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I think that the importance of academia is overestimated in the field of the arts. Potentially it can lead to mindless drones mass producing bland and sterile rehashing of old ideas again and again. It might give you a fancy piece of paper depicting scholarly credentials and could possibly lead to a lucrative career if that is what you desire. However an important element that I think tends to get overshadowed is an independent mind coming from a unique perspective free and untainted by the all encompassing dogmatic system. Is it any wonder that the quality of arts and entertainment has been on a steady decline over the years? I haven't witnessed anything new and groundbreaking since the 90s. Much of it is regurgitated and fails to break any new ground. That tends to be feed into a lazy, uninspired mindset. Personally I much prefer to be an autodidact and find my own independent approach to my music, art and writing. I don't like being told what to do and "all guitarists must learn blues and the circle of fifths, etc" I say screw cookie cutter licks, concepts and standards. We all must tune to A=440hz using a precision tuner that's calibrated to 1/1000th of a cent? I say to hell with conformity and I'm going to use my own method of tuning by ear. Play all of your scales up and down in a uniform fashion? A pox on that! I'm going to go inside and out, zigzag multi-directional and improvise 1 note here, 3 there, skip a string 2 then 6, 5, 1, skip a string 2 etc. I find it much more rewarding and liberating coming up with your own ideas. Detox yourself from media and music for a while and immerse yourself in nature, that can be a source of inspiration. What emotions do you feel among the trees, rocks, birds, water streams,etc? Express that through your instrument or other artistic medium.
Creativity generates innovation and that is not something that you can teach. Pertaining to the field of music, arts and entertainment.
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andrew covell
while i agree music needs to be approached uniquely and that adademia in the field is pressed way more than it should be these days it also cannot be understated how important learning theory and scales are sure you can use this knowledge for a template however a fun way to use it is to throw an audience off say you know they'll expect you to play a C note off of your G note you can instead surprise them by breaking the convention and going to an Fmin7thDim and from there have to work your way into making that work no one said you had to stay inside the scales much less that you can't hop scales in fact these are encouraged in metal music as dissonance brings about a heavy darker sound blues has it's own scale that breaks conventions as it is but break it further by daring to touch the 10th fret and you'll get something unique music is all about experimentation and breaking convention and that's 1 thing they don't teach in the academic setting and theres a very clear reason why it's because the school system is all about rigidity something that's only a small part of music my advice is don't look at it as learning music look at it as learning the basics of music and being given the tools you need to take it to the next level the same can be said about other artforms that are taught in schools
I'm kind of getting deja-vu here as I think we might have had this discussion before but maybe with a different topic. Yeah I don't disagree with what you're saying and in fact my view is pretty similar. I'm not saying throw it all out the window. I use theory for a foundation or a guide a lot of the time but that's all I view it as. To quote the word you used "rigidity" (good word for that btw) that is what I'm challenging. It's just theory not a be all end all towards music. Too much of it takes the fun out of it and can be discouraging and more like a chore at least to me. Also what I am saying is that there are different approaches to theory that are less pedantic and more fun. Recently I've considered giving guitar lessons that are more oriented towards people like me who are autistic or just of a similar mindset.
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Also things like automatic writing or free improvisation, embarking into uncharted territory devoid of any conscious theory can yield some brilliant results. That is often potentially when innovation occurs. That is something that shouldn't be dismissed and should at least be considered.
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