Lennon's mother was a pianist and string player. She taught John the piano, accordion, banjo, ukulele and, less successfully, the guitar. John said that he'd sit there endlessly playing the instruments until he'd learned all the chords.

McCartney's father was a jazz pianist and trumpeter. McCartney says: "A lot of people have said that I do the chords a lot like my father used to do. I'm sure I picked it up over the years."

Aretha Franklin's father was a singer. Her mother was a singer and pianist. Franklin's siblings were singers. Franklin's father was renowned for his musical sermons. According to Mahalia Jackson, Aretha's mother was one of the finest gospel singers in the country.

Zimmer's mother was a classically trained pianist and teacher. Zimmer's father was a jazz clarinettist. As a child, Hans would jam for hours with Joachim.

I get the romanticised "started with nothing, became a great artist anyway" sentiment. But that's virtually never the case for people wanting to make music in the traditional sense. It's easier to win the lottery than it is to become successful making traditional music without any formal education or early family exposure.

 

My Jazz Teacher always said: “You need to know the rules before you can break them.” If you know your options, you can make educated choices. If you have no idea, you might get lucky, but a lot of the time you will stick to what you know already, because you are comfortable with it. So learning about what works is not cheating, it is expanding your possibilities. And once you know the rules you also have the freedom to break them if it feels appropriate.

 

"As a bassist, I navigate an intricate confluence of rhythmic precision and harmonic depth, necessitating an erudite command of advanced music theory, encompassing arcane scales, modal interchange, and polyrhythmic structures. I deftly amalgamate syncopated rhythmic motifs with intricate melodic ornamentations, employing sophisticated techniques such as slap and pop, tapping, and artificial harmonics. My role is indispensable, functioning as the fulcrum that seamlessly integrates percussive elements with harmonic frameworks, thereby engendering a cohesive and dynamically intricate auditory milieu." - Sid Vicious

 

Well... I don't disagree. However I believe that people that grow up around music and that have a real affinity for it can absorb a huge amount of theory by osmosis. And no amount of knowing the rules will help someone if they don't have an innate sense of how to break them in a musical way. So I still think that writing music by a pure application of rules and formula is a cheat. Again, I agree it's good to know the rules but in a contest between rules & theory and ears I take ears. (They don't have to be exclusive, obviously.)