Right, you can be an incredibly articulate English speaker without necessarily knowing the terms for the different parts of speech in a sentence.

I think there's a number of people who learned to play by ear who just sort of "internalized" theory without needing a formal curriculum.

Yeah, I just maybe think of theory as something else than something that can only be studied formally.

Anyone can clap hands and hum, the music isn’t the theory.

I agree. But the theory is a way of structuring a system of names and shorthands to help codify what you know about producing music. At what point does your system for structuring the understanding you have about how to organize pitches in a way that you like become theory? Specially if it matches one for one to established concepts in academic music theory?

I’m not sure what you are saying.

Copy and paste “hello, world” ot install sqlite3 looks like computer science?

The argument was that the greatest guitarists didn't know theory so it doesn't equate to that. Hello world equivalent. It's more like building TempleOS or Rollercoaster Tycoon or building SQLite without getting a formal education somehow means you don't understand computer science

My examples are exaggerated or misleading. Other comment covers it I think.

On some level, yes, knowing what shape an G chord is on a guitar is knowing some theory in the exact same way that being able to get hello world functioning in a language is necessary to starting to understand the broader elements of computer science.

Just because something is the Nth lowest first step does not mean it's not a step.

The theory is true, but no theory will make you perform quite like a legendary recording artist.

Yeah, it'd be nice if Berklee funk sounded good.

[delayed]

They have taste for sure and an ear for a blues lick, but they don't know formal theory. It's like how my cat understands gravity but has no awareness of formal gravitational theory or the maths involved.

The cat is a bad analogy. A better one for me would be like a mathematician that does a contribution to the field without formal education. Would you say they don't know any mathematics if they invented their own nomenclature?

Well it isn't like they are inventing their own nomenclature either. Where are Jimi's scale books he wrote in his own modes? He didn't operate in those terms. He was very much like my cat, having an insinct for a formalized theory he does not know the formalized language for.

Is it understanding formal music theory? No, only if you stretch the definition of formal music theory to include what is definitely not formal music theory by any one's definition.

Look at the tablature for little wing and you will see that he most definitely did some sort of theorizing, as he was very structured and systematic.

My point is that what he did is what music theory describes, and he definitely arrived there. He most definitely could play the scales and the modes, even if he never used the word dorian.

There is just some allergic reaction to the word that people take to mean something along the lines of demeriting the artistry. Had he learned the diatonic chords would that mean he is no longer a no theory guy, and would that make him worse?

I know thats not what you are saying, but i do see that from the hardcore 'theory is bad' proponents. Is theory the names of the relationship between tones, or the relationships themselves?

Except that Jimi Hendrix definitely knew music theory, no idea why you'd think he didn't. He had a great understanding of what he was playing.

He had a music theory I'm sure, but the overlap of that with what's currently being taught in conservatories (let alone what was taught in his time), I'm less sure about.

And?

I mostly agree with this.

Like, I know what a secondary dominant is because I've had to use it in blues turn arounds- I didn't know that's what some folks would call it, but I knew that in the key of G, I'd often play an A instead of the Am.

And I think that the vocabulary should describe what folks do rather than the doings being driven by the vocabulary.

Most guitar players (and improv folks) that I know have much more theory that the folks who are reading but who generally don't think about what the function of their line is in a larger song.

If you're playing by memory and ear, you have to have some concepts because you can't just read a part.

Those concepts -are- the theory.

Yeah there's just a badge of honor to say that you don't know theory, as though it's something bad if you do, for some people, for some reason

I've seen it and I kind of get it. I have worked with folks who do things for theoretical reasons instead of describing what they do with these ideas.

At the same time, I wish more folks would learn to read music, or even be literate enough to read lead sheets- my life would be so much easier if folks could just show up and play the thing without spending hours learning from recordings and making whatever kind of esoteric notations they've made up.

I'm not really tracking where your confusion is. You can very much so do or "discover" something in practice that a theory describes without knowing that theory. I'd say it's even very common to "know" certain notes/chords/whatnot sound good with others and not learn "why" until later on, if ever.

My confusion is: why would you say that they don't know theory if they know the thing that the theory describes? If a person builds a radio by themselves, would you say that they don't know engineering because they didn't get a formal education on it? If a person figures out how to make a derivative, would you say they don't know mathematics because they didn't study it formally?

Well, yeah... absolutely. The theory describes why it works. I can know "this works" without knowing why it works.

Theory in my experience is much more descriptive than explanatory.

In Miles Davis' autobiography, Davis talked about how they jammed a few times. Davis would tell him to play a particular chord or scale, and Hendrix had no idea what it was at first, e.g. "try an E minor diminished yada yada there... a mixolydian scale would work on top of these changes..."

Once Davis taught him the concepts he got them immediately, or it might be a chord he knew and played, but didn't know the formal name of. So, he was a brilliant intuitive musician, but didn't have the theory chops of someone who attended Juliard like Davis.

That is what we mean by Hendrix didn't know the theory.

Yeah he didn't know the names of the concepts that he already knew. My intuition says music theory is the understanding of the concepts, not the formal study of the names. Like a person that can only play the major scale because they studied the theory, in my mind they have less mastery of theory than a person that can compose "Little Wing" or "Lenny" without ever studying it.

To me, the theory is as much a communication tool as a knowledge. It is a common language for musicians to communicate musical ideas, at a higher level than musical notation. E.g. I can go to a jazz open mic, someone says the progression is "ii V I in Dminor", or a blues jam and its "I IV V, A major", or a Grateful Dead-type jam and its all mixolydian in B, and everyone is on the same page out of the gate. The theory is you know all of the scale modes, AND what they are called, AND can tell another musician what you're doing and why. Tons of people can play interesting things outside of the box, without know why or how it's defined.

I can get behind this definition. But even following that definition, people without theory knowledge who know how to play would know a third of theory if you split the three categories that you said equally. I venture to say that the concepts themselves weigh more than an even third though.