There's an old parable from India, the blind
men and the elephant.
A man brings an elephant to a small village
and a group of blind men there who have never
encountered an elephant before go to learn
about the elephant.
Each blind man touches a different part of
the elephant, and later on they discuss it
with each other.
One blind man who felt the elephant's leg
said.
An elephant is like a pillar.
Another blind man who felt the elephant side
disagreed and said, no, no.
An elephant is like a wall.
And a third blind man who felt the tail said,
no, you're both wrong.
An elephant is like a broom.
And another felt the trunk and said, no, no,
no.
An elephant is like a rope.
And so on.
Now, while all of their descriptions the elephant
were true . None of the blind men succeeded
to describe the entire elephant as musicians,
we are the blind men in the story.
Music is the elephant, and music theory is
our attempts to describe the elephant.
So music itself is abstract and untouchable.
It's just in the air for a split second and
then it lives in our minds.
So music is an experience and describing it
and talking about it only goes so far.
So why do we bother trying to explain music?
Shouldn't we just shut up and play.
First,
what is music theory?
The word theory comes from the Greek "theoria"
meaning to contemplate or speculate or view.
The word theater has a close origin.
The term theory is used by people in a number
of ways, and I can't tell you how many emails
I've gotten over the years on this topic.
In hard sciences, a theory is a proven idea,
but others use the word theory as a speculation
of what might be true.
And another definition of theory is it's a
body of knowledge.
For us,
that's what music theory is.
It means our body of musical knowledge.
It's a blanket term for many musical topics.
So some topics are concrete facts, like naming,
pitches, scales and rhythms.
Other topics are subjective, like one should
never use parallel fifths or this is the way
you play this instrument.
Music theory is an observation of music.
It's all made up.
It's been made up and agreed upon by different
groups of people.
And it gets updated over time. and different
cultures have different theories on music.
There's not one way to view it.
So music theory is not a hard truth as it
is in science.
It's a moving, evolving body of knowledge.
But if music theory is all made up, why bother
to learn it?
Can't you just play random notes until you
stumble onto something that you like?
Well, of course you can, but with even a little
bit of theory, you can do the same thing much
more effectively.
Think about this many thousands of musicians
before you.
Have studied, practiced, and played music
for millions of hours.
So music theory, our body of knowledge is
a collection of that experience.
And even if it's imperfect and incomplete,
it's still a great launching point.
Sure.
You could work out many already known things
on your own and feel proud that you did, but
you'll be wasting precious time.
It's important for you to realize that your
time to learn to play music is limited.
It's finite.
So instead of wasting time reinventing the
wheel, you could learn what is already known
and then you can take it further or question
it or break the rules.
So the old saying is, if I've seen further,
it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
The next reason to learn music theory is understanding.
It helps you learn faster.
So learning music is an incredible exercise
in memory.
And many people make the mistake of learning
a song as just a long series of notes.
One after another.
First, I play this note and then I follow
it with this one and so on.
Now that's like learning a speech phonetically,
just speaking one syllable at a time, but
not knowing what the words mean.
Instead, if you learn the speech in larger,
more meaningful pieces, words, phrases, ideas.
You'd learn it much faster and express it
better.
So similarly, when you understand the larger,
more meaningful musical structures, you're
going to learn music much more quickly.
So instead of remembering three bits of information
like C, E, and, G, you can remember it as
a larger structure called a C major triad.
And then that larger structure later becomes
a piece of an even larger musical structure.
And so it just keeps on snowballing.
The more of these musical structures you learn,
the simpler learning each new song gets.
So I've taught thousands of students face
to face and the ones who avoid the theory
parts, they plateau and they tread water and
it takes them the same amount of time to learn
each new song.
The ones who work on the theory part, they
start to put things together more and more
quickly and they advance much more rapidly.
So theory helps you organize what you hear
and it helps you hear things you didn't know
were there or that you didn't know you should
be listening for.
Another reason to know theory is it makes
it easier to communicate with other musicians.
So it's important to be able to talk about
music because you need to understand what
other musicians want from you or how to tell
other musicians what you want from them.
The more theory you know, the more accurate
you can be when you communicate with other
musicians.
So how do musicians use music theory in the
beginning?
Music theory gives you focus.
It helps you know what there is to learn.
But new musicians are then wondering, do musicians
really think about all of this stuff when
they play?
No, they don't.
Just like you don't think about the spelling
of words or grammar as you speak, but if you
need to stop and think about it, you can.
So in the same way, music theory won't be
constantly running through your head as you
play with practice.
You'll create an express music just like speaking.
And afterwards you can look back on it and
understand why it works or be able to explain
it to a fellow musician.
And if it doesn't work, theory might help
you understand why when you're creating, sometimes
you create something great, but then you get
stuck in one place
sometimes theory can give you some ideas or
solutions of where to go or how to get there.
It's just one more tool for musicians to use.
One of the sillier things I hear people say
is they're worried that learning theory will
make them less creative.
Look, you're a creative being.
Nothing can destroy your creative abilities.
Wouldn't it be frightening if someone had
the power to make you less creative just by
teaching you something.
"Hey Jaco, did you know that was a B 13 chord?"
"Ah, man. I'll never play again."
If your creativity is that fragile, something
else is wrong.
You can't possibly think that all of the world's
musicians who knew theory lacked creativity.
So don't fear learning theory.
If anything, theory allows you to be more
creative.
So instead of wasting time figuring out all
of the things, millions of people before you
have, you can learn those parts quickly and
then you have more time to find what lies
beyond it.
You will read about or hear about brilliant
musicians who say they don't know any theory.
And it's true.
There are lots of examples of people who just
pick up an instrument and start playing.
But here's the thing.
They do know the theory.
They know it on an intuitive level.
They might not know the names for everything,
but they know how music works.
And we all have this intuition in different
amounts for each element of music.
Who knows though, you might be one of those
that's just off the charts in every aspect,
but most people aren't.
And many of those people that are off the
charts with their musical intuition, they
still learn the theory.
To wrap it up...
The most important thing to remember about
music theory is this music created the theory,
not the other way around.
First there was music and then people worked
to describe it.
So musicians played something which sounded
good, and then they gave it a name and then
they organized it.
Those names, that organization, the music
theory gives you this giant headstart and
you're lucky to have it.
So it's also essential to remember that theory
is not music itself.
It's hard to make good music with theory alone.
I don't recommend it.
Theory is just a tool.
Ultimately, music has to come from the human
spirit, but this tool will organize music
in your mind and ears, and it will give your
human spirit more chances to express itself.
Theory will accelerate your learning.
And it will help you communicate with other
musicians.
Theory will help you get to know the elephant.
