Hey! I want a copy too! (Please?)
It’s good stuff! It’s the stuff I have sorta accumulated over the years, but documented clearly and concisely. It’s not stuff I retain and use actively when I am playing, but it’s the common-sense stuff I ground myself on.
Nice job and thank you, Crotalus!!
Sent.
I wonder if it’s easier for piano/keyboard players to understand music theory, because there’s a one-to-one correspondence between notes and the keys that are laid out in a row before them.
Absolutely, especially when it comes to black notes and sharps/flats. These don’t technically exist on the guitar neck and their fret placement changes as you go from string to string. The sound of a scale, interval, or chord however is much the same for piano and guitar, and sound is ultimately what you’re after. Knowing both piano and guitar, particularly by ear, is a huge advantage when learning music.
I agree with Biffster. When teaching theory to guitar students, I have always used a picture of a keyboard with the white keys labeled to illustrate how chords are built from the notes of the scale.
Regarding the bolded phrase: that’s hilarious. All I can do is improvise! Until I could dip into YouTube How to Play vids, I typically got maybe 80% of a riff or song correct, and almost never learned the “correct” lead - I just faked it the best I could and sold it hard. Not knowing how to read or much theory certainly helps with that approach 
Can I get in on this? Please,
I’m always interested in reading another person’s approach to teaching music. Theres always new stuff I learn.
Thank you, but when I tried to open it I got, (ever so ironically) gibberish. Now, that’s funny.
Piano is very helpful. I had to really up my music game taking voice lessons. Intervals are absolutely crucial to singing on pitch. I still struggle with it. I wish we all had frets on our neck. Life would be so much better. 
Everything in music ties together. starting with scales, then intervals, triads etc. Rhythm. It all builds up one stone at a time. Before long you look up and there’s a house there.
Thank you all for all of the helpful responses, especially Wordman. I was feeling contemplative last night when I wrote this post and a little frustrated. Perhaps I need to quit worrying about it all, and just poke around and play. I picked up a lap steel for way cheap and I’m trying to figure out what notes to fake the minors and seventh chords and if I knew how they were arrived at, it would help. It’s harder to find tutorials (or tabs) for a lap steel - but actually the fretboard actually makes a kind of intuitive sense, doesn’t it? There’s an old fart on youtube named KountryCuz doing lessons on lap steel in E. His southern twang is a little irritating but he bogs me down with very little theory.
I had learned Sleepwalk for theh regular guitar from Bruce Linquist on youtube, and picking it out on the lap steel isn’t so hard, at least not the single notes. It’s the harmonic notes to go with them that I can’t seem to find.
Crotalus I uploaded your doc to google drive which kindly converted it to a PDF for me. Much better.
I think there is a wide gap between shitty guitar soloing and shitty trombone soloing. I only get to play one note at a time so it better be right!
Dude - there you go! Fuckin’ lap steel?! And you find yourself engaged? Go for it and fuck theory!!
I remember realizing I could rock in Open G following Keith. Having an open tuning that moves you opens doors. Doing it on a lap steel? Very cool.
Don’t overthink it. In most forms of popular music, theory is far less important than an intuitive feel for the music and a good ear. Nevertheless, it helps to have some understanding of theory, just to be able to have a vocabulary to express certain concepts that you already know intuitively.
You’re familiar with a major scale. You know the sound of it intuitively. You know how to play a major scale. There are eight notes in the major scale. The first and eighth notes are the same note, just an octave apart.
Think of those notes as simply numbers, one through eight. It doesn’t matter what key it’s in. Those eight notes are a major scale no matter what note you start on. But each of those numbers has a unique role to play in creating chords from that scale.
Play the one, the three, and the five, together, and you have a simple major chord.
Make the three flat - i.e. lower that note a half-step - and it becomes minor. A minor “tonality” - what you describe intuitively as “haunting” - is created by making the three flat. The three is, therefore, really important.
The seventh also plays a unique role. Adding it, or adding the flat version of it (lowered by a half-step) dramatically changes the sound of a chord or a riff. If you add the seventh to a major chord, it becomes a major seventh. You know intuitively what this sounds like. It’s a staple of pop music. Listen to beginning of John Mayer’s “No Such Thing” for an example of a major seventh chord turning into a major chord. There’s a sense of tension-resolution created by the major seventh chord changing to a major chord (the 7 changing to 8.)
Making the 7th flat, the chord becomes a DOMINANT 7th chord. I like to think of that word implying that the 7th goes from a “passive” role to an “active” role in defining the sound of the chord. The dominant seventh chord is the classic rock and blues chord. If you play some combination of the notes of the major scale, but adding a flatted (dominant) seventh, you’re playing a rock/blues riff. If you add that dominant seventh to a minor chord, it becomes a “minor seventh” chord.
There are many other concepts to talk about, but for now, these three basic things are important to keep in mind. Experiment with playing the “one” of a scale, followed by any of the other numbers. Don’t even make it a chord, just play separate notes.
One - three - five…
one - flat-three - five…
one - three - seven…
one - three - flat-seven…
So much of popular music is based around these very simple concepts. There is, of course, a lot more to it, but for now, just get your head around the things above…play around with it on a guitar, then report back. After that, I can help you understand some other things.
Lyin Eyes by the Eagles opens with G to Gmaj7 to C, Am, D
Once heard, its never forgotten. 
It was the first song I had ever played with Gmaj7.
Lots and lots of songs use G7. The Eagles were on to a unique sound in the 70’s.
I’m realizing the art of lap steel is getting notes you don’t want ringing out to shut up. 
Okay, this I understand. Thank you!
One of my other rules: expect to spend 50% of your time making the sounds you want, and 50% of your time stopping the sounds you don’t want. With a lap steel I assume there’s a lot of damping with your slide hand going on.
You need to figure out whether the harmonies are above or below the melody—in Sleepwalk I believe they’re below. Here is where interval understanding helps, as I believe the harmonies are a third below. That would be either four or five frets depending on whether it’s a major or minor third below, but it’s probably the next string in any event. Experiment to see what sounds best.