Learning to Read from Scratch

[Baird6869]

I am in a band with a very talented guitarist that has never read music in his life and plays totally by ear. He is a great guitar player and can play anything he hears pretty quickly.

The problem is that he has no concept of staying or playing in key. This is driving me nuts a bit as I always try to play in key when I play a riff or solo and he seems to play every improvised solo on the dots (3, 5, 7, 9th position mainly).

I am not the best at reading but I read music about as well as I read the French language. I know the notes, key and have a fairly good idea what is going on and can follow the song. I can basically fake my way through a whole song by having just fair-average reading skills.

My question is this..... my guitarist is commited to learing theory and has bought the Mell Bay-type intro books (even though he has been playing for 25+ years!).

How long on average does it take for someone to learn passibly if they practice a conservative 20-30 minutes per day?

He is hoping to understand basic theory including keys and time signatures, etc. I don't expect to get into a deep discussion about Mixolydian or Aeolian modes as an example.

I know everyone is different, but provided someone has a solid grasp of the instrument, are we looking at 3 months? a year? 5 years?

Thanks!

[SwingLow]

If he copies everything he reads down in a seperate notebook, then try and understand it with a instrument in hand, that'll reinforce his memory tremendously. I'd guestimate 2 months with that much music already under his belt.

[magnusdeus123]

I actually managed to learn all the theory you need him to learn in the first few hours......not that I really could put most of it into practice for the next few weeks , but yeah , manageable .

You know what the weird thing I realized when you were talking about staying in keys ?? I might be a dumbass , coz all I know about keys is basically its the scale you are using notes from , to construct notes or chords . What I've realized is that I might try changing keys in the middle of a solo , and it just ends up sounding weird , and I've subconciously managed to end up making the entire riff within a single key, just by......like.....knowing that it sounds the best that way . I dont even know what key I'm in most of the time , it's mostly just what sounds good , and then a solo around it , and I'll go as far as transversing a whole octave and reaching a different part of the fretboard , but I still somehow remain in key , because it just sounds like that , like I'm using different notes of the same scale . Is this right or am I screwing up ??

[JimmyM]

If you spent more than a few hours with theory, you'd know

But seriously, if it sounds good to you and everyone else in your band, then it's good. That's the acid test of any music...does it sound good? All theory is is organizing what sounds good.

[elpelotero]

the bare minimum he needs to learn is "this song is in A. Solo around the A. A is here, here, and here."