THEORY IN ACTION

I got pushed into learning music theory after a car-crash evening in the Sefton Hotel Douglas with the Manx Jazz Cats. Hot shot guitarist meets trad jazz band… suffice to say at the end of the evening I felt smaller than Dicky Mint. Then the other evening I sat down to watch Santana on Sky Arts, and during the concert there was close up footage of a keyboard solo. As I watched I thought “He’s playing in A Dorian!” How did that just come into my head?

Now I’ll likely never share the same continent as Carlos, never mind the same stage. But it made me think that had I been beamed down onto that stage I could have had something to contribute. And all that just from watching someone solo on an instrument that I can’t actually play!

So my advice for anyone thinking about getting to grips with music theory is to grab the elephant in the room by its big, shiny tusks! If anyone says “music theory just kills creativity”, they are a complete Luddite. Bill Dawson, via email Thanks Bill. There’s a school of thought that says “if I learn music theory, I’ll suddenly be too aware of ‘the rules’ and thus lose all of my natural creativity and feel”. There’s a certain gut-instinct appeal to this argument – and certainly there are many musicians who have made amazing music without formal knowledge of ‘the rules’. But we think it’s going too far to suggest that knowing the rules actively prevents you from making good music! It’s just information that helps you understand where you are and, ultimately, say what you want to say on the instrument. To suggest otherwise is like saying you don’t like to take maps on long drives, or look at any road signs, because you prefer to navigate by ‘feel’ alone. Yes, that could lead to some interesting road trips. But if you’re trying to get from A to B musically, knowing the way won’t make you a worse driver.