Q: hello bill, i have been struggling with understanding chords and how they work. the possibilities seem endless and there seem to be so many things at play. what i would like to achieve is to be able to identify what i want when writing a chord progression more quickly. for example i want to begin writing a song and then say "oh a sharp 9 would be great here" without trying to figure it out for hours. do you have any tips on just being able to use my ears like that? thanks.
A: songs. learn a lot of songs. hear them, love them, (if you don't then try the next one) and learn what's in all of them. soon you'll seem to know everything, which is surprising, because scientists don't know any of this stuff