The Benefits Of Learning Music Theory Before Learning Songs

For probably the majority of musicians, as soon as they can play a few notes on an instrument, they’ll jump right into learning songs. That’s usually why they picked up the instrument in the first place.

Afterwards though, many continue to only learn songs via ear or by a book, but they never take the time to learn the theory behind it. If you’ve been in the guitar community for any amount of time, it’s quite apparent that there is a sort of ‘pride’ from not knowing theory, like those before them.

Theory isn’t that difficult though. Kids can learn it and any musician can learn it. As long as you start from the bottom up instead of jumping into chords and theory, it’s totally possible! The photo above is actually from Andrew Huang’s video “Learn Music Theory in Half an Hour” and I think it’s a great foundational video.

Why I LearnED theory First

For me, I did take music through school and they taught me how to read music, but I didn’t learn much about how scales were made, and we didn’t touch chords at all since we played melodic instruments. I remember trying to create music and improvising, but I would hit the wrong notes or it would sound like a song I knew. I felt limited and was envious of students who seemed to have some natural talent.

When I picked up guitar, I didn’t want to be in that box again. I wanted to learn how to create and improvise. But I had one issue, I didn’t have the internet at home at the time, which was another reason why I wanted something to do after work. So I’d print out some scales and chord charts and only had that for reference. I was learning blindly at first, but soon I started seeing things.

The A major and A minor are 1 note/fret apart. The F chord is just the E chord moved up…I can move any scale box because all scales have the same pattern….things just started to connect in my head and I became increasingly curious about theory. More so cause I wanted to play Japanese music but the western music tips I was told didn’t sound anything like it. I knew theory was my answer.

So for a very long time, I didn’t learn songs at all, for 2 reasons: The songs I wanted to play were out of my skill level and I just wasn’t motivated to learn songs I had no plans to perform/record. So I just focused on learning the fundamentals, like chords, scales, and finger dexterity, that I will use over and over in the future.

When I started my band, I was definitely more motivated! Thing is, it was mostly power chords, but it definitely helped me get comfortable sliding my hand across the fretboard quickly and improving my strumming.

This year, we had a bit of a break as a couple members were occupied, so I started looking into more acoustic music and learning them for singers. It was then when I realized, I could look at a new song, check out the chords, and after a couple play throughs, I was already familiar with the progression. I could even have it memorized within 15 minutes if it’s pretty simple…but that’s because I’m breaking down the song as I learn it.

As I’m playing the songs, I do a lot of thinking because I am a logical learner, and Japanese music isn’t that simple. I’ll be thinking “okay it’s in the key of G, pretty obvious…..then C and D, so 1-4-5….oh now they’re doing the royal road/anime progression, 4-5-3-6…the 3 is dominant, thus the secondary dominant, okay…oh yes, I love that diminished transition chord, that tension is amazing….ooooooooo modulation, okay, we’re in the key of D now, but that chord’s a borrowed chord, I’ll remember that..”

And yes, it may seem like I’m over complicating songs but..do you see the chords above? Could you imagine trying to memorize that without theory or reference? Especially as a beginner guitarist? Oh, forget about playing…could you imagine me wanting to create something similar but only being familiar with major and minor chords cause that’s ‘all I needed’ according to many teachers online?

While this is definitely one of the most complex anime songs I’ve come across, it isn’t that intimidating for me now because I’ve seen a lot of the same elements or chords in other anime songs at this point. I’ve also seen songs with chords that this doesn’t have, like half diminished, 9ths, and augmented chords. But to me, it’s not just a bunch of random chords put together, I know what’s going on.

Theory works out in my favour tremendously because I can break down the songs, remember the progression, understand how each chord (even the odd ones) play a part, and then I can see those same tricks again later on, making the next song easier to learn too. If needed, if I forgot a song, I can probably recreate it through logic too!

Music, as a whole, is no longer something mysterious and random, everything makes logical sense! So in this article, I want to talk about the benefits of learning theory early on. I’ve included helpful videos for each tip so you can see just how easy theory makes things!

1. You Can Learn & Memorize Songs Faster

There are hundreds and hundreds of chords out there. Hundreds! But even if you stick to the basic major, minor, and dominant chords (ignoring 7ths, suspended, diminished etc) there’s still 36 chords that may be used in a basic song. Even if a song only has 4 chords in it, it’s very easy to forget which 4, or to mix up major and minor.

With theory though, when I first learn a song, I like to figure out the key. If I see the chord progression C-Am-F-G, I can listen or look at the chords and know that it is in the key of C. From there, I can break it down further. The first chord is the I (1) chord, then vi (6m), then IV (4) and then V (5). Then the chorus comes around, and it’s now Dm-G-C, and I know that is ii-V-I (2m-5-1).

Now, instead of trying to remember these 5 different chords, and risking mixing up major and minor and their order, all I have to remember is “key of C, I-vi-IV-V, then ii-V-I”. That’s it. You can understand all this more with my beginner theory articles, but when you look at a song this way, there really is no confusion. I’m learning Japanese songs too which has a lot more non-diatonic chords, but being able to put those chords into numerals helps me tremendously when it comes to memorizing.

2. You Can Transpose Songs

What is transposition? It’s when you change a song from one key to another. Let’s say, you really love this one song, but it’s a bit too high for your voice. Or perhaps you only learned a song with a capo, and you don’t have one right now….what do you do? You transpose it.

If you only learned C-Am-F-G, you won’t know where those chords came from or what you can do with them. In fact, you’re probably scared to do anything with them, cause you’ve tried creating songs before but the chords sounded bad together. But with theory, you will have confidence!

