The Importance of Knowledge in Music

I’ve been helping a fellow musician friend in his music theory studies, during which he has told me about how his friends have been negatively responding to his new found interest in music theory. The response he’s received was overtly negative. Comments like, “what good will it do you”, or “it’ll kill your creativity.“ These are usually accompanied by the phrase “I’ve done just fine without it.“ Luckily, he doesn’t agree with or internalize those comments.

It’s like this. The point of being a musician is to be able to play what you hear in your head. Right? The easiest way to acquire this ability is with learning theory, a healthy amount of ear training, any a lot of practical application time (read: doing something with what you’ve learned). Music, like language, is learned and not installed at birth. Some are born with a natural aptitude for music, but that’s not practical ability. Knowing the mechanic of music and being able to identify a tone/interval by ear makes for translating those sounds in your head into sounds from your instrument.

To be fair, there are a lot of musicians who are very accomplished without a clear understanding of music theory. Just know that the amount of blind trial and error to produce the same results that come with understanding theory is just ridiculous in comparison.

If your goal was to be a writer how long would it take you to write a book starting from illiteracy? How long would it take you to figure out grammar and spelling on your own. Would you even get your point across in a satisfactory way? Maybe, but that’s seem to be an unnecessarily long road to travel knowing the goal would be to write a book that someone other than you mother would like.

Remember, when you’re not practicing - someone else is with the intent of taking your girlfriend/boyfriend! Till next time.