How to organize content via taxonomy, blocks, panels, views? I am new to Drupal. I have a guitar lessons site that I want to convert to drupal. Guitar lessons are a container that contain exercises, and lessons are categorized - I set up taxonomy). Exercises contain text, and media: audio, video, an image or two. Main image (tab) will automatically be displayed, audio will have link, and video would appear in tab, as would secondary image (fretboard diagram). So the media could be imagined as having its own mini horizontal panel or something below the image. Some audio/video will be designated as accessible to registered users only. On left there would be block that lists exercises in the current lesson. In lesson page there would be navigation (next exercise, etc, as well as a show all exercises option).

Not sure how to create this container-exercises relationship. And since I want people to be able search on exercises by themselves, apart from a lesson, I need a way for exercises to not only be attached to a lesson, but to be categorized and accessed on their own. I suspect taxonomy is the key here.

I have been reading about Panels as a way to control layout without editing themes. Also read about Views and understand the query function they play as well as perhaps display of results. So I understand these will be key. I have set up the exercise content type, adding custom fields. But now I am at a dead end. I don't know the process flow to make Drupal display the content the way I am seeing it in my head. And I don't know to what extent the tools will get the job done vs me having to code. I know PHP very well, CSS so-so, and Javascript so-so. I am trying to avoid coding if possible, except for minor tweaks. From building my site in postnuke some years back and doing an insane amount of coding, I know I don't want to repeat that!

Any tips on how you would go about this design with taxonomy, panels and views (or other tools) will be very appreciated. I would even be willing to hire someone to help me get started (apology if that is against the posting rules!).
This is a very broad question Brian, but I think it boils down to 'how should I handle relationships between entities'.

Take a look at the Entity Reference module.  With that you can create links between your various nodes so that you can display them on the same page.

For instance let's say your main content type is exercise, on each exercise node you could use the module to create links to a video and a fingering diagram (or several).  Then for each other thing you wanted to display on the page, you create a view with a contextual filter that looks for the node id of the exercise which is being displayed.

I highly recommend finding some reading or videos on how contextual filters in views works.

Panels makes the handling of contexts a little bit easier in the long run.  There's an excellent tutorial on Page Manager.