how to learn chord notes?

[Ed Fuqua]

Hmmm, what I disagree with is the idea of "chord/scale" relationships is some methodology for learning to play music. I can give you all of the Farsi words you want, but if you don't have any meaning attached to those words, you still aren't going to make any sense.
Like Fred Hersch says "At 56, I’m part of the last batch that learned in the old way, figuring it out by ****ing up, getting back up on your feet, ****ing up again, getting back up on your feet, hanging out, learning from people around you, listening to tons of records, learning the history of your instrument, learning the repertoire, the standard repertoire, the jazz repertoire, composing your own music, starting all that, as one of the last of that batch. That’s why I have this affinity with Billy Hart, who’s 14 years older than me. I probably have more in common with him than someone 14 years younger, who may be playing everything in 7/4, or writing science project pieces, or tunes with too many chords in them."
And it's not about "playing better", like I said, it's about assessing value. For all we know, the OP could think my playing is the last possible thing he would want to sound like. Hearing how I sound is gonna give him the information he needs to say " OK, that's NOT a direction I want to go in, I don't need to do the same things that cat did" or whatever...

[ntenny]

Originally Posted by Ed Fuqua

Hmmm, what I disagree with is the idea of "chord/scale" relationships is some methodology for learning to play music. I can give you all of the Farsi words you want, but if you don't have any meaning attached to those words, you still aren't going to make any sense.

Yeah, I wouldn't argue with any of that. For what it's worth, I don't remember Sabatella's monograph being as much of a cookbook as the phrase "chord-scale relationships" might suggest. Rightly or wrongly, I did find it helped me grasp a bit more about how melodic and harmonic concepts stick together.

(Edit: I see now where I got confusing---after talking about "chord/scale relationships" in the context of the book, I said something like "chord/scale knowledge". That was supposed to mean "knowledge of chords and scales", not "knowledge of the canned relationships.)

Interestingly (maybe), I wrote a piece of software once that embodied a kind of dumbheaded canned improvisation---fed a chord progression, it cooked up a melody that had "natural" statistical properties and met some basic conventions about what scales it played over what chords. It sounded just as you might expect; you couldn't point to anything that was strictly *wrong*, but you could tell there were no ideas there. Embarrassingly, I still get a couple of its "songs" caught in my head once in a while.

And it's not about "playing better", like I said, it's about assessing value.

Fair enough. Sorry if I got prickly.

I think we got off in the weeds relative to the OP's question...

-NT

[Dredmahawkus]

I am looking for everyone point of view on how they learned chords and scales. Not even just for me but for all beginners reading this thread and wanting to learn. Not everyone learns the same way. For me what's going to keep my brain going is everyone who wrote down those formulas. I was a math guy in school...once I know the formula then I can figure out why the formula is after practice and thought. I am a little thick! I need to practice the formulas over and over then all a sudden it clicks for me. Ahhh that's why! Everyone learns different. Every bit of info and everyone's point of view is welcomed.

[Zooberwerx]

...published by Musician's Institute (MI). Very nice, easy-to-follow text with real-life exercises.

Riis

[wrench45us]

I've worked with Marc Sabatelli's 'Harmonic Language of Jazz Standards'

I'm sure some of the same basic material is covered in both.
What I picked up from that was mostly chord-chord relationships

This whole emphasis on chord scale relationships seems to be missing the fact that chords relate to each other with common tones etc etc that move or follow the melody. To me learning chord tones should be about learning chord to chord relations as basslines generally move smoothly from chord to chord and chords move from chord to chord in fairly prescribed and common ways.
Chord to chord relations indicate key centers, key centers indicate what scale tones work between chord tones. If you need more choices than that, if you really feel compelled to understand modes and chord-scale relationships -- it's really not all that much further into what's already in place, but imho, it's a terrible way to try and start building a theoretical frame work.
It's also a bad idea to learn chord tones in isolation with one chord -- chords flow into each other and chord tones flow into each other.