Music theory, by its very nature, is very different from instrumental technique.
Ultimately, technique is about solving a practical problem. “How do I move the pick quickly and efficiently between strings?” As this site has shown, there are a handful of ways to do it. Many practitioners don’t even realize how they’re doing it.
But once we get to music theory, now we’re getting into “how does one think about music?” and that is a much more elusive, difficult object of study.
Sometimes we’re lucky, and artists tell us how they think about it. Schoenberg, for example, left us a lot of pedagogical texts that help illuminate how he thinks about harmony, counterpoint, form, aesthetics, etc.
But then you have someone like Bach – very little of his teaching materials still exist, most of it through second or third-hand sources. I’ve examined a good deal of the literature of Bach, and I have yet to find a really satisfactory answer about how he thought about music - what was going on through his head that enabled him to not only compose the music he did, but improvise three and four part fugues without any pre-meditation. The recent scholarship on Neapolitan conservatories and partimento by people like Robert Gjerdingen and Giorgio Sanguinetti is definitely promising – you get a better understanding of the world of the 18th century musician, where the line between musician, accompanist, improvisor, and composer were much more blurred than they are now. But it’s still a long way from ol’ Bach.
Likewise with improvisors like Charlie Parker or John Coltrane. Someone mentioned bebop scales. I’m familiar with them, and think they can be useful. But is there any evidence that Charlie Parker or Dizzy Gillespie actually thought of an eight note scale, with a chromatic tone between the root and b7? Hell, is there even a recorded example of either of them playing an eight note scale from root to root? I can think of lots of chromatic scalar lines in Bird’s playing, but the ones that come to mind are the ones in solos like “Donna Lee” - first chorus, the very first Bbm7 / Eb7 cadence - a typical example, but nothing really like a “bebop scale.”
And honestly, if you can convincingly explain what John Coltrane’s theoretical mindset was from about 1964 onwards, I’ll happily take lessons from you.
But even if you never get it, I think the process of trying to excavate a hero’s thought process is definitely worthwhile. Sometimes you get lucky – transcribe enough Charlie Christian, and you start to see that he was clearly thinking in terms of chord shapes to structure his lines.
But even if you never quite figure it out, it can be an invaluable starting point for your own personal music theory, which is ultimately what we’re all aiming for.
