Harmony
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.
The archive
Articles
100 pieces on how music is built and how it is written down — with playable examples, tables you can check, and no filler.
♮ intro · ♯♯ intermediate · ♯♯♯♯ advanced — like key signatures, more marks means more to hold in mind
Counterpoint
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.
Orchestration
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.
Rhythm & Meter
Meter, Beat Hierarchy and Hypermeter in Performance
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.
Rhythm & Meter
Polyrhythm and Cross-Rhythm: Counting the Distinction
Polyrhythm, cross-rhythm and polymeter are not interchangeable. Counting the ratios shows what separates a divided span from a pattern set against a metre.
Music History
The Rise of Functional Tonality: From Modes to Keys
Around 1600 the bass became the foundation of harmony and the modal system narrowed to two keys. What changed in the documents, and what the change cost.
Harmony
Secondary Dominants and How Tonicization Works
A secondary dominant makes any chord a temporary tonic. How to spell one, where it turns up, and what cancels the effect.
Harmony
Seventh Chords and How They Resolve in Tonal Harmony
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.
Form
Sonata Form: The Tonal Plot
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.
Rhythm & Meter
Swing Timing: What the Notation Does Not Say
Jazz notation asks for swing and leaves the ratio to the players, because the timing is tempo-dependent and a fixed written value would be wrong at most speeds.
Harmony
Voice Leading: Why the Rules Exist in Four-Part Writing
Parallel fifths, tendency tones, spacing and doubling, read as solutions to one problem: keeping four lines heard as four lines.
The ebook
Music Theory: the site as a book
The site's working library as a structured ebook: intervals, keys, harmony, counterpoint, rhythm, form, tuning, orchestration and the history behind them.
- 78 pages
- PDF format
- $2.87
- By The musics.name project
The Gumroad link opens the seller’s listing and checkout. Review the current total and purchase terms there; the free site does not require a purchase.
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