I'm going to learn how to play guitar

ADMIN: Please change Hades’ forum name to “Tight-Assed Musical Anarchist” - that is all

All I’m going to say is this:

Music theory is not useless at all for playing guitar or writing music. To be honest, though, for the things most people play, it won’t be necessary to know a lot. It’s good to have an understanding of keys, rhythm, meter, etc.

But, while I think Hades’s definition, conception, and opinion of music theory couldn’t be farther off base, he’s not entirely wrong that a lot of the practices wind up being irrelevant to rock music; either because a lot of it is written without it (and is worse off for it, because it just sounds like a bunch of random chords strung together), or because a lot of it is painfully basic. So, it’s not surprising that Hades carries this opinion, and it’ll likely be true for whatever DR wants to do on guitar unless he moves past the realm of most rock/music you hear on the radio.

I just want to say the stuff I want to end up doing is miles away from the rock/music you hear on the radio. My friend took music theory, but a lot of the stuff he plays on bass he learned by ear. I don’t know if I have that skill or not, I guess I won’t know until I start. I just know that I know literally nothing beyond “Ta-ta-tee-tee-ta” from elementary school. I want to be able to express music ideas on paper, and I know the basic elements of music theory cover that. As far as it being restrictive, wouldn’t it only be as restrictive as the person allows it to be? I would imagine it would allow for more musical expression. Anyway, Hades, I do respect your opinion on the matter, but for someone who knows nothing about music besides a couple Italian words and some guitar words, I really think I would benefit. Plus for me it’s starting to go beyond learning guitar. I want to learn music. I want to learn guitar as a form of musical expression, not just to jam to some tabs. Hell, maybe I’ll even pick up other instruments as I go on, but now I’m just getting ahead of myself.

What exactly do you plan on playing on your guitar, then?

Well… metal. But you made it sound like there was nothing else to learn on Guitar than radio rock. I’m really into Dream Theater, Nevermore, Redemption, Shadow Gallery and other bands that use heavy, technical, but melodic riffs and leads, and that’s the kinda stuff I want to do.

Hmm. Yeah, I guess theory might help a little bit. But, for the most part, theory isn’t going to teach you how to do technical stuff; music theory allows you to learn what makes music tick, and there are two main theory classes taught in schools: Trad Harmony, which will teach you how to write Baroque/Classical/Romantic/20th Century Art Music, and Jazz Theory, which teaches…Jazz. Both of them have stuff that will be useful - particularly in the basics - but it’ll take a long time for you to learn anything incredibly specific that you might think to use in metal. Even when you do, it’ll be more of a compositional technique than anything. Oh well, I guess you’ll see when you take the class. It’s useful for starting out, but theory is pretty pointless for rock music most of the time.

And no, I don’t believe I meant to say there’s nothing else to learn on guitar but radio rock, but rock in general - especially rock on the radio, but pretty much all rock - takes a really flippant approach to applied music theory, for better or worse (usually worse).

We shall see.

Dammit, I wish I had more time on this cpu to read through all of this.

But here is my advice:

Get a ukulele first. No lie.

I’m learning a six-stringer now and using what I’ve learned from uke on it and taking to it like white on rice. Plus uke’s are cheap, and easy to learn.

Then you can be like this old cat here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9toJRdu2bXQ) and get all the women.

Good advice, except I think he only has interest in heavy metal and rock. That’s not going to bode well for a ukulele.

I dunno, doing Ukelele covers metal songs might make me famous on Youtube.

It’s not like anything else matters

In fact, one could say that Nothing Else Matters?

god why does metallica suck so bad now

They sold out when they released Kill 'em all.

They sold out when they fired Ron McGovney.

They sold out when they sued napster.

They sold out when they sold out, those bastards.