Have you ever wondered what makes your favorite musicians so great? The answer is simple: They know how music works and how to make you feel the same. Knowing how music is expressed is essential to being a good guitarist or musician. If you can control emotions through music, you will be able to significantly affect the experience of others.

Most guitarists wish to express their creativity with their guitar playing. However, the majority of guitarists have no idea how this skill can be practiced. This causes a lot to be wasted on practicing the guitar in a way that doesn’t yield big results. The solution is to gain a greater understanding of the basics of creativity in music.

Guitar players search for the music of their favorite bands and practice them repeatedly to increase their musical creativity. Although this can be a great way to have fun while playing the guitar, it won’t help you learn much about musical expression. Spending too much time on this will result in you missing the two most essential parts of being able create emotion through music.

1. You need to know how great musicians think. You need to know WHY these great players choose certain ideas and notes. This is something you will not learn if all you do is copy the “notes” from your favorite songs and solos. It is not enough to play the same notes with other musicians. You must think about the emotions that you want to convey and which musical choices will be most effective to accomplish this goal. Once you achieve this level, your unique musical sound will reflect the ideas and emotions that you create.
2. Knowing how to create and express specific emotions by using certain musical choices when playing solo or in compositions is crucial. Without having to say anything, you must be able express the emotions you desire with your music to your audience. This is something that many guitarists struggle with and they find themselves limited to playing other people’s music without being able express their own feelings through their playing.

There is a huge divide between guitar players regarding music theory. Music theory is something many people avoid. They believe it restricts their freedom of expression. Some believe music theory should be required to know how to make music. These views, however, aren’t complete in the grand scheme of the role of music theory.

What then is the true purpose of music theory? Music theory is an instrument that describes accurately the effects musical ideas have on the emotions of those who listen to it.

Music Theory can be changed by changing your mindset

Understanding music theory’s true function will change the way you think about music theory. Music theory doesn’t just explain the function and meaning of chords and scales. Music theory is all about explaining why people feel certain emotions when certain ideas and scales are used. This knowledge is essential to developing great musical expression skills.

Here is an example of how you could use this idea. As a guitar teacher I spend a lot teaching my students creativity. One exercise that I use with my guitar students is to ask them to list the emotions they wish to express through their music. I then ask them to create a list of specific musical expressions that they can achieve using a variety different music theory ideas.