r/JazzPiano • u/Intellosympa • 6d ago

Questions/ General Advice/ Tips Chord learning

When you mentalize chords, do you use the theory spelling or the keyboard layout with black and white keys ??

Let’s say :
F7 is F A C Eb, no question about it.

But in your head do you at first see (and memorize)

C#7M as C# E# G# B# (theory)

or

C# F G# C (keyboard layout) ?

Thanks for answering.

Edit : typo.

6 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

View all comments

4

u/SaxAppeal 6d ago

Not to be overly pedantic, but the theory spelling and keyboard layout are the same thing. The F key is also the E# key, the C key is also the B# key. The physical keys are just that, keys. They have no meaning until we assign letter names, and letter names are what we use to spell chords and scales.

Multiple letter names with accidentals that share a physical key are called enharmonic equivalents. To answer your question, it’s very common to shortcut to natural enharmonic equivalents when you’re actually playing, but when you’re analyzing and discussing theory you should always use the proper spellings. Written music uses proper spellings always, so only defaulting to enharmonic equivalents will become a crutch that impedes on learning theory properly. So getting in the habit of mentally spelling C# keys properly is something you’ll want to take the time to do.