This is where I struggle with theory. Watching this back and forth reminds me of born-again Christians arguing over the meaning of a 5 word sentence. I mean no disrespect here – this kind of thing is where I gave up on theory altogether.
I remember back in the 80s reading Guitar for the Practicing Musician, and the guys doing the transcripts, bless their hearts, would go into long, drawn out detail about how George Lynch started in this mode, stepped briefly out to this outside mode for a half measure, before switching back to the original, and so on and so forth.
All the while, it was abundantly clear George was doing a simple pattern, like 11-12-14, across 4 or 5 strings. There was no theory involved, but these guys were desperately trying to compartmentalize it like that, like George was playing it “that way,” and he clearly wasn’t. In fact, it became incredibly easy to tell the theory guys from the gut guys – if the explanation of their lead theory was 3 paragraphs long, they didn’t know a goddamn thing about theory – they were winging it. The theory guys had one or a couple sentences about the key or mode they used, and that was it.
So, I guess this turned into a rant, and I didn’t mean it to, but it gets frustrating – how do you know “when to say when” when it comes to parsing this stuff out. Clearly Syn knows a staggering amount of theory – I knew that already, but seeing him here riffing this stuff out off the top of his head is insanely impressive, but the question remains – where does the ordinary guy draw the line? Where do you start from and where do you set your targets?
It’s all so overwhelming, and I don’t want to walk away from theory again.
- theory and harmony can be an incredible source of inspiration and can develop your ear making what you hear in your head naturally, inherently more sophisticated. 
