Why are people so afraid of Music Theory?

[Yukio]

I find that most uke players don't understand theory or find it practical because they haven't been taught fretboard patterns that make theory more directly applicable on the instrument. Once you learn such patterns, doors open.

Similarly, when people learn guitar or uke, the focus is almost exclusively on fixed chord names, rather than on learning to play relatively, which is how we really hear and "understand" music intuitively. If you want to learn to play by ear, the most effective way is to pay attention to the relations between chord roots and to recognize the qualities (types) of the chords that are being played. Some scale study—in terms of generic patterns rather than rote playing of scales—is very useful in training your ear to recognize—and replicate—what you're hearing, in whatever key it's being played, or in whatever key better suits your voice range or group. So, I strongly encourage people to learn the Nashville Number System (more so than formal theory notations) and to learn to play relatively. This is also hugely beneficial is you wish to learn to play songs from memory; the more chords that may be involved, the more beneficial thinking relatively becomes.

Someone mentioned above that learning the notes on the fretboard wasn't that useful for playing all over the fretboard. I may be misinterpreting what that person meant, but I disagree. IF you play primarily by chord names (rather than relatively by root degrees), then knowing two things is vital to playing easily and effectively all over the fretboard: you should know where the roots are in all your (movable) chord shapes and where all the notes are on the fretboard, so you quickly know where you can root those shapes and which shape you can use. Which shapes is dictated by which string the root falls on in the targeted region of the fretboard. Learning the fretboard just isn't that hard, if approached the right way (which, sadly, is not the way it's normally taught, in my opinion), and the payoff is well worth the modest effort.

Degree recognizition is an outgrowth of ear training—it's something that you can learn to hear "naturally" and directly, without even knowing what key is being used. It's similar to how we can sing songs without knowing what keys we're actually singing in. Degree recognition makes it much easier to memorize songs, because the information you're memorizing agrees more naturally with the sounds in your head, and relative progression patterns are easier to recognize and "chunk" in memory.

Thanks, @ubulele, I think this is what I need to learn.
Where to start? Maybe with identifying where the roots are located in the chord shapes that I commonly use? I can put some effort into that. Once I know the root positions for the chords, am I then applying fretboard patterns to the root position based on what string the root is located? Is this only for single note lines, or is there a deeper story going on with all of this?

 

[ripock]

Until we receive Ubelele's more in-depth and systematic approach I will briefly explain what I have done on this front. Instead of a chord book. I have a chord piece of paper (graph paper, 8.5X11).

• I determined which chords I care about. On my paper I have m6, m7, m9, m add9. Δ7, ø, 13, m11, sus2, sus4 (I omitted from my paper major, minor, augmented, and diminished 7 because I know them)
• For each chord I found a shape with the root on the G string, the C string, the E string, and the A string.
• instead of just using dots like chord books I write in the interval numbers. For example, for the m7, I write down 1, b3, 5, b7. This way I know which note to sharpen to get a different chord such as the dom7 or the 7#5.

That is it. Once you do it, then you can play chords all over the fretboard. You just keep the same shapes and move to the root regardless of where it is. This may seem like a lot of work, but think of the alternative: learning every chord one-by-one in a disjointed manner. That takes a lot more effort. Check my math but here's how I figure. If you want to play all the major chords all over the fretboard, that's 72 individual things you need to learn (Each note has about six voices (at least on my super tenor) multiply that by the 12 notes). Or you can learn 4 moveable shapes for the major chord.

 

[Yukio]

Thanks, @ripock. I kinda do that anyway. Just to take stock of my personal situation, I always use movable shapes, unless there is a compelling reason to use an open chord. I can play chords all over the fretboard and haven't needed to refer to a chord chart or book in years. I know the ingredients for all the chords you listed and can build them from scratch or modify chords I know by heart to achieve the desired chord type. I also know where the notes are on the fretboard. The only principle difference I can see right now is that you and @ubulele know by memory where all the root can be found for any particular shape (and perhaps also know by heart what finger holds down all the other constituent parts of the chord.)

