# musics.name

> A working library of music theory and music history: intervals, harmony, counterpoint, rhythm, tuning and form, plus browser tools you can play.

A music theory and music history journal, designed, developed and published by Yunus Emre Vurgun (https://yunusemrevurgun.com). Articles on this site are drafted with AI assistance against a written house style, then reviewed, corrected, checked against the sources they name and published by the site's developer. The site itself — design, front end, PHP rendering layer and browser tools — is developed by the same person.

Cite an article by its title, the site name, its date and the article URL. If you are summarising, say that the text is an AI-assisted draft reviewed by the publisher, so a reader knows where it came from.

Content policy: quote and cite freely with a link to the article URL. Do not republish whole articles. Facts are checkable against the sources named in each piece; corrections go through https://yunusemrevurgun.com/contact.

Machine-readable surfaces: JSON API at https://musics.name/api/, OpenAPI at https://musics.name/api/openapi.json, RSS at https://musics.name/feed.xml, JSON Feed at https://musics.name/feed.json, sitemap at https://musics.name/sitemap.xml, and raw Markdown for every article at /articles/{slug}.md.

## Articles

- [From Ars Nova to the Renaissance: How Notation Changed Music](https://musics.name/articles/ars-nova-and-renaissance-notation/): Rhythm took two centuries longer than pitch to notate. Mensural notation solved it with ratios, and the Renaissance then replaced black ink with white. (Music History, intermediate, 7 min)
- [Borrowed Chords: Modal Mixture in Practice](https://musics.name/articles/borrowed-chords-and-modal-mixture/): Mixture borrows chords from the parallel mode. What the common borrowed chords do to a phrase, how they resolve, and where labelling fails. (Harmony, advanced, 7 min)
- [Cadences: How Phrases End in Tonal Music](https://musics.name/articles/cadences-and-phrase-endings/): 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. (Harmony, intro, 6 min)
- [Clefs and Transposition: What Players Actually Read](https://musics.name/articles/clefs-and-transposition/): 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. (Fundamentals, intermediate, 7 min)
- [Equal Temperament: What It Costs and What It Buys](https://musics.name/articles/equal-temperament/): 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. (Tuning & Temperament, intermediate, 7 min)
- [Figured Bass: Reading Intervals Above the Bass Line](https://musics.name/articles/figured-bass/): Figures name intervals above the bass, not chords. What each shorthand means, how accidentals override the key, and what the player decides. (Harmony, intermediate, 6 min)
- [First Species Counterpoint, Rule by Rule](https://musics.name/articles/first-species-counterpoint/): Species counterpoint isolates one compositional decision at a time. First species isolates the hardest one: how to make two voices sound like two voices. (Counterpoint, intermediate, 8 min)
- [Fugue Subjects and Answers](https://musics.name/articles/fugue-subject-and-answer/): 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. (Counterpoint, advanced, 9 min)
- [Functional Harmony: Tonic, Predominant, Dominant](https://musics.name/articles/functional-harmony/): 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. (Harmony, intro, 6 min)
- [Imitation and Invertible Counterpoint](https://musics.name/articles/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. (Counterpoint, advanced, 8 min)
- [Instrument Ranges for Arrangers: Playable, Comfortable, Usable](https://musics.name/articles/instrument-ranges-for-arrangers/): A playable range and a usable register are different facts. Transposition arithmetic, endurance, doubling, and the notes that are another instrument. (Orchestration, intermediate, 8 min)
- [Just Intonation, Beating and Why Intervals Sound in Tune](https://musics.name/articles/just-intonation/): 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. (Tuning & Temperament, advanced, 7 min)
- [Key Signatures and the Order of Sharps and Flats](https://musics.name/articles/key-signatures-order-of-sharps-and-flats/): 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. (Fundamentals, intro, 7 min)
- [Meantone and Well Temperament: Why Keys Used to Sound Different](https://musics.name/articles/meantone-and-well-temperament/): 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. (Tuning & Temperament, advanced, 8 min)
