Q: how do you go about learning the chords to a song? as in having them memorized, being able to play them back on a keyboard fluidly, etc.
A: that doesn't make sense to me. for me it's more like memorizing syllables of words, which indeed i don't do, because the awareness sits in a deeper part of the brain that does not require any direct concentration. like a word, as long as i've heard it a time or two, i can say it comfortably, even if i don't think consciously about the individual syllables. the same is true with songs and the chords in them