Wow, amazing how this thread has turned into a theory thread with just me gone into isolation for the weekend
Midiroom, I get you well with your last comment, but I have to agree with Wolfram..
This weekend I had the priviledge to play at a conference..
Some guys would know here that I've only ever played once at church in my life, but here I was suddenly enthrsted with this huge role..
The guys told me from the start that they wanted me to play the traditional style (which I've only ever practiced in once @ home
)
But I was so amazed when I got there & I just started playing..
It was by feel, yes, but theory made me do the right stuff...If I didn't have the theory, I probably would have made tantamount mistakes & I would have been booed out, but the way I played was so impressive that now I find myself being given more responsibility than I would like
I can explain everything I was doing & I didn't have to transpose because I knew exactly what I had to do (thanks to the numbers!!!)...
& yes, there was alot of feel to it, but I was still guided by theory more than anything....
What I have also noted is that the advanced guys have all said that theory has helped them to put the dots together...
I have 2 sets of students:
The 1st once wanted to learn to play all the stuff they hear in 3 days..alright..they can play some of the songs now,but it is so difficult to explain to them stuff that will help them play instantly, because they "don't understand the language"...I have to resort to saying: "Play this chord..", "what is a chord?".."this!" , "then that..then this"....very frustrating & time consuming & you'd have to do that for most songs!!! Because they thought theory was going to waste their time..
then there are guys who fell in love with my playing & I told them I'll start them off with theory..
I taught them about forming scales & the importance of those...
I told them how songs are built off scales..
The dude was incredibly fascinated (so was I
)...
I then illustrated a simple song, Joy To The World...
I told him we needed to add some meet in our melody, so I had to explain how the chords are formed for the c major scale.
Need I say that since his ear was so good, when the group was praying, he was playing whilst I was away!!!
More importantly, he had an understanding of what he was doing..
My point:
Theory needn't be boring, it can be applied there & then
This guy was telling me how he would have gone for music classes a long time ago if he'd known that THEORY was soooo exciting..
He's a drummer btw