This is something I never committed to memory. I can look at a chord and tell you what the parts are, but it is not something I can do 'in real time.' I just learned the handful of shapes for each particular flavour of chord and called it a day. To me, they were all inversions of a particular chord, but I could not tell you precisely WHICH inversion it was and where the individual parts of the chord were located without taking a moment to reason it out.

So, what I am trying to understand is, if I learn the roots are for of all the shapes, (and perhaps other parts of the chord shape as well) how then am I to apply this knowledge on a practical level?

I can easily see that if you know where the fifth degree is in a dominant seventh shape, that makes it easy to throw in a #5. Also if you know where the third degree of any chord is, you can make it a minor chord by flattening this note or find a sus2 or sus4 chord. If you know where both the 3 and the 5 are for a dominant 7 shape, you can make a half-diminished chord by flattening both the 3 and the 5. This is all well and good. I can do this stuff, just not super quick for all but a few frequently used chord shapes.

Is this pointing to an end goal, like to be able to improvise a chord melody solo? That would be cool and a worthy goal, I'm just having trouble connecting the dots between this discussion of theory and playing that kind of stuff off the top of my head in real time.

 

[ubulele]

Thanks, @ubulele, I think this is what I need to learn.
Where to start? Maybe with identifying where the roots are located in the chord shapes that I commonly use? I can put some effort into that. Once I know the root positions for the chords, am I then applying fretboard patterns to the root position based on what string the root is located? Is this only for single note lines, or is there a deeper story going on with all of this?

I'd be happy to explain and show you in a videochat session. It's rather a lot to explain in print without visuals, especially since the focus is on patterns you can visualize.

These patterns are at heart cross-fretboard interval patterns,and therefore applicable to playing either melodies or chords. For chords, I usually start by finding the tonic locations for the key I want to play in; these are my primary reference points. I associate the chords with the degrees of the scale relative to the main key tonic (like the I IV V stuff, but a bit more exact). So if I'm going to a 3 chord, I move a vector of a major 3rd from one of the tonics. (The vector depends on the string you start from, whether you're conceptually moving up or down a 3rd, and perhaps whether you want to move up or down physically on the fretboard.) Or I might move one fret down from a known 4 location, or up a whole step from a 2, or down a 5th/up a 4th from a 7 (per the 7362514 sequence) or up a 5th/down a 4th from a 6 (per the same sequence reversed)… This is where I mainly apply the interval or "root cluster" patterns—to find root locations. Once I've found the root location, the string it's on tells me which movable shape(s) for the chord type I can apply to get the desired chord.

The reason you start by learning where the roots are in your current chord shapes is so, for each common chord type, you are prepared with at least one (movable) shape rooted on the first string, one on the second, one on the third and one on the fourth. Therefore, no matter which string you locate a root on, you're ready with a shape of the appropriate type. This dramatically reduces the amount of rote learning required to play in all regions of the fretboard.

If you don't already know a set of such shapes for a particular chord type, there's a relatively simple system to derive them as needed from basic template shapes (usually the dom7s work best) or from closely related shapes. For instace, if you need a 9#5 chord, you can apply a #5 tweak to a 9th shape you know for the desired root string, or you can apply both a 9th and #5 tweak to the corresponding dom7 template chord. So for the four main dom7 shapes, you'll want to learn which string plays which component of the chord (root, 3rd, 5th or 7th)—and fortunately, there's a trick that simplifies this. It's all very similar to what ripock described except that (if I understand rightly) he focuses on deriving from triads (which have inconsistent component mappings and usually involve an extra derivation step) whereas I focus on the more uniform dom7s. Once you understand the mappings of the template shapes—only four to contend with—you see that the mappings for most other shapes are similar.

If you play by absolute chord names (or are reading a standard score), then you'll probably find notes or root locations through fretboard knowledge, and then you apply the same shape selection or derivation logic as for roots found relatively. If you don't yet know the middle and upper fretboard, there are a couple of simple cheats to locate roots there by note names—as a temporary measure or fallback until you have learned the full fretboard.

If you're playing melodically, then a knowledge of cross-fretboard intervals is a great asset to playing flexibly rather than by restrictive scale patterns learned by rote—which don't even work well for many passages in real music.

