn't all that hard if you take your time. Think of it as a lifelong journey that adds to the fun of music! Isn't that the bottom line?

Mike Neer's tutorial is a superb resource. Another I've found handy is "Pocket Music Theory," by Wyatt & Schroeder, published by Hal Leonard. It's about $5.00 and fits in a shirt pocket or guitar case. At 52, you're a fair bit younger than I was when I started learning this stuff.

Bogue

Wayne D. Clark · From: Montello Wisconsin, USA

Tunning, 1-3-5 chords, Triads, an octive's, Lades & Gentelmen START YOUR GUITAR'S. Oh,and if you have any questions, there is always THE FORUM.

Wayne D. Clark
usnyn2nd@frontier.com

Clete Ritta · From: San Antonio, Texas

You dont have to learn theory, but you should!
Learning theory, like any math-oriented science will take you through successive layers of complexity.

Many players get through the major and minor chords fairly easily and dont progress much further than that.
There's a lot of music involving only three chords that can be derived with this rudimentary knowledge of theory.

I recall jumping the hurdle into diminished and augmented chords, it was like a lightbulb coming on and it all made sense. All of a sudden basic arithmetic had blossomed into calculus, or at least geometry. Laughing

Someone on the forum (edit- pretty sure it was Mike Neer) had made a comment about the relationship between the dominant seventh and the diminished chord form, and that it may be easier to comprehend from this standpoint.

Theory is harder to visualize on the guitar than on the piano.
If you have the means, study theory on the keyboard as well.
Its all black and white and may help alleviate some of the frustration. Smile

Even if you dont become proficient at playing piano, the knowledge of theory gained is applicable on any instrument and can only help you along your musical journey.

Clete

David Matzenik · From: Cairns, on the Coral Sea

This is a simple but very important thread for newcomers to muisc and the responses are generally clear, but I have to take exception to this anecdote.

basilh · From: United Kingdom

Well said David, it needed to be debunked..

Nothing other than a self perpetuating "Urban Myth"..

Those that repeat it are almost certainly quite proficient and are being protective of their self perceived ranking..

Rob Anderlik · From: Chicago, IL

some really great replies here...

Here's my two cents:

It's not a perfect analogy but - IMO - trying to learn how to play an instrument by focusing on music theory is kind of like trying to learn how to speak a foreign language by reading a book. It never hurts to read the manual but I think most people learn faster by traveling to the country and/or engaging with someone who speaks the language fluently.

Don't get me wrong, I think music theory is or can be extremely helpful. However, if you are anything like me you may find that you won't retain or fully employ that knowledge until you can connect those concepts to your own experience as a player. There have been plenty of world class players who were not "educated" in the sense of music theory, but were great players nonetheless.

It's just a suggestion, but you might consider breaking up your practice time into different segments - instead of just tabs and online lessons, I would encourage you to dedicate a portion of each practice session to learning to play by ear using either Transcribe or Amazing Slow Downer. In addition you might spend some time transcribing tunes you already know - familiar tunes - by ear. Being able to hear a melody or lick and find those notes on your instrument is essential to becoming fluent as a player. Its painstaking work at first but with persistence it pay big dividends over time. As you build a repertoire of tunes learned by ear you may find that you will also build the mental file cabinets to store the theoretical stuff as well.

I've seen situations where players on different instruments had decent theoretical knowledge and could read music but were restricted in their ability to adapt to extemporaneous musical situations because they relied too much on the written page and had not learned to play by ear. On the other hand I've been fortunate enough to play with some great musicians who had the whole package: the ability to play by ear, read music and a deeply ingrained knowledge of music theory. All three of those things working together gives a player a lot of tools to work with. If I had to pick one thing to work on as a starting point, however, I'd focus on learning to play by ear.

Hope this helps!

George Keoki Lake · From: Edmonton, AB., Canada

A-B-C-D-E-F-G ... Only 7 letters in music. You learned A-Z in grade 1, (27 letters)! Just think of all the combinations of words, sentences, etc., you have accomplished with those 27 letters. They opened the world to you and so it is with music, but with fewer letters. Basic theory is quite simple, just as is basic language. Main thing, enjoy.

John Davis · From: Cambridge, U.K.

Ear,Ear Rob, My lack of theory has not stopped me useing diminished and argumentative chords Confused

though I would like to own a guitar with a few more minor chords on it Oh Well

but on the plus side I can still pick out almost any toon thats in my head and if I play a wrong note or chord....I have Basil over here to straighten me out Smile

Mark Eaton · Posted 11 Feb 2011 1:20 am

basilh · From: United Kingdom

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