I started playing piano when I was like 7 or something and I took lessons for a couple years, but never learned anything music theory related otuside of terms and how to read music (no scales, chords, etc.)
Then I started playing guitar a bit later, and learnedhow to play barre chords and so on, which helped me understand theory somewhat better I guess. I also learned my major and minor scale on guitar, but because I have a really hard time reading music for guitar and seeing frets as notes that was pretty much useless. I just used tabs and so on to play songs I liked, never really learned to much as far as improvisation goes. A few years later I started getting into keyboard, and I've been trying to learn music theory. But, I don't really think about it when I make music. I like to just make cool experimental glitchy electronic type songs or ethereal stuff, and I just start playing and roll with it. If that's the type of thing you want to do, learning the theory to play the notes isn't nearly as important as learning to use effects and so on to manipulate sound and knowing what you want to add to your song. However, if you want to play jazz, you better know everything about music theory or your ****ed. So it really depends on what you want to play.
|