Hi Sharke, the best way I've found to learn all keys is to pick a tune with the chords you want to learn and play it in every key. You'll soon start to "see" the notes in the particular chords you are playing and after a while those note names will stick. Knowing your note names is not particularly needed to play the chords, I think "intervals" is a more valuable skill, however knowing your note names can sometimes be an easier way to communicate your chords and ideas to other musicians.

rebel007
Hi Sharke, the best way I've found to learn all keys is to pick a tune with the chords you want to learn and play it in every key. You'll soon start to "see" the notes in the particular chords you are playing and after a while those note names will stick. Knowing your note names is not particularly needed to play the chords, I think "intervals" is a more valuable skill, however knowing your note names can sometimes be an easier way to communicate your chords and ideas to other musicians.

I have no trouble playing chords, in fact I can read a jazz chord sheet and construct the chords anywhere on the neck in any key, without having to learn chord shapes by heart, simply by virtue of the fact that I know where all the intervals are located in relation to any root. This goes for any kind of freaky altered chords you can think of. What I'm trying to do is get away from thinking in terms of the guitar neck I'm so familiar with and thinking purely in terms of notes. The urge hit me quite hard when I was watching Eli Krantzberg's Jazz theory course on Groove3 and he was going through chord voicings on the stave. I realized that I was quite lost, whereas Eli was reeling off those notes and spellings without thinking about it. Having this kind of facility with chord tones in terms of note names has got to come in handy when you're arranging music on a stave, which is something I'd really love to get into (again, thanks to Eli's orchestration course on Groove3 ). 

Hi Sharke, I was talking about keyboard, not guitar. When I want to know what the notes are in a chord, I can see them in my head. This comes, I think, from having played them over and over, and over so many times I just see them.
I think it maybe a little easier to see the note names from having done this on a keyboard rather than a guitar, as the notes are in a more logical straight line, although that may just be because I'm a piano player and I have come from a classical background where knowing note names is one of the first things taught, so I guess I have always come at chord theory from a note name perspective. I guess scales also help as this gives you the sharps and flats and also stresses the knowing the note names.
Hope this helps, if you need more help let me know as I have been a piano teacher for many, many years now and it irks me to think that I can't help some one in that respect. :)

Thanks. I guess what I'm looking for is a structured method for learning those note names in every key. I know that I could theoretically sit down and learn them one by one parrot fashion, but my brain sucks at that. I'd like to know how, say, a horn player gets to know their chord tones in every key inside and out. Would it be a good idea, for example, to start with the major triads and learn those in every key? Then do the same with the minors and move onto the sevenths? One problem I foresee with this is that once I've learned the major third interval in every key, my brain will be tempted to just count one step down every time I want to think of a minor interval. It's that extra step that bothers me, although I know some people will say "this is exactly what I do." 

Yeah, I get that. But I'm not sure there is a short cut to learning note names. Those horn players you speak of I'm sure just spent many hours going through their scales. I tell  all my students, "scales will give you all you need to know" (regarding chord theory). I think even in other styles of music than our western 12 tone octave, musicians just learn their scales.
I know it can be a hard slog but you have a head start over someone that's learning from scratch, and I think once you make a start you will be surprised how quickly it will come.
Pick a key, one that you consider you know fairly well and find the names of the notes in the easy chords and then progress to the more altered chords, then change to related key and learn that one, you'll soon see how they relate. I really do think you will find it easier if you can "see" the notes on the keyboard rather than the guitar.
Let me know how you are progressing, I will help all I can.

It's kind of weird, I spent many years learning scales and arpeggios. Many classically trained musicians yearn for the day they can forget all that theory, throw away the music and play by ear. Yet I understand the need to learn note names, as they become a language you can use to communicate your songs and structures to other musicians. Keep at it, it's a good skill to have.

Hmm maybe I will just buckle to for the hard slog then. I have a feeling the complete beginner has an advantage of sorts over the experienced musician in learning this stuff, since they're going in without any of the shortcuts and "shape knowledge" that I think will make it a little harder for me to think in notes. Maybe I'll just start with C major inside and out, then go from there. Surprisingly enough, when I Googled this question before posting it here, I found little mention of the subject.

You are probably right, in that the complete beginner may find it easier, but I think that probably comes from the fact that they are 8 or so years old and have no preconceived ideas and just take what their teaches give them as gospel. They also have no other distractions, that those of us in later years have, and can concentrate entirely on what they are learning.
Don't let this discourage you though, I really do believe that once you make a start you will find it easier than what you might at first think.

links related to the topic
Seeking advice from people who've learned to play some piano after many years of guitar playing - PG Music Forums
 
Guitar to piano / Piano to guitar converter. - MUSICAL ANDROID
 
How to Play guitar tabs on piano
 
i've learned a lot from willie use the search box for things like scale chord etc.
JAZZEDGE - YouTube

For memorizing anything, I tend to use this...
http://mnemosyne-proj.org/
 
It's an open source project that lets you build your own flashcards. Then as you go through your cards you click different numbers to indicate how well you knew the answer and that controls how quickly the card will cycle back.
 
You can organize the cards into groups and then activate only certain groups. So for example, you could group by tone count - 2 tones - 3 tones - etc. or by Key.
 
You can store all card as front to back - back to front or just front to back. In other words, you could have Amaj7 on the front and A, C#, E, Ab on the back. You could have it also show you these tones on the first, and you have to say Amaj7.
 
If you click through the cards every day, you'll be amazed that the information slowly begins to stick.
 
You can also export your cards to your phone and practice on the go.