Famous musicians who only have basic knowledge of music theory. . .

Walnutcracker · 18-02-2012 01:34AM #1

I know there have been a fair few famous musicians who we all think are amazing musicians yet they couldn't read or write music and even knew very little about music theory. I just saw Noel Gallagher on the Late Late tonight and while i'm not a fan i do recall the last time he was on that he said he didn't even know half of the chords he was playing. Got me thinking. I have been playing music, in various forms, the best part of 20 years. Sometimes i feel i should know more than i do but then i hear musicians who people look up to and learn from admitting that they don't even know the theory behind what they're playing. Who do you know of, that are well regarded, that fall into this category? I'll start -

- Noel Gallagher as mentioned
- I heard that Jimi Hendrix was more of a player than knowing what he was doing
- I seen a video of Marty Friedman (from Megadeth) saying he didn't know the name of the scale he played
- I also saw a video of the guitarist from the Melvins talking through some of this songs riffs and saying he didn't know what the chords were and that he often just played what he thought sounded good. He even went on the say that the drummer often says that his 1 count is in a different place than anyone elses 1 count :P But then again that's their style

- I heard similar from Dave Grohl. In a video, he said he can't read music and often when writing music he goes with what sounds good, even if he doesn't have a clue what he's playing.

Anyone else have any more to add to the list. I think it's inspiring knowing that people we often look up to don't know as much as we think they do.

kirb42 · 18-02-2012 11:12AM

I'm afraid I might be letting the cat out of the bag here....Paul McCartney & John Lennon.... famously couldn'r read or write music...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca_GCvApODg

trad · 18-02-2012 11:14AM

In the words of Brush Shields

"Music is like football. Those who know least about it get most out of it."

firefly08 · 20-02-2012 03:22PM

It's very common. I wouldn't be surprised in fact if a majority of rock musicians can't read music at all. They are successful because of the music they create, and being able to record is enough for that. Reading and writing music was much more important in the past because (a) it was the only way to "record" the music, and (b) music was primarily written for other people to perform, since that was the only way to "broadcast" it. Now you can just record it and broadcast it to the masses electronically, so why bother writing it down?

To add to the list, Dimebag Darrell could not only not read or write musical notation, he didn't even take lessons.

Also this is a guess, but I bet Phil Lynott had no training in music theory either. Just a hunch.

session savage · 24-02-2012 08:34PM

Albert Hammond must have written over 100 songs. He wrote "the air that I breathe", "to all the girls I loved before", "one moment in time", "creep" and joe dolans "make me an island" and he couldnt read or write music and as far as I know he didnt know what chords he was playing either..... theres hope for me yet

noby · 25-02-2012 08:10AM

session savage wrote: »

Albert Hammond must have written over 100 songs. He wrote "the air that I breathe", "to all the girls I loved before", "one moment in time", "creep" and joe dolans "make me an island" and he couldnt read or write music and as far as I know he didnt know what chords he was playing either..... theres hope for me yet

Are you talking about radiohead's "creep"? He didn't write that; they just used a melody line from "air that I breathe" so he got writing credit.

elefant · 25-02-2012 08:19AM

He wrote 'I'm a Train' though, so he's a grade A dude no matter what.

purplepanda · 23-06-2012 09:38PM

Knowing how to read music & music theory are not always connected, many piano players don't know theory but read music for example. With guitarists it's usually the other way round.

Bass players & drummers are more likely to read music than guitar players.

I've seen pictures of Hendrix playing piano & writing music, also Lennon & McCartney wrote on keyboards so must have been able to read some music scores?

Music theory is not absolute & rules are there to be broken as long as it sounds good!!!

Still making out that you don't really know what you're playing is more rock & roll :pac:

EDIT Jimi plays Hammond Organ!!!

Jimi+Hendrix+jimi_piano.jpg

UserName 217 · 24-06-2012 12:50PM

Jimi is asked in this interview does he read music and his reply is
"no, not at all".

Skip to 50 seconds to see it.

Demeyes · 24-06-2012 07:42PM

I think most people who have been playing generally pick up a fair amount of theory, much more than they might even realise. They might not know names for what they do but they know it'll work.
The basics of theory aren't crazy complicated and most people could get a lot out of only a few hours reading and thinking about theory. The basics of a scale and how chords are constructed could be explained to anyone in no time really.

martinedwards · 25-06-2012 07:56AM

when the who were recording with an orchestra the conductor bawled out the orchestra becaust the uneducated idiots with no music theory were wiping the floor with them.

there are a million guitarists who don't do theory.

BB King can't even play chords!

darrenw5094 · 25-06-2012 01:59PM

martinedwards wrote: »

BB King can't even play chords!

Even Noel Gallagher can play those.....lots of them.

Squidgy Black · 25-06-2012 10:48PM

darrenw5094 wrote: »

Even Noel Gallagher can play those.....lots of them.

That's ALL he can play

Ulveren · 29-06-2012 09:57PM

Demeyes wrote: »

I think most people who have been playing generally pick up a fair amount of theory, much more than they might even realise. They might not know names for what they do but they know it'll work.

Everyone in the western world has an ingrained awareness of the harmonic, melodic and rhythmic structures that have defined Western Music over 400 years. If you play or listen to a sequence of F,G, and C major chords, you have a sense of balance and rest as the chords land on the C. You don't have to know the interrelations between the intervals of the triads as they progress in a perfect cadence, you can listen to hundreds of tunes from popular tunes and you'll find this same chord sequence, made different by rhythm, timbre (the particular sound of an instrument) or the way the notes of the chords are arranged.

This means that handling the notes we have can lead to creativity, we just have to be aware of all the musical effects we have: dynamics, rhythmic variations, choice of instrument, the placement of the melody and its shape, and, literally, an infinite number of other things at hand

tomasrojo · 05-07-2012 01:19AM

purplepanda wrote: »

Lennon & McCartney wrote on keyboards so must have been able to read some music scores?

