{ "count": 8, "topics": [ { "key": "fundamentals", "name": "Fundamentals", "blurb": "Pitch, notation, intervals and scales — the vocabulary everything else on this site assumes.", "count": 4, "url": "https://musics.name/topics/fundamentals/", "json": "https://musics.name/api/articles.json?topic=fundamentals", "newest": { "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…" }, "articles_url": "https://musics.name/topics/fundamentals/" }, { "key": "harmony", "name": "Harmony", "blurb": "Chord function, voice leading, cadence and modulation: how tonal music moves from one place to another.", "count": 8, "url": "https://musics.name/topics/harmony/", "json": "https://musics.name/api/articles.json?topic=harmony", "newest": { "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…" }, "articles_url": "https://musics.name/topics/harmony/" }, { "key": "counterpoint", "name": "Counterpoint", "blurb": "Line against line — species, imitation, canon and fugue, and the rules that keep independent voices independent.", "count": 3, "url": "https://musics.name/topics/counterpoint/", "json": "https://musics.name/api/articles.json?topic=counterpoint", "newest": { "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…" }, "articles_url": "https://musics.name/topics/counterpoint/" }, { "key": "rhythm", "name": "Rhythm & Meter", "blurb": "Beats, subdivisions, syncopation, hypermeter and the difference between a cross-rhythm and a polyrhythm.", "count": 3, "url": "https://musics.name/topics/rhythm/", "json": "https://musics.name/api/articles.json?topic=rhythm", "newest": { "slug": "meter-and-hypermeter", "title": "Meter, Beat Hierarchy and Hypermeter in Performance", "dek": "Meter is a pattern of strong and weak positions, not a time signature: how it is built, how it stretches past the bar, and where performance contradicts it.", "topic": "rhythm", "topic_name": "Rhythm & Meter", "tags": [ "meter", "hypermeter", "phrase structure" ], "level": "intermediate", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1430, "reading_time_minutes": 7, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/meter-and-hypermeter/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/meter-and-hypermeter.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=meter-and-hypermeter", "excerpt": "Three words get used as if they meant the same thing in rehearsal: meter, time signature, beat. They are related and they are not the same, and the difference shows up exactly where the music becomes interesting, in syncopation, hemiola, and phrase endings…" }, "articles_url": "https://musics.name/topics/rhythm/" }, { "key": "form", "name": "Form", "blurb": "Phrases, periods and large-scale designs: how a piece of music tells you where you are.", "count": 1, "url": "https://musics.name/topics/form/", "json": "https://musics.name/api/articles.json?topic=form", "newest": { "slug": "sonata-form", "title": "Sonata Form: The Tonal Plot", "dek": "Sonata form is a tonal argument, not a set of labelled boxes. What matters is which key you are in, and how the music gets home again.", "topic": "form", "topic_name": "Form", "tags": [ "sonata form", "form", "tonality" ], "level": "intermediate", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1683, "reading_time_minutes": 8, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/sonata-form/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/sonata-form.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=sonata-form", "excerpt": "Ask someone to explain sonata form and you will get a diagram: exposition, development, recapitulation, with an optional introduction and coda, and a list of themes labelled first and second. The diagram is not wrong, but it describes the surface. What holds…" }, "articles_url": "https://musics.name/topics/form/" }, { "key": "tuning", "name": "Tuning & Temperament", "blurb": "Just intonation, meantone, well temperament and equal temperament — and the cents that separate them.", "count": 3, "url": "https://musics.name/topics/tuning/", "json": "https://musics.name/api/articles.json?topic=tuning", "newest": { "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…" }, "articles_url": "https://musics.name/topics/tuning/" }, { "key": "orchestration", "name": "Orchestration", "blurb": "Registers, ranges, weight and voicing: writing for instruments as they actually behave.", "count": 2, "url": "https://musics.name/topics/orchestration/", "json": "https://musics.name/api/articles.json?topic=orchestration", "newest": { "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…" }, "articles_url": "https://musics.name/topics/orchestration/" }, { "key": "history", "name": "Music History", "blurb": "Repertoire, notation and practice from the medieval period to the present, told through the documents.", "count": 4, "url": "https://musics.name/topics/history/", "json": "https://musics.name/api/articles.json?topic=history", "newest": { "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…" }, "articles_url": "https://musics.name/topics/history/" } ], "declared_without_articles": [], "generated_at": "2026-09-24T23:17:27+00:00" }