[PenguinBoy]

carvin, i disagree that people without theory knowlege can't write as complex music. And it's absolute bollocks to sugest that players without trained knowlege are un able to improvise out of set scales. Music theory is a shortcut to what can be learn't through time and familiarity with your instrument. That's all. People who don't know theory, and play their instruments with allot of commitment, will gain such a good relationship with it, that they know what everything will sound like before they play it. It's like speach patterns; speach is learnt through experience. You can be illiterate yet learn a high level of english through simply doing it and hearing other people speak.

You cease having to go through everyword you know, and contemplate the gramatical context to express your feelings. And it's the same with well practised musicians. In their minds, they know what they want to express and they just play the notes which express that, in their own private accent, in their own dialect, and their own level of elequency.

After all, the kind of people like that^, are the ones who studied their instincts to tell the rest of the world about what has no become excepted theory and musical grammar.

And believe it or not, dispite the musical theory involved, some of the greatest musicians and composers of all time themselves grew to discard many of the rules of theory that they had been taught, to further the shape of music and accomodate their own vision. And they too played by ear.

And who cares how hard it is to shred! so long as it's done in a way that sounds good!

I've not answered the poll, cos i don't have a straight answer. I was taught saxaphone, but eventually i broke away and played it my own way. I can read music but i can't site read, i think it's to do with my dyspraxia; i can't multitask reading + playing. i just practised pieces til i knew them, and then played. and in jazz band songs, i just improvised a part for myself.

Guitar, i am completely self taught.

and i'm hoping to start singing lessons next year, because i feel i need help in getting to know my voice.

Feel without theory can be heartwrenching but can also be verry under developed in sound. Theory without feel can be impressive. But it'd be more of a science or a craft than an art.

Feel musicians oftern need to learn theory through instinct. to be able to express what they feel in an understood way. And Theoretical musicians need to learn to express themselves through the music and stretch the rules that they are bound to.

EDIT: You should check out the gypsy music of eatern europe, and jazz, and bluesmen of the world, and find out how many of them can read music or have had a music lesson. You just get surrounded by music by birth and you learn it like speach, it's just another way talking.