Musicians/theorists

Hans made a comment about performing musicians and theorists...he said "both viewpoints are right and necessary." I've studied musical theory for many years, and enjoy it greatly...but, as for being "necessary," it is not at all necessary for the performing of music. It's good for folks who want to talk ABOUT what may be happening in some sort of theoretical sense in a musical performance, but they are not remotely the same thing. Same with tuning theory...as Sami Abu Shumays has recently pointed out, there are people who can play with very subtle microtonal inflections that have no concept of the theoretical part of it. KNOWING, intellectually, about where the notes fall will not help in the slightest.
And, the blues analogy is again appropriate. I can bend notes in a very subtle way, consistently, but I don't know just what ratio I'm landing on (plus, where I place the bend may change slightly from situation to situation). And, I can show my students, by ear, how to do it as well...and if they keep trying, they can often get the hang of it (but jeez, it's not an easy art). And, I've read many hundreds of interviews with great blues artists over the years, and don't recall ONE of them talking about the theory behind what they do...and not one of them learned the blues in a school of any sort. The great jazz guitarist Barney Kessel once remarked, in Guitar Player, that none of the great jazz artists he knew had learned in a school. And of course, the case of Django Reinhardt is well known...he was illiterate for most of his life, but was considered a musical prodigy when he was 12. And, needless to say, there are many more examples such as this. Yes, theory is fun for chatting, but not necessarily useful for playing many styles of music...best...HHH
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