Playing by absolute chord names may seem most straightforward, particularly if you mostly play from lead sheets, using the keys the notators chose—except for a few things:
• You get little understanding of what you're playing and why. In contrast, playing relatively maps fairly directly to theory and supports easier recognition of common progression patterns—even when you wander into other keys. To explain things played by absolute chord names, players tend to remap to relative degrees—so why not just start with and stay with relative degrees?
• You get less training in picking things up or playing them by ear. Few of us have perfect pitch and can easily identify pitches—much less chords—by name, whereas it's much easier to recognize pitches relative to a key's tonic or to other already-identified degrees.
• Absolute chord names are harder to memorize than relative structure, for a number of reasons I won't delve into here.
• Relative patterns are "key-agnostic": what you learn in one key ports immediately to any other. What you hear and analyze relatively in one key you can immediately play in another. In contrast, most folks have great difficulty transposing absolute chord names from one key to another.
• Although it may seem otherwise, standard notation is at heart a relative notation.
• Playing by absolute chord names, you tend to overlook chord relations and common patterns (theoretic and fretboard) that can facilitate, streamline and "chunk" your thinking. Rather, chord names tend to be viewed as discrete entities.

 

[Bibs]

Once you understand the mappings of the template shapes—only four to contend with—you see that the mappings for most

@ubulele I'm new to this and I'm trying to keep up with you. You mentioned four shapes twice. What are they?​

 

[Yukio]

Thanks, @ubulele. I will PM you to set up a time to have a video chat. You offered to do this with me a long time ago, and I can see it is high time I took the plunge.

 

[UkeStuff]

Music theory doesn't necessarily have anything to do with scales..

Without being "haughty" about it, I hold a PhD in music, and have taught K-12 music for 27 years, and have taught college students and adults along the years as well. That's not to build myself up, but to just establish that I have studied and taught music theory. As a music educator, I'm more like a general physician than a specialist--so a TRUE theory "expert" would hold a PhD in musicology (no joke), and to be honest, most of the musicologists I have worked with are a very specific type of personality--Type A would be an understatement. Good people, to be sure, but can be challenging to work under or work with (and yes, I have stories).

What I wanted to address is this issue of theory not having anything to do with scales. It's quite the opposite--as long as you are playing western music on a western instrument, scales are one of the foundations of music theory. You can find instruments and music that is not based on the western twelve tone system--but you have to look pretty hard. Even aleatory music is based on using every one of the 12 notes.

Ultimately, when I teach theory to my elementary students (we hardly get past the concept of a basic scale, and not much in depth at that), to high school students (full classes as I mentioned before), college students (I would make every student buy and bring a ukulele!), or adults, I teach theory following this progressive system:

Notes become scales
Scale become chords
Chords become progressions
Progressions become phrases
Phrases become songs or movements
Movements become symphonies or operas

That's a lifetime study--most music undergrads get two full years of theory and sight-singing/ear training. Master's and Doctoral students typically have REMEDIAL classes in theory (based on musicologist-created entry exams) followed by various theory courses.

The thing is that most ukulele players do not hold a music degree--many ditched music education at the end of high school or during middle school (talking the US system here) where the study and performance of music is devalued in our culture (even though we'll spend billions on a Taylor Swift tour--no disrespect to Taylor, who I really enjoy) for the pursuit of courses that lead to "real jobs" and sports (as if people who have real jobs and play sports cannot listen critically to music or play music or make their own music). And yes, there are issues in music education where we don't offer certain instruments or styles of music (I fought to change that).

One of the things that drew me to the ukulele was watching community groups of players coming back to music in their 50s and 60s, now free of the tasks of raising a family or working 8-6 every day, finding an instrument, singing and playing with friends in community--many times having not made their own music since age 13.

While there are music teachers who want to be the band/choir/orchestra director that gets the "superior trophy" at every competition (and there's nothing wrong with excellent performing band/choir/orchestra members), my focus, particularly while earning my PhD, became more about knowing what my students knew and could do--and then helping them to have a lifetime relationship with music, which leads to community, mental health, and even physical benefits.