No, they couldn't read or write music. In their teen years, they couldn't record their songs either, and since they couldn't write out the melody, they'd lose the song if their memory subsequently let them down. They made a virtue of it, concluding that if they couldn't remember it later then it couldn't have been all that good.

I wouldn't go so far as to say they had no knowledge of musical theory though; they got a fair bit of off-the-cuff tuition from George Martin in the early days, and they seem to have picked up a lot of tricks to do with time-signature switches and modulation from imitating other people's songs.

Django Reinhardt is a good example of a first-rate musician who couldn't read or write music. As far as I know, he couldn't read or write his native tongue either! Negligible official schooling of any kind.

spokesman · 07-10-2012 01:46PM

martinedwards wrote: »

when the who were recording with an orchestra the conductor bawled out the orchestra becaust the uneducated idiots with no music theory were wiping the floor with them.

there are a million guitarists who don't do theory.

BB King can't even play chords!

Thats right, if you look at the rattle & hum dvd, you can see when BB King is rehearsing with U2, he says something like " dont mention chords because i dont know any" or words to that effect.

tomasrojo · 07-10-2012 10:40PM

spokesman wrote: »

Thats right, if you look at the rattle & hum dvd, you can see when BB King is rehearsing with U2, he says something like " dont mention chords because i dont know any" or words to that effect.

RW: You're an excellent musician. I'm sure you can learn chords.

BB: I know some chords. I'm not shall we say fluent as a lot of musicians are. But the chords that I know I can't play them behind myself. If I'm singing and trying to play something I cannot play properly behind myself, the chords that should be there. That's what I meant, but if you come in and catch the show tonight you'll hear me play chords.

http://www.mnblues.com/review/bbking-intv-rw4-00.html

K.Flyer · 07-10-2012 10:53PM

Roger Waters from The Pink Floyd in the early days could not tune his guitar and often Richard Wright the pianist would tune it up for him.

Shakti · 13-10-2012 11:04AM

Walnutcracker wrote: »

- I heard similar from Dave Grohl. In a video, he said he can't read music and often when writing music he goes with what sounds good, even if he doesn't have a clue what he's playing.

Is there another way? I think there is a lot of needless snobbery surrounding this subject.

-=al=- · 13-10-2012 12:13PM

once you have a good set of ears you'll usually be ok

Deschain · 30-10-2012 12:12PM

There are many famous musicians who can neither read or write music, or have much theory knowledge. It is not necessary to understand the theory to be able to know what sounds good, what the theory does is explain why it sounds good. People have been making music for a long time before someone tried to explain what they were doing or name what they were doing, the music is in you to make whether you know the theory or not. However, I sometimes come across musicians who claim that they don't need theory or the 'rules' as it will hinder their creativity in some way. I can't understand this philosophy, as a musician I take everything into consideration when making music, I have some understanding of theory and that knowledge has helped me discover different possibilities that I may not have thought of otherwise. Yes you may stumble on these possibilities without the theory but they may just pass you by with it.

Kev M · 18-11-2012 07:21PM

Noel Gallagher went on to say that none of his bandmates could ever read music or really had any formal theory training to speak of, and he said he's happy he never had any.

From my own experience of playing for years without any form of theory, and then going on to learn to read and finally actually learn what the hell I was doing, I believe that it's both good and bad.... Bad in that it actually can limit you in certain ways, because rather than just going off on whatever feels/sounds good (99% of the time would have been pentatonic or blues scale stuff for me I guess) you can end up becoming robotic and overthinking everything. Depends on the style you aspire to play ultimately I think. But for most rock/pop radio music, theory isn't necessary. Obviously a different story if you're into Paganini.

joydivision · 18-11-2012 07:26PM

When people say they had no theory training they dont mean they picked up the guitar one day and played it .
Youd need to know pentatonic scales at the least if you wanted to do anything other than yourself and the guitar .
I dont think lizzy ever went anymore complicated than pentatonic scales .

IrishGrimReaper · 20-11-2012 04:20PM

Another one is Stevie Ray Vaughan, I forget which interview it was but basically he said he'd record himself playing on a cassette player and let his band listen to it and they pretty much did the rest hehe.

Found it, it's from the start.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_dTeL7Aw1I&feature=plcp

Rented Mule · 21-11-2012 12:35PM

K.Flyer wrote: »

Roger Waters from The Pink Floyd in the early days could not tune his guitar and often Richard Wright the pianist would tune it up for him.

To this day, Malcolm Young still has to tune Angus Young's guitar.

darrenw5094 · 21-11-2012 01:22PM

Rented Mule wrote: »

To this day, Malcolm Young still has to tune Angus Young's guitar.

With all the album sales, surely he can buy a fricken tuner.

We all have them.

joydivision · 21-11-2012 04:27PM

When they say they cant read music they usually mean in the classical sense .
I have loads of songs written all I do is write the lyrics and write what chord is played over the words .
If I go as far to write riffs I write them in tab form (a picture of guitar strings with the number of the fret im pressing on them )
alot of music is wrote this way . Its all you really need .
Noel Gallagher was a guitar tech for the inspiral carpets before he joined oasis . If anybody honestly believes he didnt know chords Or how to read a tab they are deluding themselves . Its just what they say to sound cool .
Metallica I believe are all classically trained musicians . One of the few famous ones .

Deschain · 29-11-2012 01:16PM

joydivision wrote: »

Metallica I believe are all classically trained musicians . One of the few famous ones .

That is not true. The only member of Metallica to have a classical background was Cliff Burton. It was to him they looked to when writing harmonies and such.

Famous musicians who only have basic knowledge of music theory. . .

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