Megadeth guitarist Kiko Loureiro recently shared a 12-minute video on his official Youtube channel, in which he answers his fans’ questions. Loureiro replied to a question about Dave Mustaine and said that Mustaine doesn’t use music theory at all.

Megadeth recently completed ‘The Metal Tour of the Year’ which has been their first North American tour since 2017. They also have been working on their sixteenth album named ‘The Sick, the Dying… and the Dead!’ for a while, and it is planned to be released in 2022. Although it has been announced that the release is close, we still don’t have an exact date.

Besides his busy time with Megadeth, guitarist Kiko Loureiro has also been very active on his YouTube channel. He has been uploading many Q&A videos in which he answers fan-submitted questions, some parts from Megadeth rehearsals, and also backstage footage of some shows.

In a recent Q&A video, Kiko Loureiro was asked by a fan whether Dave Mustaine uses music theory to compose Megadeth songs. Kiko answered that Mustaine doesn’t use music theory at all because he mostly doesn’t need it. Loureiro explained that Dave Mustaine has knowledge of some basic theoretical stuff, but his imagination is so powerful that he can imagine the sounds and easily create the riff related to them.

Here is Kiko Loureiro’s answer to the question on Dave Mustaine:

“You have to understand that people are different. A creator can play something and just imagine the mountain, the sea, the hell, a war — imagine things, those sounds. He can relate that riff to a machine gun or can relate that riff to a bomb exploding, in the case of Megadeth. But he can play a chord and imagine the mountain, the sun, sailing — whatever. So some people are like this.

Some other people need the theory — they need the names, they need the things organized to make sense. So that’s why some people really relate to the theory and love theory. I love theory. Some other people don’t feel they need theory to compose, to create, because it’s all about imagination.

And, of course, the basic stuff they might know — ‘Oh, this is a major chord,’ ‘This is a minor chord,’ ‘This is the name of the notes, like E, A, D,’ but in the end, it really doesn’t matter as well. So, does Dave Mustaine use theory? No, he doesn’t.“

You can watch the full Q&A video below.