"Does Guitar Theory Give You
An Unfair Advantage?"
By Don J. MacLean
www.TotallyUnderstandGuitarTheory.com
Some say learning guitar theory is a
total waste of time, others swear by
it. Who’s right?
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?
Unfair Advantage
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 and
just become average guitarists at best.
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.
© Copyright 2005 - 2015 Don J MacLean
604-290-2692