The Guitar Players Club

Well, this site's potential is looking good, as I'll be talking with a professional developer later in the week. Although, there will always be a blog here, I always wanted more for a guitar site. Unfortunately, as with most things, it's going to come down to how much money it's going to take to get the progress started, and what

it will take to keep it going. There's nothing more that I would like than to have a useful site for aspiring guitarists, so I'm going to do everything I can to make it happen.

In the mean time, I'm going to be posting what I can, anything that may be useful to someone, anyone.

I was just flipping through a book on playing guitar. It's entitled, 'The Infinite Guitar', and is written by a fabulous guitarist, Chris Juergensen. This guy has paid his dues and put in the time and effort necessary to reach the upper limits of what can be accomplished when you set your mind to something. I highly recommend you get a copy of his book. Yoy can get more information at ChrisJuergensen.com.

I entitled this post 'Music Theory' because I caught a glimpse of a section of Chris's book about Music Theory. I'd just like to say that I realize many guitarists either seem to have the mindset that music theory is something that's maybe too hard to learn, or something that they don't need to learn.

Although you can get into some rather complicated aspects of music theory, what you need to learn from theory, is very doable....and very necessary. Obviously there are many musicians, not just guitarists that never bother to learn very much as far as theory goes. This doesn't mean that you can't become an excellent player...obviously. Although my theory knowledge isn't extensive, I know enough to help me tremendously. That being said, there are many, many players that I'm sure now less theory than myself, but are still better players. It just comes down to, if it helps you, why not do it ?

I can tell you, if you take some time to devote to learning some theory, you will never regret it. When you can hear the music, analyze it, and truly understand it, it opens up a whole different world to you as a musician.

If you're like me, and probably most players, you've spent your time listening to the same tracks over and over, trying to learn that blistering lead, or that different chord progression. Well, when you understand some of the theory behind the music, you can analyze what's being played, and then you can understand why it sounds like it does, and what is being played, even before you pick up the guitar. Believe me, that's better than just jumping all over the neck trying to see what fits.

Before I started to learn theory, I saw that the same chords would be used together in certain songs, but I didn't really understand the progressions. It makes it a lot easier to concentrate on your actual guitar playing technique, and not spend most of your time trying to decipher just what is being played.

I have a friend that studied, actually studied music from early on. When most of us where out partying, playing, and running around, he was hard at it. Needless to say, it paid off... very well. When I was trying to figure out the basic chords to a simple (now) classic rock song, he could just listen to music, understand the chord progression, and pick up a guitar (or sit at the piano) and play it.

I guess a good way to put it into words would be....use your ears and brain BEFORE, AND during your playing. It shouldn't just always be about picking up the axe and 'jamming'. It's fun, but there can be so much more.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 2:31 pm and is filed under Theory.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.