Harmony
Harmonizing a Melody: How to Choose the Chords
Harmonizing a melody means choosing a chord for each strong beat that contains the melody note. This worked example uses the opening of Ode to Joy in C.
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
Harmony
Pedal Point and Ostinato Explained: Holding and Repeating a Bass
Pedal point holds one bass note while the harmony above it changes. An ostinato repeats a short pattern. This covers the kinds of pedal, how clashes resolve, and the ground bass.
Harmony
Diminished and Half-Diminished Sevenths Explained
The fully diminished seventh is four notes stacked in minor thirds, and the half-diminished seventh is a diminished triad with a minor seventh. This is how each one spells and resolves in C.
Harmony
The Tonnetz Explained: Euler's Lattice and Chord Moves
The Tonnetz is a lattice of fifths and major thirds whose triangles are triads. Leonhard Euler described it in 1739, and this is how to read it.
Harmony
Non-Chord Tones: Passing, Neighbour, Suspension and More
A non-chord tone is a note that sounds over a chord without belonging to it. Here are the main types, how each is approached and left, and how to write them.
Harmony
The ii V I Progression in Major, Minor and Jazz Styles
Why ii V I is the backbone of tonal music: voice leading, turnarounds, minor-key forms, and the jazz reharm toolkit.
Harmony
Harmonic Sequences and Circle Progressions That Modulate
Descending fifths, ascending 5-6 patterns, Pachelbel loops: how sequences work, when they modulate, and how to write them.
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.
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.
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
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- By The musics.name project
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