Music Theary 101 for self taught guitar players?

[ezboarderz]

I am a self taught guitar player that plays mostly for hobby as its been something that I have had as a hobby for the last 20 years. I have learned to play basically through trial and error and by learning the songs of bands that I enjoy listening to by looking up their tabs. I have noticed that I have discovered patterns of notes for certain tunings and apparently those happen to be falling into certain scales which i have made into riffs and ive built up riffs over the years this way and have had some success turning those into songs.

I am at a point where I feel that my lack of understanding of music theory is holding me back as I have the physical ability to play the stuff I enjoy at fairly fast tempo but I would like to get an understanding of what the certain patterns that I discover are and how they connected to scales, keys, chords, etc. I feel like understanding the why and the how will allow me to be even more creative with coming up with riffs and just allow me to be a better song writer. I am a huge fan of extreme metal and I feel like this will take me a long way. I play 6 string guitars, mostly in drop B or standard C#, but I will be looking to get myself a 7 string early next year.

Are there are online resources that one could recommend for someone like me? I feel like a "music theory for self taught guitar players" type of a thing would be perfect if something like that exists.

 

[bostjan]

musictheory.net

wikipedia.org

 

[Lax]

Music theory for guitarist for dummies or anyway it's titled, I went back to theory with for dummies digital books and it clicked well and nice

 

[Winspear]

Musictheory.net indeed. Wikipedia is great. Best I can suggest is to use these music theory resources or resources like these, use notation, train you ear with the topics. Avoid guitar theory resources for the most part at least until the theoretical information is understood, because they tend to push not much more than internalising physical patterns. Put the harmonic information to the guitar (either with or without guitar resources) after you already understand the theory.
Basic initial roadmap in my opinion; Intervals+diatonic scale, triad construction