Re: Music Theory Questions
I took a couple of music theory courses when I was in college (many, many years ago) and I've found that knowledge to be helpful in some ways with guitar and not helpful in others. I think the "not-helpful" part comes from the fact that the concepts were taught using a piano keyboard as a reference. In itself, that's a good thing because a piano is laid out in a way that is very easy to understand. Guitar however is not laid out as simply for understanding notes and chords. As you move from string to string the pattern changes when you reach the "B" string and it becomes easy to get lost.
I've never bothered looking into the history of how the standard tuning of a guitar was derived, but my gut tells me that it's set up for patterns of fingerings which are relatively easy to grab. This makes (in my opinion) the guitar a difficult instrument to play in terms of traditional music theory. Instead, it seems to be designed for simpler "music" notation like chord charts (lyrics with chords written above the words). I personally find tablature a bit difficult to read, but then too I only use it for a point of reference to learn something that then gets memorized. Nonetheless, tablature is much easier to follow for guitar than standard sheet music.
That being said, there were some very handy things I got out of my music theory classes for guitar... namely understanding the concepts of music keys, the notes and chords in them, and the four basic chord structures (major, minor, augmented, and diminished). From there you start understanding basic additional notes that can be added to the chords (7ths, 9ths, 4ths, etc.). I find this to be invaluable for when I see a chord I don't recognize... but I can still figure out how to play it based on the notes that should be there. Chords can be played as arpeggios as well, which turn into scales (once you add the appropriate passing notes for the key you're in).
In short, I've found music theory to be VERY helpful for guitar in terms of helping me to understand what I'm playing and why it works, but I personally have found it to be a bit too complicated for actually PLAYING a guitar.
Learning as much theory as possible is a great goal, and I would encourage any musician who is interested to follow it as far as they want. At the same time, though, it's not the only way to be a good musician. There are many out there who are what I would call "theory snobs." These are the people who look down on those of us who don't have the gigantic amount of knowledge they possess, and then belittle us with attempts to make us look stupid. Just don't become one of those people... the reason why none of us knows how to resolve a German 6th is that nobody cares! I've been a musician for over 30 years and have yet to encounter one. [emoji6]
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