{ "query": "interval", "count": 20, "count_indexed": 28, "results": [ { "slug": "just-intonation", "title": "Just Intonation, Beating and Why Intervals Sound in Tune", "dek": "Pure intervals come from small whole-number ratios, and beating is what stops them sounding pure. What just intonation gives, and what it cannot fix.", "topic": "tuning", "topic_name": "Tuning & Temperament", "tags": [ "just intonation", "intervals", "acoustics" ], "level": "advanced", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1488, "reading_time_minutes": 7, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/just-intonation/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/just-intonation.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=just-intonation", "excerpt": "“In tune” sounds like a matter of taste and is mostly a physical event. When two tones sound together and their frequencies stand in a simple whole-number ratio, their overtones land on top of one another and the combined sound holds still. When the ratio is…", "score": 54, "partial": false, "snippet": "“In tune” sounds like a matter of taste and is mostly a physical event. When two tones sound together and their frequencies stand in a simple whole-number ratio, their overtones land on top of one…" }, { "slug": "reading-intervals-at-sight", "title": "Reading Intervals at Sight: Generic and Specific", "dek": "Naming an interval at sight takes two passes: count the staff positions first, then judge what the accidental does to the size.", "topic": "fundamentals", "topic_name": "Fundamentals", "tags": [ "intervals", "sight reading", "notation" ], "level": "intro", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1107, "reading_time_minutes": 6, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/reading-intervals-at-sight/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/reading-intervals-at-sight.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=reading-intervals-at-sight", "excerpt": "An interval is described by two properties at once, and readers who collapse them into one get stuck. The first is the generic interval: how many staff positions the notes span, counted inclusively from the lower note. C to E is a third because three letter…", "score": 54, "partial": false, "snippet": "An interval is described by two properties at once, and readers who collapse them into one get stuck. The first is the generic interval: how many staff positions the notes span, counted inclusively from the lower note. C…" }, { "slug": "figured-bass", "title": "Figured Bass: Reading Intervals Above the Bass Line", "dek": "Figures name intervals above the bass, not chords. What each shorthand means, how accidentals override the key, and what the player decides.", "topic": "harmony", "topic_name": "Harmony", "tags": [ "figured bass", "basso continuo", "inversion" ], "level": "intermediate", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1269, "reading_time_minutes": 6, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/figured-bass/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/figured-bass.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=figured-bass", "excerpt": "A figured bass is a bass line with numerals underneath it, and the numerals are not chord symbols. Each one names an interval above the note it sits under, counted from that note. The player supplies the rest. Understanding what is written and what is…", "score": 48, "partial": false, "snippet": "…, and the numerals are not chord symbols. Each one names an interval above the note it sits under, counted from that note. The player supplies the rest. Understanding what is written and what is……" }, { "slug": "equal-temperament", "title": "Equal Temperament: What It Costs and What It Buys", "dek": "Twelve equal semitones solve the problem pure intervals create. The cost is small in fifths, large in thirds, and paid by every fixed-pitch instrument.", "topic": "tuning", "topic_name": "Tuning & Temperament", "tags": [ "tuning", "temperament", "intervals" ], "level": "intermediate", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1399, "reading_time_minutes": 7, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/equal-temperament/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/equal-temperament.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=equal-temperament", "excerpt": "A piano cannot retune between two chords, so its tuning has to work for every key in advance. Equal temperament is the arrangement that does that, and it earns the ability by making every fifth slightly narrow and every major third noticeably wide. The…", "score": 42, "partial": false, "snippet": "A piano cannot retune between two chords, so its tuning has to work for every key in advance. Equal temperament is the arrangement that does that, and it earns the ability by making every fifth…" }, { "slug": "first-species-counterpoint", "title": "First Species Counterpoint, Rule by Rule", "dek": "Species counterpoint isolates one compositional decision at a time. First species isolates the hardest one: how to make two voices sound like two voices.", "topic": "counterpoint", "topic_name": "Counterpoint", "tags": [ "species counterpoint", "voice leading", "two voices" ], "level": "intermediate", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1647, "reading_time_minutes": 8, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/first-species-counterpoint/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/first-species-counterpoint.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=first-species-counterpoint", "excerpt": "A cantus firmus is a tune with no accompaniment, eight to sixteen notes long, that moves mostly by step and comes to rest on its final. First species asks you to add exactly one note against each of those notes: two voices, both in whole notes, moving…", "score": 31, "partial": false, "snippet": "A cantus firmus is a tune with no accompaniment, eight to sixteen notes long, that moves mostly by step and comes to rest on its final. First species asks you to add exactly one note against each of…" }, { "slug": "fugue-subject-and-answer", "title": "Fugue Subjects and Answers", "dek": "A fugue's opening notes commit the piece to more than a tune. The subject's shape and the answer's adjustment decide what can happen next.", "topic": "counterpoint", "topic_name": "Counterpoint", "tags": [ "fugue", "subject", "answer" ], "level": "advanced", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1725, "reading_time_minutes": 9, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/fugue-subject-and-answer/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/fugue-subject-and-answer.