{"id":171475217,"date":"2025-09-15T15:12:27","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T15:12:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/crutches-are-not-a-bad-thing-2\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T15:12:27","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T15:12:27","slug":"crutches-are-not-a-bad-thing-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/crutches-are-not-a-bad-thing-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Crutches are not a bad thing."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As I mentioned in my previous post , I\u2019ve been working on using the CAGED system to build chord arrangements for a few songs as part of an exercise. One of them is the immortal Stella By Starlight.<\/p>\n<p>And it turns out that I hate chord symbols. Reading the Real Book chart is irritating for me because it has the plus, minus, circle, etc. It\u2019s fine, people use them. I can read it but it\u2019s not my preferred system. Sometimes I get a little flustered by them.<\/p>\n<p>So I made a crutch.<\/p>\n<p>People use crutch as a bad word. I think that that\u2019s insane. When you are learning to walk again after an injury, a crutch is critical. When you are permanently crippled, you need something to help you walk. Here\u2019s what I mean by the symbols.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, look at that. Minus signs, plusses, whatever. And there\u2019s no translation table, anywhere.<\/p>\n<p>So I made this, a translation table of symbols from The Real Book to common names and spellings.<\/p>\n<p>English Names&#8221;,&#8221;description&#8221;:&#8221;&#8221;}&#8221; data-component-name=&#8221;DatawrapperToDOM&#8221;> !function(){&#8220;use strict&#8221;;window.addEventListener(&#8220;message&#8221;,(function(e){if(void 0!==e.data[&#8220;datawrapper-height&#8221;]){var t=document.querySelectorAll(&#8220;iframe&#8221;);for(var a in e.data[&#8220;datawrapper-height&#8221;])for(var r=0;rThis is exactly the sort of lookup table that I find very, very useful. Should I have it memorized? Yes. Do I? No. Thirty odd years later, I am capable of teaching Latin at a college level. Do I forget things, like the word for inkwell? Yup, often. Tables like this are useful crutches. They also help you with remembering things, the act of writing it out reinscribes (get it?) the concept in your mind.<\/p>\n<p>Enjoy.<\/p>\n<p>Next post, I\u2019ll show you how to make use of these in preparing something.<\/p>\n<p>(And there\u2019s a PDF for you, too, if you need it, of the original lead sheet.)<\/p>\n<p>Real Book Stella By Starlight<\/p>\n<p>44.6KB \u2219 PDF file<\/p>\n<p>Download<\/p>\n<p>Download<\/p>\n<p>Please subscribe, too!<\/p>\n<p>Thanks for reading Learning Jazz From The Masters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p><em>\ud83d\udcce Files and downloads are available in the <a href=\"https:\/\/learningjazzguitar.substack.com\/p\/crutches-are-not-a-bad-thing\">original Substack post<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Going from chord symbols to words and back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[135],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-171475217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171475217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171475217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171475217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171475217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171475217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171475217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}