Originally Posted By: jdew

A Keyboard
I play guitar but when I studied music theory I found it much easier to visualize and understand if I used a keyboard or piano. For example, 1-3-5 vs 1-b3-5 vs 1-3-5-b7 are easier for me to see and understand on a keyboard. In fact, any music theory... scales, chords, intervals, progressions, etc... was easier for me to understand and apply on a keyboard. Also helps a great deal with ear training.




This. It is SO much easier to see intervals when those intervals are next to each other key to key than on frets where you also factor in playing the same notes by changing strings. I have tried to explain half steps and whole steps to a friend who owns 6 guitars but can't play a note and to try to explain how the open 2nd string is the same as the 3rd string on fret 4 (And why I say learn the next in a planar fashion rather than top to bottom. Learn where every A is, then every B. And so on.) is like speaking Swahili to a deaf person. Then I had him put on a guitar and stand behind me while I showed him that moving from one fret to the next is the same as moving from one key to the next key with no regard for white or black. Just "next". But as soon as the talk turned to half steps and whole steps on the guitar and scales he got lost.

I left him with "Learn what WWHWWWH means and you can play a major scale. That's step one."

And this is where I get frustrated with him. He says often that he gets bored because there isn't much to do. And I tell him "THAT is when you pick up your guitar and learn how to play it."