Harmony
Tritone Substitution: The subV7 Chord That Still Resolves
Replace any dominant with the dominant a tritone away: why subV7 works, how it smooths bass lines, and where jazz standards hide it.
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Articles
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
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.
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.
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Ear Training & Practice
Ear Training for Intervals: A Method You Can Practise Daily
Interval recognition comes faster with a method: three intervals tied to a tonic, sung before they are named, and a short daily routine you can keep.
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Harmony
Diatonic Chords in Major and Minor Keys Explained
Diatonic chords are the triads built on each scale degree from the key's own notes. Here are their qualities in major and minor, worked out in C and A.
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Jazz & Popular Harmony
Jazz Chord Voicings: Shell and Rootless Voicings Explained
Shell and rootless voicings keep the third and seventh of each chord and leave room for a bass player. Worked examples use Dm7, G7 and Cmaj7.
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Tuning & Temperament
What Are Cents? The Unit That Measures Small Pitch Differences
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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Harmony
Augmented Sixth Chords: Italian, French and German Types
Italian, French and German sixth chords: how each type is built, how they resolve to V, and their use in enharmonic modulation.
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Fundamentals
Reading Intervals at Sight: Generic and Specific
Naming an interval at sight takes two passes: count the staff positions first, then judge what the accidental does to the size.
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Tuning & Temperament
Pythagorean Tuning: How Stacked Pure Fifths Build a Scale
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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Counterpoint
Canon Types and Techniques: Rounds to Crab Canons
Strict and free canon, interval and time distance, inversion and crab canons: how canons work and how to write a singable one.
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Fundamentals
Pentatonic and Blues Scales: Patterns With a Purpose
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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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.
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Music History
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.
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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.
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Music History
After Tonality: What Composers Replaced It With
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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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.
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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.
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