[grawprog]

>The most basic aspect of Western music theory overlooked here is the relationship between tonic and dominant. If you know the "home" chord aka "the I" aka "tonic" is C major, the dominant will be G major, aka the V chord. Add just the F major chord, and you'll know 1-4-5 in a "basic" key: C major. 1-4-5 is the simplest chord progression, you can play amazing grace, you are my sunshine, even The Beatles, you'll be rocking with 1-4-5.

Having learned music theory on a guitar rather than a piano, I learned this in a different order. C Major wasn't the focus at first. We started with Am Pentatonic and learned the common 1-4-5 progression and how to build chords and progressions out of that. Then added the rest of the notes of the Am scale in before finally going into root notes and relative scales and learning C major.

It's just my conjecture, but i think Am works better on guitars for learning because it's right in the middle of the guitar starting on fret 5 on the 6th string. Makes it easy, like you say, for someone to solo along with a 1-4-5 progression just by running up and down the scale. As long as you hit the right frets, it'll sound decent, you don't have to stretch too far, you get a nice clear view of the scale's 'pattern' on the frets. Plus, it's the relative minor of Cmajor meaning, you can still play along with someone just hammering white keys on a piano.

We also learned using a lot of blues music. There's a lot of easy variations you can do on a guitar in an Am blues key that can teach you all those fundamentals.

Modes were also worked in at the same time. This was probably not the best though, cause i really didn't get them at the time and only fairly recently sat down to study them and actually figure them out.