The DANGER ZONE: When MUSIC THEORY Hurts Your CREATIVITY (And How To Get Out Of It)
Should you learn music theory? I mean, you wouldn’t want to hurt your creativity, right?
Wait, let me redo that with my best Italian mobster voice: “What a nice creativity you have there… Wouldn’t it be a pity (wiggles eyebrows suggestively) if someone were to do some music theory to it, would it?”
Because, of course, everyone knows that music theory will completely decimate any morsel of creativity you originally had in your soul, so what’s the point of learning it?
Look at the attractive alternatives we have instead!
Should you instead just keep randomly picking notes until you find something good because that’s the ‘creative’ thing to do?
Yes! This is the way! You should completely neglect to develop any sort of understanding of the musical art form and just write music through sheer random chance, like a monkey on a typewriter.
Ok, ok, let me stop here before we have a sarcasm overdose.
Let me tell you the real surprising thing: All these people who say that music theory destroys creativity actually have a point!
No, I’m not going to take that back or make it sarcastic again. I mean it: they DO have a point.
There IS a specific moment when you learn music theory where things could “go the wrong way,” and you can actually harm your creativity.
I call this “The Danger Zone of Music Theory”
And - if it wasn’t clear from the uber-clear name that I gave it - you really do not want to get stuck in the Danger Zone of Music Theory.
So, if you feel that music theory is holding you back… well, watch this video where I explain what is is, how to avoid it, and how to get out of it while you are still in time:
… of course, you should watch this video even if you don’tfeel that music theory is holding you back… so you can avoid it in the future and/or help your friends who may be stuck in the … (epic voice) Danger Zone of Music Theory! (/epic voice)
One part of music theory that many people neglect (and it will not hurt your creativity) is learning all of the notes on the guitar fretboard. This helps you massively when learning, playing, or writing music – and think about it, what other instrument is there where people are not taught to know their notes? If you want to learn an easy way to know all of the notes on your fretboard, check out my free eBook on learning the notes on the guitar fretboard
Video Transcription
Hello internet, so nice to see you! So people on the internet tell you that if you study music theory, it’s gonna destroy your creativity. And you know, I’ve been fighting a long uphill battle to convince you guys, that is not true. But today, I declare defeat is indeed a point of truth in what those people say.
And it is perfectly true that if you learn music theory in the wrong way, that’s my disclaimer, okay? If you learn music theory the wrong way, it’s gonna completely destroy your creativity. And I’m going to explain you how and why not because I want you to do it, but because I want you to not do it, of course, okay.
It all boils down to how many options you have to do things, okay? Because what is creativity? Okay, people have made definitions of creativity, creativity, music is this is that you have options, you can either not know only one way of doing things, if you know only one way of doing things. You’re not creative.
If I’m telling you to play G major, D Major C major, and the only way you know it’s okay, if you can do only that, if you have no other way of playing it, you have no creativity because materially, that’s the only thing you can do. How can you be creative, if you have only one option, there is a worse situation, or you can have zero options.
If you don’t know how to play guitar, and I’m telling you to play C major D Major G major, you have no idea what I’m talking about, okay? It all boils down to options. Too many people learn music theory. And they learn music theory. And every time somebody says, that’s how you do things. In their mind, this translates to this is the only way to do it. This is the way this is the way, which is never true.
It’s never meant we when we teach music theory, and we tell you, that’s how you do it. It’s never made, this is the only way to do it. It’s never meant this is the right way to do it. It’s never meant this is the only possible correct way of doing it. Okay, and but I see these all the time I talk with students, I talk with people, I respond to my comments that you guys gently wrote on my own, not so gently sometimes on my videos, okay, and I notice how some people think that what they put in the video is the only right possible way, which I never met.
Okay. So if you enter, if you come and learn music theory, thinking, I am going to learn the correct way of doing music. This is going to destroy your creativity. Because everything you learn, we stop you. If you come in and learn music theory in a way, like I’m going to learn the right way of making music is going to destroy your creativity completely.
Because everything you learn will stop you, you learn one way to play the G chord. And you will learn in learning stops there because you learn the way of playing the G chord. This is the way in reality you can play the G chord in several positions in the fretboard, you can play it here. Sure you can play it here.
But you can also play it here. And you have a lot of other possible options for playing the G chord around the fretboard. Okay, one more interesting than the other. Okay, seven, and they have all their users and some of them. Interesting, or can I say? Less common, existing, logical, okay?
