Hi David,

I notice that at least in the beginning of your method, you don't talk about chord types like major, minor, dominant, diminished. You describe everything only as the ‘1 chord’ the ‘2 chord’, etc. So how will I know how to improvise over songs with chord symbols like A-7b5? Do you help us make this translation eventually?

Thanks,
William

David's response:

Hi William,

Yes, absolutely. Understanding those written chord symbols is easy once you have a basic understanding of harmony. And this is what you’ll learn from IFR. We purposely avoid using a lot of unnecessary technical jargon because music isn’t something you can understand from words and formulas. If you want to be able to improvise and express your own music with the sounds, then your highest priority is to experience the sounds for yourself and explore them creatively. So especially in the beginning of the IFR journey, everything is organized for you to be able to get right into this experience of exploring the sounds creatively and really jamming with them, and we do that with a minimum of technical symbols and names.

But as our palette of sounds becomes more advanced, we will naturally need some additional terms and concepts to talk about the sounds we’re exploring. And so that’s where a lot of those chord symbols you’re talking about come into play. If you want to see some examples of how this works, I invite you to take a look at IFR Standards Workout 1. This course contains five of the most common jazz tunes played in jam sessions, explained in IFR tonal language so you can see exactly how this translation works.

And if you ever get stuck or have a question about how to analyze a particular tune, feel free to send us the tune and we will be happy to analyze it with you.

Thanks William,
David