Here Steve talks a bit about the importance of learning your theory and of training your ear.

The more you know about theory, the easier it is to come up with possibilities. If you learn theory it doesn't mean that you can't play music that has soul, it just means that you can figure it out quicker.

If you do ear training, you can figure out why you like what you like, and guess what? that will help you when you try and write your own stuff. If you get stuck for an idea you might think; well I got this idea I love, I just canÍt seem to hook it onto something else, let me just go back to historically, some things that worked. The more you know, the easier it is to make your choices. It comes down to, if it sounds good and feels good...it is. There's no rules.

But to get to that point of having something that you really believe sounds good, you need to be able to make intelligent choices. YouÍll have a lot easier time coming up with the choices if you learn the theory and ear training.

Theory is a finite thing, its kind of like addition; once you learn how to add...you can add. Some things are more numbers, some things are less numbers, but its pretty much the same...you add or subtract. And theory is basically a very finite science. You can take it to the n'th degree to the point of being ridiculous but, music theory is pretty much learning how things are arranged and what we call them. Its like psychology, its all the stuff you already knew, but you put names to it.

Same is true with ear training. Well excuse me, ear training's a little bit more of a skill you have to hone. Ear training is VERY important.

Steve Morse