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This seems incomplete to me. The 2nd from the tonic also stays the same whether in a major or minor scale, but we speak of major and minor seconds, not perfect seconds. This is one of the reasons why I prefer my method of looking at counting up or down from the tonic in a major scale and comparing the results, for motivating the distinction between major/minor vs. perfect.

You can't copy-paste a thread between forums. Once it's posted here, it's here to stay unless a moderator moves it.

Polyphonist, thanks for that catch.

This is extremely wise, and too many people don't get this. Adults tend to think about what they are told, and essentially they end up interpreting it; what they end up doing is no longer the instruction - it has vanished. If you can turn this around deliberately, you can work miracles.

Unfortunately some modes of teaching want to cater to "adult nature". Since adults "conceptualize", the teaching is abstract and idea-heavy. I believe that adult beginners need to be very heavy in simple, direct experience - they may have to relearn this child-side.

Absolutely. This is where I came in with "strategy" - where the task is broken down into smaller tasks, which the student CAN handle. Over days, as you layer in each thing, you end up with a beautiful piece of music. There are teachers who understand this. Here you come to your "Just Do" --- if a teacher gives "simple activity 1", then "simple activity 2", but the student insists on doing the complicated full picture he sees, then the student simply won't experience this.

Here's a piece i learnt a few years ago, and I'm re-viving it, because I LOVE the piece. Maybe Merodiene or someone can flag it on grade, I'm thinking 3 - 4.

The piece is called Cristofori's Dream composed by David Lanz.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7mgrcULIbs

Before this piece as an example, I had never done arpeggios. But there are 2 very very brief passages in the later half of the piece that uses them, so I learnt them. Its kinda like learning on demand. Its only a 2 octave C Maj. and 2 octave D Maj. When I played this for my teacher at the time, she exclaimed..."excellent", but her outburst, made me loose my concentration LOLOL. I didn't know it was anything special or important. I learned it as notes on a page.

So...do you need arpeggios for the piece, sure, did I practice them specifically for the piece...yes. because my fingers had to move like that handn't before.

I dunno if that makes sense.

Just start a topic in the ABF and/or hitchhike an existing thread that talks about one of your concerns. You can link to this thread in case anyone wants to read what's here. But with mostly new people, maybe fresh input from scratch would be good.

The theory discussion has moved to the ABF: Here

It usually depends on the notes around it. If you are in the key of E-flat major where you have a B-flat occurring in the key signature, and in that measure or the note previous to the C-Cb or C-B interval, you may want to choose Cb over B natural to avoid confusion. Also, since you are going from Bb to Cb/Bnatural, the sound goes up melodically, so you want the notation to reflect an upward motion of notes. So the notes and key signature come into consideration. However, there is no right or wrong I think. It's only wrong if you call C-Cb a major 7th.