Toto guitarist Steve Lukather has spoken out about the similarities between using guitar tabs and playing ‘Guitar Hero’.
In an interview with Ultimate Guitar, the guitarist for Toto Lukather revealed that tabs don’t “make sense” to him.
“Tab doesn’t even make sense to me, why would you learn that if you can learn how to read music?” he said, “I look at tablature and reading music the same way you look at playing real guitar and playing ‘Guitar Hero’.”
He continued: “If you’re taking all that time to learn the game, why don’t you go on to learn how to play the guitar at the end of it? It’s the same thing to me, like, why would you do that?”
“But hey, a lot of people live by it, even in Nashville, with the number charts. Sure, it’s easier to change keys but it’s a drag when you have altered chords,” he said.
Lukather went on to say that learning guitar theory has helped his playing and that the idea of not needing to learn it is the “biggest lie out there.”
“Just knowing your common tones, your relative majors and minors, the simple dumb shit you learn right away, I don’t care if you’re a shredder or a classical player, it’s important to know the language,” he said.
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“I could give you a thousand reasons why knowing harmony and theory has helped the writing process, the options, the improvisation. The biggest lie out there is that knowing how to read music or knowing anything about music theory takes your soul away… Bullshit!”
Despite his strong stance, Lukather ultimately conceded that he wouldn’t force iconic guitarists like Eddie Van Halen or Jeff Beck into lessons.
“On the other hand, would I give, God bless his soul, my brother, Edward Van Halen, guitar lessons? Would I give Jeff Beck guitar lessons? No. ”
He continued: “My own son plays guitar weird because he didn’t want to take lessons, but he started to come upon something that I would have never thought of, so I just stopped myself.”
“And I was like, ‘Carry on. Keep doing what you’re doing. Just don’t become a shredder. There’s already too many of them. Write good songs, be a great rhythm guitar player, play melodically, and you’ll always have work’.”
“So, he listened to me, fortunately, and now it’s working. But saying that music theory takes the soul out of a song is just a lazy man’s way of saying they don’t have the time to put in,” he concluded.
Check out ‘Africa’ by Toto:
