Watch some music theory videos on YouTube. If you have no idea what they’re talking about, you need more.
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How much music theory do you really need to know?
- Thread starter IamGroot
- Start date
I know an awful lot of decent play by ear folks who have spent a lifetime making up excuses for not understanding and theory. They struggle with it every time we get together and it wastes 25 minutes of practice time every song explaining (again) what it means when the bandleader writes *solos for 12 bars in mixolydian* on their very well detailed charts.
I know zero people who put in the time to learn everything they can, who and are great theorists & players that sit at home or on the bandstand wondering what it is like to understand nothing.....
Give me a half an hour a day for 90 days and I can teach you 800 years of what the world's best musicians spent a lifetime learning and documenting for posterity. It is neither difficult or complicated; you just need to jump in and start the process.
I know zero people who put in the time to learn everything they can, who and are great theorists & players that sit at home or on the bandstand wondering what it is like to understand nothing.....
Give me a half an hour a day for 90 days and I can teach you 800 years of what the world's best musicians spent a lifetime learning and documenting for posterity. It is neither difficult or complicated; you just need to jump in and start the process.
Reasons to learn Music Theory:
1) Bach .......
If you read chord charts, well its in G.
Liner Note:
This recording was produced by analyzing Gould's playing, transcribing it digitally, and playing it back on a player piano with modern equipment.
It's basically as if Gould had time-traveled from 1955 to a modern day recording studio and recorded the same playing with better technology.
1) Bach .......
If you read chord charts, well its in G.
Liner Note:
This recording was produced by analyzing Gould's playing, transcribing it digitally, and playing it back on a player piano with modern equipment.
It's basically as if Gould had time-traveled from 1955 to a modern day recording studio and recorded the same playing with better technology.
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- Oct 7, 2000
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I agree with all of this and think it was very well stated.
I play by ear, and I earn more than the average musician. I get some pretty cool gigs from time to time, too. The big difference between me and someone of equal talent that could be doing what I am is that I have to put in MUCH MORE TIME to learn songs. I have to put them on a usb and listen to them hundreds of times over while driving, learn them at home, and have them all memorized - including songs that start with odd grooves or rhythms I never heard before.
Takes a lot more time, but I do think there are benefits to that, too. A big one is that I'm never staring at a chart. I'm always confident in what I'm doing, which allows me to connect to the music without thinking. And it develops my ear a lot more.
I'm aware that it limits my playing to a degree, too. If I actually KNEW what I was doing my capabilities would be endless
.I got really inspired when I read (I think in BP magazine) that Pino Palladino jumped into John Entwistles shoes in a matter of a few days when John passed away. And he didn't know how to read music, nor much music theory at all.
All of Fleas early work (his best stuff, IMO) came also without any solid understanding of theory.
I agree with your assessment. I would say that the more you know, the better. Having advanced knowledge of music theory won’t prevent a person from playing 3 chord blues, but having no knowledge of music theory might crimp your jazz career…..
That’s heartening. I obv didn’t take the time to read all 9 pages of replies…oopsIt may have been pointed out once or twice already ...
The pandemic has really messed with people’s heads.
I think the answer to this depends on what you're doing and what you aspire to. Theory is a way to describe sound, it's not the other way around. People forget that it's quite possible to create sound and music without knowing a lick of theory, but you wouldn't have theory without the music that it describes.
That said, for most of us, theory is a means of describing what we're doing so that we can work with other musicians and communicate specific information about musical ideas. I don't know a ton of theory, but I've been able to reasonably communicate at the levels I play in for a while now. So I'd say that for some of us there's a limited amount that's actually required. However, there are levels far beyond what I've ever done or aspired to that would require much greater depth of communication. I would have been better positioned to tap into those levels if I had learned more early on. The more theory you know, the more precise that communication becomes.
That said, for most of us, theory is a means of describing what we're doing so that we can work with other musicians and communicate specific information about musical ideas. I don't know a ton of theory, but I've been able to reasonably communicate at the levels I play in for a while now. So I'd say that for some of us there's a limited amount that's actually required. However, there are levels far beyond what I've ever done or aspired to that would require much greater depth of communication. I would have been better positioned to tap into those levels if I had learned more early on. The more theory you know, the more precise that communication becomes.
NEED? None. Tons of music has been recorded and release by people that don't understand anything about music theory.
It helps, but it isn't required.
It helps, but it isn't required.
I'm the oddball. I've been playing jazz for 45 years, starting in middle school jazz band. I'm a fluent sight reader, and play in a large jazz ensemble that's chart-based, plus I do a fair amount of combo work. I know nearly all of the standards that are likely to be called at gigs in my area. In combo groups, I do extensive soloing, typically on every tune. I can pick up new tunes by ear, or from head charts, whatever it takes: Jazz, rock, folk music, etc.
