JK Drum Solutions: Drum Set Instruction, Transcriptions and Educational Podcasts
Drum Set Education Resources

Another 'Who Needs Music Theory?' Anecdote

The eleventh commandment: Know Thine Friggin' Music Theory (It sounds much better in the original Aramaic)

   The drummer starts 'Billie Jean' followed by the percolating bass line followed by...

...followed by the arrival of a clueless scraping of guitar strings hopelessly attempting to pass for entrance off a mile-high cliff with an anvil for a parachute.  This guitarist looks to others for help? It is then the guitarist silently cogitates:

   "Yes - the others will teach me basic music theory now...at this very moment.  I will not even watch the bassist's fretboard to seek resolve! Certainly for this experience is not too late nor embarrassing enough to convince me of the obvious and practical need to understand music theory.  The fact that I am shamelessly weighing this band down at this very moment is not enough to reckon with the folly of skipping a very serious gap in learning my instrument. Nope. "

   "Also, I will keep playing through the entire song so that the sound of my confused, muted harmonic vengeance will propel the crowd to further dance with their heads tilted in curiosity."

   "Furthermore I will give challenge to the excellent singer who despite knowing to follow the bassist will constantly have to fight off my incorrect needling like fending off a mugger in the night."

   "This is good."

   I thought of blasting into a 5/8 Polka/Cha-Cha amalgamation but decided even that was no match for this scenario.  After this most unsatisfying musical experience the guitarist avers to the band he thought the song was in a different key. It would have been less surprising if he mentioned in 2017 that President Kennedy had been fatally shot.

   So the daunting question of HOW and WHY this could happen.  Well, the can is kicked further down the road by the guitarist who will never visit this issue again.  All concerns alleviated. All curiosities tranquilized.