All the same, I am not Dylan. It wouldn’t work for me
I have known bands that tried to make music without knowing anything about music theory. I don’t mean this in the abstract, I mean I have known the people that tried to do this. And most of the time, it isn’t pretty.
Not everyone is Deadmau5. Not everyone has an innate sense of what sounds good. Most of us have a far easier time learning from the discoveries of others, standing on the shoulders of greats.
One strategy for this is just imitation, sure. But this is like the kids that memorize all the answers for their tests. They may ace a test now and again, but they really haven’t learned much, compared to the kids that learn how to inductively reason about what’s being asked of them.
Once again, it all comes down to goals. If your goal is to just make covers from online tabs, then it doesn’t matter. But if your goal is to create music yourself or with others, including just jamming and improvising, then it’s gonna be a much better experience to learn some theory first.
Bob is quite the respected poet. Nothing is random in what he writes. He has a Nobel Prize for it.
As far as the music theory versus no music theory, Brad Whitford graduated from Berklee with a music degree and did alright.
Joe Perry learned music with a record player, playing songs over and over and improvising to what was playing.
Together they’re pretty formidible
Can you play music without learning theory? Abosolutely; there’s many artists that have, bassist that comes to my mind is Mina who is self taught and has never had a lesson. But you have to put the time into playing like Joe and Mina did. Path is shorter with some theory. And makes it easier to talk to other musicians
The great thing about Bob Dylan is that after hearing him on the radio I thought ‘well if he can sing out loud, anybody can’. He really lowered the bar for me and my campfire singing and I’m grateful for it.
OK but I’m saying that you don’t need to have these rules served to you as “This is the harmonic minor scale - practice this up and down the fretboard”. Imagine someone likes 12-bar blues and they learn 10 standard blues tracks. Is is completely unreasonable to assume that they can now improvise a similar bassline over a backing track?
If the song is in any key other than the one(s) they memorized, they wouldn’t have such an easy time doing that without at least a little theory.
Even though the chord progression is the same, the scales fall on different notes. So at minimum they would need to know the scale shapes, which means the intervals, even if they don’t quite think of it that way. The bass scale shapes are defined by the intervals for each scale.
Totally agree. This is still learning the construct, not the application of.
Now the tricky part comes…
If you take French lessons, and then don’t actually go speak French everyday, guess what happens?
Same with music.
I think this is where a lot of hobbyist musicians start to fall down. If you don’t apply your language, then you really don’t get the ‘how to use it’ under your belt, and, then forget it in general.
A friend of mine decided to learn Portuguese, and spent countless hours in online chat groups talking to others to practice. There are actual services for this. But not for musicians. This has always been presented to me as ‘figure it out in isolation, then meet with your instructor, get feedback and try again’. This isn’t enough in my opinion to get really anywhere. We need a place to do this like the language example above, for hours and hours.
I totally agree. The only language learners I’ve met who have got really proficient are those who have gone abroad to work or live and have had to speak the target language every day. Maybe you don’t need to do that with an instrument but playing with a band is such a great opportunity for development and it’s really frustrating I can’t get out and do it…
It’s a lot more straightforward than that. You learn your scales and your theory and so on.
AND THEN
You either learn and play songs/riffs or you have fun jamming to a backing track or drum rhythm on You Tube. Songs and jamming are your practical application of those scales, arpeggios, theory, techniques and so on.
If you don’t learn your theory or your scales, then you’re just taking potshots at the fretboard in the hope that it will sound musical. You may get there in the end but it’s one helluva long and tortuous way to go about learning the bass, and there is no guarantee that the result wil even be correct or musical.
For the language analogy, you go into the classroom and practice your grammar and vocab. Then you converse with people, preferably in their native country. And you keep on conversing and interacting to solidify what you know.
Eh, gonna disagree with you guys on this one. I think this is where the language analogy breaks down.
I don’t think there is an upper limit on how far you can progress with music via self study. Basically it’s the application of the art that matters; as long as you are making music you will progress.
It’s more like writing in that regard. It just requires practice of the art and study. Being in a band is fun and there’s nothing like the creative energy you get as a group - but it’s a different kind of progress then. Not mutually exclusive with progressing via self applied learning.
Having been in a band (technically still am I guess, despite different continents) I get the idea that it’s a necessary thing. But to be honest I really don’t think it is, at least for all kinds of progress.
I don’t feel held back at all by working primarily on my own. YMMV there but really the only thing limiting my own progress is me, not the lack of a jamming group.
There’s a ton of bedroom producers out there making great music on their own. I don’t see any reason they would be limited by working on their own and the results speak for themselves.
This is unfortunately not how you teach a language if you want people to be capable communicators. I was a language teacher for many years (and an active language learner for quite a few) and I can say with some authority that it doesn’t work. Apart from killing motivation (who is going to sit through grammar classes for 10 years before they can speak?), a lot of grammar simply doesn’t reflect language use and can actually hinder progress.
We all have a language learning “instinct”. We just need exposure to language and the opportunity to practice it meaningfully. A good teacher can motivate a student to practice, organise their studies and direct their attention to weak points etc. but there is no place for extensive, meaningless, context-free grammar practice. Unless that person is doing a linguistics course.
I should really take this moment to clarify a point - I am not against musicians having musical knowledge - I am just saying there is a better way of improving playing skills than forcing theory down people’s throats. How many people would have got past lesson 2 on B2B if all the first classes had been theory?
You’re agreeing with me! I didn’t say that you had to study it for years on end. Just like on bass, it should be done in parallel with the practical application of music/language. If you didn’t much of it would be forgotten or seem meaningless by the time it’s applied (either conversing with people to learn a language, or playing songs or jamming to learn the bass to practice what you have learnt).
Depends on the individual and their goals I guess. I was in a band with some mates years ago and I loved it, it really gave me a shot in the arm. I think a key word is also ‘progress’ - should everyone be trying to master increasingly complex musical forms?
Sure you can do it in isolation, but how do you know you are getting any good? How do you pick up on other’s language and continue the conversation?
This also means playing with other bassists.
Think about it…guitarists hang out and show each other riffs and things and tips all the time. I assume bassists do it too but would also assume to a lesser extent, they are maybe taking cues from guitarists and working on grooving with the drummer.
Doesn’t have to be with a band, can be with other bassists, guitarists, drummers, anyone. Can also be through feedback with other musicians while playing in isolation, but, without the feedback loop, you will be endlessly asking for a cheeseburger with a side of roller skates until the feedback loop informs you.
Yes, but not in isolation, they are influenced by others.
The #1 way to progress on sax is to…play with other sax players, learn from them, etc.
Bassists can and should do this, but don’t see a lot of it happening in my world.
Maybe there is a way to start some online connects within the forum just for this @JoshFossgreen
Oh, sure - I didn’t mean in a complete vacuum of course. You will and should get feedback from others to factor in to your growth; the analogy with writing there is strong too.
But these are all just factors. Bands and group interaction are one path for development (and one I think everyone should try for the experience if nothing else). But it’s not the only effective path.