I know very little theory, just because I never took the time to learn it. Of course I know what the chord symbols mean, and I can play scales in the modes, but can't remember the names of the modes. So far as what mode to play over what chord, and that kind of stuff, forget it.
Basically, I compensate for my lack of theory. But it's a handicap in a number of ways. If you hit me with really difficult modern changes, I'm lost, though I can often play a brief solo by improvising directly from the melody. I can't compose to save my life, and I can play bass parts but can't tell you what all of the decorations are on the changes (7ths, 11ths, 37ths, etc).
There's an old saying that a bassist doesn't need fast fingers, just fast ears. If your ears are fast enough, and you've spent a lifetime of playing and listening, and have been given lots of opportunities to learn on the bandstand, then you don't need to learn theory. The players I know who can play jazz intuitively without having studied theory formally, learned it on the bandstand by playing a gig with good players every night for years.
If you don't want to spend 45 years, you can get there quicker by learning theory.
I think you are not an oddball, Many horn section guys can sight read as well and can solo without knowing what a tritone substitution is or when to use a flat 5 or #5 Many have an abundant riff library as well and execute them well.
When I lived in Moorhead MN, I played with the same type of players. I did not hear any diminished scales in the solos. But they can all can cold read big band arrangements. No theory and also no talk on jazz history.
That's usually the jazz that people expect. Hard bop and post modern jazz, is probably not going to get paid well anyway. When I try to ask if we can do some Metheny or late Haden tunes or Egberto Gizmonti, people think I am crazy. There is a big body of work in Jazz and improvisational from mid 60's to early 90's - as well as today.
You do not even have to know theory and even read. Christian Henson composed his first film score when he cannot sight read. Listen to the first few minutes of this. He has a pretty good resume.
I saw something like that live with my dad.
I might have some of the details wrong but it was something like this. It was advertised come hear Ocar Peterson play, at some piano store. When we get there, there was this grand piano there
We sit around and and this rep tells us we are about to hear Oscar play. Then the rep goes over to this box next to the piano that looked like a cross between a giant desktop tower or a little dorm fridge and hits a button and the grand starts to play some Oscar Peterson with no Oscar on the bench.
It was the first acoustic MIDI grand playing some MIDI recorded Oscar. It was cool!
An interesting process, including the slight re-tuning of the piano and more obviously, absence of Gould's humming. There is a lot of debate comparing his two famous Goldberg performances. Gould himself had little time for that 1955 performance and would probably not have sanctioned such a process using what he would have considered sub-standard source material. His discussion of the 1981 performance and his own comparison to the 1955 performance is enlightening.
I've no need to and don't have the will to now. I'm in a nice covers band and it will more than likely be my last band. Agree never to old to learn new things if it's what you want to do.So now that you're 60 it's time to stop learning new things?
It's really not hard to learn basic theory, and you'll be surprised how much a little knowledge goes a long way.
Citing Glen Gould can just as easily be justified to point out a deliberate lack of adherence to orthodoxy.
I think music theory is a descriptive language, it helps communication. The problem I have with it is when it is used as a didactic thing, a kind of gospel of righteousness held only by those who speak it. A language is only truly useful when it is equally possible to use it to state why something is wrong. It doesn't take much knowledge of music to see that the statement that 'using a 4th is only a transitional note, and should not be lingered on', is not universally correct. I saw a statement like that some pages back, and the only way to make sense of it, is if the writer had a very limited perspective. Even when they explained that it moves to a third or a fifth, it seems unjustified to me, unless a bass player is to be blinkered like a horse into trotting along beside a guitarist who can only play triad chords.
I don't think I'll post again in this thread, because unlike the English language used on the forum, the exchanges on music theory very quickly stop being any fun. It's like people have their own fixed ideas a lot of the time, and don't easily accept any others. If a language can't be used to transcend this, it's not very useful to me.
I can accept things like circle of fifths helping to know the key based on the count of accidentals printed, or other patterns used to speed up communication, and knowing names of intervals is very basic and useful, but if in a band situation two musicians get frustrated by a lack of theory when it's probably easier to hum or play the interval or pattern to be played, then that can get annoying very fast.
If musicians cannot communicate music to each other without theory, then how the hell do they communicate to an audience?! Listening is worth a lot more than the often-didactic result of too much theory.
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I'm betting there's ALOT of experienced players (including 'pros') that know way more than they think, they just didn't realize there was a name for the things they figured out.
