I would agree with you. I feel like watching videos where someone goes "hey, so here's this pattern that completely unlocks the neck for you, don't be stuck in a box anymore!" and all they're showing you is where the various notes in a key are along the neck (now I know that, but I wouldn't have known that before...) and it's WAY more confusing than if you just learn how the pentatonic scale works and how to find the notes in a key etc. And the funny thing is, the only reason I was stuck in that box in the first place is because of silly rote memorization without understanding why you play the various notes in a scale etc., it just feels like this thing that kind of compounds when you just learn patterns vs. just learning the underlying principles.
But again, I'm completely amateur at this stuff still, and I don't have any experience teaching other folks an instrument, so it's hard for me to say with any certainty that we should be teaching it one way or another I guess.
This is why learning guitar when I was younger was so difficult to me; people just presented things like "you have to learn these 5 scale patterns" but they didn't really go into why, it was just "memorize this stuff and then you'll be good!", but I hate rote memorization without understanding the underlying principles. I'm old and didn't have the internet back then so I was just learning from various books or friends and it was slow going, but I still see things like this presented in tons of Youtube videos today.
I've since gone back and learned a bit of music theory as an adult and it's been super helpful understanding the underlying principles so I can work things out vs. having to just memorize things without understanding why they work.
I think then you can go practice the various scale patterns and get good at them with the knowledge that you can always work out the scale from first principles if you need to.
Different strokes for different folks though I guess, I'm sure there's an argument to be made for not overwhelming folks with too much theory out of the gate. Not sure if I had started with a bunch of theory if I would have stuck with it when I was younger.
I would agree with you. I feel like watching videos where someone goes "hey, so here's this pattern that completely unlocks the neck for you, don't be stuck in a box anymore!" and all they're showing you is where the various notes in a key are along the neck (now I know that, but I wouldn't have known that before...) and it's WAY more confusing than if you just learn how the pentatonic scale works and how to find the notes in a key etc. And the funny thing is, the only reason I was stuck in that box in the first place is because of silly rote memorization without understanding why you play the various notes in a scale etc., it just feels like this thing that kind of compounds when you just learn patterns vs. just learning the underlying principles.
But again, I'm completely amateur at this stuff still, and I don't have any experience teaching other folks an instrument, so it's hard for me to say with any certainty that we should be teaching it one way or another I guess.