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=fugue-subject-and-answer", "excerpt": "Almost every description of fugue begins by warning that fugue is not a form. The warning is necessary and usually wasted, because the terms that follow (subject, answer, countersubject, exposition, episode) get used as if they named fixed compartments. They…", "score": 31, "partial": false, "snippet": "Almost every description of fugue begins by warning that fugue is not a form. The warning is necessary and usually wasted, because the terms that follow (subject, answer, countersubject, exposition…" }, { "slug": "imitation-and-invertible-counterpoint", "title": "Imitation and Invertible Counterpoint", "dek": "Imitation makes one idea serve two lines. Invertible counterpoint makes those lines interchangeable, and the arithmetic behind it is small enough to check.", "topic": "counterpoint", "topic_name": "Counterpoint", "tags": [ "imitation", "canon", "invertible counterpoint" ], "level": "advanced", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1688, "reading_time_minutes": 8, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/imitation-and-invertible-counterpoint/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/imitation-and-invertible-counterpoint.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=imitation-and-invertible-counterpoint", "excerpt": "Two melodies that have nothing to do with each other can still be written together correctly, and the result will often sound like two people talking past each other. Imitation is the oldest solution to that problem: the second voice takes up the first…", "score": 31, "partial": false, "snippet": "Two melodies that have nothing to do with each other can still be written together correctly, and the result will often sound like two people talking past each other. Imitation is the oldest solution…" }, { "slug": "meantone-and-well-temperament", "title": "Meantone and Well Temperament: Why Keys Used to Sound Different", "dek": "Quarter-comma meantone, the wolf fifth and the well temperaments in between: what keyboard tuning did to each key before equal temperament settled the argument.", "topic": "tuning", "topic_name": "Tuning & Temperament", "tags": [ "temperament", "tuning", "keyboard" ], "level": "advanced", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1598, "reading_time_minutes": 8, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/meantone-and-well-temperament/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/meantone-and-well-temperament.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=meantone-and-well-temperament", "excerpt": "A modern keyboard hides its compromise. Every key is equally in tune, which also means every key is equally out of tune, and a major third in C major is exactly the same size as a major third in F sharp major. Before the nineteenth century the compromise was…", "score": 31, "partial": false, "snippet": "A modern keyboard hides its compromise. Every key is equally in tune, which also means every key is equally out of tune, and a major third in C major is exactly the same size as a major third in F…" }, { "slug": "music-after-tonality", "title": "After Tonality: What Composers Replaced It With", "dek": "When chromatic harmony outgrew the tonal hierarchy, composers tried serial rules, rhythm, folk modes, and sound mass. What each method actually solved.", "topic": "history", "topic_name": "Music History", "tags": [ "atonality", "serialism", "modernism" ], "level": "advanced", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1399, "reading_time_minutes": 7, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/music-after-tonality/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/music-after-tonality.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=music-after-tonality", "excerpt": "The tonal system was not abandoned because composers got bored of it. It was abandoned, in a handful of works written between roughly 1908 and 1923, because the chromatic language that had been built on top of it could no longer be explained by it. What…", "score": 31, "partial": false, "snippet": "The tonal system was not abandoned because composers got bored of it. It was abandoned, in a handful of works written between roughly 1908 and 1923, because the chromatic language that had been built…" }, { "slug": "clefs-and-transposition", "title": "Clefs and Transposition: What Players Actually Read", "dek": "A clef fixes one pitch and the staff follows. Transposing instruments move it again, so the same written note reaches the audience at different pitches.", "topic": "fundamentals", "topic_name": "Fundamentals", "tags": [ "clefs", "transposition", "score reading" ], "level": "intermediate", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1326, "reading_time_minutes": 7, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/clefs-and-transposition/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/clefs-and-transposition.