Music Theory? duuuhh

Alright folks, Another pondering thought has crossed my mind this evening (be afraid)... That is:
'Is music theory absolutely essential for all types of music?' My answer??

Most of the time! But depending on the genre of music you're playing, it's importance varies...
Genres such as jazz, prog & classical; having a knowledge of scales, harmony and sight reading is absolutely essential!!! Other styles such as punk, blues (I can probably think of more..) then.. you could probably get by without as much knowledge... (all entirely subjective and opinion based)

That's probably the reason why jazz/classical students have previously criticised the pop course. don't deny it...     
  
                                             ;)

HOWEVER! Playing a certain style does not limit your learning to a certain theoretical level. Generally, my opinion is listen and take from every style of music you can. I've currently got grade 6 music theory, I can't say I've felt particularly limited by my knowledge of theory. It's just a matter of getting the basic grasp of it, then the rest of it is pretty straight forward.

A case study!
When guitarists use different tunings, often it is to achieve a different kind of sound. From a songwriters view point, often it's to unfamilirarise themselves from the neck. You can know how to play every scale, position, time, chord and then some other guy comes along that knows nothing about that but can write better riffs! It's because not being aware of the theoretical aspect of what they're playing, they just know what sounds good.

A good idea? you don't have to know how to play every scale (although I still recommend it), something better is to pitch the note you're playing in your head. When you write melodies/solos/riffs, try singing them first then playing it on your instrument! Having relative pitch is more important than perfect pitch. Train your ears to recognise intervals, sing along while you're playing melodies, maybe even write out some notation and try to sing it out if you want to develop those bits.

Melodies should come from your head not your hands!

First Blog

Well I've stumbled across this site... Best get blogging I guess, I'll try to keep this going!

What's on my mind? from a somewhat controversial perspective ..

On a real note, does the whole promoting gigs/events through websites/texts sending out mass messages actually work? through my experience, I've come to realise that 95% of the time... It's not really going to happen!

We all get those FB adds from promoters and a lot of the time, we get about 10 event invites at once about gigs with bands/djs we've never heard of... Usually it's a 'Not Attending' the majority of the time. As we know, Facebook is a social networking site, so when we receive just the mere title of the event from these guys, it's seen as spam and we don't tend to react kindly to that. When most people are looking to go out, they're not wanting to watch someone they've never heard of. Instead, these should be made more personal.

Examples?
Hype it up! (face to face/phone calls) make sure everyone knows who you are before you go putting up posters, events. That way, they can put a name to a face and will be more likely to come along
(unless it's gonna be bollocks..)
(the strongest one!) Word of mouth! tell your friends, they tell their friends.
Viral advertising on youtube! Make a cool video. Show people it's all worth it
(if you're using facebook events) Make sure it's in their area!!! there's no point in inviting someone to an event in london if they live half way across the country..

That's a mere few to think about, I hope you enjoyed my change of text size and bold to emphasise my points..

More blogs to come hopefully!! I can literally feel your excitement through the screen, bet you can't wait!

On another note! if you've got to this point in the blog, kindly go to my band's page and check out the tracks! lots of exciting stuff happening for us at the moment!
www.myspace.com/arizonabayuk