"Does Guitar Theory Give You An Unfair Advantage?"

By Don J. MacLean

www.TotallyUnderstandGuitarTheory.com

Does guitar theory give you an unfair advantage, or is it just a waste of your time?

Imagine being raised on a deserted island with no exposure to music. 

On this deserted island you have all you need to survive and a guitar.  You also have a  library.  In this library you have huge amounts of information on everything except for music. 

Nevertheless, you decide to spend your life learning to play the guitar and writing music. 

Now compare this with your identical twin who is raised on a different deserted island. 

Your twin also has everything needed to survive and a guitar. 

On this second deserted island there is a library that includes a full music section.  Here your twin will find musical scores from all of the best musicians. 

Your twin will find books on how to play the guitar plus volumes and volumes of books on music theory, guitar theory, harmony, composition and anything else you can think of that is related to music. 

After one year of playing the guitar with equal levels of motivation, who do you think will be the more accomplished player?  What about in two, three and five years?  Do you think the playing field is level? 

Obviously your twin had an unfair advantage of being able to learn from all of the accumulated wisdom from hundreds of years of music performance, history, guitar theory and composition. 

On your deserted island you were only able to learn by trial and error.  Your twin was able to learn from guitar methods that have evolved over hundreds of years—dramatically shortening the learning curve.  Obviously your twin was set for success on the guitar and will be able to play circles around you.

What's interesting to note, is that ninety to ninety-five percent of all guitar players take the very, very, long trial and error approach to learning the guitar—and they do it by choice.  This is one of the major reasons why so many players struggle for years and years to just become average guitarists.

When you understand guitar theory you will be able to make sense of music and most specifically the fretboard.  In other words, the neck of the guitar will make sense, scales will make sense, chords will make sense, songs will make sense, guitar solos will make sense, and you'll be able to learn songs faster.

Imagine you were trying to memorize the words to a play in a foreign language.  Let's say you don't know a single word in this new language.  How long do you think it would take to memorize the play?

What if you knew the meaning of 50 words.  How long would it take you now?

Now compare this to knowing the most common words in the foreign language and understanding their meaning.  This alone will make learning the play much, much easier. 

I'm sure you'll agree that the better you understand the foreign language the easier it would be to memorize the play.

The same is true in music.  Music really is a language of its own.  The more you understand the language of music, the easier it will be for you to do anything in music.

Why not use this to your advantage and catapult your playing to the next level?

Give yourself the unfair advantage:

Learn the Guitar Theory You Need to Know Now

You may be curious why so many guitarists take the hard way and never take advantage of the power of guitar theory.

It's because of the 3 Biggest Guitar Theory Lies.

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