Probably the best anti music theory video talk/discussion/tutorial from one of the best bassists of all time. Enjoy!
Skip to the one minute mark to avoid the bs about ‘thanks to my sponsors’ 
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I love Wooten and read his book entitled The Music Lesson. Make no mistake, Wooten is not anti-theory. As he says in the video, theory is like a tire changing set you keep in the trunk… Hopefully you will not need it. It is there to aid in solving problems. No musical problem, no theory necessary…
A very simple and cool exercise is to play a triad drone like G-B-D that loops then add the tension 2 (A) then sharpen it to add the “wrong” note Wooten is talking about. Just play the triad and one other note within the Chromatic scale. You will FEEL the tension.
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I know, I know but it makes a more interesting title, hehe. The bit towards the end of playing something not right then dropping back into what is right is amazing. As he says it’s about context 
Edit: and yes the tension and release is so so so important to emotional music in general. I feel this is exactly what Radiohead does so excellently
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Copy that 
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Sorry, couldn’t resist…
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Haha 
It was one of his famous routines. He was an accomplished pianist as well as northern comic. Very very funny man born just down the road in Collyhurst.
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Yes, I remember him fairly well. Mid 30s British guy here. A great talent! 
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Nice approach, great Philosophy!
Thanks for posting!
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You wouldn’t believe if I told you I met him while painting an elevator in Ann Abor.
“ exscuse me, where’s the stairs”
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Cool vid, cool dude, cheers for posting : ) Really liked the way he articulated himself.
Always played by ear with minimal theory…it’s more fun…I always seen theory as more of a language to capture music without recording it.
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As a bass player, Victor Wooten is one of my heroes. Search “You Can’t Hold No Groove” on YouTube, which I’ve been practicing for years.
About “wrong” notes, you have to have theory well under your belt to play outside. Also, in terms of musical gesture, teacher always said, “If you make a mistake, make it again.” Jazz teacher, that is–make a mistake in classical, and you’re fucked.
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I’ve got some similar saying …
I forgot the source, but it was a word of wisdom from a Jazzer … he said “… if you play a ‘wrong’ note you can always tell the audience that it was intentional, but if you mess up the groove, they will crucify you”
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Yeah, you can make any sound mistake in jazz work as long as it grooves. If you lose the swing for even a microsecond, it’s like hitting a dissonant mistake in Mozart–it’s cold and lonely out there.
By the way, Wooten is a good explainer, but one thing he doesn’t mention is how all those “wrong” notes are always a half step away from a “right” note so that you always hear his wrong note as a tension that’s dying to move to that next stable right note. His musicality is so natural to him that he can’t help playing it that way. But you can play total cacophony and make it work (for a while) as long as it grooves. That’s what makes jazz so hard: you can fool yourself that you’re in the groove, and then it’s shocking when you listen back to a recording. But with wrong notes, you objectively know when you pressed the wrong keys or were in the wrong fret, etc., so it’s much harder to fool yourself. Singers also have that problem of sounding good to themselves even when they’re out of tune because your brain sort of hears what you meant to do, not necessarily what you did. Remember all those humiliating American Idol tryouts from the early 00’s? Those people made idiots of themselves not because of being “pitchy, dog” but because it was obvious they’d never listened to a recording of themselves in their entire lives.
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What I think “funny” … in a kind … is that those ‘wrong’ notes built a theory of ‘putting them in the right place’ by themselves 
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Yeah he is incredibly impressive. I love the NAMM videos
Good post Craig
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