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The Importance of Musical Knowledge

By Jimmy Hudson

A lot of guitar players think that theory and sight reading are useless. That could be the case if you never want to improve as a player and you want to play the same old stuff every day. A couple years ago on the day after Thanksgiving I got a call from a bassist that I had only previously talked to over the phone. He got a jazz gig at the last minute and wanted me to come do it with him. Everybody he was playing with was out of town for the holiday. At first I was a little hesitant because I had not played jazz since college.

So we booked the gig - it was at a fancy art gallery. The owner called us back and said the gig is off unless you guys can produce a sax player. The first thing I did was call one of the band instrument stores here in town and asked if they had anyone there that played sax. They reffered me to one of their employees. I talked to the sax man and he said he would do it, so we called the owner back and booked it. We had put a band together in less than an hour and we all met up at the gig.

Now all three of us had never met each other before but we pulled it off. We all had our Real Books and we sight read the whole time. The one thing we all had in common was that we could all sight read and we all knew theory and music as a language.

Two hours later we got payed. Now if you don't know how to read, or how music works, you will not be able to pull a gig like that off, especially when it is not your normal playing style.

If you truly love music than there is no excuse at all for not learning it. The sad thing is many guitar players never take the time to learn the guitar. What is even more sad is that there are teachers out there who don't know a single note name on the guitar, be carefull who you go to for lessons. Don't be afraid to ask them what their credentials are. If you are in lessons and they keep telling you to bring in CD's so they can figure out songs for you than you are not learning from a teacher, A teacher will show you how to figure songs out yourself, they will help you develop a good ear, and they will teach you music as a language so you can write your own stuff and improvise with other musicians.

If you want to pursue a career as a studio session guitarist you will be expected to know the material given to you almost instantly. We do this by a combination of reading and theory. See if you know theory you will automatically know where a specific chord wants to resolve to, this also helps when you are writing. Instead of a hit and miss system you let the progression tell you where it wants to go. Your music will sound much more thought out and it will be a lot easier to improvise over and write melodies to.

In my experience I have had those that have said well Clapton never knew theory and he don't have to have his thumb behind the neck. Of course I am just mentioning Clapton, I have heard it with all kinds of players. What these people don't understand is that was a different generation of music. They did not know the first thing about technique then, let alone about carpal tunnell syndrome, which by the way many older players ended up with carpal tunnel and made some of them stop playing. Segovia was one of the last old school classical guitarists he played with his right wrist bent sideways and eventually developed carpal tunnel from what I have heard. The only way that music can progress is if we do with it what we have done with cars and computers and everything else. We constantly have to make it better. I promise you if you get technique out of the way you will never have to worry about what fingers to use ever again. Your only limitation will be your mind. We can work on that with theory, jamming with others, writing, etc. See in previous generations the only music schools where for classical instruments, classical people didnt even consider the guitar as a formidable instrument untill recent years, they still treat guitarists as second class citizens. Now we have schools where we can learn everything there is to know about music, we can maximize our technique and we can study the science behind the guitar. In fact over the last few months my wife, Krystel and I have been working on building a school, American Guitar Institute™ so that people will have a different option of learning.

See there is a difference between a musician and someone who simply owns an instrument. A musician has their own unique sound, they attack the notes, their way, they have a unique tone, they do everything in their power to constantly progress. A true guitarist you can hear 20 seconds of them playing, realistically four notes and you know exactly who is playing, where someone who just tinkers if they can even learn a song they will sound like someone else never themselves. If I had a dollar for every hour I have spent on guitar alone, not including Piano, bass or drums, I could probably retire. That is the other neat thing. If you understand music thory it can be applied to any other instrument, which makes playing other instruments a lot easier. Again That is a musician. Someone who just owns an instrument sits around and noodles and never progresses. I know people in their 40's and 50's that have not learned anything new in 30 years. I honestly feel sorry for these people. I think the main reason why people don't learn all they can about the instrument they play is they are scared. They are scared of change and they are scared of new things. If you can break past that you honestly can obtain musical freedom.

Music can be a very challenging way to make a living. I recently walked away from it for a little over a year. I litterally cut my hair and got a real job as they say. Well one year and five jobs later, hear I am stronger as a person and musician than ever before. I realized that if you have a true love for something and you really want to pursue it. You can make a decent living doing what you love doing. Now I honestly feel if you want to pursue music as a career the more knowledge you have the more fun you will have and more oppurtunities will come available for you.

One thing that I see frequently is players that play only what is popular at the time. They play what their friends tell them to listen to, I really can not stress enough please try to have an open mind for new stuff to listen to. Some of my biggest influences are not even guitar players. I really love listening to different kinds of music I am easily inspired. I have learned licks from listening to some jazz song from a sax player to even sitting down and transcribing video game themes along with comercials and old TV shows. If you keep your ears open you might just here music every where you go. Jonas Helborg once played on a CD called Ode to a Tractor, granted Helborg is a strange cat, wicked musician though hopefully you see my point to be open minded towards any style or any instrument.

Jimmy Hudson 2000-11-26

revised, I might add a badly needed revision 2003-8-9

re-revised 2003-8-26 ok so my grammer and spelling could use some work

The Importance of Musical Knowledge

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