Is Music Theory Necessary?
That’s an interesting question. The Beatles always claimed that they didn’t know any music theory and they did pretty well. That said, they had access to a producer, George Martin, who was well schooled in it. Would their records have been less brilliant without George’s expertise. No doubt. However they wrote those brilliant songs without his participation.
One interesting thing that I noted in my many years of teaching songwriting was that my students who had a deep knowledge of music theory were no better songwriters than my students who had next to no knowledge of discipline. Why was that? Well I had a number of theories. Perhaps being able to deconstruct a song provided limited advantage when trying to create a song. One analogy that comes to mind is an expert mechanic who can fix anything on a car wouldn’t necessarily be able to design an engine from scratch. Another thought has to do with lyric writing. If those students spent all their time working on learning music theory, they would have by definition have much less time learning about poetic devices and appreciating well written lyrics. Also, songwriting has to do with creating melody that ‘rides’ over the chords. I’m not sure you can teach that very readily.
In conclusion, I’d have to say that you will need to learn some music theory. That said it may not be via a music theory course although that would likely be the most efficient way to learn. You may prefer to learn organically. By that I mean by hanging out with the instrument you write on you will eventually learn that C and Am sound good together. Now you may not know that the Am is the relative minor of C but that’s okay.
So either way you’ll need to learn some music theory even if you don’t realize that’s what you’re learning.
Exceptions…If you’re writing for Broadway and the stage you better know theory. The same is true for jazz influenced pieces.
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Jim Bruno's Songwriting Class 