Now that we know that C-Am-F-G is I-vi-IV-V in the key of C, we can take that formula and apply it to any other key. For example, in the key of G, you can quickly calculate the formula and you’ll get the chords G-Em-C-D.

Again, no confusion at all and it will sound amazing. If you don’t get this, please please read my beginner articles. I made sure it was super simple to understand for other beginners.

3. You Can See Similarities Between Songs

Before, you may have worked hard to memorize C-Am-F-G and G-Em-C-D, thinking they were 2 different songs with no relationship, but as you saw above, they are the exact same chord progression, just in different keys!

I find when I learn new songs, since I break them down this way, it’s easy to be like “oh! That’s the same as this song” or “ahh, it’s just like this song, just with an extra chord”. Many progressions are reused, so I don’t even need to put effort into learning the progressions. If I can recall a song similar to it, I already have a great foundation to save time. If I can’t remember the key, I can play around til one chord sound right and figure out the rest easily right after.

There are only 7 diatonic chords, aka chords that belong to that key, and I’m pretty sure a good 75% of Western songs will stick to those chords. If each song has 3 or 4 chords, there’s only so many different progressions one can make, thus many get reused over and over. With time, it’ll be very easy to hear these which takes me to my next point…

4. You Can Transcribe Songs Faster

You ever watch a Youtuber who can hear a song the first time and be able to play it right after? It may seem like magic or some incredible natural talent, but trust me, it’s not. Well, okay, some do have perfect pitch, but the majority don’t. They either worked on it through years of ear training, or they cut that time in half by using theory to eliminate possibilities as we saw above.

If a person can figure out that the first or home chord is a C, that already eliminates many other chords. From there, they can use both their ear and knowledge to figure out each chord after that. The cool thing about theory as well, is that it gives you a list of what is more likely to come next.

Using harmonic functions, a ii chord sounds great going to iii or V, and a IV chord sounds great going to I or V. Of course there are other places it can go, but those tend to happen more regularly because it sounds more natural. You can learn more in the last part of my beginners series about what chord goes next.

I’m sure if you listen to most pop music, you may be able to guess what the next chord would sound like on your own, either cause you’ve heard it before or because that’s what would be the most satisfying, but theory explains the why. If you’re a beginner and you want to learn to play songs by ear sooner rather than later, theory is going to help tremendously. It won’t be such a guessing game.

In the video below, while he has a setlist of songs he already knows, he is open to learning new songs for people. With a listen or two, he can figure it out by ear. A lady requested a Japanese song, and as I said in my intro, they don’t tend to follow Western songs, but he was still able to use theory to make estimated guesses of what chord is playing and he can remember it quickly this way too.

5. You’ll Be Freer to Create, Improvise & Experiment

There’s a reason why so many improve lessons will start you off with the Blues. It has a very simple and predictable chord progression of I-IV-V, a perfect harmonic progression that works great with the pentatonic or blues scale. But if you feel like you can only do the blues, or you get lost with other kinds of backing tracks, it would certainly help to understand the theory behind progressions and scales so you can tie everything together and feel more confident.

In my early days, I really admired FretJam’s videos. I’m a logical learner, so when other Youtubers would say just use this scale or this box for this track, yeah it may work then but I wasn’t sure how or when to apply that shape or scale in another context. There was a lot of disconnect. But this really helped me tie things together.

Once you understand the theory, of how scales create chords, and why certain notes sound great on one chord while another makes you cringe, everything will be so clear and you’ll be able to improvise on top of any song, anytime. You won’t even need a backing track and guide to do so. If you can figure out the chord progression of a song you like and even learn these songs by ear, you’ll be given full freedom.

Then later, if or when you decide to write your own music, you’ll already know how keys and chords work, you would know the progressions or scales of the songs you liked and learned, and you’ll be able to immediately put elements of things you liked together. You’re not stuck in a box shape, or using a progression in a certain key, you can transpose them easily!

What would have felt like 100 puzzles pieces that don’t seem to fit together, are now 10 ingredients that you can mix and match as you like 🙂

Conclusion

I really hope you, especially if you’re a beginner or intermediate guitarist, will take every song you learn as a learning opportunity. Not just learning songs blindly and forcing yourself to memorize these random chords, but understanding where these chords come from and how they work together, will help you not just learn more songs faster and grow faster as a musician.

What would have felt like 100 puzzles pieces that don’t seem to fit together, are now 10 ingredients that you can mix and match as you like 🙂 Amazing analogy, I’m proud of myself for that.

Speaking of which, definitely check out my Music Theory is like Cooking Science article. In this, I say that not all cooks learn theory and they can still win contests, but knowing a bit more about the ingredients and how cooking works will give one more confidence when it comes to creating original dishes or using new ingredients. They can skip the trial and error stages and easily bring their visions to life.

And hey! Music theory really isn’t rocket science. I get that it can seem intimidating if you don’t know anything and try to watch a Youtuber who goes into detail, but trust me, if elementary kids could learn it, you can do it. All that matters is that you take it step by step from the beginning, and I’ve written articles to make it as simple and detailed as I could to ensure you can.

If you take the time to learn this stuff earlier on in your music journey, you’ll grow quicker and be miles ahead from others who didn’t bother to learn. You don’t know how many posts and forums I read from people who’ve been playing for 10, 25, even 40 years, and they still feel like a beginner.

Even under the comments of the 30 minute theory video I posted on top, people have been playing for ages, memorizing all their scales and this and that, but all it took was that one lesson for them to make sense of something.

Trust me, the confidence you get with theory will take you so far in the music world. It won’t make you more creative than the next guy, but you’ll gain so many benefits, such as being able to communicate with other musicians and follow along in a jam.

If you’re a guitarist, definitely check out these channels for guitar teachers who combine their lessons with theory.

Happy Learning~