Tab was not around when most of us started, as Mario pointed out. We learned from the ground up. By that I mean what the notes on a scale are, what the intervals were, which leads to why chords are related. All the tab in the world won't teach you what a 4th is, or why the 6th is minor.

WHY do people resist learning theory?

Someone (maybe Thumper?) posted a link to Russian guitarist Viktor Verkholashin playing Mozart's Turkish March, a great piece by my favorite composer ever. The context of that post was that tab would help him play it. Well, okay. Here's where old training and experience kicks in. Thump, this is in NO WAY meant to be a shot at you.

As I listened to this rendition, all I could think was "He needs tab to play THAT? Sheet music would be WAY better." The bass line on that piece is mainly root and 5th, with a few chromatic scales tossed in there. As soon as the piece started, I said "Okay. He is in E major now, soon to move to A minor after the into line." (I have heard this piece many times in music classes in college.) Did you know that was E just by listening? (Ear training. Also from college.) Then in the second motive it changed to A major, which incorporates the "A chord family) D major (the 4th) and F# minor (the 6th). You won't learn what the 4th and 6th of a scale are by reading tab.

Each section contained nothing exotic. It was all chords within the "chord family" of the root.

Everybody uses SOME form of tab, especially guitar players who prep for a session or a rehearsal where the itinerary calls for learning a new song. Billy posted "Twinkle Twinkle" on this thread. If I landed here from Mars and had to play that song tonight, I would have a paper in front of me that looks like this:

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
C C C C F F C / F F C C G G C /

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
C C F F C C G / C C F F C C G /

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
C C C C F F C / F F C C G G C /

When I chart, the / key means to tie it to the chord before and not strum it.

Now, that simple chart is the first few courses of bricks as you build your firepit. The next course is where you think about embellishing. Do you want to do something a little off piste and maybe incorporate air vents? If so you allow for that variation from the blueprint and leave out one brick on all 4 sides of the next row. They you lay the course above it without mortar, step back, look at it, walk around it, assess it, and decide if you keep the vents or not. To relate that to the chord chart, in that middle row, should I play G major or G 7th? Let's do it once with a major and then with a 7th and then decide.

BUT, through all of that, you have to know how to use a trowel and concrete! You have to know what a 7th is. (Oh no! Not THEORY!!)

I see a similarity between learning music at an advanced age to how I saw how many people of a certain age were scared to death of computers. I once had to add a stick of RAM to a computer for a customer. The guy looked inside the case when I took the cover off (and vacuumed 2 years of dust out of it) and just shook his head when he saw all the parts. I said "Let me show you how really simple this is." I pulled off the power cable from a hard drive and showed him how it only goes on one way. I showed him the memory slot and how the RAM was slotted so it could only go in the right way. I showed him the card slots, explained what everything did. I then told him that when he wanted a second computer I would guide him in buying the parts and we'd build it from scratch together. 6 months later he did that. We sat at a table for 2 hours and then booted his new computer. (It would have taken me 20 minutes had I not also been teaching and letting him do everything.) When we finished, as I was loading Windows, he said "That was really not all that difficult."

Music theory is the same way. It is NOT like climbing all 765 steps to the top of The Great Pyramid of Giza. It's more like the 91 steps of Chichen Itza in Mexico. And whichever you choose to walk up, you walk up those steps one at a time, and when you get there you feel a sense of accomplishment. I walked up the 284 spiral stairs in the Arc de Triomphe rather than take the elevator. The elevator is faster, but do you get a deep sense for the majesty of the place that way?

Apply that logic to music. Invest 6 weeks taking theory lessons 2 nights a week. You will feel the majesty of your musical accomplishments much more deeply. Every time I sit down at a keyboard or strum a guitar I am taken back to my young youth and smile a prayer of thanks to the old man who made me learn theory before I could touch an instrument. Take those lessons and all of this will come clear to you. Aging is not an excuse to stop learning. I am learning to speak some Hindi so I can mess with the scammers better. I am 72. Do I plan to go to India where Hindi is the common language? Of course not. (I mean, it's INDIA!) But if I can speak 45-50 phrases that apply to scammer baiting, it will allow me to do it better, so I am learning the linguistic equivalent of music theory.

Last edited by eddie1261; 08/22/23 01:38 AM.