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=clefs-and-transposition", "excerpt": "A staff is a grid without absolute meaning. A clef gives one line or space a fixed pitch, and every other position follows from it by step. That single decision determines what a player reads, and two further conventions determine what the audience hears…", "score": 30, "partial": false, "snippet": "A staff is a grid without absolute meaning. A clef gives one line or space a fixed pitch, and every other position follows from it by step. That single decision determines what a player reads, and…" }, { "slug": "seventh-chords-and-resolution", "title": "Seventh Chords and How They Resolve in Tonal Harmony", "dek": "The chordal seventh falls, the leading tone rises, and the tritone at the centre of V7 resolves by step. What each diatonic seventh chord is for.", "topic": "harmony", "topic_name": "Harmony", "tags": [ "seventh chords", "dominant seventh", "resolution" ], "level": "intermediate", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1396, "reading_time_minutes": 7, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/seventh-chords-and-resolution/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/seventh-chords-and-resolution.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=seventh-chords-and-resolution", "excerpt": "Adding a seventh to a triad changes what the chord is for. A triad can sit still; a seventh chord cannot, because the added note is a dissonance with a destination. That single fact explains the behaviour of every diatonic seventh chord in tonal music…", "score": 29, "partial": false, "snippet": "Adding a seventh to a triad changes what the chord is for. A triad can sit still; a seventh chord cannot, because the added note is a dissonance with a destination. That single fact explains the…" }, { "slug": "borrowed-chords-and-modal-mixture", "title": "Borrowed Chords: Modal Mixture in Practice", "dek": "Mixture borrows chords from the parallel mode. What the common borrowed chords do to a phrase, how they resolve, and where labelling fails.", "topic": "harmony", "topic_name": "Harmony", "tags": [ "modal mixture", "borrowed chords", "chromatic harmony" ], "level": "advanced", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1465, "reading_time_minutes": 7, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/borrowed-chords-and-modal-mixture/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/borrowed-chords-and-modal-mixture.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=borrowed-chords-and-modal-mixture", "excerpt": "An F minor triad in C major requires an A flat, which the key signature does not give. Unlike a secondary dominant, the chord is not pointing at another key: F minor is the subdominant of C minor, and C minor is C major’s parallel mode. The tonic has not…", "score": 28, "partial": false, "snippet": "An F minor triad in C major requires an A flat, which the key signature does not give. Unlike a secondary dominant, the chord is not pointing at another key: F minor is the subdominant of C minor…" }, { "slug": "string-quartet-voicing", "title": "Voicing a String Quartet: Registers, Doublings, Weight", "dek": "The quartet is four registers, not four violins. What each instrument can sustain, where the texture muddies, and which double stops lie under the hand.", "topic": "orchestration", "topic_name": "Orchestration", "tags": [ "string quartet", "voicing", "orchestration" ], "level": "advanced", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1462, "reading_time_minutes": 7, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/string-quartet-voicing/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/string-quartet-voicing.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=string-quartet-voicing", "excerpt": "A string quartet has no mixer, no conductor, and nowhere to hide. Four instruments sit close enough to hear each other’s bow noise, and every vertical sonority is the direct result of four players deciding how loudly to play. That makes the quartet the most…", "score": 28, "partial": false, "snippet": "A string quartet has no mixer, no conductor, and nowhere to hide. Four instruments sit close enough to hear each other’s bow noise, and every vertical sonority is the direct result of four players…" }, { "slug": "voice-leading-in-four-parts", "title": "Voice Leading: Why the Rules Exist in Four-Part Writing", "dek": "Parallel fifths, tendency tones, spacing and doubling, read as solutions to one problem: keeping four lines heard as four lines.", "topic": "harmony", "topic_name": "Harmony", "tags": [ "voice leading", "part writing", "counterpoint" ], "level": "intermediate", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1340, "reading_time_minutes": 7, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/voice-leading-in-four-parts/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/voice-leading-in-four-parts.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=voice-leading-in-four-parts", "excerpt": "Part-writing rules usually arrive as a list of prohibitions, which makes them feel arbitrary and easy to resent. They are neither. Almost all of them follow from a single aim: four voices that behave like four voices. Once you can hear what a broken rule does…", "score": 28, "partial": false, "snippet": "Part-writing rules usually arrive as a list of prohibitions, which makes them feel arbitrary and easy to resent. They are neither. Almost all of them follow from a single aim: four voices that behave…" }, { "slug": "scientific-pitch-notation", "title": "Scientific Pitch Notation: What C4 Actually Means", "dek": "Middle C is C4 in scientific pitch notation, C3 on some manufacturers' labelling, and MIDI note 60 in every sequencer. The numbering is a convention.", "topic": "fundamentals", "topic_name": "Fundamentals", "tags": [ "pitch", "notation", "midi" ], "level": "intro", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1240, "reading_time_minutes": 6, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/scientific-pitch-notation/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/scientific-pitch-notation.