The big challenge ukulele players face is that they jump into the instrument knowing songs, learning songs, and playing/singing songs, but then want to understand by things happen (Why does G7 go to C? Or why is there a D7 suddenly in this song, going to a G, while we are in the key of C).

And that's where you want to step back.

Musictheory.net used to have a great website that I used with my high school students--I always tried to have them work through a couple of different resources when I was teaching, because if they didn't understand my way of thinking about something, I tried to have them experience another person's interpretation of theory. And that was a pretty successful method over the years.

So ultimately, if you're trying to figure out why certain chords are used, they are chords based on scales, and scale order impacts the order and type of chord.

And that means that scales have everything to do with western music theory.

I'm not a musicologist, so I'm not going to stress out about other opinions, nor am I going to get mad and yell about things like this.

And as I tell people with ukulele all the time--if you run into someone who insists that they know everything and there is only one right answer, just avoid that person.

 

[ubulele]

in reply to Bibs:

The four main movable dominant 7th shapes, which I use as templates, are:
n:0212 R4 (i.e., root on string 4)
n:0001 R3
n:1202 R2
n:0100 R1

The "n" stands for any fret number (because I'm describing generic, movable shapes here); the digits in the shape descriptor (including 0) are added to the base fret number, which for these four shapes will be the same as the fret the root falls on. Thus, to play an A7 rooted on the A at 4/2 (string 4, fret 2), you play the shape 2434, which you might see expressed as 2:0212. The next A upward on the fretboard is at 2/5, so you'd position the 2nd string shape 1202 at the 5th fret: 6757 (i.e., 5:1202). Note that for other chord shapes, the root is not always at the bottom of the chord, and thus n (marking the base fret of the shape) could be lower than the fret the root falls on.

I'll defer a description of how to describe rootless chords, where the root is effectively an additional but "ghost" component of the chord shape; it's not actually played but is used for shape positioning.

All this is easier to understand if you see the shapes demonstrated or at least see chord grids. Sadly, the grids you see in published sheet music never mark the roots; you only see them marked in reference materials of better quality.

The next thing to know is, in each template shape, which string plays which component of the chord. This may help:

Think of the strings as divided into "left" and "right" string pairs (or top and bottom). You already know where the root in each template shape is (see above). In these four shapes, whichever string the root falls on, the 5th falls on the other string in that pair (which is to say, it's the other string on the same side of the fretboard). Then the other pair must play the 3rd and 7th—but in which order? Well, if the shape is a "four-finger" shape (R2 or R4), then the outside string in that pair plays the 3rd, and thus the inside string plays the 7th. For the other two (barre) shapes (R1 and R3), the mapping is the opposite: the seventh is on the outside and the 3rd on the inside. This mapping doesn't hold for all chord types—including some you derive from the template shapes—but the majority of chord types have a strong correlation with the dom 7 shapes, to the point of having similar mappings.

In short:
5th next to the root, in the same pair (i.e on the same side of the fretboard); applies to all four shapes.
4-finger shape (R2 and R4): 3rd on the outside (7th on the inside).
barre shape (R1 and R3): 7th on the outside (3rd on the inside).

How you use this knowledge is beyond what I care to explain in text form. Would you be interested in videochatting?

 

[Bibs]

@ubulele
Not for awhile thank you. I'm going to need time to integrate this.

 

[Yukio]

in reply to Bibs:

The four main movable dominant 7th shapes, which I use as templates, are:
n:0212 R4 (i.e., root on string 4)
n:0001 R3
n:1202 R2
n:0100 R1

The "n" stands for any fret number (because I'm describing generic, movable shapes here); the digits in the shape descriptor (including 0) are added to the base fret number, which for these four shapes will be the same as the fret the root falls on. Thus, to play an A7 rooted on the A at 4/2 (string 4, fret 2), you play the shape 2434, which you might see expressed as 2:0212. The next A upward on the fretboard is at 2/5, so you'd position the 2nd string shape 1202 at the 5th fret: 6757 (i.e., 5:1202). Note that for other chord shapes, the root is not always at the bottom of the chord, and thus n (marking the base fret of the shape) could be lower than the fret the root falls on.

