The Musical Knowledge Thread...

[Bern]

Originally Posted by tbeltrans

I have been working on a website

Tony

Very nice, Tony.

[tbeltrans]

Originally Posted by Bern

Very nice, Tony.

Thanks, Bern. I will be putting up the remainder of the music theory in either one or two more pages soon. I do have it all written, so it mostly a matter of cutting, pasting,and formatting. After that, I want to write articles dealing with experiences and observations that ma be helpful to others, that come directly from my own practice. I also want to review books, not necessarily music books, that pertain to having an avocation to add richness to our lives.

Thanks,

Tony

[Roselynne]

Just popping in to give a hearty "Thank You!" to Jeff for starting this thread, and to Tony for a new great site.

Now ... popping back out to lurk, learn and practice.

[tbeltrans]

Originally Posted by Roselynne

Just popping in to give a hearty "Thank You!" to Jeff for starting this thread, and to Tony for a new great site.

Now ... popping back out to lurk, learn and practice.

Thanks! I just finished adding the second page on theory to my site. I intentionally limited the scope of my theory pages to serve as providing just the fundamentals, but hopefully doing so in a manner that helps people to work this material out on the fretboard, where it matters. If you work with Robert Conti's chord melody materials, the theory on my pages is what will help you understand the basic concepts he says you should have at least exposure to. These are also the basics for whatever you wish to pursue on the guitar. There are many places to get this theory - books, other sites, discussion in these forums. My pages are yet another means that will hopefully be useful to some here.

Tony

@tbeltrans -
On your web site the dominat 9 formula is missing the b7.
1 3 5 9 is just add9.

[tbeltrans]

Originally Posted by phmike

@tbeltrans -
On your web site the dominat 9 formula is missing the b7.
1 3 5 9 is just add9.

Thanks! I will fix that. I put a lot of text up in a short period of time, so if you see a problem, definitely please let me know.

Thanks,

Tony

[jasperguitar]

as a kid, I learned the scales, key signatures, etc.

but it sure does sound more impressive saying "theory" ..

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

[Davis Webb]

Theory is poorly taught. Great guitarists for the most part have no ability to teach. I took alot of theory classes and they were passable but not great. Teaching is a whole other ball of wax.

Now, if a music theory expert were to collaborate with an educator....

[drguitar001]

Originally Posted by Davis Webb

Theory is poorly taught. Great guitarists for the most part have no ability to teach. I took alot of theory classes and they were passable but not great. Teaching is a whole other ball of wax.

Now, if a music theory expert were to collaborate with an educator....

In college, I found that most of my music theory teachers had no idea how the theory (music information) they were teaching was actually used. Don't get me wrong, they understood the very basics (rhythms, notes, basic harmony...etc) but they did not understand orchestration, chord substitution, relationships between scales and specific harmonies, why it is important to be able to recognize scales and chords by ear (much less how to use that knowledge), and on and on...

So unfortunately, theory was just dry information to them and they taught it as such. As a result, those students who later became teachers would often teach the same subject matter the same way. Music theory should always be taught in a way that relates it to real world music and problems that real world musicians encounter. Music theory should answer questions, not create them. The fact is that music theory/information is freakishly easy to understand if properly taught.

Rare few musicians are rocket scientists and the information they need to learn is pretty simple. The problem many guitarists run into is that they want it to be fun and easy and not require practice to do. We live in the Burger King society; we want everything to be fast, hot and juicy. But rare few things in life that are worth doing are fast, easy and good (with the exception of sex as a teenager?).

A good teacher can see where a student needs work to move them toward a student goal. But, as I have found many times in the last 40+ years of teaching, you can lead a horse to water and you can even drown the beast, but you cannot make him drink. Students who are willing to leave their ego at the door and bother to learn always grow as a guitarist/musician at fantastic rates. Those who are sure what they need to learn before meeting a teacher are doomed to learn only what they think they are missing. They are the hungry, standing in a room full of food, when all they can see is a crumb on the floor two feet in front of them.

But I digress...

[drguitar001]

Originally Posted by Davis Webb

Theory is poorly taught. Great guitarists for the most part have no ability to teach.

One other point about this statement. I live near a very famous jazz/fusion guitarist. Over the years, I have received many students who previously had studied with this astounding guitarist.

It was stunning to me that even students who had studied with this guitarist for many, many years could not play a simple C major scale nor could they recognize/play simple chord forms.

My take from it is that often great (truly great) guitarists have high levels of talent and found it easy to assimilate music knowledge when they were learning. The problem is that these same great guitarists cannot relate their innate ability to the average folks they would be teaching. They visualize and hear in ways that their students do not and as a result, the students cannot understand their teacher's thought process.

I struggled with guitar both physically and theoretically when I began. I needed to look at everything from various angles to make sense of it (poor theory teachers). I had to read about theory explained by many different sources to really gain a foothold into the world of music and I needed to hear how that theory translated into music to truly understand it. In other words, I did not have a strong talent for music.