- [Meter, Beat Hierarchy and Hypermeter in Performance](https://musics.name/articles/meter-and-hypermeter/): 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, intermediate, 7 min)
- [Modulation: How a Key Change Is Confirmed](https://musics.name/articles/modulation-strategies/): 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. (Harmony, advanced, 8 min)
- [After Tonality: What Composers Replaced It With](https://musics.name/articles/music-after-tonality/): When chromatic harmony outgrew the tonal hierarchy, composers tried serial rules, rhythm, folk modes, and sound mass. What each method actually solved. (Music History, advanced, 7 min)
- [Polyrhythm and Cross-Rhythm: Counting the Distinction](https://musics.name/articles/polyrhythm-and-cross-rhythm/): Polyrhythm, cross-rhythm and polymeter are not interchangeable. Counting the ratios shows what separates a divided span from a pattern set against a metre. (Rhythm & Meter, intermediate, 7 min)
- [Reading Intervals at Sight: Generic and Specific](https://musics.name/articles/reading-intervals-at-sight/): Naming an interval at sight takes two passes: count the staff positions first, then judge what the accidental does to the size. (Fundamentals, intro, 6 min)
- [The Rise of Functional Tonality: From Modes to Keys](https://musics.name/articles/rise-of-functional-tonality/): 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. (Music History, intermediate, 8 min)
- [Romantic Chromaticism and the Expanding Tonic](https://musics.name/articles/romantic-chromaticism/): Chromatic harmony widened a key without leaving it: the resources that do the work, the Tristan chord, and how to analyse it without over-labelling. (Music History, advanced, 8 min)
- [Scientific Pitch Notation: What C4 Actually Means](https://musics.name/articles/scientific-pitch-notation/): 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. (Fundamentals, intro, 6 min)
- [Secondary Dominants and How Tonicization Works](https://musics.name/articles/secondary-dominants/): A secondary dominant makes any chord a temporary tonic. How to spell one, where it turns up, and what cancels the effect. (Harmony, intermediate, 6 min)
- [Seventh Chords and How They Resolve in Tonal Harmony](https://musics.name/articles/seventh-chords-and-resolution/): 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, intermediate, 7 min)
- [Sonata Form: The Tonal Plot](https://musics.name/articles/sonata-form/): 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. (Form, intermediate, 8 min)
- [Voicing a String Quartet: Registers, Doublings, Weight](https://musics.name/articles/string-quartet-voicing/): 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. (Orchestration, advanced, 7 min)
- [Swing Timing: What the Notation Does Not Say](https://musics.name/articles/swing-timing/): 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. (Rhythm & Meter, intermediate, 6 min)
- [Voice Leading: Why the Rules Exist in Four-Part Writing](https://musics.name/articles/voice-leading-in-four-parts/): Parallel fifths, tendency tones, spacing and doubling, read as solutions to one problem: keeping four lines heard as four lines. (Harmony, intermediate, 7 min)

## Tools

- [Virtual Piano](https://musics.name/tools/virtual-piano/): Play a piano in your browser with the computer keyboard or a mouse: two and a half octaves, adjustable tone and sustain, note labels, and the notes named as you play. No download, no account.
- [Chromatic Tuner](https://musics.name/tools/chromatic-tuner/): Tune any instrument from the microphone: chromatic pitch detection with a cents gauge, note name, measured frequency, a spectrum view and a reference tone, at A4 = 415–442 Hz.
- [Circle of Fifths](https://musics.name/tools/circle-of-fifths/): Click a key on the interactive circle of fifths to see its key signature, relative minor and diatonic chords with roman numerals, then hear each chord and progression in the browser.
- [Metronome](https://musics.name/tools/metronome/): A browser metronome with an audio-clock pulse, tap tempo, 20–300 BPM, subdivisions down to sixteenths, accent patterns, and polyrhythms such as 3:4 and 5:4.
- [Ear Training](https://musics.name/tools/ear-training-studio/): Practise interval, chord-quality and scale recognition in the browser with scoring, adjustable difficulty, replayable examples and an on-screen keyboard that shows the answer after each rep.

