Hi,
 
I can tell you that I had taken music lessons in Portugal when 8 or 9 years old, but the teacher was more interested in using a very heavy ruler in your hands than she was in teaching you music. She was a total stupid frustrated musician witch!
 
In Brazil we couldn't afford lessons, and none of us had anything music at all, but when I came to America at 15, I did not do too well with A and B and C, and could not figure it out, and since I spoke no English and was having a hard time in school, guess what went out the window first ... no music lessons! I kinda wish the possibility had been there, but it never happened, but I was an insane music listener and absorber of our collection of classical music, over 2k LP's and 100 operas, and then later my own collection of progressive and experimental music.
 
I'm hoping/expecting to be able to finally get into music a lot more as I get older and hopefully can slow down my work load. But the mechanical side, or numerical side of it, kinda throws me off, even though it appears simpler. I tend to play for the "sound", not the mechanical numbers, if that sounds right to anyone. But I do not know the "name" of any of the notes or can identify them at all.

I'm pretty good with my music theory in that I know quite a lot about scales, chord spellings, chord functions, modulation etc. And with a guitar in my hands I can construct any chord you throw at me anywhere on the fretboard on the spot, because I know how all the notes on the guitar relate to one another interval wise. 
 
But for the most part, when I'm writing music at the computer I have absolutely no concept whatsoever of what notes I'm writing or what chords they make up. If I play a part on the keyboard, it's been picked out by ear without any theory behind it whatsoever. I also do a lot of work in the piano roll view, just setting notes down and moving them around until they either resemble what I hear in my head or until they resemble something completely different, but which I like the sound of. A lot of the parts I come up with are often quite harmonically rich, and they frequently change key (and sometimes meter). But I'll work through a whole song not knowing or even caring what those chords are. On the rare occasion I do bother to work them out, I'm usually quite surprised. For instance I recently sat down and worked out the chords of a tune I'd working on and they turned out to be Am/D7sus/Esus4/Fm/Bb/Dm/C/Bb. Those were felt out by hand at the keyboard, but I very much doubt that I would have come up with them had I been thinking in terms of music theory, either with my guitar or with pen and paper. That Fm/Bb modulation in particular. For this reason I've really been enjoying the experience of working "blind" at the keyboard and the PRV because I really do have no idea what I'm playing, unlike the guitar. 
 
The MIDI functionality has opened up a whole new area of musical composition for me and I love it. I have a few "cheats" by which I come up with stuff I would have never written in the traditional sense. One is banging out a rhythm on one key and then going back and dragging those notes out into chords in the piano roll. In this way I can develop chord parts which I would never have been able to play on the keyboard (since I'm crap at piano). Another way is by using the polyphonic MIDI conversion of Melodyne Editor to convert dense orchestral recordings into MIDI and then exploring that MIDI. For instance I took a short sample of a Percy Grainger piece and converted it to MIDI. The result was pretty much nothing like the original (I didn't bother to tidy it up in Melodyne), and then I quantized it to 16th notes. After that I just set about removing some notes, adding some notes and moving others around, using my own sense of music, until it turned into something which had my musical stamp on it, but which I never would have come up with without the "seed" of Percy Grainger's notes. 
 
I sometimes wonder if I could get by without knowing any theory at all. There's only 12 notes, after all!

FWIW, I have a couple of reasons to do this.
 
Professionally, I may have interesting openings in views which might require that I'm a proficient sight-reader and that I have a decent knowledge of theory.
 
Secondly, the project my wife and I are working on could benefit from it. For her, in certain cases, having charts really comes in handy. Same for some of the folks we'd be working with.
 
Thirdly - mental gymnastic. It's good to keep the brain stimulated and to learn stuff. As I've found out for myself, it's easy to forget how to learn and, in this day and age, working with computer, some of us tend to commit very little to memory.
 
Plus, I do have the time for it and even if it weren't the case, I think that that stuff is like training, or whatever you want to do. You need to make the time, you need to make it a priority. The difference between people who do and people who don't is often that the first made it a priority. 

