The Relic

I made them do theory because being able to read music along with a sound understanding of how chords and scales are constructed and how they can be strung together is the key to your instrument. In learning to play without those skills you're just limiting yourself and your playing becomes a series of habits, not necessarily good ones.

Say, for example, you're working on a song by ear from a recording and you come across a good sounding but unusual chord, one that isn't in the front end of your Learn To Play In Just Ten Minutes A Day tutor book. If you know the theory then the chances are you can build the chord, and maybe add a little colour of your own, but if you don't you'll probably fudge it and fall back on your limited armoury of triads. The same sort of thing applies if you're writing a tune: the way to originality lies in knowing how you might move from one chord or one scale to another without jarring the ear, and that knowledge also helps you resolve problems such as how to modulate to a diifferent key without breaking the flow.

Don't be surprised if you are harassed by lecturers, by the way. When my wife was teaching there came a time every year when my she'd come home saying things like, "I'm getting bugger all from Such-and-such. I'm going to have to read him the riot act. Most of them don't seem to realise that they weren't given their places just so that they could spend three years laying about and carousing..." and so on, and so on.

__________________
The Relic

Richard Dawkins for Pope.