# Help me revise this idea for learning chords/changes for Jazz standards

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#1 7 April, 2017 - 15:45
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#### Help me revise this idea for learning chords/changes for Jazz standards

What do you think of this idea I'm working on to remember the chords of Jazz standards?

For example, Cherokee starts like this: Bb | Bb | Fm7 | Bb7.

So far the plan is to do the following:
1. See what key it is in and call that the 1 chord. Bb is the 1 chord in Cherokee.
2. Write out the numbers of all the bars, so for our first 4 bars it goes 1 | 1 | 5 | 1
3. Convert each chord quality to a number (1 is ionian, 2 is dorian, etc.), which would read 1 | 1 | 2 | 5
4. Put the output of steps 2 and 3 together to make 11 | 11 | 52 | 15.
5. Then use two digit PAO with method of loci to remember full songs. We'd have something like "Todd | dots | lawn | Lonnie"

A few problems with this are the following:
1. Db songs are not as common as G songs, so the numbers won't be very random. Likewise for the stories. Some progressions are very common too, and I'm not really taking advantage of that.
2. The typical way of learning chords is to play over and over, so maybe that's a better way. It seems more natural to think, "and now do a two five one starting on D".
3. Bb6 for example, is not one of the 10 different colors. More than 10 exist.

8 April, 2017 - 20:41
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Joined: 2 years 1 month ago

If you have a lot of repeating information, you can group them by location.

So all ii V I progressions could go in one location, and different progressions could go in other locations.

I haven't tried it myself, so it's just an idea. :)

11 April, 2017 - 04:16
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Joined: 4 weeks 8 hours ago

Personally I say, just try it out, test the results and post back ;)

I focus on the core numbers that underly the song. You'll hear if it's supposed to be a major, minor, etc. Just think, how does the bass player see it.

I suspect there's going to be a huge personal element to learning music.

Will be interesting to see what you come back with. I too am working on memory systems for classical compositions.

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