yes, Mary??? You remember how to make them?? bg

I'm so focused on trying to learn here, it didn't occur to me, until after reading Joan's post, that teachers may need help to teach. This hopefully will be brief and helpful.

I learned to play guitar in college by watching, listening and playing with other people. I learned AFTER I heard the music, felt it and fell in love with it.

My brother was learning to play guitar at the same time, by taking "Music Theory" classes at MIT in Cambridge. He was "labeled" early in life as having a "genius" IQ, received scholarships to MIT, got his degree as an Electrical Engineer and later became staff in the computor labs there.

We were both new to the music and played our guitars together during holiday visits and school breaks. I came home one year with a 12 string guitar and had JUST learned to play "San Francisco Bay Blues" on it....excited about how the bass runs I was doing in the song SOUNDED. He stopped me and asked "why" I did something.(still no clue what) and had me slow the song down. He then informed me that I had added something in the beginning of the song, and "theoretically" it made no sense. He taped my playing and back we went to our respective schools.

About a week later, I received a phone call from him, telling me that he had figured out how I "got away" with what I was doing. Evidently, later in the song I omitted something to make up for what I had stuck into it at the beginning...so I ended in the right place.

It took him years to FEEL the "heart" in the music.

This is already wayyy to long a post for this thread, but I found it sad to think learning to play music for him was another Mathematical challenge that required solving. But that was HIS truth and the way he learned..mathematically and theoretically, pages of equations, paper etc. My truth, I think, is that I need to hear it, and see it...and this little Casio keyboard I have here is helping a LOT to understand a bit of the stuff in this thread.

Apologies for being long-winded...