I have a very strong background in Music Theory & Ear Training …..
FWIW ..I feel it is much more important than what type of gear I happen to use 
a lot of people don't realize that they are shortchanging them selfs by not learning Music Theory ….
when you start to understand a little about music theory , you can take what you know and recycle every thing in new and interesting combinations of musical ideas …
that alone makes it with the effort 
 
Kenny
 

kennywtelejazz
I have a very strong background in Music Theory & Ear Training …..
FWIW ..I feel it is much more important than what type of gear I happen to use 
a lot of people don't realize that they are shortchanging them selfs by not learning Music Theory ….
when you start to understand a little about music theory , you can take what you know and recycle every thing in new and interesting combinations of musical ideas …
that alone makes it with the effort 
 
Kenny
 

Having heard you play, I was pretty sure that you had a solid background in theory. :)
 
I've always regretted giving up on the music school. Back then, I felt that my classical guitar teacher was exaggerating my potential. I felt like a fraud because I'd been playing by ear "for years", so it seemed normal to me that I'd progress quickly.
 
This impression I had that I'd somehow cheated lead me to really belittle my abilities, and what I had learned, to the point where before I picked up the theory book, I was actually scared that I wouldn't be able to learn. But I went ahead and I started to realize that I'd probably learned more than I remembered and gave myself credit for.
 
When I dropped out of music school, I was playing in a band with a bunch of old beatniks - standard stuff from The Real Book and such. Their approach seemed to work for me - I didn't really need to read music, only to follow basic charts w/ chord names. I knew how to work out chords and figure out all the embellishments and 5th and 7th and all. I figured that that was enough, and it was paying more than I ever could have hoped, so...

Without music theory, the following isn't as funny.
 

An Upscale Bar
C, E-flat and G entered a bar.
The bartender said, "Sorry, I don't serve minors."
The E-flat left and the C and G had an open fifth between them. After a few drinks, the fifth was diminished and the G was out flat.
An F entered and tried to augment the situation but was not sharp enough.
A D entered and excused himself to the bathroom, saying, "I'll just be a second."
An A entered but the bartender wasn't convinced that this relative of C was not a minor.
Then the bartender noticed a B-flat hiding at the end of the bar. "Get out, right now!" he exclaimed. "You're the seventh minor I've found in this bar tonight."
The next night the E-flat returned to the bar in a 3-piece suit.
The bartender said, "You're looking sharp tonight. This could be a major development."
This was the case, when the E-flat took off the suit and everything else to stand there au natural.
Eventually, the C sobered up and realized in horror that he was under a rest.
He was brought to trial, found guilty of contributing to the diminution of a minor, and was sentenced to ten years of D.S. without the possibility of a Coda.
On appeal, he was found innocent of any wrongdoing, even accidental, because the accusation was bassless.
The bartender decided he needed a rest -- and closed the bar.

Rain

kennywtelejazz
I have a very strong background in Music Theory & Ear Training …..
FWIW ..I feel it is much more important than what type of gear I happen to use 
a lot of people don't realize that they are shortchanging them selfs by not learning Music Theory ….
when you start to understand a little about music theory , you can take what you know and recycle every thing in new and interesting combinations of musical ideas …
that alone makes it with the effort 
 
Kenny
 

Having heard you play, I was pretty sure that you had a solid background in theory. :)
 
I've always regretted giving up on the music school. Back then, I felt that my classical guitar teacher was exaggerating my potential. I felt like a fraud because I'd been playing by ear "for years", so it seemed normal to me that I'd progress quickly.
 
This impression I had that I'd somehow cheated lead me to really belittle my abilities, and what I had learned, to the point where before I picked up the theory book, I was actually scared that I wouldn't be able to learn. But I went ahead and I started to realize that I'd probably learned more than I remembered and gave myself credit for.
 
When I dropped out of music school, I was playing in a band with a bunch of old beatniks - standard stuff from The Real Book and such. Their approach seemed to work for me - I didn't really need to read music, only to follow basic charts w/ chord names. I knew how to work out chords and figure out all the embellishments and 5th and 7th and all. I figured that that was enough, and it was paying more than I ever could have hoped, so...

thanks Rain, 
yes , I sort of keep that card pretty close to the vest ….
speaking from P E….it is my humble opinion that a lot of times people (including myself ) have the tendency to overcomplicate music and music theory...
one of the most important things I have found out for myself for learning new things involving music has been to just listen with my full concentration and learn to recognize what I'm hearing …this is a skill  that is accumulative ...
I know that you are a smart guy , I know this from how you express yourself  in the way you write (English )
music is no different … a lot of music is learning to recognize and recall what you already know .
Kenny

Here you go Rain ,
 
take a look at these free online courses 
 
Fundamentals of Music Theory 
 
https://www.coursera.org/course/musictheory
 
Developing Your Musicianship
 
https://www.coursera.org/course/musicianship
 
Kenny
 

Thanks, Kenny. I'll check them out! :)

Hey!  Even I can afford these courses!