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“I’m at last taking a class from a teacher who is relatable and helps make this knowledge accessible.

Lyrics, chord charts, and rough sample demos.

Three ‘simple’ pieces that an artist needs to be able to compose in order for their artistic concepts to be well conveyed.

The perequisite is having taken a Music Fundamentals class before, which I’ve done twice – the last time about eleven years or so ago.

I have a refresher book, too.

But this foundational structure did not really tell a person how to apply the knowledge functionally – nor, especially, intuitively.

Theory has been presented enough to name the pieces and then get abstract with the Circle of 5ths – much like math can continue building, but unless you are measuring something or getting into physics, all you really came away with practically is geometric measurements or how to count change, for example.

I am finally gaining slow ability to identify notes and tonal relationships on the piano.

Lord help me attempting to convert this same info to a guitar!

And I can see that if you know the Circle of 5ths, then you can somehow begin identifying potential chords by whether there are notes in a piece of music with tonic, sharps, or flats aspects.

Then, you could go on to say a note is augmented or diminished, or at a degree counter to its original position within the chord structure.

But I’m still workung backwards it seems, trying to just find the notes to match my singing because trying to write chords to chart seems to me to be not enough info to convey a song’s details properly.

For now, I’m still at the place of clarifying the little details – which might be making my learning curve more difficult than going for generalities.”