Online Guitar Learning Center Blog

Introducing Music Theory for Guitar

I wanted to talk a little bit about music theory for beginners.

First, I wanted to say a little bit about why you should learn music theory. If you stop to think about what music theory is, that will explain the why.

Music came first, music theory came about from trying to explain why some music worked, and some didn’t. And also to teach other musicians how to make music that worked. As music evolved, so did music theory. But at its most basic, it’s still trying to explain what makes music work, and how you can be a better musician.

I have taken college-level music theory classes; unfortunately, the teacher was obviously bored with the subject, and seemed interested more in being sure his class could pass tests, rather than become better musicians. (Part of that, I’m sure, was that he had little input into what was taught in the class, and after teaching it for years, he was bored going over the same material year after year and this was understandable. Also, he had a set time frame, and needed to cover all the material in the course in that time frame.)

We don’t have that problem here, there won’t be any tests, and you can learn at your own pace. My goal here is to make us all better musicians.

I suggest beginners learn a little music theory, and then play with it until it becomes second nature, then learn a little more, and repeat this process over and over. You will begin to see a difference in your playing much more quickly if you learn music theory this way, rather than trying to learn all the theory at once, and not spending time integrating it into your playing.

If any readers are more advanced, and want music theory of a more advanced nature, leave a comment, if there is enough demand, I’d be happy to discuss more advanced music theory, perhaps on another blog.

If you are looking for advanced theory, and can’t wait, I highly recommend George Van Eps three volume set, Harmonic Mechanisms for Guitar. You can read more about them at these links: Volume 1, Volume 2, volume 3. (I only recommend these for advanced players, if you are just beginning your study of music theory, these will likely confuse you.)

I welcome questions and comments; let me know what you most need to learn.

Hello

I hope to make this blog a useful place for you to visit often, to learn about playing guitar, and music theory, especially as applied to the guitar.

Bring your questions about music theory, and I will do my best to answer them, in a way that makes the ideas clear.

I have been playing guitar for more than twenty years, I am primarily a self taught guitarist, although I have worked with a few teachers, but not until I was an intermediate level player.

I have tried many different learning tools, books, cassette tapes, videos, dvd’s and lately, online teaching sites.

I will be sharing what I have found to be the best learning materials and sites, to make you a better guitar player, in the shortest possible time.

The biggest idea I would like to get across about learning guitar, online or with a teacher, or any other learning materials, is that buying every thing you can find about learning guitar, or paying the best teacher in the world for private leaaons, will not make you a better guitar player, unless you open up your guitar case, take out the guitar, and actually play some guitar!

I believe that playing music should be fun, (they don’t talk about “working” music, it’s playing music.) And, I will try to help you enjoy learning everything you want to learn.

Bass players are also welcome; I only recently started learning bass, about six months ago, so I am still a beginner. But many ideas that work on guitar, work on bass, also. And, music theory is the same, no matter the instrument; it’s only the application that changes. (I mean that chord, scale and mode theory is the same, but you can’t play guitar chords on a flute, for example.)

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