I believe long exposure to good music in the folk genre sensitizes you not only to chords but also to the impact of segments, intervals, and certain kinds of runs, and also develops a sense of how the ties between chords can work and can vary. This matrix of background experience makes it possible to go back and forthbetween the larger blacks represented by the chords, and the finer threads of musical sensation which you build by the melodic line contrasting with the chords' "infrastructure" so to speak.

This is an evolutionary process. As with all evolutionary processes some resultants survive and others get eaten! :>)

Much love,

A