PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic do you like listening to classical guitar?

Hi Guys,
At the risk of re-re-stating what I have already said, I am certainly not saying that knowing music theory is harmful.

If you go back to my posts and re-read them, you will see I did not state or imply that.

And, David, to say, "And to say Paul McCartney doesn't know theory is silly", is a silly statement itself, because, as with what I refer to above, I am talking about Macca not knowing how to read and notate music according to the Western Classical way of doing that.

As he has said, he can see the movement of notes going up and down (on the staff), but that is about it.

As Notes noted (to be alliterative about it) in his post above, McCartney has worked within the Classical world "with help" - part of that help was to have Clive Davis (and others) be his guide, and part of it was to have one of the tracking programmes produce notation - because (unlike Elvis Costello) he did not want to learn how to write notation for fear of it limiting his creativity (I do not think that it would have).

Paul is not as "OCD" as you say about getting things 'right' - not only does he play songs in different keys now (probably a necessity because of his voice), but some (such as 'Her Majesty') he plays differently live than on record, and he is very 'loose' (i.e., non-"OCD") about getting right down to the right notes (e.g., 'Every Night' in which he consistently now plays the descending figure on acoustic guitar differently than he did).

MarioD, when you talked about the violinist who "...just never ventured outside the realm of her chosen music", that is exactly what I am saying, and what I think is common to many who have had a Western Classical Music training.

I am not blaming the theory here, rather the sensibility that the teachers of that theory often instills in people. Thankfully, we have places like Berkeley.

David, The Beatles' sensibility was to break the 'rules' in so many ways. Macca still does this occasionally - I remember a friend saying about 'Here Today' "Who starts a song with a diminished chord?"

How many people do you encounter in the Classical world who experiment in the ways that The Beatles did (either on their recordings, or in concert)?

David, I love your metaphor, and agree "Great guitarists make love to their instrument". I also completely agree with what you said about some people "shoot[ing] the cannon off in the first minute. No build. No strategy, just musical porno".

For me, being somewhat technically and theoretically 'challenged' with regard to my knowledge of music theory and my ability to perform technically well, I think that a 'less is more' approach to building solos can help to counter that tendency - to a large extent, I think that, it is not what you do, but how you do it; as you say, it is about feeling.

I am loving the exchange of views here.