Whenever you learn music theory, if you want to destroy your creativity, and again, I get it. That’s the point that some people make. And that’s because they’re learning it this way. If you want to destroy your creativity, every time I or somebody else, say something, think to yourself, This is the only way to do it.
This is a way when you learn something, before you learn something, you have zero options. These, it’s a good place to be because when you have zero options, you’re open to learning that’s a good place to be. Because you come in and you’re learning and you’re having fun and you’re getting something new.
And then you expand your horizon. It’s good to have zero options because you’re You’re under no illusion that you know something. The problem happens every time. When you have one option. That’s the danger zone when you put a big triangle here. Okay, that’s the danger zone. Okay, when you know how to do something in only one way, that’s the danger zone, you should know that you should remember that and every time you’re in the danger zone, you want to move along until you get out of the danger zone.
Okay, it’s when you know only one way to play that chord. Well, you know, only one way to play that song. You know only one way to finger that solo two fingers at scale. And you know only one way to do anything, you know only one position for the interview, if you didn’t, you know, this year so you and you don’t have here, here, here, here here, then you have only one option.
So when every time you have only one option, think danger, okay? Why? Because if you have only one option, you are not creative with that. You can’t possibly be because you have only one option. What do you want to be one to get out of the danger zone and go into two plus options. And that’s where the fun begin.
Because the moment you start having more than one option, you have two options, or three options, or 100 option, then you can start picking and choosing the option that works best for your song. You can start being creative simply by by putting things together, putting things together in Latin, Coombe, Panera calm, composing camp from putting things together, the idea of writing music was not that you come up with something from nothing, you that you come up with something put putting together elements you already know, you already learn and other people know.
But the way you put them together is original, you can write their song using the same old chords. But if you have several options for each one of them, you can create something completely new, even if every single chord is old. If you know, chord progressions, but you know, several ways of playing the same chord progression, you can create something new, because you have options. Okay?
So yes, it is completely true that studying music theory the way most people teach it the way most books teach it the way most university courses, teach it, okay, we will destroy your creativity because they teach you one option. And it’s not their fault, because for the teacher, for the professor, for your trainer, whatever, your guitar teacher, it’s pretty obvious to them that that’s just one possible way.
It’s just one thing is just something you want to practice right now. And it’s pretty obvious to them that there are more options, but they don’t tell you. And so what I see it’s kind of a it’s kind of miscommunication between teachers, and students. And what I see all the time when I go around and talk with students, is that they don’t know it.
So now I’m telling you, every time you learn something, ask yourself, is there any other way of doing that? Is there any other way I can do that? That sounds different maybe? Is there any other approach I can use? Is there any other way to put this on the fretboard? Can I do the same but in a different way? And until you find an answer, don’t stop, you’re in the danger zone. Don’t stop in the danger zone.
Okay. All these kind of, I’m not gonna call it work, because it’s fun learning new origin is packed with all this kind of process if you want. It’s made way easier if you know your instrument. Okay, and one thing I see, the biggest waste of time most guitar players have on their instrument is that I don’t know the notes on the fretboard.
You tell them to play an E note or an E chord. And they take forever to find that E chord and then Accounting I guess the G string your G, A, B, C, D E, I found my E note on the world. Congratulations. We are the next song ready? Okay, you should go a little bit faster than that. Now, if you are in this situation, don’t worry. It’s not your fault is that you haven’t learned your notes yet? How can you learn those notes?
Well, I created a video and ebook that details the whole process. And with that investment of five minutes a day, I know it’s a big investment. It’s five minutes a day, okay, you can learn all the notes in your fretboard completely for free, the book is free, okay completely for free. And you learn them permanently. And you have instant recall of all the notes you just know what they are, you know that what they did the year but another etc are the higher octave.
You find all of them without even thinking how this is possible because you don’t memorize them. But you train those notes into your hands and into your muscle memory until you know where they are. It’s easier than it seems. It takes less time. It’s more fun and it looks like just click on the link on the top right or in the description.
Get that ebook completely free, your risk is zero. And then you too can go through all this this whole process and learn how to play the same thing in different ways. And finally, be creative. Okay, so remember the danger zone.
Don’t stay in the danger zone. If you stay in the danger zone. Then of course music theory will renew and we don’t want that go beyond the danger zone and music theory will help you and make you a better musician. This is the Tommaso Zillio of MusicTheoryForGuitar.com and until next time, enjoy.