We are all offer for this boring theory. This article will make you feel better.
For most people, myself included, theory can be boring. All I want is to play! It’s like in school, when you need to be inside doing homework while all you want is to go outside and play with the other kids in the neighborhood. You can see them play and have fun in the sun through the window. That is the feeling. I just want to play, get better, learn amazing pieces of art.
That’s why it’s so easy to skip the theory. I’m sorry to say this, but you’re hurting yourself. Why? Isn’t it great to practice? Yes, it is! And it is much better to practice than not doing any of the two options. To help you feel better about using valuable time for learning theory, here are some reasons why it’s a must.
The fundamentals
The most obvious is that it’s fundamental for playing your instrument. How can you play if you don’t know how? But when you’re starting to learn, you’re probable trying to figure things out on your own, assuming tings, guessing, and doing everything you can to avoid the theory. You think you’ve learned the fundamentals, but you’re wrong. You’ve learned enough to play something, but there are more fundamentals you need to learn before you can take your playing to the next level.
Learning to read, not only understand
A common question is “Can you read notes?” You’re reply may be “Yes”. Bet there’s a difference between being able to understand the notes either by counting or through being able to see which note it is and what tone at the instrument it belongs to, and to actually read them while playing. You can’t read just because you can say all the letters in a poem. Reading notes should happen more or less fluently. Of course, you need to practice to be able to play it good, especially if it’s a more difficult melody, but you should be able to find the tones pretty fast and be able to play slowly through it already the first time. That’s when you can READ notes. For example, you don’t necessarily need to figure out what all the notes are to play it right, that could take a lot of time. It’s about recognizing the position, the distance between the notes. Search YouTube for “How to read notes fast” or similar.
How skipping this theory hurts you: If you avoid using time to learn the techniques to read notes fast, you’ll waste a tremendous amount of time because your progress with your songs will be incredibly slow. This again hurts your motivation.
Benefits from learning the theory: You’ll learn the melody much faster and stay motivated. You’ll have much more control, and after a while you’ll be able to play easy songs you’ve never heard before with no problem.
How everything works
After a while you think you know what it’s all about, but you’re probably wrong. Because we often just learn how thing is, but not why, how everything is tied together. When you have this understanding, the rest of the theory is much easier, and you can use your sense of logic to figure things out quicker when you are practicing or learning more theory. In other words, learning this will help you to learn both other theory and your new melodies a lot faster, which in turn saves you valuable time.
Learning to improvise and learning fills
It’s no limits how long it would take to learn this by yourself by trying to figure it out on your own. Yet, it’s by far one of the most useful and fun things you can learn! What if you should play at an event, and you get out of the flow, can’t follow the notes fast and precise enough. Should you sit there like an idiot trying to play the measure all over again a couple of times slowly while your face turns red, and you’re starting to sweat? No, of course not! You’ll improvise! Just replace some notes, cut out some notes to make it easier, or just play something completely different which “happen” to fit, which by the way can sound VERY cool and take the song to a whole new level. Replacing a piece with something completely different that you improvise can be something you do even when having control on the notes, just to spice things up. Of course, if the situation is appropriate. Sometimes you should play something with no preparations, and it could be difficult to read both the treble line and the bass line at the same time without practice. Then it’s good to be able to improvise the left hand!
Another excellent thing to do is to use fills. This will also spice up your playing and make it more personal. Let the music drift a little. And with blues it’s even important.
Do you have the answer for how you can do all this? No? Well, with just a little time with some music theory you’ll have what you need to start practice all this. And the best of all, this is skills that gives tons of fun! And you’ll be a lot better at free play as well. This is an incredible amount of benefits!
Summarized
In short, spending even just a very little amount of time on music theory and theory for your instrumental playing will save you a TREMENDOUS amount of practice-time! You’ll learn more advanced melodies much faster, making it possible to learn more melodies within a shorter amount of time. You’ll sound much more professional, handle flaws in your playing much better, and gain a lot more motivation, feeling much better about yourself. You’ll reach a MUCH higher level than you would ever do by only using time practicing.
Have we covered enough reasons to make you convinced? Good!
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