I'll defer a description of how to describe rootless chords, where the root is effectively an additional but "ghost" component of the chord shape; it's not actually played but is used for shape positioning.

All this is easier to understand if you see the shapes demonstrated or at least see chord grids. Sadly, the grids you see in published sheet music never mark the roots; you only see them marked in reference materials of better quality.

The next thing to know is, in each template shape, which string plays which component of the chord. This may help:

Think of the strings as divided into "left" and "right" string pairs (or top and bottom). You already know where the root in each template shape is (see above). In these four shapes, whichever string the root falls on, the 5th falls on the other string in that pair (which is to say, it's the other string on the same side of the fretboard). Then the other pair must play the 3rd and 7th—but in which order? Well, if the shape is a "four-finger" shape (R2 or R4), then the outside string in that pair plays the 3rd, and thus the inside string plays the 7th. For the other two (barre) shapes (R1 and R3), the mapping is the opposite: the seventh is on the outside and the 3rd on the inside. This mapping doesn't hold for all chord types—including some you derive from the template shapes—but the majority of chord types have a strong correlation with the dom 7 shapes, to the point of having similar mappings.

In short:
5th next to the root, in the same pair (i.e on the same side of the fretboard); applies to all four shapes.
4-finger shape (R2 and R4): 3rd on the outside (7th on the inside).
barre shape (R1 and R3): 7th on the outside (3rd on the inside).

How you use this knowledge is beyond what I care to explain in text form. Would you be interested in videochatting?

Just kidding!
I just wanted to say that I had an EXCELLENT video chat with @ubulele yesterday. I got to experience this part of the theory 1 on 1 and we dove into a whole lot more about how to play the ukulele in a more relative fashion, relying on patterns and shapes such as these and numbered scale degrees as opposed to letter names for notes and chords. It was a big bite to swallow (we talked for three hours straight ) but in the morning, I found I had retained pretty much all of the concepts discussed when I went to practice them for myself for the first time.

Ubulele is an excellent teacher, and it would be good to figure out how to best share these concepts (and more) with everybody who is interested. I would be nice to hear your suggestions as to how to go about such an endeavour.

 

[ubulele]

(blush) In fairness, Yukio is an excellent mentee. One thing that impressed me was that he would (without prompting) summarize back to me the patterns and main points I covered, including for patterns that I hadn't talked about for a while—and without referring to any notes. In a month, he'll be better at this stuff than I am!

 

[Nickie]

Wow, most of this made me glassy eyed. Most people I know don't even want to know a scale. They couldn't care less what notes they're playing, as long as we're in the same key. We have one theorist in our band, and nobody ever asks her a question about it.

 

[EddiePlaysBass]

I'll reply first and read the thread later: few people have managed to explain certain things to me in a way that actually makes sense.

Learn scales!
Why?
You have to! It will help!
How?
This is the C major. Learn it up and down the neck!
Okay, and how do I apply it to songs?
Play it up and down the neck!

I exaggerate, of course. And yes there is PLENTY more to theory than that. But I once played a minor third note on bass over a major chord sequence and was immediately told I can't do that. Sorry, but in certain cases / songs / settings that does work. Don't give me limitations, give me explanations.

Having said that, I try to learn a bit more about music every time I pick up an instrument. I started on the uke to get a better grasp of how chords work, for instance.

 

[Yukio]

Wow, most of this made me glassy eyed.

It's true. This stuff is pretty hard to explain in plain text. A thoughtful person, trying to choose carefully their words, can still end up with long paragraphs of daunting detail that is hard for the reader to grasp when sharing this kind of information.

It can feel to me like I am able read and comprehend some of these written descriptions only if I already understand the concept being described. Otherwise, the briar patch looks pretty impenetrable.

That is why I feel we need to find a more satisfactory way to share this kind of information. Plain text seems rather inadequate to present concepts based on pattern recognition or for explaining musical technique. Visual and auditory material is hard to explain in words.

 

[ripock]

I'll reply first and read the thread later: few people have managed to explain certain things to me in a way that actually makes sense.

