Type a chord symbol or a scale name and go straight to it, or search tools, glossary terms and every article. Results are ranked by where the words appear.
Guitar & Fretboard
CAGED turns five open chords into movable shapes. This explains how the shapes connect, how to name a moved chord from its root string, and how to find one chord in several places.
Guitar & Fretboard
Every fret is one semitone, so the fretboard is a grid of note names. This covers standard tuning, the landmark frets and a two-week routine for learning the whole neck.
Guitar & Fretboard
A barre chord is an open chord moved up the neck. The E shape and the A shape are the two to learn first, and each one is built from its open chord by a simple rule of offsets.
Guitar & Fretboard
Tab shows strings and frets rather than pitch names, and a chord diagram is a small grid of the same information. This explains both, with an arpeggio you can check against the fretboard.
Rhythm & Meter
Hear 5/4 and 7/8 as beat groups, not math: counting systems, conducting, repertoire from Brubeck to Balkan dance.
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Music History
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.
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Fundamentals
Three minor scales, three different jobs. What each form changes, why composers switch between them, and how to hear the difference.
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Music History
Rhythm took two centuries longer than pitch to notate. Mensural notation solved it with ratios, and the Renaissance then replaced black ink with white.
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Tuning & Temperament
Pythagorean tuning builds every interval from pure 3:2 fifths. Here is the seven-note scale it produces, its whole tones and semitones in cents, and the wolf fifth it leaves behind.
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Fundamentals
Scale degrees number each note of a scale from its tonic, and solfège names the same positions do, re, mi. Degree names, movable and fixed do, and why degrees travel between keys.
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Orchestration
An orchestral score stacks every part on one page. This covers the standard order of the families, the brackets and clefs, and a first-read method.
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Tuning & Temperament
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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Music History
When chromatic harmony outgrew the tonal hierarchy, composers tried serial rules, rhythm, folk modes, and sound mass. What each method actually solved.
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Harmony
Roman numerals label each chord by the scale degree of its root and its quality. Here is a step-by-step method, with I vi IV V worked in C and G.
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Tuning & Temperament
A cent is one hundredth of an equal-tempered semitone. Here is the formula, what the common intervals measure in cents, and what a tuner is showing you.
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Tuning & 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.
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Fundamentals
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.
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Acoustics & Sound
A vibrating string or air column sounds a fundamental and a set of partials at whole-number multiples of it. Here are the first sixteen, their cents, and where they differ from equal temperament.
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Orchestration
A transposing instrument sounds a different pitch from the one on the page. The intervals for common instruments, and how to transpose a part.
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Fundamentals
Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian and Locrian explained by pattern and color, with hearing tips and modern uses.
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Music History
Gregorian chant is unaccompanied Latin liturgical song. Neumes were the signs that recorded its melodies, first showing only the direction of movement and later placed on lines.
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Fundamentals
The staff, the treble and bass clefs, line and space names, ledger lines, and where the key and time signatures sit, with a table to learn from.
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Fundamentals
The circle of fifths organizes every key by signature and closeness. How to read it, memorize it, and use it for modulation and chord choice.
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Harmony
Why ii V I is the backbone of tonal music: voice leading, turnarounds, minor-key forms, and the jazz reharm toolkit.
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Fundamentals
Major and minor pentatonics plus the blues scale: the patterns, the blue notes, and why five notes carry so much melody.
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Rhythm & Meter
Tied overbeats, attacked offbeats, hemiola and groove: how syncopation displaces accent and why the body keeps the score.
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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.
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Fundamentals
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.
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Tuning & 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.
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Rhythm & Meter
Polyrhythm, cross-rhythm and polymeter are not interchangeable. Counting the ratios shows what separates a divided span from a pattern set against a metre.
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