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The Shortcut for Getting Good on Guitar
Music theory helps you understand the how and why of the instrument.
Playing guitar is no different from any other skill: The more you learn, the better you get. Putting some time into the study of music theory can help your playing tremendously, no matter what genre you are into.
Of course, there are many ways to get good at the guitar, and some famous guitar players have truly blazed their own trails when it comes to mastering the instrument. However, they all have one thing in common: Whether they studied music theory or not, they each have a solid understanding of how music works.
How music works is a pretty good, though simplistic, definition of music theory. This is the bones of music, the turning gears behind the curtain. Over countless decades, musicians and scholars have analyzed music to determine the why and the how of what makes it sound the way it does.
Much of this study is based on the works of the classical masters, but many forms of music have contributed to the overall body of knowledge. The end result is a compendium of useful information that, if studied and understood, can be a tremendous asset to any musician.
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