Theory is one of those things in music where people who study it will tell you that you definitely need to learn it and the people who never learned theory will tell you not to bother with anything but the basics.


I'm in the latter group.

However, everyone is different. I have a friend that I started playing guitar with at the same time about 10 years ago... He went on a theory obsessed journey to learn all the theory he could... I just started playing in bands and started writing and playing songs. 10 years later, our technical ability is about the same. I would say I'm a better lead player becuase I have a better overall feel and improvisational ability and he is clearly better at rhythm and song structure. We have our strenghts and weaknesses becuase the paths we took. He loves to tell me I'm doing it wrong, and I love to follow him up in a jam so I can let my guitar say what I need to say about that.