Yes. No. Maybe... all answers are right if you consider that you don't have to approach Theory in any sort of approved or "right" way. People have been exploring it since, as a species, we began to organize sound in pleasing, meaningful ways. To make your first chord is to begin to understand the mechanics of Music intuitively and viscerally (body memory, like the way you walk), as our ancestors have always done. Written record and scientific method are a recent development in the historic span of Humans creating Music - an attempt to preserve and refine what bubbles out of us naturally... how, when, and where is that useful?

Conventional Theory is as useful as your ability or desire to use it. This has everything to do with your learning style, where you are in the process, what your goals are - and what choices you have. Imagine a baby hitting the books to learn walking - now consider a runner studying his/her performance, attempting to improve it. Blues is an aural, intuitive tradition that needs no in-depth analysis or explanation, while Classical guitar could not exist without it. Illiteracy eliminates the possibility of reading or writing a language, but not of speaking it creatively and evocatively - Music is just another language. What and how do you want to communicate?

Guitar Tablature is all over the Internet, and for good reason - it's the written language that tells you where on the guitar fretboard to place your fingers to get the sounds you want to hear when you're learning music that other people have created; the most direct way from point A to point B. Some teachers may disagree with me that Tablature is Theory, but I believe it is only bypassing the complicated explanation to get to the actual playing, and that your hands and your intuition are absorbing Theoretical wisdom as you learn. They teach you what works without telling you WHY it does, and that's ok... there's plenty of time to learn WHY if you decide you want to.

Chord symbols are the other most common written language for learning guitar - again, they don't tell you much more than where to put your fingers to get the proper sound; they do name the chord, but they don't tell you WHY it has that name. You learn a song by playing a series of chords, so you discover that a particular group of chords work together, still without understanding WHY they do. You could build an entire repertoire of other peoples' tunes, and be the campfire hero without ever consciously exploring the Theory of what you're doing - you'd still be absorbing Theory intuitively and viscerally - and if that's as far as you want to go, go for it!

If, however, you are a dedicated, serious student of Guitar - if your goal is excellence in a lifelong pursuit of the accumulated science of the instrument - you'll eventually hit a wall. Theory will then be the only gate through the wall, because there's really no way around it... and once beyond that wall, a whole world of understanding will open up for you. What you absorbed viscerally and intuitively will suddenly begin to make logical sense - and the benefits to your musicianship will astonish you! I have to add a caution here, though... once you have advanced to this level, there may be no turning back! The learning is endless, addictive, and enormously rewarding; you may be left with no other choice than to become a Guitar Hero!

~~~tod~~~