Starting a new thread around chord/melody is a good idea - but it breaks the continuity a bit, so I'll post this here, and wait for someone else to do the business, and put in the appropriate links back and forth from here. (The trouble is people tend not to read through the earlier thread.)

I think in terms of chords, but never chord sequences. By that I mean, once I know what key it is, I'll be choosing from a known set of chords, which I'll pull in to make the appropriate sound, but I'll be thinking in terms of the tune, and looking instinctively for a chord that has that note, and which fits in (which isn't the same thing) And my personal prejudice tends to be for as few chords as possible.

That's when I'm playing a guitar, which I mostly do. If in a session I pass the guitar across to the guy who plays the mandolin so he can do a song, and I pick up his mandolin, I'll think in terms of getting the right note, largely because I don't really know the chords too well on the mandolin.

But as I said, I never think in terms of chord sequences as such, and get completely lost when people start talking in those sort of terms.

Takes all kinds. But I think in folk music and in other sorts of music the tune should be regarded as more fundamental than the chords. There was a quote from the late Isaac Guillory on a Mudcat thread which I just dug out: "Here's one from those days when the melody went where it will and the chords just followed." I think that's the right way round, and it was a brilliant example of how Isaac could give a whole lesson in a sentence sometimes.