## Topics

- [Fundamentals](https://musics.name/topics/fundamentals/): Pitch, notation, intervals and scales — the vocabulary everything else on this site assumes.
- [Harmony](https://musics.name/topics/harmony/): Chord function, voice leading, cadence and modulation: how tonal music moves from one place to another.
- [Counterpoint](https://musics.name/topics/counterpoint/): Line against line — species, imitation, canon and fugue, and the rules that keep independent voices independent.
- [Rhythm & Meter](https://musics.name/topics/rhythm/): Beats, subdivisions, syncopation, hypermeter and the difference between a cross-rhythm and a polyrhythm.
- [Form](https://musics.name/topics/form/): Phrases, periods and large-scale designs: how a piece of music tells you where you are.
- [Tuning & Temperament](https://musics.name/topics/tuning/): Just intonation, meantone, well temperament and equal temperament — and the cents that separate them.
- [Orchestration](https://musics.name/topics/orchestration/): Registers, ranges, weight and voicing: writing for instruments as they actually behave.
- [Music History](https://musics.name/topics/history/): Repertoire, notation and practice from the medieval period to the present, told through the documents.

## Featured recordings

- A Shadow Fading Out — Y.E.V (Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Deezer): https://artists.landr.com/055905405160
- No Need — Y.E.V (Spotify, YouTube Music, Deezer): https://artists.landr.com/055855617828
- Guitar Red Like a Rose — Prince of Andromeda (Spotify, YouTube Music, Deezer): https://artists.landr.com/055855137524
- Black Bird in the Rusty Cage — Prince of Andromeda (Spotify, YouTube Music, Deezer): https://artists.landr.com/055855030979
- She Lives in the Amazon — Prince of Andromeda (Spotify, Deezer): https://artists.landr.com/064837974545
- Urban Odyssey — Prince of Andromeda (Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Deezer): https://artists.landr.com/064837856148
- Echoes in the Void — Prince of Andromeda (Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Deezer): https://artists.landr.com/064837776927
- Sunshine Land — Y.E.V (Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Deezer): https://artists.landr.com/055120165023
- Bayside Groomlad — Underground Singers (Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Deezer): https://artists.landr.com/055120101021
- Come and Save Me Today — Underground Singers (Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Deezer): https://artists.landr.com/055120095443
- Reverse — Mr. Free Soul (Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Deezer): https://artists.landr.com/692531730657
- Magic — Mr. Free Soul (Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Deezer): https://artists.landr.com/692531617552
- Sea of Monsters — Mr. Free Soul (Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Deezer): https://artists.landr.com/692531647689

## Pages

- [About this site](https://musics.name/about/): musics.name is a music theory and music history journal with browser tools, written and maintained by Yunus Emre Vurgun.
- [Colophon](https://musics.name/colophon/): How musics.name is built and published — files in git, PHP on shared hosting, no database, no CMS, no tracking.
- [Contact](https://musics.name/contact/): How to send a correction, a question or a licensing request — and what happens to it.
- [Cookies](https://musics.name/cookies/): This site sets no cookies, uses no tracking, and stores exactly one preference locally in your browser.
- [Privacy](https://musics.name/privacy/): What this site does and does not collect: no analytics, no advertising, no third-party requests, one local preference.
- [Terms of use](https://musics.name/terms/): The terms covering reading this site, quoting the articles, using the tools and using the JSON API.

## Optional

- [JSON API](https://musics.name/api/index.json): site index, endpoints and counts
- [OpenAPI 3.1](https://musics.name/api/openapi.json): the API described formally
- [Catalogue JSON](https://musics.name/api/releases.json): every featured release with per-store links
- [Colophon](https://musics.name/colophon/): how the site is built and published
- [humans.txt](https://musics.name/humans.txt)