Interesting point of view about famous players who don't read, but I'm not sure I completely buy that. That said, I'm in the opposite camp, which is, even Hendrix and SRV would have been more advanced players if they knew theory and could read. By the way, who knows, maybe SRV knew his theory, but just never talked about i! I think it boils down to what it is one is trying to accomplish. If your musical life is going to be spent playing 12-bar blues in a garage band, maybe you don't need it; but then again, if someone watches Josh Smith's lessons about using II-V-I turnarounds in 12-bar blues, they would see that nothing is as trivial as it seems. If, however, you think you may want to record, or even play on other peoples' music, then you better learn to speak the musical language. There is a reason that people like Lee Ritenour get hired to fix David Gilmour's solos and get paid big bucks for it. To sum it up, I'll quote BB, who some may think couldn't read (he could, but maybe not sight-read) or didn't know theory (he did, but maybe not enough to play bebop). He said, it's better to know and not need than to need and not know.
Interesting point of view about famous players who don't read, but I'm not sure I completely buy that. That said, I'm in the opposite camp, which is, even Hendrix and SRV would have been more advanced players if they knew theory and could read. By the way, who knows, maybe SRV knew his theory, but just never talked about i!
I think it boils down to what it is one is trying to accomplish. If your musical life is going to be spent playing 12-bar blues in a garage band, maybe you don't need it; but then again, if someone watches Josh Smith's lessons about using II-V-I turnarounds in 12-bar blues, they would see that nothing is as trivial as it seems. If, however, you think you may want to record, or even play on other peoples' music, then you better learn to speak the musical language. There is a reason that people like Lee Ritenour get hired to fix David Gilmour's solos and get paid big bucks for it.
To sum it up, I'll quote BB, who some may think couldn't read (he could, but maybe not sight-read) or didn't know theory (he did, but maybe not enough to play bebop). He said, it's better to know and not need than to need and not know.