Does Knowledge of Theory Help You?

[MadBrain]

I view theory not as a set of rules but as a recipe. Like, if you've had classical music classes, these guys usually love Mozart and Beethoven, so they'll give you some "rules", but it's actually the recipe for making classical music (the sonata form, for instance, is a theoretical construct they came up with in the 19th century to explain the form in the music of Mozart and Beethoven). Same for this jazz chord stuff, it's a recipe you can apply or not. It's the same as in cooking, really. (IMHO)

[jopy]

This is a poorly posed question until some definition of music theory that is operative for everyone can be proposed.

Is knowing how to make a C major chord shape on a guitar "knowledge of theory?"

Is knowing how to play in time with a drummer "knowledge of theory?"

Is being able to recognize a waltz when you hear one "knowledge of theory?"

Is recognizing a guitar style as being within the rules of traditional blues "knowledge of theory?"

I'm not trying to be difficult, I really don't know if I could pin down what music theory means to me.

How many different versions of theory are there?

[aciddose]

i'd define "theory" as understanding chord structures and progressions, and having the ability to construct a melody entirely by starting from a progression, selecting scale and having everything fall into place. by selecting specific scales, progressions and rhythms you would be able to produce different genres immediately.

for example, a formula like this:

playing a bass on each 5th semitone starting from a root, applying minor chords on 0th, 5th, 7th or 9th of the current bass note produces a cheesy bossanova.

http://xhip.cjb.net/temp/public/bosserbossa.mp3


magic.

i'd say that's "theory".

[JohnDX]

This is a poorly posed question until some definition of music theory that is operative for everyone can be proposed.

Is knowing how to make a C major chord shape on a guitar "knowledge of theory?"

Yes, if you know that it's a C (if not, no).

Is knowing how to play in time with a drummer "knowledge of theory?"

No, sounds more like a skill.

Is being able to recognize a waltz when you hear one "knowledge of theory?"

Yes (well, at least if you know what makes it a waltz, but I guess you can learn it by feeling or something, and then it wouldn't be).

Is recognizing a guitar style as being within the rules of traditional blues "knowledge of theory?"

I would say no. Knowing about genres is musical knowledge (obviously), but not exactly musical theory. But it's a borderline case, because knowing about musical forms (like sonatas) is a kind of musical theory.

[tapper mike]

Theory isn't based on your knowing it.
It is present whether you can define the theory or not
Ignorance does not make one free of theory.
Theory means you don't have to stumble around in the dark.

You can find things by happenstance, however that doesn't mean you will retain them or apply them to different settings.

Take for instance following a beat.
Every heard of Guitar Hero. Guess what happens when you get creative with your timing and button selection. YOU LOSE
Thru trial and error you may find yourself hitting the right buttons at the right time assisted by what you see on screen. It doesn't matter that you don't know what tempo or metre is While you may think you are just learning to react to the environment you are actually learning rythmic structures although you may not percieve it as such.

[The Fex]

Well, hey I like some things by Paul McCartney better than either, and he don't know a thing from theory; I don't believe that means it's inferior in any way.

Hmmm.... Sir James Paul McCartney D.Mus took music lessons in the 1950s and studied piano at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in the 1960s. His approach is largely intuitive, but I think it's a stretch to say he don't know a thing....

[Tony Ostinato]

trust me if you ask paul to play a c7 he wont flat the 3rd.

plus they had guys they could sing the horn parts to and theyd chart em up, so if you dont know theory you just end up hiring someone who does.

i just did a big john lennon tribute show at 1st av in mpls, we (the horn section) used charts that i did in finale and so we only needed one rehersal, and i could debate that we didnt even need that cause there were no mistakes.


now if the horns couldnt read we wouldve needed quite a few rehersals, especially to catch all the meter changes.

so its as ive said before i see theory as a way of avoiding rehersals and arguments, and it totally works.

[Sascha Franck]

Is knowing how to make a C major chord shape on a guitar "knowledge of theory?"

Depends on how you approach it, IMO. Did you learn it from some "1200 barré chords for guitar" or did you figure it out yourself? I'm not saying either method is the best, but a mixture of both methods would probably be nice to be aware of. And well, yes, that's theory.

Is knowing how to play in time with a drummer "knowledge of theory?"

