how essential to music production is music theory? i want to

You could always just learn an instrument

of course studyign music theory can only benefit you.

use your ears. nothing is necessarily correct. what IS correct is how you hear and feel about your music. good luck

You should learn theory, itll only make your stuff sound better. You don't need to dive too deep, but having a basic grasp of scales, chords and intervals will make your stuff sound better than just randomly picking notes on the piano roll. There are plenty of free resources on the internet that you can use and aren't too complicated, so it's not too hard to learn.

learning music theory is definitely just more power to you. no harm in doing it

First and foremost, always keep in mind the question of "does what I'm playing sound good to me?" in your head. It's pretty vital. Figure out a way to register what comes up in your mind that sounds good to you as well.

Anyhow, the thing about music theory is that it's descriptive rather than prescriptive, and a massive helpful tool that you can use to make finding what you think sounds good easier. It's not something that comes up that naturally, but after a while you get the gist of how music theory works. And that means that you'll take far less time turning something that comes up in your head into the sound you want.