Music Theory Doesn’t Stunt Creativity – It Fuels It
March 1, 2017
Predictably, the people who think music theory is a waste of time are the ones who’ve either never studied it, or who’ve learned to hate the study of it. Just as predictably, the ones who feel that music theory is a must for anyone who writes or performs music are the ones who’ve got a…
via Music Theory Doesn’t Stunt Creativity: It Fuels It — The Essential Secrets of Songwriting
I Write The Music 
March 1, 2017 at 1:27 pm
I respectfully disagree. As a composer I don’t hate the study of music theory, and I have studied music theory for many years, and yet I still think it is a waste of time. Writing music is not the same as constructing a building. First of all, you’re not going to kill anyone with a collapsed structure if you don’t follow certain rules. Second, imagine all the music theory that was unknown to composers in Medieval times, and yet they still wrote music. Third, music does not depend on theory anymore than deciding who one should marry would depend on a scientific study based on a theory of love.
March 2, 2017 at 2:27 am
It is debatable if music theory as we know it today governed the creative process of the great composers. We know that Bach and Mozart both wrote out works of other composers to learn their techniques, but much of what is now taught as music theory very likely was second nature as linguistic grammar is to native speakers of a language, rather than a conscious and formal process of following rules prescribed by music theorists. After all, modern music theory is essentially a study of music that has been written, and is often considered as a sub discipline of musicology. Also, at many institutions of higher learning it is differentiated as a separate discipline from music composition, as in the title, “department of of music theory and composition.”