>Checking out music-theory on the side to learn about what you
>are listening to and how to explain it is a bit different IMO
>to people who went to music-school and stuff

Yeah, that could be. Personally I had a parallel upbringing - I was taking piano lessons and music classes at the same time as I was getting an informal education in rock and punk from friends. It helped me to keep an open mind, I think, and to spend some time thinking about why certain bands worked even though what they were playing was dead simple. (For instance I still love the Ramones, whose music couldn't be any simpler, but a lot of bands that aped them are just boring.)

>I also think a knowledge about theory (actually, they don't
>have to know theory for this but still, an increased technical
>skill can also fuck up here) can affect artists badly in the
>sense that it leads to an "awareness" about what they are
>doing (and by extension, what they should not do) which IMO is
>often actually a bad thing in music as weird as that may seem,
>especially if you are doing/writing simple music and your
>theoretical knowledge is more than functional.

I hear you, but I'm not sure how true that works out to be. Lots of trained pros have played simple music effectively - actually I think that's a big key to the success of one of my favorite groups, Bad Brains, because they played "dumb" hardcore punk but used their theoretical grounding and playing experience to introduce some cool twists that eluded more primitive bands, and also be tight even when playing at light speed. I have found for myself that even though I know what I "should" play when I pick up a guitar - where the chords and scales are, in other words - a lot of times I write more interesting stuff by just sliding my fingers around and making noise until something catchy starts happening. In those cases I usually work out the theory behind what I'm doing later - surprisingly often, it's something that is harmonically sound but maybe has just a few weird suspended notes or inversions that make it sound a little alien and off.

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