Hm, well, this is really opening a can of worms for me. And I don't know the answer, either.
Let me put it this way: Some people seem to have an extremely good "natural" feel of time. Others can't even count or clap quarters along a 4-on-the-floor beat.
Now, once you could perhaps think of methods to improve the situation, it might become some sort of a "theory" as well. And yes, there's ways to improve. In this case, it's got almost exclusively to do with practice efforts, rather than, say, just reading about it. But then, doesn't all theory, at least in case you actually want to "experience" it, involve some practical things such as actually playing stuff? At least for me, knowledge about something and actually trying things out go hand in hand.
In addition, for me it's been extemely helpful to learn about some rhythmic principles (such as grouping 16ths into patterns of 3, etc.). That also made me aware of other rhythmically related things and certainly improved my timing, too.

Is being able to recognize a waltz when you hear one "knowledge of theory?"

Is recognizing a guitar style as being within the rules of traditional blues "knowledge of theory?"

I'd say yes to both, but...

I'm not trying to be difficult, I really don't know if I could pin down what music theory means to me.

How many different versions of theory are there?

Countless versions.
I don't even think at all that you need to be aware of the name of something.
For instance, before I started reading any books about scale-chord relationships and the likes, I almost already had it nailed down for me. I even made my personal notes about it - and guess what, once translated to "traditional theory language", it seemed I haven't been missing much, if anything at all. In other words, what I thought things would be like was almost 1:1 transferable.
I think, as soon as you can organize the stuff you do in whatever way, it becomes a theory of some sort.
Adjusting that to whatever might be more common is basically just a vehicle to let you communicate easier. And it might as well open up an easier way to an overview, to certain techniques and the likes. After all, there's quite some decades of experience behind what we usually describe as music theory - and it's partially made up by quite some geniusses, so it can't all just be pure bullshit.

- Sascha

[Sixofour]

It would be better if musical theroy and musical fact were seperated more.

Its a fact that mozart used scales.

Its a theory that he somehow made music better or more complex than anyone since.

Its a fact alot of jazz uses syncopations.

Its a theory that this makes jazz better/original/unique.

Also note, the word 'theory' is directly interchangeable with 'opinion' It doesn't matter what we are talking about, politics, religion, science, music, arts what ever..a theroy is only the opinion of the theorizer. Because you call it an theory and not an opinion doesn't make it more valid or right.

Its a fact things fall to the earth.

Its a theory that says its a phenomena called gravity.

I think everyone understands the concept of fact and theory enough.

Once you figure that out, musical theory gets easyer to understand, and you are more capable of getting the useful information present in theory and discarding the rubbish that is also present in theory.

[The Fex]

trust me if you ask paul to play a c7 he wont flat the 3rd.

I'd certainly hope not.... what's your point?

Its a fact things fall to the earth.

Its a theory that says its a phenomena called gravity.

Yeah, gravity's a myth. Truth is, the Earth sucks.

[jopy]

I think everyone understands the concept of fact and theory enough.

The problem is more complicated once you start using physical science phenomena as an example. Most scientists now recognize that facts and theories are intimately connected to one another because the way that you make your measurements is entirely based on your underlying theory of the phenomenon under investigation. The idea that "objects fall" sounds simple enough in practice and is certainly relevant from an engineer's point of view, but is a lot more complicated to a physicist who starts asking about the meaning of "objects" and "fall." Similarly, the idea that there is gravity is a theoretical proposition, but the evidence for the theory that objects are attracted to one another (sorry for sloppy description here, you know what I'm getting at) is so overwhelming it isn't really up for debate anymore.

I've really got this on the brain because I'm currently reading through Daniel Levitin's excellent book "This is Your Brain on Music," and he points out that many of the studies that have been performed to investigate musical memory have been disputed because the experiments are conducted under conditions that are most agreeable to one theoretical perspective or another. I usually favor the idea that Tapper Mike put forward that everyone's using theory at some unconscious level, so I know that i look for examples that support that point of view. But I suppose I know just as well that I don't like music that is graphed out in advance and I much prefer what some people would call "atheoretical" composition methods where the conscious control of theory is sublimated completely and the ears and intuition take over. Is it a fact that Muddy Waters "used theory" to create a body of recognizable harmonic progressions that make it easy to make sense of the other elements of his music--well, that depends on what "used" and "theory" mean.

