The Steel Guitar Forum

Not real sure where or when I heard this statement, but someone once said "If you want to vacation in Mexico, learn to say Dos cerveza por favor. If you are moving there, learn Spanish." Music is a language. It is a lot more fun to have a great musical conversation with someone if you both speak fluently.

Dom Franco wrote:...the steel guitar does not always have to play the downbeat, we can hear the chord, then answer it with a slide or lick and come out sounding like a champ

Too many trade secrets...

well the jury's back , out of 148 folks participating, only 4 people feel that knowing ANY theory is out of the question. Pretty small group ! The other 144 see value even in a small degree. My own vote selection was:

Reasonable understanding

A reasonable understanding is all that is called for. I put myself in the higher category, but although it's helpful sometimes, it doesn't make me pick better.

Ian Rae wrote:A reasonable understanding is all that is called for. I put myself in the higher category, but although it's helpful sometimes, it doesn't make me pick better.

perhaps , but it may make you THINK differently as you are playing...

This is a constant work in progress for me.

Its a given that if you want to know, understand and apply the theory. Anyone who says otherwise is really going to be frustrated later on.

Your ear can only take you so far. Especially if you are learning something like Jazz where there are loads of different ways of approaching a tune and without some basic knowledge ingrained in your body and soul it won't happen. You might as well stick to Blues.

I remember being told those that can't play Jazz or classical play rock/blues etc.

what some say is "I don't know or want to know theory and have done just fine without it.
translated: I'm a self taught genius and nobody can tell me sht.

i remember Bobby Bowman playing something on his Emmons for me
and when i asked him what "note " he played at a certain point ,
he just looked at me and said
" beats the hell out of me, i just hear it in my head and and play it "

Stefan Robertson wrote: I remember being told those that can't play Jazz or classical play rock/blues etc.

i'd be content playing the blues.
at least then you don't have jazz snobs bugging you with their feigned intelligence.

Some steel players are mechanically-minded and make their own repairs; others don't attempt to. And so it is with music theory - it's useful if you're that way inclined, but not essential.

And we should be careful to define what we mean by music theory - it's easy to assume that we're talking about the subject as traditionally taught in schools and colleges, but a theory is any system that removes guesswork. Bobby Bowman will have had a theory that worked for him - to play what you hear requires a means of predicting the outcome. Buddy Emmons clearly had plenty of theory even though he could not have written it down in the same way as a university professor.

In addition, Bobby Bowman knew where he was on the fret board and where he was heading. He may very well have said " sure I don't exactly know what note it is" but he KNEW he was in the right positions and the actual note didn't matter. He knew it was a relative fit.

Relative notes to each of the fret board positions is not guess work and it's not by accident.

sorry Tony,
but i remember his exact words very clearly

" beats the hell out of me, i just hear it in my head and and play it "

had to monkey with you ,but these are his words ...lol

If you want to know what note you are playing at any point in time, just hook up a tuner like a Boss TU2, and it will tell you the note.

Pete, that is a brilliant piece of non-overthinking.

Calvin Walley wrote:sorry Tony,
but i remember his exact words very clearly

" beats the hell out of me, i just hear it in my head and and play it "

had to monkey with you ,but these are his words ...lol

Calvin, not an argument,

Many of us cannot tell you what exact notes we are playing across the neck but we can tell you that they are relative to the key we are playing in.

Also don't overlook that Bobby was extremely witty and full of satire, he probably knew every note backwards.

I recall I once offered Emmons a gig for $35 , he said it would take $36

Those were his words ....

I knew Bobby Bowman as well as anyone on the Forum, and better than most here; he was my closest friend in the world. And I can tell you that when one has the soul and the innate musical intuition that he had, you don't need to know how to spell a "minor 7th flat 5 flat 9 chord," you know how to play it non-intellectually.

But if you want to discuss it theoretically with others, and know what other chords can be substituted or played over it, mid-level chord knowledge is required.

As long as we're talking about Bowman, his album "Pure and Simple" is one of the purest, most Jimmy Day inspired expressions of non-verbal musical communication I've heard. Really, it's like listening to a soulful singer bare his heart. A listener either "gets it," or he doesn't. Those whose standard of steel guitar excellence is measured by the Orange Blossom Specialists at steel shows who receive standing O's for their acrobatics, enviable as their skills undoubtedly are, miss a very important part of musical expression.