Whoa, let's all cool it for a moment...
I don't know that anyone was trying to be snobby
here, but I suppose I can see where the disconnect
was. A lot of the Europeans on the list assume a
certain level of basic general music theory knowledge.
They are in the right to do so. Sadly, however, for
a lot of guitarists in the US, mastery of even basic
music theory (i.e. terms like "transpose,"
"half-step," and "minor third") is considered an
advanced skill and therefore the province of academics
and people who hate "real" music. (Let's leave the
musicologists out of this for now :). Therein the
perceived snobbery in the advice offered from over the
ocean.
As an example, I had a private guitar student come
to me a while back enthusiastically claiming that he
wanted to know "all there is to know" about music
theory. The guy could already play quite well, knew
his basic chord shapes and could - slowly - figure out
the name of any note on the neck. However, after a
couple of lessons in which he obviously was making no
effort to absorb the theory information, the source of
his frustration came out: "This is a waste of time. I
don't want to memorize notes, scales, and chord
formulas - I want to learn _GUITAR_ music theory!" He
wasn't able to articulate it any more clearly than
that and I never did figure out exactly what it was
that he wanted. I suspect that he was after more
shapes and finger patterns - which I did not show him.
Ironically, I had him do most of the theory work
on the fingerboard so that he'd be able to make the
head/hands connection. Never made it to that point,
obviously.
Chris
--- Howard Posner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Friday, Jun 15, 2007, at 09:13
> America/Los_Angeles, Narada wrote:
>
> > I'm forming the opinion that there
> > are certain 'members' on this list who have
> adopted a rather arrogant
> > and elitist attitude towards guitarists for whom
> the lute is a second
> > instrument.
>
> Obviously, you formed such an opinion some time ago,
> and you're
> entitled to it. But please don't tell us you're
> "utterly confused" and
> ask very basic questions, then tell us how offended
> you are when you
> get basic answers that don't acknowledge your
> advanced state of
> knowledge. Unless you're more interested in
> impressing everyone as a
> sage than in actually learning something, you're
> better off with
> answers that tell you too much than answers that
> tell you not enough to
> avoid the danger of making you feel slighted.
>
> HP
>
>
>
> To get on or off this list see list information at
>
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
>
____________________________________________________________________________________
Park yourself in front of a world of choices in alternative vehicles. Visit the
Yahoo! Auto Green Center.
http://autos.yahoo.com/green_center/
