Kurt Cobain Said Music Theory is a Waste of Time

[seannachaidh]

I was a music theory and composition major. My first theory prof's words have always stuck with me: "Music theory teaches you how to analyse how music works. It's not intended to teach you how to write music. You compose from your heart. Break the rules."

[TheUnmitigatedDawn]

Most people: Kurt didn't know music theory, he didn't know that chord.

Rick Beato: I know that. But his ear knew.

[johnrobinette]

Music theory isn't the rules, its the explanation!

[hansolo]

He was part of the era where it was cool to act like you don’t care about things. He also claimed he didn’t care about practicing but practiced relentlessly

[theimprovisedgarden]

Steve Vai put it best essentially saying you need to have as much technique and theory as is required to do what you want to do with your music, that's it.

[DanFlashes]

Cobain intuitively figured out a lot of music theory, he just didn't bother to learn the words for the concepts he was utilizing. Because that's primarily what music theory is for, an agreed upon language so we can communicate with each other about abstract concepts

[paulciampo]

The truth? Do both. Learn. Then throw it away and let your brain pull whatever it likes from the theory subconsciously.

[theballadeer]

If Kurt did learn Music Theory, Nirvana wouldn't sound like Nirvana...

[bgmchrisc]

If you can't jam with someone, are you a musician?

Of course you are. 'Musician' comes in many forms. A songwriter who works alone is just as much a musician as someone who only plays classical compositions and has never written a note in their lives. The whole of music is so much more than just playing your instrument, and figuring out what scale and key a song is in. Music is art, not math.

[Gian]

I think that the context here is important. I lived through the whole "grunge" revolution and people sometimes forget that right before that you had all these great virtuosos playing in bands and talking about how fast they were and about modes and how the practiced guitar even while going to the bathroom. So when the whole Seattle scene came about it was not about how many hours you practice, or how many arpeggios or modes you knew by heart, but about how much feeling can you put into music. If you check all the other Seattle bands, they had way more complex music (technically speaking) than Nirvana, and they could play solos, jam and improvise, but they also were not talking about the technical stuff all the time. The uncool part was to brag about how many hours you practice and how much music theory you knew, because those talking about that were mostly doing music that had no feeling.

[pkrdy]

Some people are born with a brain that naturally understands music, and they can do a lot without knowing anything about music theory. Most people are not born that way. Learn your scales, folks!

[sherwintavarez]

Kurt, Beatles, EVH and Jimi Hendrix did not know music theory, they HEARD music theory

[jackhaugh]

So I’m 51, was born in ‘73, started playing guitar when I was 17 and was really into Led Zeppelin and Metallica.
I graduate HS in 91. I’m 18 and in college that fall, and Nevermind drops. I was completely blown away. The video gets played every 15 minutes on MTV, or so it seemed…
I’m in my dorm room one day, exactly 3 days after Nevermind drops, and I hear some one in the dorm playing SLTS downstairs from me on a really loud electric guitar.
I get up and go running at a full sprint through every floor of the dorm until I find the person playing it, and start pounding on the door as hard as I can. Mind you, I’m on the football team and am pounding on it so hard the upper corner of the door is bending into the guys room. He eventually answers.
I basically force this guy to show me how to play the song, and ask him how he figured out how to play the song so quickly.
He said he’s a guitar performance major, is in a band, it’s not a hard song, and that his band is playing at one of the bars that evening downtown and asked if I’d like to see them play.
I told him I was 18 and wouldn’t be able to get in where they’re playing, and he goes how’d you like to be our roadie then. So being the strapping young lad that I am I become their roadie in exchange for guitar lessons.
So this guy and I become pretty good friends. He’s actually a huge Dead Head, and Jerry is his favorite guitar player. He starts teaching me theory, how to use modes, how to actually jam with people instead of just playing a song the way it’s written, so on and so forth.
I’m really glad he turned me on to jammy stuff like The Dead and The Allman Brothers, otherwise I think I would have just focused on learning songs note for note with tabs, and never really learning anything about music itself.

[swissarmyknight]

So I took "Lithium isn't in a key" as a challenge. Its mostly in E major and E minor; there's a name for this (parallel tonality or something?, its multiple scales that both gravitate back to the same tonal center), with one borrowed chord from blues and one spicy WTF chord from I-don't-know-where. As is common with Kurt, the guitar is playing power chords while the vocal melody spells out more complex chords.

Taking the vocal melody into account (all pitches sound one whole step lower than written, D Standard tuning, all mistakes should be attributed to years of smoking pot), I have the main chord progression as:
E5 G#5 C#5 A7 C5 B5 Dmaj9
and the chorus section as
A5 Cmaj9 A5 Csusb2

It contains chords primarily from E major and E minor, one chord from E blues, and one chord from smoking pot. As is common in Kurt's music, there are power chords that are deliberately ambiguous whether they're major or minor. That's what the I/i and V/v mean below. You could solo or compose over those chords as if they were major or minor and add extensions at will.

I would analyze that as

I/i, iii (from E major), vi (from E major), IV7 (from E blues), VI (from E minor), V/v, and Dmaj9 I would notate as "spicy" as its not from major, minor, or blues.

The chorus section I would analyze as
IV/iv--VI--IV/iv--vi
IV/iv, VI (from E minor), IV/iv, vi (from E major), which is fucking awesome. You can really see Kurt's habit of borrowing chords from parallel major and minor keys and minor/major ambiguity in this section. I'd like to see a really proficient jazz soloist solo over this section in particular.

So what we have is a simple chord progression, LMFAO
And the chorus is IV/iv--VI--IV/iv--vi, emphatically LMFAO

[Meatball]

People who say that music theory is limiting or stops creativity really don't understand the point of music theory. Music theory isn't a set of guidlines or rules, it's a description.

Admittedly, basic music theory is taught as if they were rules, you see lots of people teaching you to only use the 7 chords of major for a songwriting excercise for instance. But once you delve further into music theory you realise it's just suggestions. There's no difference between learning theory and someone showing you a cool set of chords they found except one lets you expand upon your knowledge and be more analytical.

[kipponi]

Eddie VanHalen said: there are twelve notes in octave do whatever you like❤😂. I like it👍

[TheSupart]

John Mayer also "you dont need to know all and *went to Berkleee school of music*

[bradlaidmanpoplearningserv]

The same thing happened between Noel Gallagher and Aimee Mann. Aimee graduated from Berklee - she kept asking Noel how he came up with his complex chord progressions and odd chords. He was like leave me alone I have no idea what you're talking about. He's said the same thing recently he isn't a guitar expert he's a songwriter.

[LivingWater-bshh]

Kurdt Cobain wrote some of the best music in the 20th century. He did not need music theory filtered thru lesser musicians. He worked on his skill the way he saw fit.

[Stykzman]

I know quite a bit of music theory, but I gotta be honest, I only think you need to know as much theory as you personally believe you need to know.
Kurt may or may not be good in a jam, but you know what? Kurt wasn't a musician, he was a songwriter, it's not the same thing.
His ability to be in a jam session isn't important because that's not what he was trying to do, he was trying to write songs, that's a different skill and that requires little to no theory at all.
Personally, I have met equal amounts of musicians who both know a shit ton about theory and those who don't, and both have been just as likely to be shit in a jam.
I've been in jams where I've known the most of anyone in the room and they all could play circles around me - That's just my experience and could be a comment on how shit my playing is, but it also made me change the way I think about this kind of thing.
People who talk on this dichotomy always irk me on both sides because I don't feel like either side of the argument really understands what the other person is saying.