Un-theory Your Music Education- Playing Intuitively vs. Memorization

My 17-year-old self after performing at my Senior Recital. I don’t have a picture that is relevant to my distaste for learning music theory early.

Piano, I’ve played my whole life. Keyboard (specifically heavy metal and prog rock) I discovered at 14. I taught these instruments at all levels for almost ten years. Now that I’m taking up guitar at 33, I know what sounds I’m going for when my fingers touch the strings, but I don’t know how to execute them yet.

I prefer to keep it this way, because learning music theory early limits creativity and stifles innovation. I’m speaking from experience. I’ve seen it happen to many students, and recalibrated the way I taught lessons halfway through my career as a result. Music theory is simply the names of the notes and movements that musicians play naturally because they sound good. It’s a universal language across all instruments. But a person only needs the vocabulary if they plan to communicate with other musicians, and often, not even then does a person need the vocabulary.

Let me break this down. There are two ways to acquire a skill:

• learned knowledge (knowing names of notes, knowing chord shapes and scale patterns, knowing how to read music and what all the different spots and lines mean),

• intuitive knowledge (the ability to mimic hand movements and match sounds, knowing if something sounds “good” or sounds “off”, the ability to count, the ability to notice if a muscle hurts and should be relaxed)

When we develop an interest in a new instrument, it’s because intuitively, we say, “I could do that,” when we are exposed to it. What is it that we can do, exactly? The actions of the second group- mimic, listen and match, train our limbs and fingers to move in new ways. The intuitive senses that you developed as a child. These are the tools that create, innovate, and fulfill when we use them to develop a skill.

By learning music theory first, we’re learning the “correct” ways to play scales and chords, we drill the patterns into our heads, and recall them from memory. Conversely, when we allow ourselves to “mess around” for as long as possible and get familiar with the sounds that we enjoy hearing and playing, we develop our skill free of limitations and attuned to our natural instincts.

We also develop our distinct, unique “sound” when we focus on learning intuitively and based in body movement. That is not to say that a person who tends to use frequent scales/chords/diddleys doesn’t have their own “sound”, they’ve just developed their sound as a result of memorization that is now autopilot to recall. And possibly, they’ve had to spend time intentionally straying outside of their learned patterns after they’ve spent much time inside of them.

This begs the question, “Isn’t there a ‘proper’ way to play every instrument?” Sure. But that falls in the intuition category: We need to train our hands to move free of tension or pain, and learn to move them in ways that create dynamic. This is all related to HOW a person physically plays- not the content of what they are playing. There is an ocean of difference between the HOW (called technique), and WHAT (design). Technique refers to what your body has to do to produce the sound and do it smoothly and without tension. Design refers to what notes and patterns you are playing within the sound that you’re making.

Some non-music examples to further drive home this distinction:

Let’s say you want to get into pottery. You will have to learn the basic elements of what you’ll be touching. You need to learn about kilns and safety. You need to learn about the most effective ways to shape clay into a general dish-like design. You *don’t* need to learn the most popular ways to paint it, the dish shapes that are most attractive to potential buyers, or any “you should do this” that a fellow potter insists is the right way to alter your slab of clay after proper technique has been executed. These examples fall within the realm of design, and it is auxiliary. You have 100% control of that. After you learn your pottery technique and pick the supplies that work best for you, it’s up to you to design the thing as wacky or traditional as you’d like.

Let’s say you’re learning language. If your goal is to talk to people, you need to clearly hear strings of random mouth sounds, mimic them, associate them with body language and in what context they are being expressed, and eventually repeat them back to people when context dictates. Mimicry wins over memorization because we learned this skill as a baby when we first learned to communicate with our caregivers. You *don’t* need to learn how to read the language or write it, yet, because you will spend all your time trying to decode the string of sounds that someone has just said to you by writing them out in your head chalkboard and saying, “Those sounds don’t match what the written letters should sound like.” You’ve focused on the written design of the language rather than the intuitive skills that will help you engage in conversation. It is immeasurably more important to focus on mimicry, listening, and developing mouth and throat muscles to perfectly match the sounds you hear.

What if people learned music this way, too, using our instinctual baby skills? What if a person fumbled around on an instrument and strung together a handful of beautiful-sounding notes without worrying about if they are “in key” or not? Teacher Lauren can smell the breeze of innovation from here.

All of this being said, I’m still a proponent of learning music theory, but further along in a person’s education… After they’ve already developed a strong sense of what they LIKE to play and what feels good in the hands (because instruments are exercise, after all), and which sounds fill them with adrenaline and “the happies” when played. If you want to play music that already exists, you’ll probably need to learn how to read notation. If you want to collaborate with a band, saying “F Minor” will be easier than just showing someone the frets you’re playing so they can match you. If you want to write within a well-known style of music, like the blues, patterns and adhering to them are your friends.

You should use theory the way it is intended- to have a language to communicate your notes and movements with other people. Use it as a guideline and THEN explore what note options exist outside of those memorized patterns. Use it when you’re bored of what you’re doing or feeling stuck, because there will always be more advanced and unknown theory available than what you already have in your arsenal.

My message to beginners, as someone who is a beginner again, is to beware or teachers who pressure you to abandon your baby skills in favor of memorized knowledge. Anyone who tries to tell you that learning feel and developing your ear are less important than memorizing patterns, is someone who probably is not in touch with their baby skills, themselves, or who was traditionally trained the same way they are training you. Ditch that teacher. Find yourself a teacher who encourages improvisation sessions over sterile memorization. A teacher that makes you feel empowered is one who acknowledges your accomplishments even if they’re as small as, you’ve accidentally played a juicy note and decided that it belongs, and you’re both excited that it’s just so darn juicy.

Some people have no desire to innovate, which is fine. Some teachers like to use an artist’s songs in order to teach in-context skills to their students. Which is great.

Ultimately, it only matters that you are acquiring skills that are new to you in order to develop a strong sense of self-worth and accomplishment. Creation and innovation create new genres, eras, and a whole flock of people who are deeply moved by what you’ve conjured up from the abyss.

As of day 5 of playing guitar, I am pleased with the feel that I’m developing and my ability to match what I hear in my head to the frets on the guitar… which is about all I can do. But the growth is exponential right now because I’m only using my senses and not losing motivation because of “the rules”.

Baby skills, baby!