

coworker’s nerdy interests are, then do some light research
Not saying this is bad advice, but it can feel disappointing and invalidating when they don’t reciprocate. “Yeah that’s cool I guess, anyways…” stings a bit when it’s finally your turn to share.




Right, because what’s considered “musical” is highly subjective and would be useless without the theoretical knowledge to analyze and describe others’ playing and apply it to your own. Good luck playing jazz without knowing what a II-V-I or major scale is. I’ve taught guitar part time and most of my students were 12 year olds who wanted to play like Kirk Hammet but didn’t want to learn theory, guess what? They sucked and had no idea what to play that wasn’t memorized tabs. Once I convinced them to just learn A minor on the low E string after a few lessons they could thrash improvise riffs as well as anyone, some of them even discovered modes (mostly phrygian) all on their own by just fooling around at home! Creativity comes with experience, experience comes with a base level of knowledge about what you’re doing.