thanks for the help earlier! i'm the one learning the peter gabriel song Here Comes the Flood. (i'm not asking about theory btw hahahaha, please don't move to space, we like having you here.) what i'm trying to learn is the full, accurate piano part in the original key, from the Shaking The Tree version. i don't think i communicated my questions very well though, or at all, so i'll try again.  i have experience in percussion, but also some guitar and mandolin, learning with tabs and by ear - i'm the one that thinks strings sound soapy. but i can JUST BARELY read music at all. i am teaching myself piano, and how to read music. right now my ears are ahead of my fingers and feet, which are all MILES ahead of what i can actually read. there's a lot of "music language" that i've been exposed to but don't really understand yet. i want to learn this stuff so i can play and communicate with others better, and to be able to write down things i make
  up.  my strategy is: A) have fun learning songs that i like as accurately as i can, by ear. B) learn to read using beginner music books and get frustrated because i can only read things like hot cross buns so far. (maybe a tad more advanced than that.) it was fairly equal a month ago but now i spend 95% of the time i play on A and 5% on B. so, i haven't progressed on reading much. that's problem 1.  problem 2 is: i think i have a pretty good ear. BUT i sometimes hit a limit: when it gets to be 5 or 6 or more keys pressed at the same time, it all starts to sound like One Big Thing and i have trouble distinguishing the notes, especially low ones. (keep in mind that i can't NAME the notes/chords from hearing them, i can just copy what i hear after hunting around a bit.) i know some musicians are able to identify notes in big chords really easily and accurately, and it seems almost like they were just born with that ability, which is kind of scary,
i think if you keep using a pause and hunt strategy, (make sure you are using a local copy of the file, not streaming. if it's streaming like on youtube or something you're never gonna be able to unpause-pause as quickly as you need to) if you keep using the pause and hunt strategy for more and more songs, you will learn more and more and there will be less and less things that confuse you, and less and less things that fall outside your familiar classification system. if there are any chords or notes you are wondering about, i will be able to tell you if you show me where you heard it