Learn scales!
Why?
You have to! It will help!
How?
This is the C major. Learn it up and down the neck!
Okay, and how do I apply it to songs?
Play it up and down the neck!

I exaggerate, of course. And yes there is PLENTY more to theory than that. But I once played a minor third note on bass over a major chord sequence and was immediately told I can't do that. Sorry, but in certain cases / songs / settings that does work. Don't give me limitations, give me explanations.

Having said that, I try to learn a bit more about music every time I pick up an instrument. I started on the uke to get a better grasp of how chords work, for instance.

If it isn't useful to you, then it isn't. It goes back to how you approach things and what your intentions are. If you play other people's arrangements, then someone else has already done the theory work for you and you don't need to learn anything. I, on the other hand, never play other people's music. I always improvise my own. So I need to know about scales and about the finger patterns of the scales so that I can compose melodies at will. I need to know moveable chord shapes and know their roots so that I can move anywhere on the fretboard to create progressions that aren't boring. Again, it is all about your goals. I tend to think of it as a meat pie. You can just go to the store and select a meat pie from the freezer which will be sufficiently good. Or you can learn how to make pastry crust and learn how to cook so that you can make your own meat pie which will be better as it will not have nasty green peas in it. It is a matter of wanting to consume pre-made commodities versus making one fresh.

 

[ubulele]

I don't separate the use of theory just to prep time; I also use it continually when playing. It's my biggest ally in navigating the fretboard and playing a full panoply of chord types with a minimum of confusion or mental lapses.

 

[AZChris]

Presenting a discussion that is not well defined and has the word "Theory" in it will just turn off many recreational musicians.

That was a good post. Thanks for that. It goes back to what Riprock said about people having different goals and reasons for playing. I suspect most uke players are recreational and thus get nausea or frustration from theory threads. I have had frustrating times in my life where I tried unsuccessfully to pull a rec player to a more serious level to be able to jam or perform with them. Some don't want it. "Gimme a kazoo and the 5 chords I know and I'm good" encompasses a lot of people and there is nothing wrong with that. They have a blast with uke and playing with others. They don't care about theory, more complex arrangements of music or how to play a barre chord. I have to find deeper stuff with other players.

I use theory all the time. Just last night I was in a discussion (in DM) that really made me think about non-harmonic tones and how you can have notes outside of the chord or key in the melody but they almost always resolve to consonance. See how smart and intellectual I sound even saying that? That is what I hate about theory. It enables you to talk over people's heads, make you feel superior and others feel inadequate. In the uke world that is 90% rec players (guess) it makes no sense to push theory unless it's wanted or easily connects to something they already know.

 

[Nickie]

That was a good post. Thanks for that. It goes back to what Riprock said about people having different goals and reasons for playing. I suspect most uke players are recreational and thus get nausea or frustration from theory threads. I have had frustrating times in my life where I tried unsuccessfully to pull a rec player to a more serious level to be able to jam or perform with them. Some don't want it. "Gimme a kazoo and the 5 chords I know and I'm good" encompasses a lot of people and there is nothing wrong with that. They have a blast with uke and playing with others. They don't care about theory, more complex arrangements of music or how to play a barre chord. I have to find deeper stuff with other players.

I use theory all the time. Just last night I was in a discussion (in DM) that really made me think about non-harmonic tones and how you can have notes outside of the chord or key in the melody but they almost always resolve to consonance. See how smart and intellectual I sound even saying that? That is what I hate about theory. It enables you to talk over people's heads, make you feel superior and others feel inadequate. In the uke world that is 90% rec players (guess) it makes no sense to push theory unless it's wanted or easily connects to something they already know.

How true! Once, in a jam session I used to lead, we had trouble getting folks to play T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R. It was our greatest challenge, as well as getting people to tune up their ukes! I showed them how, and we got a bass player, who I later had to tell to leave as he had horrible tempo and rhythm skills. I once handed out a Circle of Fifths drawing and proceeded to tell them what I knew about it.
I was quickly told that I was way off. So, I crumpled up my copy and threw it over my shoulder, which they all did as they laughed out loud. There was never another discussion about it.