This is sort of my point with "theories" of music. There are some statements that seem incontestably related to theory and others that are more tangential. Trying to nail down clean lines of demarcation between what is or isn't theory leads to an unresolvable issue. Eleanor Rosch demonstrated quite conclusively that identifying something as inside or outside a category is neither philosophically nor psychologically descriptive of the functioning of most definitions in practice. Instead, we think of prototypes. So knowing chord progressions is really 100% theory, knowing rhythmic patters is more like 80% theory, knowing forms like the blues might be more like 50% theory, and so on. A complete definition would be better if it was a checklist of elements that are or are not theory and then membership could be determined based on how many "inside the theory world" boxes you check.

Does Paul McCartney use conventional music theory? Yes, sort of, and sort of not. His way of writing probably fits several of the parts of our definition of someone using music theory, but fails to fit into others. He used intuition and an unbelievably good set of ears to figure out what sounded right. I cannot imagine that he sat down to write music and thought, "hmm, I think I need to avoid using the leading tone too early in this bar, so I'll violate the audience's expectations by using a suspension until the end of the bar, and then I'll use the same sort of suspension on the resolution to maintain a feeling of tension in what is otherwise a consonant melody." But it also so happens that he used a lot of chord progressions and melodic ideas that are right out of the generally accepted theory of popular music and he seldom does the sort of outright violations of theory that someone like John Lennon used for his music. Is that using music theory? Moving further out, John Lennon's writing is much closer to conventional music theory than this Sonic Youth SYR record I'm digging right now, but if you listen to interviews with SY members, they will make some statements that are clearly theoretical in nature and they're pretty well informed regarding the history of concert music in the 20th century.

Sorry for rambling, I'm just thinking about this a lot lately, as you might be able to tell.

[yemski]

All I know is,every time you write a parallel fifth Bach kills a kitten.

[Sascha Franck]

I think that (ideally of course) theory, ear training and technical skills should more or less go hand in hand with whatever your "intuition" might be after a while.
As a really simplified example: I may have a chord progression such as Gmin7, C7, Fmaj7. Knowing a bit of theory, I could, for instance, play an Amin7 as a replacement for the Fmaj7 (should I want to go elsewhere, repeat the progression, etc., doesn't exactly matter). Now, being a guitar player, I may as well just assume that a bass player is playing all the required root notes, so I may just play triads on top. For an Amin7 chord a C major triad would do the job. That's the theoretical portion so far.
With a bit of pratical experience, I would be able to play different inversions of that C major triad.
And with some ear training, I would probably even be able to instantly replace both the Fmaj7 chord with an Amin7, instantly play a C major triad and so on.
Now, after a while, this might as well become a more or less "intuitional" thing, so the chords may just "fall into place" without me even having to think about it.

For me, this is already sort of happening in some areas. Just as another example, I practised scales against random chords (as a sort of ear training) a lot. These days, after playing the first note over a random chord, my fingers most often would instantly move to the proper position, without me having to even look at my fretboard or think about it.
The same would also be true for the chord progression mentioned above, as I've played it a lot (among others).

Now, we may of course argue about what "intuitive" playing or composing is. I don't think there's a lot of "truly" intuitive players. I mean, let's take any guitar player. Is there anybody who really figured out the common open position chords themselves? I doubt it. I'm sure that around 99% (probably more) of the guitar players around looked at some chord diagrams, had some lessons, etc.
And while this is not exactly related to theory (which, as much as I believe, is indeed only a vehicle to describe things), it's just required as a tool to make theoretic analysis work in a practical sense. I mean, you will never be able to explore the secrets of 4 part voice leading without actually trying things out. Doesn't have to happen in realtime, could as well be done via step input inside a sequencer - yet, you need to be able to try things out.
And in the end, I really think it's the best if these things go hand in hand, regardless of what approach you prefer (personally, I'm a big fan of certain simplified versions of classical music theory).

- Sascha

[zircon]

One excellent aspect of knowing music theory is that you can listen to existing music, be it pop, big band, trance, or whatever, and deconstruct it in your head - on the fly -

for me personally this is one of the reasons i hate the fact i learned theory. i find i can no longer switch it off and just listen and enjoy, im forever counting time and listening for intervals and whatnot.

Not a problem for me - it makes music that is mundane, well, more mundane, but generally speaking it heightens my appreciation for music rather than the other way around.

[jancivil]

trust me if you ask paul to play a c7 he wont flat the 3rd.

Lower case c?