While pianists, and players of most musical instruments, tend to consider music theory as a crucial part of their musical journey, many guitar players tend to view music theory as useless at best, and as a stumbling block to creativity and self expression at worst.

In this article on music theory myths guitar players tend to believe I delve into and despel some common myths that lead to these negative beliefs about music theory.

In today’s article, I will show you different way you can harness the knowledge of music theory to become a better guitarist and a more complete musician.

1. Understanding the guitar fretboard

Until you learn some music theory basics, the name of the notes on the guitar fretboard and have a general idea of how they relate to each other, these notes seem to be thrown there at random.

In reality, there is a logic to the fretboard madness and learning the fundamentals of music theory, as well as spending some time memorizing the notes on the fretboard will take you a long way in understanding your patterns and choices you have through the fretboard maze.

2. Reading rhythms

If your’re learning a song, a lick, a riff or a solo, guitar tabs are great at showing you which notes to play, but don’t deliver much when it comes to the showing you the duration of each note.

The combination of these different note durations is what makes the rhyhtm in music.

Many guitar players, get the rhythm by ear, but learning the note durations and different time signatures, will make it easy to fill in the parts your ear didn’t manage to get – especially if the rhythm is complex.

3. Knowing which notes and scales to play over a chord progresson

Learning how to play scales on guitar is very important if you intend to improvise your own licks and solos.

However it’s also important to understand how scales work and what notes they consist of.

This will help you make the best note and scale choices when you’re improvising over chord progressions.

4. Ear training

Music theory doesn’t directly train your ear.

However, since ear training involves organizing sounds in your head, if those sounds are made of combination notes that follow logical patterns (intervals, scales, chords, chord progressions) you have already understood without attributing a sound to, learning and memorizing these sounds will be easier.

5. Guitar songwriting

Writing songs requires a different set of skills than playing the guitar, however the two subjects are very complementary to each other.

With few exceptions, when I ask my guitar students whether they also want to learn how to write songs, most answer in the positive.

If you intend to acquire the skill of songwriting apart from playing the guitar, music theory is great at connecting the two together.

It shows you the various musical options you have and can choose to use in your songs.

6. Replicating things

Do you sometimes play the guitar and stumble opon something you really like?

If you know some music theory, you can analyze what the melody or chord progression is made of and replicate it in different musical contexts, forms and variations.

7. Liberates your creativity

Not only is the myth that music theory stifles your creativity wrong, but actually the opposite happens – it frees it.

Many guitarists think that those guitar players who know music theory, are thinking numbers and making calculations when creating music.

Except that we don’t do that.

After we figure out say, a new scale, we may, until we’re confident on how to use it, play a bit mechanically (such as practicing scale sequences on it).

But once that scale is internalized, the opposite happens.

Since we know, with confidence, which notes we have as options, and since we have trained our ears to follow the path of the scale (and know how a note will sound before we play it), we can focus all our attention on the creative aspect of making music.

Conclusion: How to benefit from music theory

I still study music theory on a regular basis.

Unlike the days when I was studying for exams (and didn’t understand the real value of music theory) today, I learn less in quantity and instead I internalize and apply every new music theory concept I learn.

If I learn a new scale, once I get comfortable with it, I will use it to create licks, riffs and solos. If I learn a new chord, or chord progression, I write a song with it.

Use books or articles to understand new music theory concepts but once you do, try to find a way to apply it in a real musical situation.

Because it’s only then that music theory becomes fun and, above all, useful.

Robert Callus is a guitar player, songwriter and blogger and gives guitar lessons in Malta.