A post on Facebook today citing Macca in the news Beatles documentary points out his nut is backwards and apparently no one bothered to file it. Also points out Sir Paul states he hasn’t a clue what any of the knobs do.
So the guy who can’t read music, knows zero theory, and has no idea how a bass works is the world’s most treasured musician. I love it.
I take a lot of what a Beatle says with a grain of salt; they were so much about image at the time, though what Sir Paul says now would be interesting.
Also a man who could compose the final E chord for A Day in a Life knows something about theory. Although I will buy no formal training. He certainly understands it.
I think that is where George Martin came into play a lot, in arranging etc.
I agree. A lot of the later Beatles songs were very complex and they all had a good understanding of harmony and changing keys. They probably couldn´t explain what they were doing in academic terms of music theory in many cases, but they had an understanding, how music works.
People also have to keep in mind, that they played a LOT live gigs for example, when they had gigs in Hamburg where they played for hours and hours. They also played very different styles of music throughout their career. During their early days they had a lot of rock’n roll influence like Chuck Berry and later they developed their own style and experimented a lot with different musical concepts and with recording technology. It is amazing, what they accomplished with the limited technology they had at the time.
Also George Martin was an accomplished musician, if I remember correctly and I am sure he helped them to develop as musicians.
This is exactly my point (although I said it a bit more vaguely and ‘tongue and cheek’) that you can just play and learn it, but man, you gotta work it. Neither way is better or worse, just different.
Between him and the drugs, the creativity was limitless….
I think his best effort was The Frog Song. Prove me wrong 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVfaf43W9cM
I think, the drugs explain a lot of things (especially lyrics) that was going on during that time… 
Way back in the day we used do historic battles with miniatures, me and my buddy Vic. One day we got invited up to the MIT Strategic Wargaming Club, and we took them on. These were all dudes who studied military history, and we kicked their butt. I can’t give an explanation for what an envelopment is, but I can pull one off. And I used the same lines about not knowing anything. Anytime I hear that line, my radar goes off, becuse I used it to great effect.
I was explaning a Floyd concert to my bass teacher, and had the same thought. Floyd had these amazing choreographed light and efffects shows, so did ELO and Earth Wind and Fire for that matter, and it all went off seemlessly. But it was before they had computers and it was all done by hands and switches, and there are few shows today that come close, Rammmstein and Babymetal the only two I would say are as good, but not better.
They did a lot with what they had.
Yes, that was crazy and it proves, that creativity and sometimes simply being stubborn and persistent beats technical equipment. I heard Eddie van Halen say in an interview, that he developed a lot of his techniques because he couldn´t afford fancy equipment, when he started out.
Django Reinhardt played amazingly with just two fingers and Jeff Healey learned to play guitar on an amazingly high level, although he was blind.
My equipment is probably better than the stuff a lot of highly skilled musicians had in the fifties and sixties but I still sound like crap.
Nothing matters until it does.
I think people misunderstand the whole “didn’t know theory” thing… it almost always means that they don’t understand the conceptual written language of theory that explains how music “works” but they do have an intimate knowledge of what theory sounds like. One can be very proficient at using a language without understanding the rules of grammar.
Music is a language of it’s own, if you understand how music works and what it sounds like, you don’t need written rules to define it. Our lives are full of things that we do where most people do not understand the rules of how they work… you can go swimming without having a technical knowledge of fluid dynamics, you can take great photos without understanding the rules of composition and calculating exposure… you just need to do things enough that you have a good working knowledge.
This is how children learn things… they conduct experiments, observe the results and learn from that. Children learn language by listening, copying, repeating things over and over until things become natural to them. This is where adults usually struggle when they work to understand a 2nd language (especially if english was the first)… they attempt to use rules to map the 2nd language onto their first language instead of just using the new language enough that it becomes familiar to them. I think there are 2 reasons for that: 1. adults think that rules are a shortcut to learning something and 2. many adults have an aversion to making mistakes so they want to learn something as well as possible before they implement it.
There are many many well known, successful musicians who couldnt read music, couldnt play an instrument and didnt know theory… and it didnt matter because creativity doesn’t come from any of those things. Anyone who has listened to music throughout their lives has an understanding of music theory, they just may not realize that they do and they might not be able to communicate the concepts.
I jumped off the barn roof with a home made parachute aged 8. I learned about how many times your height you can jump before it hurts.
Did you learn anything about parachutes? 
Ofc. nothing of that doesn’t matter. I know a lot of people will say EDM is not a proper music. But take things like progressive house or various types of D’n’B, almost no one of those producers know theory, yet their sets and tracks fill stadiums with people eagerly dancing. And in some cases these tracks are complex AF.
Music just pushes the right buttons in your linguistic/emotion center, and the only brain which is concerned with actual theory or production behind any music are just brains of fellow musicians. People on the dance floor cannot care less about what’s behind the track.
Yes I learned that 30 feet isn’t enough distance for the parachute to fully open and slow my descent. Despite my brother’s best efforts to ‘fluff’ open the chute as I jumped off.
I did a free fall parachute course in the military and thought of that moment as I stood in the plane door waiting to jump out at 8000ft !
Any time anyone says “i don’t have to do (some thing) because (insert famous person here) didn’t”, it’s just plain dumb. Do something or don’t because it’s what you want/need to do; don’t use other people as an excuse, because you’re not them.
It’s kind of amusing that people usually only use this scenario to be lazy… i don’t see many people suggesting they’re going to cut off their fingers because a few musicians only needed 2. I will say though that there is a trap that you can get into where you spend way too much time focusing on theory for theory sake instead of listening to your own inner creative voice.
….and no fluffer - there’s a bad joke in there somewhere
I don’t think that would have helped
Let’s say you are young Paul McCartney, full of bright eyed ideas about love and the world, and you get to spend the Gladwell “10,000 hours” around all the people he did. Did he learn theory, sure, did he learn loads of more useful stuff, like what sounds good with what, how to make his bass line more complex as he went, how pig-headed John and on and on.
To me, you learn a crap ton more doing it that way then studying mixolydian scales and whatnot.
I just think it is an interesting example of Gladwell’s ‘time + opportunity’ concept. I think this always wins vs. staring at a book etc. I am sure my musicianship, bass playing, etc would exponentially grow if I could even find a few knucklehead musicians to bang around with.
An artist that comes to mind in this is Suzuka Nakamoto, lead singer of Babymetal, whom I suspect has synesthesia, because when they’re in the studio she tries to explain what she wants (and she calls the mixes in fact, and has for years), she calls for things in terms of colors. This bass part needs to be more red, the guitars more yellow. They give her a score and she draws on it in colored pens. And Moa, the backup singer, has to translate what Su drew to the engineer, band, and producer. Su can’t explain outside of colors.
Beethoven had synestesia, which is probably why he could compose while deaf. He would see shapes and color, and hear sound in his head.
The understanding of artists covers a lot of ground.
