Do You NEED To Learn Music Theory If You Don't WRITE SONGS?
Is music theory more or less important to learn depending on your goals?
Lots of people think music theory isn’t important to learn because they:
“don’t want to write music”, or
“don’t want to improvise”, or
“don’t want to know anything about the skill I’m learning”. (lol)
But here’s the thing. Music theory is just a part of learning music. It’s a part of learning how to play guitar and how to be a musician.
So while technically you could learn how to play a song without ‘learning theory’, you could also learn a song without learning how to strum. Or without learning how to do anything except strumming. Or without learning a G chord.
You could also learn to walk without learning how to tie your shoes, and you could learn to read without learning how to talk.
(If you are thinking "these are all stupid examples, and they are not even all true..." congratulations: you know exactly how I feel when people say "I can learn guitar without learning music theory")
So with all that being said, if you’ve ever asked someone “do I need to learn music theory if all I want to do is X Y and Z”, I recommend asking yourself:
“If I want to be a guitar player, why am I going out of my way to avoid becoming a good guitar player?”
(Or like a dear friend of mine says "you can't win by losing"...)
Why avoid something that will make you better?
Because you think it’s difficult? (It’s not)
Because it will take forever? (It won’t)
Because “real musicians play by ear and don’t know theory”? (They all know theory in one way or another).
If you want to be good at guitar, learn theory. If you don’t, don’t ;-)
If you still think, for whatever reason, that there are still good reasons not to learn such a valuable part of being a musician, watch the video linked below and I’ll explain even further why you need theory, regardless of your goals.
Speaking of music theory, one thing that most guitar players never understand well enough is scales and modes. Check out my Master of the Modes guitar course if you want to massively expand your knowledge of scales and modes on the guitar!
Video Transcription
Hello Internet, I got an interesting question I want to answer. If one doesn't want to write songs, is then theory necessary? This is an interesting question, because usually I get the same questions from songwriters asking me, is that necessary to learn music theory to write songs?
After all, I can just write songs completely by ear. In fact, I also get the specific same question from other people like, is it necessary to learn music theory from an improviser? After all, I can go by ear.
Or it is necessary to learn music theory if I just want to do whatever, because I'm just not going to do whatever instead. So let me tell you one thing. If you want to be a musician, music theory is necessary, period.
Simple as that. Indeed, what today we call music theory was once simply called music. Everything we teach today as music theory was, in the Baroque era or before, taught simply as music. You were learning music.
You were actually learning music theory, or what today we call music theory. And you were learning. You were learning also the application of these to the instrument, okay? Composing and music theory were the exact same thing.
Playing the instrument and knowing what you were playing, so knowing music theory was actually the same thing. It was taught in an integrated way, as opposed to today, when apparently we separate theory from everything else, and then we are wondering why we can't compose the same thing that people before us were able to compose with ease, okay?
Yes, you need theory. I regularly get people telling me that they composed their songs without theory, and then you check and you're like, you are playing a G of chord progression, which is like G, C, and D.
And they go, yes, what do you think chords are? Chords are theory. Just because you learn about them, and nobody told you that they are theory, it doesn't mean that they are not theory. They are theory, okay?
And you're welcome, by the way. I regularly get questions like, do I need to learn theory if I just want to play something like the questions we have today? Yes, yes you do, because you may want to adapt that thing, okay?
So if you are just, if you're just learning how to strum your guitar... Okay, and you're learning a handful of chords, which incidentally are music theory again, and then a number of shapes, essentially.
So associate that this is the G major chord, this is the D major chord, and you just want to read through the chords and strum, you can just do that, yes, but guess what? You just learn some theory, okay?
You learn that there are specific sounds that we call with the letters or with the letters but in an M after that for minor or the letter and then a number seven after that for seventh and a few more, okay?
and then you associate those with shapes on your guitar. Which is, incidentally, the hardest way to learn all that because if you knew how those chords are built and how to build them yourself on the guitar, it will be much easier, seriously.
It will be a bit more of a time investment at the fact. First, it will be much easier. The moment you go beyond major and minor chords, start with sevens, nines, whatever else, it's just easier to learn how chords are built and then find those shapes on your guitar by yourself.
I mean, in order of magnitude, less work to do that. But even then, suppose you have your song and then you want the song is too low for you or too high for you to sing. Then you have to learn to transpose the song and guess what?
That's still theory. Sure, you can get away with a capo and then playing the chords higher on the guitar. You cannot really play them lower, okay? You could just learn how to transpose and this would be easier, no, okay?
Maybe you wanna play with a band and I don't want you to play the full chord all the time. So maybe you're either playing the G this way, you want to play G just on the top three strings and the different position for that G and guess what?
You need to know music theory for that. The take-home message is this. You are learning music theory anyway. There's no escaping that. The moment you start talking about chords, for instance, or where to put your finger down on the guitar, I mean, they tell you, okay, on the third string, you put down the finger on the fifth fret, okay.
That's just another way of doing music theory, which is just a very complex, inefficient way of doing music theory, okay? Because it's still, let's count five from the bottom of the string. It's just easier to know that this is a C note, okay?
It's just easier. But you're learning theory anyway. Your choice aside, if you want to learn theory in an inefficient and- useless way and so waste a lot of time with rules of thumbs or this is just the shape or put your finger on the fifth fret and all this kind of thing.
Or if you want to actually learn the theory that works, make your life much easier, put a little bit more time investment, not much, just a little bit more at the beginning, okay, and then later you can do whatever you want with music which is much more satisfying because you learn to change the way this instrument sounds, to follow how you want to play and how you want to sound and everything gets so much easier,
okay, and you understand what's going on. And these, regardless of your goals, these works if you just want to play songs, if you just want to compose some, if you want to compose and play them, if you want to read from a score, if you want to read from a chord chart, if you don't want to read, if you want to go by ear, if you just want somebody else explaining you the songs, if you never want to play the instruments but you want to write on a computer,