Well, I'm unfamiliar with the gentleman, but must disagree from a role of an amateur always striving to improve... The point of music theory is not that something is wrong or right, but to understand some regularities in why something sounds right or wrong. I mean, notes and chords themselves exist only because of music theory. People clanged things together every which way until (if I'm not mistaken) Pythagoras came along and figured out that these 12 particular tones sound good, but more importantly the random clangers tend to arrive at these 12 tones (at least in Europe), after a lot of experimentation. The same thing with chords and eventually the whole song structure... The problem for me is that I struggle in vain. The same as with the primitive clangers, I'm going to experiment with random chords, but my mind is still going to end up at one of a few progressions that have been figured out ages ago. Perhaps because of cultural influence, but in the end it's what's going to sound right to me. Except with music theory I could figure that out much quicker.

But there's nothing wrong with working outside discovered relationships, if that sounds right to you... Or even if it doesn't. I mean, I don't even know with modern academic music.