I’ve been a jazz player/teacher for a long time, and have had the good fortune of working, studying, and playing with a lot of great players. I’d like to give a little bit of insight into what I’ve learned, but please feel free to take it with a grain of salt.
First of all, the “theoretical minimum” is going to depend heavily on what kind of music you’re playing. You COULD use things like set theory, hexachords, and the rest of Milton Babbitt’s things to analyze delta blues, but my God… why on Earth would you want to?
At its core, all “theory” really is being able to connect two or more ideas together. We all have a “theory” when we play, whether we’re aware of it or not. Even as something as simple as “assuming the guitar is in tune, if I play this chord shape, it will always have the same sound” is a theoretical construct.
There are a number of “theoretical traditions” – collections of common ideas passed down and formed into a pedagogy – that may or may not make it easier to play. Some of it may be useful to you, some of it may not. My litmus test is something like:
- Does it help you understand the mindset of the players you are trying to emulate?
- Does it help you communicate ideas more fluently to your peers?
- Does it help you expand the artistic boundaries of the music you’re playing, in ways that may not be possible through your ears alone?
All of those things are going to depend on where you’re at, what kind of music you play, what your goals are, etc.
But because that’s kind of hopelessly broad, here’s a one-size-fits-all answer:
You should be able to name the scale degrees of all 12 keys – instantly, painlessly, effortlessly, mistake-free
If I ask you what the 6th degree of D is, you should answer “B” without a second thought.
If I ask you what the 5th degree of Ab is, you should answer “Eb” like someone just asked you your name.
I’m dead serious about this. It should be hardwired. Like if someone asked you 1 + 1. If you have to think about it, it’s not there yet.
There are a bunch of ways to get there… flash cards, worksheets, whatever. Do it for 5 - 10 minutes every day. You’ll make much faster progress than you think.
And if you’re at the point where what I’m asking doesn’t even make that much sense, or it’s still fuzzy, then there’s some base theoretical knowledge that needs to happen. There are lots of resources out there for basic music theory, pick one that works for you.
Once you can do that, I guarantee you that the rest of your music theory studies will be a breeze. There will be things you still need to study, of course, but you will have the keys to the kingdom. And this will be true no matter what kind of music you play.
Now, the question of “what do improvisors think when they’re playing” came up. This is a tremendously complex question – I am going to stick mostly with jazz players, because that’s what I know and because improvisation is an integral part of jazz and there’s a very high bar you have to reach before you’re even considered minimally competent at it.
The short answer: it depends on the player.
Troy has brought up Martin Miller, and how he has a collection of licks and ideas that he plays over each chord and/or chord changes. That is true for some players.
You could think of this as a spectrum of sorts. On the one side, you would have players that play almost entirely pre-arranged licks. On the other side, you have players that almost entirely eschew licks and patterns, and try to “live in the moment” – creating entirely spontaneous music.
Troy has argued that most – maybe even all – guitar players fall into this first group. But looking at the players he cites – Martin Miller, Pat Martino – I believe there might be some selection bias at work. Gypsy players, for the most part, love licks. A lot of them come straight from Django. And Pat Martino, God bless him, but work through something like “Linear Expressions” and you see those ideas pop up again and again for his entire career. Those guys are great players – they have a bag of tricks, and it works for them. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.
But there are other guys who don’t operate like that. It’s easier to find guys who aren’t guitar players: the classic example is Sonny Rollins, an all-time great improvisor that has spent 50+ years walking a tightrope every time he plays a solo. Lennie Tristano, a great player and teacher, specifically structured his teaching so that his students would NOT be playing memorized materials. You can hear the results of that in his own playing, and in his two most famous students, Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh.
And there are guitar players who really do try to play spontaneously. Wayne Krantz is a good example. Someone who would be good to talk to, if you wanted to get in their head, would be NYC based guitarist Chris Crocco. He has terrific chops, plays lines that should not be playable on guitar, and tries to consciously avoid any patterns in his playing.
As far as things other people have brought up in the thread:
- Pat Martino’s minor conversion is pretty straightforward: convert every chord type to minor. “Minor” for PM is not a specific scale – it’s a dorian/melodic minor mix with ample use of chromatic passing notes.
- Ben Monder’s teaching (if he is even interested in teaching at all, and I’m not sure that he is) is not going to be geared towards beginners or intermediate players. It’s going to be for advanced/professional players who want to explore the bleeding edge of harmonic concepts on guitar. If you’re asking about scales, chords, triads, ie, basic stuff, then he’s not going to be interested in working with you.
