All the topics
Each text explains a concept with objects that sound, and says what to read before it and what comes after. They are in the order the graph puts them — from what depends on nothing to what depends on nearly everything.
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The start
depend on nothing- Properties of soundHow long it lasts, how strongly it sounds, whether it is low or high, and what made it. The four questions every sound answers, and how a score writes down each answer.
- AcousticsEvery sound comes from a vibration. This topic follows sound from the instrument to the ear: what a vibration is, how it propagates through the air in waves, why frequency determines whether a note is low or high and amplitude whether it is loud or soft, the range of human hearing, and why orchestras tune to the same note.
- Instrument familiesStrings, winds and percussion: the three families of instruments, told apart by what vibrates to make the sound. Here you learn how each family divides, why a metal flute is still a woodwind, why the piano belongs with the strings, which percussion instruments play notes, and the more scientific classification the books only hint at.
- NoteEvery musical note starts as a specific pitch that we capture with a name and write down as a symbol. Here is how we get the seven core notes, why they repeat in an endless cycle as pitches rise, and how different languages name them—from A–B–C to Do–Re–Mi.
- Note values and restsOn the staff, a note's position gives its pitch, and its shape gives how long the sound lasts. Those shapes are note values, and each one has a rest that measures a silence of the same length. Here you meet the seven note values, the proportion between them and their matching rests.
- The staffFive lines and four spaces are enough to write down how high a sound is: the higher the sign, the higher the sound. Here you learn to count lines and spaces, to leave the staff with ledger lines, and to recognise the parts of a written note.
- Tone and semitoneThe distance between two neighbouring notes is not always the same. The smallest is the semitone, and two semitones make a tone. Here you learn to measure those distances on the keyboard, find out why there is no black key between E and F, and hear the difference between one step and the other.
- Instrumental ensemblesFrom the duo to the symphony orchestra, and the band beside them. Here you learn how many instruments make a chamber group, a chamber orchestra and a symphony orchestra, how the sections sit in front of the conductor, what separates a philharmonic from a symphony, and the words each player's part uses to say who plays.
- RangeNo voice and no instrument reaches every note. The span between the lowest and the highest note it can produce is its range, and a melody has a range too. Here you learn how a range is written, why not every note in it is equally easy, what it has to do with choosing a key, and why the words for it change from book to book.
- AccidentalsThe black keys have no names of their own: they use the seven names with a sign added. Those signs are accidentals, which raise or lower a note without changing its name. Here you meet the five accidentals and learn how far each one reaches.
- ArticulationThe same notes, with the same durations, can sound joined to one another or apart, short, leaned on. Articulation is that way of producing and connecting sounds. Here you learn the signs for legato, staccato, portato, tenuto and accents, and what each one changes in the sound.
- ClefThe staff shows that one note is higher or lower than another, but not which note it is. The clef does that: a sign that gives one line its name. Here you meet the G, F and C clefs, find middle C in each, and see why there is more than one clef.
- DynamicsA melody can be played in a whisper or with full force, and move from one to the other on the way. Dynamics is the art of grading that loudness. Here you learn the scale from pianissimo to fortissimo, the signs for crescendo and diminuendo, and sudden reinforcements such as sforzato.
- Dots, ties and fermatasNote values only double or halve. For a note that lasts three beats, five beats, or as long as the performer likes, notation has four devices: the tie, the dot, the double dot and the fermata.
- IntervalTwo notes, and the usual question: how far is one from the other? That distance is the interval. Here you learn to count it by note names, to recognise it on the staff by its shape alone, and to tell melodic from harmonic, conjunct from disjunct, simple from compound.
- The measureUnder almost all music runs a steady pulse, and that pulse falls into groups. A measure is each of those groups, set off from the next by a barline. Here you learn to feel the beat, to count how many beats fit in a measure, and to read the barlines that separate them.
- Modern notationMicrotones, clusters, indeterminate pitch and durations in seconds: the signs twentieth-century composers made up for sounds the traditional staff could not write. Here you learn what each one asks for, why they vary from one composer to the next, and how to read a score that uses them.
- OrnamentsAppoggiatura, mordent, turn, trill, arpeggio, glissando and flourish: notes added to a note of the melody to decorate it. Here you learn what each ornament plays, where it takes its time from, how it is written, and where the books themselves disagree about how to perform it.
- Voice typesSoprano, mezzo-soprano, contralto, tenor, baritone and bass: how voices are classified by range and by timbre, the rule that helps you remember every range, the middle register of each, the subdivisions of opera and the clefs each voice is written in. And why one book counts six adult voices and another counts four.
Scales and chords
depend on the start- Consonance and dissonanceTwo notes played together can sound at rest or ask for movement. Here you learn which intervals theory calls consonant and which dissonant, the degrees between them, why the perfect fourth divides the books, and how the idea of consonance has changed through history.
- Enharmonics, and why the same sound has two namesTwo spellings for the same sound, and why the choice between them is not arbitrary; a note's name carries its function.
- Interval qualityC–E and C–E flat are both thirds, and they are not the same size. Quality tells them apart: major, minor, perfect, augmented, diminished. Here you learn to measure an interval in tones and semitones, the two families of intervals, what accidentals do, and the tritone.
