BenTunnicliffe

Another +1 for Soundcloud.
Some producer friends of mine have been talking on the phone about a latest effort whilst I've been there then said they'd post it on Soundcloud and without having to go off and make a cuppa they were both able to then hear the track in question and chat about it over the phone.

The same guys actually discovered the website when it was recommended and being used by their uni lecturers on music tech courses to upload material etc so I can't imagine the bitrate etc is too bad bt I haven't checked myself so I wouldn't quote me on that.

Hope that helps.

*Sorry, Bit of a rant here*

Without trawling through the many valid replies to this thread to quote people I just see theory as another tool in a bag of tricks/arsenal/toolbelt or whatever you want to call it.

Having a good ear that can hear things such as "oh we just went up a fret/semitone/halfstep/one metal line on my long wood thingy", when a chord goes from major to minor or things that to most us by now are very simple wether we know theory or not such as "oh sh*t we're in the chorus now....*moves hands accordingly* is a good tool to have but not everyone by far has this kind of hearing in music and the people who do develop it at different times in their playing.

Being able to see patterns is a fantastic skill also but doesn't have to mean knowing theory.
For instance in a huge list if not a majority of pop records or something like a blues learning a riff of notes as just a geometric pattern on the fretboard is far quicker than breaking it down into scale or chord degrees (R, m3, b7, #11) and as I believe in msot situations the faster you get stuff learnt or to a level of them being playable the more time you have to rehearse, or perform I would in a such instance take THAT approach.
In a classical piece of music though there is a lot of patterns being played that are descending down a scale in which case if the music is being read from dots having the ability to VISUALLY spot such a pattern saves time, panicking and a lot of hastle. Also when a pattern of degrees is being applied to different chords of a scale (I, V, vi etc) being able to see this as a diatonic progression will save a lot of stress too.

How we apply songs to memory or furthermore remember them is also soemthign that has many approaches.
Some people will hear a new song as fragments of other things they've heard before, some people have perfect pitch and can play back verbatim, some people watch the other isntruments and apply what they see to their instrument and on the other side of the scale I know a good amount of musicians (a majority are from formal, classical or very structured learning kind of backgrounds such as brass bands or have had a number of lessons from someone with such a background) who almost refuse to play songs unless they're writen out in some form or another i.e. a chord chart or complete dots and just don't really apply things to memory.

My overall view is that in any situation the more of these skills I have available to me then the more flexible I can be and ultimately get the job done.
I enjoy listening to, playing along to, studying, recording and performing a very wide variety of music styles which is what's lead me to end up with this mentality.
If you're thing is playing every weekend with some old friends in your (insert genre of choice here) band and that's what makes up 70% of your music collection the chances are you wont need ALL these skills by far and that without thinking about it you'll already have your own process with varying levels of music theory included in that.

Frankly I was lead to teach myself music theory (i'm self taught) when I went through a good couple of years being besotted with Jaco and I'd heard he was a music theory buff and so I sent out to find, learn and apply all these scales and books he'd studied. From that I have all my diatonic harmony, scales, arpeggios, understanding of chord progressions, gave my hands a good workout and it really improved the way I can see a piece of music and it be something i can understand and draw from rather than listen, be amazed but have no idea how i'd approach trying to create something of that nature.
A few years ago, after deciding that my aim was to play as much as possible to try and make a living out of it I sat down and decided to really concentrate on my reading music purely because I've been aware for a long time how little amount of bassists there are in North Wales who read dots and that if I could get to a level of being able to confidently play most charts thrown in front of me and thus be getting a larger run of the work available around here; it really has worked very well.

No idea how to end this post so....yes....there's my 2p.