On the positive side, this extra effort early in my learning has allowed me to be able to express music knowledge (theory) in simple, easy to understand terms with clear usage instruction. Rarely do I find a student who was less talented than I so students tend to pick up music theory quickly from me. My struggle has also allowed me to simple create tools for understanding that you would be hard pressed to find anywhere else (like a transposition circle, rules for creating strong improvisations, how to write blues riffs and much more).

So you are correct in your statement. I am not a great guitarist by any stretch of the imagination, but most folks (even guitar players) think I do okay. And that is okay with me.

[stanron]

We come back to the sometimes mentioned opinion that all the theory you need in order to play can be learned by playing. And of course listening. What you get from text is a vocabulary and description of phenomena that previous musicians have observed and agreed upon.

The primary purpose for a musician, surely, should be to play music. (Whether original or covers is up to the individual and to this argument irrelevant). Many musicians play a lifetime of good music without reading a word of theory text. (In fact until the first written work, and who knows when that was, all musicians had). It doesn't mean they hadn't learned the ideas expressed in theory texts or that their music was rubbish. Any one with a mind and ears will get this stuff if they play enough for long enough. I sometimes wonder if some of these inquiries are attempts to cut out some of the playing bit.

I'm not saying it's impossible to first learn the theory and then learn to play. It just seems to me to be the wrong way round and unnecessary and much harder to do.

Reading about theory can help you to understand music you don't play. It might help you play music you want to play in the future but I worry that a person who learns the theory of a genre before he starts to play it is going to struggle. Far better to listen first, try to copy a lot and then read some. But there should be far more listening and playing than reading.

[drguitar001]

Originally Posted by stanron

Reading about theory can help you to understand music you don't play. It might help you play music you want to play in the future but I worry that a person who learns the theory of a genre before he starts to play it is going to struggle. Far better to listen first, try to copy a lot and then read some. But there should be far more listening and playing than reading.

Honestly, the process of learning music theory practically never comes before picking up an instrument or singing a song first. Also, I have never heard of anyone learning music theory before some level of musical experience first. So this is a non-issue.

Most reputable music theory teaching includes actual music examples of the theory being taught while the learning is taking place. This way the student can hear what is being taught while they learn the written concepts.

[tbeltrans]

Robert Conti is a great player AND a truly gifted teacher via his books and DVDs. He recreates the learning experience that he had growing up, as did others of his generation - before there were jazz schools. Joe Pass, Tal Farlow, and lots of guys seemed to learn to play first, and then learned/figured out why what they were doing worked, later and in the context of the song. It isn't a matter of these guys not knowing theory, they all did. But they learned to play and later, why what they were doing worked. They did it all in the context of what they were playing. Where we seem to get into difficulty is when we separate the theory from practice, and make a bunch of exercises instead of playing tunes and applying what learn to playing tunes right away. Conti's materials put it back together the way it should be. There may be others that do too, I don't want to imply that he is the only one. But he is the one I know about.

Joe Pass apparently taught the CAGED system in seminars, but he NEVER thought that way. I can only guess that he had to come up with something, because that is what people expected. I asked him once if he had any advice for learning chord melody style. He said to learn melodies. He said a lot of guys get hung up on theory and all these weird chords and scales, but that none of that really had anything to do with making music. Conti has his "no modes, no scales" approach which goes along exactly the way that Joe Pass was talking about - you learn to play tunes by playing tunes. That is the "old school" approach.

Regarding fingerstyle, I was amazed at how well versed in theory Alex De Grassi was, as was Michael Hedges. They were both at the first fingerstyle festival that John Stropes organized in the early 80s in Milwaukee at the U campus. I don't know if they learned the "old school" way experientially or from books formally and separate from music making, so I can only say they both really knew their stuff. At that time, Kottke was studying jazz via Joe Pass as he was reinventing his approach to the guitar due to injuries. He was there too that year.

The issue often comes up whether learning theory is bad for creativity. To me, it seems that would not be an issue at all if it was learned in the context of making music (the old school way). Maybe the way to really master the instrument is to apprentice to a master for a long term commitment as is done in some other cultures...just a thought.

Tony

[mc1]

Originally Posted by ombudsman

...
Having just wrapped up a year and a half in a band with some people that did not know the meaning of terms such as "bridge" and were sometimes confused as to what was a chorus and what was a verse (!), this is fresh in mind.
...

i must admit that i have been confused by the term bridge and still don't fully understand it. i get intro, outro, verse, chorus, AABA, AABCA, etc, but bridge, not so much.

after reading your post, and, thinking about it, i decided to go and learn about it. i understand it better now but it's still kind of vague to me.

[mr. beaumont]

Think of bridge as "C" for pop and rock...common form, ABABCAB...sometimes they'll take the place of a solo...

Jazzers will sometimes call the B section the bridge...


Back to the other conversation, Ithinkone of the biggest misconceptions is that you "use" theory.