In Miles Davis' autobiography, Davis talked about how they jammed a few times. Davis would tell him to play a particular chord or scale, and Hendrix had no idea what it was at first, e.g. "try an E minor diminished yada yada there... a mixolydian scale would work on top of these changes..."

Once Davis taught him the concepts he got them immediately, or it might be a chord he knew and played, but didn't know the formal name of. So, he was a brilliant intuitive musician, but didn't have the theory chops of someone who attended Juliard like Davis.

That is what we mean by Hendrix didn't know the theory.

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javier123454321 a day ago | parent [-]

Yeah he didn't know the names of the concepts that he already knew. My intuition says music theory is the understanding of the concepts, not the formal study of the names. Like a person that can only play the major scale because they studied the theory, in my mind they have less mastery of theory than a person that can compose "Little Wing" or "Lenny" without ever studying it.

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jawilson2 a day ago | parent [-]

To me, the theory is as much a communication tool as a knowledge. It is a common language for musicians to communicate musical ideas, at a higher level than musical notation. E.g. I can go to a jazz open mic, someone says the progression is "ii V I in Dminor", or a blues jam and its "I IV V, A major", or a Grateful Dead-type jam and its all mixolydian in B, and everyone is on the same page out of the gate. The theory is you know all of the scale modes, AND what they are called, AND can tell another musician what you're doing and why. Tons of people can play interesting things outside of the box, without know why or how it's defined.

	▲	javier123454321 a day ago \| parent [-]
		I can get behind this definition. But even following that definition, people without theory knowledge who know how to play would know a third of theory if you split the three categories that you said equally. I venture to say that the concepts themselves weigh more than an even third though.