Hey William, hope you are well!

I cover Intervals in Piano Lessons for Producers.

As you said, no, they are not necessary to know.

A lot of music theory is “good to know”, but in reality, learning to produce chords and melodies for beats truly comes down to knowing a key and scale.

Once you know a key and scale, you will then muscle memorize the chords available to you.

You should be practicing piano for at least 5 minutes a day (even at my level) to keep to fine-tune your improvisation skills.

There’s two types of musicians, really..

1. One who can only read sheet music and play another person’s music..
2. One who can improvise and create their own music from scratch (which is what we want to be as beatmakers!)

Understanding a key and scale will help you achieve #2 there.

I also like to practice piano over a “click track”, like my Piano Drum Loops, to practice piano as a producer in a real-world setting.

I hope that helps you move forward..