How Important Is Music Theory For Jazz Guitar? 

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how is this only 1600 views? he's the only guy teaching real jazz on youtube

I'm glad to hear you shouting out Troy Grady. his work is great, and provides a great analogy between intellectual knowledge of a technique and instinctive/embodied knowledge of a technique.

YES!!! INSTINCT vs INTELLECT perfect. Love Grant Green. Great guy for blues players to dip there toe in jazz. Green definitely has one foot in the blues so there are familiar lines here. Love Charlie Christian too. Both were amazing players. Love your channel.

I'll never will forget an old jazz guy that was in my local college jazz class. Can remember his name but what I remember is his ability to blow the changes on his sax. He had played professionally and dazzled the staff will his improvising powers. I remember talking to him one and asked him why are you taking this class when you already know how to play. He said he wanted to understand theoretically what he was doing. I was completely the opposite. I understood music theory but had no improvising ability. I couldn't even play Mary had a little lamb by ear. I told him you don't need this nonsense, you can play already. I told him I'd rather by in his shoes. Guys who can play get the gig. Guys like me teach, and lead others young musicians down a road to failure.

I've taught French for years, and I can tell you that as adults, people's natural ability to learn vary from one extreme to the other. Some people can only learn if they learn the rules, while other people are much more willing to repeat without analysis. In the same way, some people can only learn by translating every word, while other people are willing to get on board with a word or expression by just having a general idea, accept the gist of it without having to find an English equivalent (which is often not really accurate anyway). And finally some people are very gifted, whichever way they learn, they achieve very good progress, and for the teacher it's the easiest job in the world. And some people are... well, the opposite. I've seen people who cannot learn the different forms of the verb Etre (to be), it's basically six words to learn by heart, no matter how hard they try, even if you gave them 3 months. Fine they are not going to learn through grammar, we can always learn by being exposed to the language, hear, repeat, get a sense of the meaning even if we don't understand every word. This is the ideal way to learn and it does wonder with people who are able to do it. But it's not everyone. Some people are completely hermetic to this way of learning. It has to be said that I taught many people, I consider myself successful at it, although I wasn't really able to teach certain people (a minority of people). Eventually it wasn't my career. I can only imagine how this translate to jazz learning. It is true that music is a language, and ideally it should be learnt like you learn your first language. But unfortunately most people cannot learn another language the way they learnt their first language. We can try to unlock those skills with some psychological tricks, but I mean it was beyond my ability to do that.

I look foward to your next video. You are the best teacher i have come across recently you are very detailed and dont throw in silly pop ups and edits in your videos just information.

A lifetime’s worth.

Great video! Thank you Denis😎

Music theory may not be that important or necessary for playing the guitar. But there seems to be a tendency to completely forget that music theory can indeed be really interesting. And once you've got the basics down, it may even become more interesting. You may even - God forbid - profit from it for your playing and overall musical understanding. Just for the record.

"I'm not talking out of my ass". I love it.

17:40 it's a standard 6/4 cadence

so what youtuber/video was it?

It’s a great exercise in contemplation. Without foundational theory, you have nothing. The great masters may not have been able to read or write a so called “Be-Bop” scale but they certainly knew harmony,what flowed,etc. and the whole thing stems from the influence of the Baroque period. Your point about listening is Key. Whether you can name the theory or not, it’s in your head. Would love to talk for hours on this. alas… it is interesting how everything you play, you are defining with theory. Lol

😂Pokemon hanginging on guitar ❤

Traditional music theory, none. Personal vocabulary and sounds, as much as you can get on your ears.

Berkeley does tend to get bruited in this respect, but theory seems to hobble peoples jazz voice from year dot. Most notably folks with a classical bent like Vaughan Williams (dreadful penguins), Gershwin (gimme some decent Klezmer instead), Previn ('nuff said) , Yehudi (and I think Stephan suffered a bit) but also I find some of the jazz royalty from the '40s quite staid because of it (esp Duke)

I like your call to listen to the music you strive to play. But not sure why you spent so much time in this video dissing a RU-vidr and higher education in jazz, or why you stuck in a racial slur about the people in the country you live. Wading through the extra 15 min of you explaining the RU-vidr’s mistakes wasn’t worth the 5 min you took to explain part of Grant Green’s solo and show us a few different cadences. Not pissed off, as you say, but sad.