+1,000,000. I never understood why people put such an emphasis on scales. I've taken 2 years of music theory in college (with more advanced material on the way), and we barely even talked about scales. It was all about harmony, and how each chord will move to the next one, in a (hopefully) graceful manner. The crux of the last part of the course (Theory IV) was chromaticism, and how to get from chord to chord with the least movement possible (which is obviously a chromatic neighbor).
Rarely do you see songs actually utilize a complete scale; plus what can be construed as a "scale" or use of the degrees in a scale by one person can be construed as just voice leading and harmonization by another person. To be honest, we didn't even cover modes in my theory course, since they had little part in the classical theory training. I suppose they may be more important in jazz, but I could be wrong.
+1 - Scales are mostly helpful in understanding chords and melodies.
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Some 20-odd years ago I started buying "Guitar For the Practicing Musician" at the grocery store and reading the articles and transcriptions in that mag. Every (tabbed BTW) transcription included an analysis of the solos detailing what modes the guitar player was using and every interview with the guitar heroes of the day (like the guy from Winger, Alex Skolnick, Kirk Hammett) included the question "What advice do you have for aspiring players?" Their answer was always "Learn music theory!" but there was never any elaboration on what that really meant. Every bedroom rockstar took that to mean "I need to learn all of these modes and pentatonic scales that are listed in the transcription analysis!" and that was the long and short of it.
After many years of music theory, ear training, and Schenkerian Analysis classes at the college level I cam to the realization that scales and modes and the stuff professed in Guitar were really not very important. Harmony is where it is at, and if you understand that then everything else is relatively easy.
Deacon Blues harmonized Twinkle Twinkle in a post above here and I can tell by just looking at the chords that it's not going to sound right just based on harmonic function. I don't even need to hear it.
Learning scales is really more of a practice technique for improving your instrument handling, nothing more. If you are practicing scales to learn scales then you didn't get the point. Playing lydian dominant is all 12 keys around the circle of 4ths with a crappy tone and poor time teaches you nothing.
"Music theory" is thrown around this forum so often by so many who don't understand what it is for. The music came first and then the analysis of it.
Go ahead and start the flamethrowers, but I'm going to stick to my claim that focusing on scales and arpeggios is nothing more than looking at a box of nuts and bolts and gears. That is in no way going to build a house.
I think I completely agree.
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