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=scientific-pitch-notation", "excerpt": "Scientific pitch notation writes a letter, an optional accidental and an octave number: C4, B♭3, F♯5. The letter and the accidental are uncontroversial. The number is where documentation, instrument charts and software quietly disagree, and a single octave of…", "score": 27, "partial": false, "snippet": "Scientific pitch notation writes a letter, an optional accidental and an octave number: C4, B♭3, F♯5. The letter and the accidental are uncontroversial. The number is where documentation, instrument…" }, { "slug": "ars-nova-and-renaissance-notation", "title": "From Ars Nova to the Renaissance: How Notation Changed Music", "dek": "Rhythm took two centuries longer than pitch to notate. Mensural notation solved it with ratios, and the Renaissance then replaced black ink with white.", "topic": "history", "topic_name": "Music History", "tags": [ "notation", "mensural notation", "renaissance" ], "level": "intermediate", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1456, "reading_time_minutes": 7, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/ars-nova-and-renaissance-notation/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/ars-nova-and-renaissance-notation.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=ars-nova-and-renaissance-notation", "excerpt": "A staff puts a note in pitch space, and position is cheap to draw. Duration is not a position but a relationship: a note is short only next to a longer one, and a page of polyphony has to state that relationship for every voice at once. European music had a…", "score": 26, "partial": false, "snippet": "A staff puts a note in pitch space, and position is cheap to draw. Duration is not a position but a relationship: a note is short only next to a longer one, and a page of polyphony has to state that…" }, { "slug": "cadences-and-phrase-endings", "title": "Cadences: How Phrases End in Tonal Music", "dek": "Authentic, half, plagal and deceptive cadences, and the real reason a close sounds strong: what happens in the bass, the top voice and the metre.", "topic": "harmony", "topic_name": "Harmony", "tags": [ "cadence", "phrase structure", "tonality" ], "level": "intro", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1260, "reading_time_minutes": 6, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/cadences-and-phrase-endings/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/cadences-and-phrase-endings.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=cadences-and-phrase-endings", "excerpt": "Music has punctuation, and it is made of harmony. A phrase ends when the harmony, the bass, the metre and the melody all agree that something has finished. That agreement is a cadence, and its strength is not a matter of taste: it comes from four or five…", "score": 26, "partial": false, "snippet": "Music has punctuation, and it is made of harmony. A phrase ends when the harmony, the bass, the metre and the melody all agree that something has finished. That agreement is a cadence, and its…" }, { "slug": "instrument-ranges-for-arrangers", "title": "Instrument Ranges for Arrangers: Playable, Comfortable, Usable", "dek": "A playable range and a usable register are different facts. Transposition arithmetic, endurance, doubling, and the notes that are another instrument.", "topic": "orchestration", "topic_name": "Orchestration", "tags": [ "instrument ranges", "transposition", "arranging" ], "level": "intermediate", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1587, "reading_time_minutes": 8, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/instrument-ranges-for-arrangers/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/instrument-ranges-for-arrangers.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=instrument-ranges-for-arrangers", "excerpt": "Range charts are the first thing an arranger looks up and the last thing that answers the question. A note can be inside the printed range and still be a bad idea: unplayable in context, wrong in character, or a strain the player will pay for on the third…", "score": 26, "partial": false, "snippet": "Range charts are the first thing an arranger looks up and the last thing that answers the question. A note can be inside the printed range and still be a bad idea: unplayable in context, wrong in…" }, { "slug": "key-signatures-order-of-sharps-and-flats", "title": "Key Signatures and the Order of Sharps and Flats", "dek": "Sharps arrive in the order F C G D A E B and flats in reverse. The order is the circle of fifths written out, one signature at a time.", "topic": "fundamentals", "topic_name": "Fundamentals", "tags": [ "key signatures", "notation", "circle of fifths" ], "level": "intro", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1454, "reading_time_minutes": 7, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/key-signatures-order-of-sharps-and-flats/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/key-signatures-order-of-sharps-and-flats.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=key-signatures-order-of-sharps-and-flats", "excerpt": "The accidentals in a key signature never appear in an arbitrary order. Sharps are added one at a time as F, C, G, D, A, E, B. Flats are added as B, E, A, D, G, C, F. Both lists are the circle of fifths spelled out, and the reason they are constant is that…", "score": 26, "partial": false, "snippet": "The accidentals in a key signature never appear in an arbitrary order. Sharps are added one at a time as F, C, G, D, A, E, B. Flats are added as B, E, A, D, G, C, F. Both lists are the circle of…" }, { "slug": "modulation-strategies", "title": "Modulation: How a Key Change Is Confirmed", "dek": "A modulation is not a chromatic chord; it is a new key confirmed by cadence. The routes into one, and how to read them off the page.", "topic": "harmony", "topic_name": "Harmony", "tags": [ "modulation", "pivot chord", "key relationships" ], "level": "advanced", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1510, "reading_time_minutes": 8, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/modulation-strategies/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/modulation-strategies.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=modulation-strategies", "excerpt": "A piece that ends in G major and began in C major has modulated. The change of key is not a single event on one beat but a process spread over several, and the process has a rule: a key exists when its tonic has been confirmed by a cadence. Everything else…", "score": 26, "partial": false, "snippet": "A piece that ends in G major and began in C major has modulated. 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