[ludston]

That's a cool project, but learning music via music theory is a bit like trying to learn English via grammar theory. It's backwards, and out of the hundreds of musicians I've met, I've never met one that walked that path.

Strong recommendation: Hire a teacher. Even with experience playing four instruments, and when I decided to learn another, I still hired a teacher.

[jmkr]

One of my goals for this years was to get a jazz teacher, specifically for guitar.

A layoff killed that goal for the foreseeable future.

Theory has helped me practice like I think you're supposed to. More structured, more analysis. It also tickles the same part of the brain the certain comp sci topics do.

I think it came from wanting to learn how to improv, and then wanting to make my own songs. So I make a few tracks a week, of different genres, depending on what I'm interested in at the time. I've seen improvement, and I take notes about what I learned/what works.