Having said all that, to this day, I am still envious of friends and students of mine who know little to no music theory, and can create wonderful songs and play effortlessly over jazz changes. Whenever my ear and my fingers couldn’t find what was next, organically, I would turn on the theory brain to help me find what the next part or magic chord I was searching for could be. The more I learned, the more options opened up to me as a writer, and the more my favourite bands' songs made sense. What I saw as a musical prison was in fact just the broom cupboard of the castle that is music theory. That belief was caused by not knowing how little theory I actually knew! I didn’t know I was just scratching the surface. There are only certain scales I can use with those chords, and I would run the risk of sounding generic and a watered down version of my favourite bands and songwriters.

I was of the mindset that there were seven chords in a key, and they’re the only ones I can use unless I change key, a thing even in itself would be theoretically asking a lot. To be honest, once I scratched the surface with theory, I found it confining. There’s something pure and organic about letting your ear and your fingers do the work digging to find the magical notes and chords to your next great song. I understand where people come from with that argument. In my opinion, it does the complete opposite. The common argument against learning music theory is that it kills creativity. Theory, to me, has been a short cut that has allowed me to come up with parts in the time it takes to boil a kettle. Thank you, theory! Learning theory to that level definitely helped me be asked back to do more sessions for that particular producer. Sometimes I will do sessions where the non diatonic chord progression is completely over the top and I’ve been asked to not only create a melody over it, but also harmonise that melody in different areas of the neck. Even knowing whether to use the major pentatonic scale or minor pentatonic scale over a given chord progression has been the difference between me being asked back for a gig or not. Even though learning theory was a huge undertaking, even getting the basics was difficult for me at the time, the time saved getting me out of a musical pickle has been worth the effort. There have been many musical situations where music theory has been incredibly useful.

John Frusciante from Red Hot Chili Peppers knew more theory than it was cool to mention, Kirk Hammett took lessons from Joe Satriani, Eddie Van Halen took piano and theory lessons, Paul McCartney studied theory in order to take his songwriting to another level, and Sting was even a music teacher in a secondary school! Hearing that some of my favourite players actually took theory lessons made me see theory as something…cool. I could do it, too! I could write songs in the style of my heroes, and know what I was doing when it came to writing killer solos. He could explain what Metallica were doing from a compositional point of view that, for me, was very exciting. They made theory cool! Hearing Joe Satriani talk about modes and the moods they create started to explain so many things that I thought were reserved for the rock and metal gods. I just wanted to rock, and hopefully not look like a complete and utter nerd while I did it (looking back, I definitely did).īut then, something happened. I didn’t think ‘can Kirk Hammett effortlessly navigate his way around a II V I progression in Db major?’. Me personally, I didn’t stare at the Guns N' Roses posters on my wall wondering if Slash could improvise confidently over ‘Giant Steps’.

Whether it be rock, funk, country, pop, metal, jazz, or any number of genres and styles that made us pick up the guitar in the first place. We wanted to play the music that excited us. For most of us, we didn’t pick up the guitar wanting to sit with theory text books.

Black sabbath changes acoustic chords