From Ars Nova to the Renaissance: How Notation Changed Music
Rhythm took two centuries longer than pitch to notate. Mensural notation solved it with ratios, and the Renaissance then replaced black ink with white.
The archive
Articles
28 pieces on how music is built and how it is written down — with playable examples, tables you can check, and no filler.
Borrowed Chords: Modal Mixture in Practice
Mixture borrows chords from the parallel mode. What the common borrowed chords do to a phrase, how they resolve, and where labelling fails.
Cadences: How Phrases End in Tonal Music
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.
Clefs and Transposition: What Players Actually Read
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.
Equal Temperament: What It Costs and What It Buys
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.
Figured Bass: Reading Intervals Above the Bass Line
Figures name intervals above the bass, not chords. What each shorthand means, how accidentals override the key, and what the player decides.
First Species Counterpoint, Rule by Rule
Species counterpoint isolates one compositional decision at a time. First species isolates the hardest one: how to make two voices sound like two voices.
Fugue Subjects and Answers
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.
Functional Harmony: Tonic, Predominant, Dominant
Tonic, predominant and dominant describe what a chord does to a phrase rather than what it is. This is how the three harmonic jobs divide the work.
Imitation and Invertible Counterpoint
Imitation makes one idea serve two lines. Invertible counterpoint makes those lines interchangeable, and the arithmetic behind it is small enough to check.
Instrument Ranges for Arrangers: Playable, Comfortable, Usable
A playable range and a usable register are different facts. Transposition arithmetic, endurance, doubling, and the notes that are another instrument.
Just Intonation, Beating and Why Intervals Sound in Tune
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.
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