I took music theory 101 way back when and played some guitar.

You can kinda tell the difference between like, Noel Gallagher throwing in a suspended chord here or there because he knows it or found it and it’s an interesting add-on, versus Bruno Mars, whose ballads are composed like a motherfucker.

Bruno Mars, at least, knows *exactly* what he’s doing.

Good question.

I think competent composers and songwriters absolutely know what they’re doing — even if they don’t know the formal names for things. To wit: Joni Mitchell was using sus chords for years, intentionally and artfully, before she knew what they were called. She referred to them as “chords of inquiry” — because that’s what they meant to her. It was years before someone (maybe Wayne Shorter?) told her what everyone else calls them.

One can write evocative, emotionally powerful music without having any formal training and without knowing official terminology. But when communicating with others, it helps if you have a common language with which to describe things.

If you’re a working musician, it’s pretty important to be able to name notes, intervals, rhythms, and chord types using commonly accepted language — and it’s important to understand how notes, chords, and rhythms relate to each other. If you were to ask me to play a 16th-note C Lydian arpeggio, but my term for that is “Lavender chugalug,” it would take a minute for each of us to figure out what they other person means — which is not an efficient way to communicate.

Good catch!

Do you realize you’ve just volunteered to proofread all my writings in the future?

🙂