- Metric accentThe beats of a measure do not all weigh the same. The first is strong, the others weak, and the same logic runs down to the parts of each beat. Here you learn where the weight falls in each meter, and why it is what lets the ear recognise a meter without seeing the score.
- Simple and compound meterTwo measures can have the same number of beats and sound quite different. The difference lies in which note value takes one beat and how that beat divides: in two, in simple meter; in three, in compound meter.
- Tempo, and why it is not the same thing as grooveThe speed of the pulse, written in Italian words or in beats per minute, and the difference between playing fast and playing with the right groove.
- Absolute and relative pitchSome people hear a note and name it with no reference at all. Most musicians do something else: they hear how far one note is from another. Here you learn the difference between the two, what the words absolute and relative mean when they describe a sound and when they describe an ear, why a tune is recognisable in any key, and which of the two skills can be trained.
- Score navigation, and the order the music is read inRepeats, first- and second-time bars, da capo, dal segno and coda — the marks that make a two-page piece last five minutes, and the order each is read in.
- Choir and vocal ensemblesWhen voices sing together. Here you learn the four kinds of choir, why the mixed choir is written in four parts and leaves out the mezzo-soprano and the baritone, how choral music is laid out on the page, what singing a cappella means, the difference between a choir and a quartet of soloists, and where a singer should breathe.
- ChordThree or more different sounds at the same time. Here you learn what counts as a chord and what is only an interval, the difference between the model chord and the many shapes it takes in music, why doubled notes do not change a chord, and how chords are built in thirds, and sometimes in other intervals.
- Harmonic seriesNo musical sound is a single note: along with the fundamental sound the harmonics, fainter, in a fixed order. Here you learn where they come from, the series they form, the frequency ratios behind the octave, the fifth and the fourth, why timbre depends on them, and how far the series explains harmony and tuning.
- Octave designationThe piano has eight Cs, and every one of them is called C. Here you learn how octaves are numbered to say which is which without a staff, the rule that gives any note its number, why middle C is C4 in one book, dó 5 in another and dó 3 in a third, and how to read the systems still in circulation, from the organ to MIDI.
- ScaleA series of successive notes separated by tones and semitones. Here you learn what a scale is, and what it is not, the difference between a diatonic and a chromatic scale, why the seven white-key scales are not the same scale, how scales are classified by their number of notes, and why the seven-note scale is only one among many.
- The scoreEvery part of a work written one above the other, to be read at once. Here you learn what a score is and what a part is, in what order the instruments appear in an orchestral score and why, how brackets and braces group the staves, what a reduction is, and the terms that only turn up when several people read the same music.
- Building intervalsNaming a written interval and writing a requested one are the same reasoning run in opposite directions. Here you learn Lacerda's method: start from the natural interval, which you know by heart, and settle the difference with accidentals, upwards and downwards.
- Interval inversionSwap an interval's two notes, taking the lower one up an octave, and it becomes another: the fourth becomes a fifth, the major third a minor sixth. Here you learn the rule of nine, what happens to quality, and what inverting is good for.
- The major scale, and the formula that defines itA fixed sequence of tones and semitones which, applied to any note, produces that note's major scale, and determines its whole spelling.
- RhythmRhythm, meter and tempo travel together and get confused all the time. Here you learn to tell them apart: rhythm is the way durations follow one another, meter is the ruler that organises them, and tempo is the speed at which it all goes by.
- Time signatureThe two numbers stacked at the start of the staff sum up the measure: how many beats it has and which note value takes one beat. Here you learn to read them in simple meters, to decode them in compound meters, where they mislead at first, and to recognise the C and cut-C signs.
- The guitar fretboard, read as a rulerSix strings, one fret per semitone, and two rules that spare you memorising the two hundred and some notes of the neck.
- Recognising intervals, and the skill every ear rests onIdentifying the distance between two notes by ear, the method that actually works for learning it, and why to train the descending and harmonic forms too.
- Syncopation, and the accent that lands where the pulse is notThe accent displaced off the pulse, which only exists against an established metre and is the rhythmic mechanism of nearly all Brazilian popular music.
- Triads, and the four possible qualitiesThree notes stacked in thirds, and why only four combinations exist, all of them determined by the intervals, not by anyone's choice.
- The tritone, and the interval that cannot sit stillThree whole tones, the interval that splits the octave exactly in half; the only symmetrical one, the one that makes every dominant ask to resolve, and the one that sounds tense even to someone who never studied.
- AnacrusisNot all music starts on the first beat. Here you learn the three ways to begin, on the strong beat, before it or after a rest, the rule that decides when you write only the opening notes and when a whole measure, what the last measure owes the anacrusis, why words so often ask for one, and masculine and feminine endings.
- Chromatic scaleTwelve semitones in a row, every note between a sound and its octave. Here you learn why for Lacerda there is only one chromatic scale, with no key, and for Med there are several, each tied to a key; the practical rule of sharps going up and flats coming down, what changes under a key signature, and why spelling matters when the sound is the same.
- MelodyA succession of sounds of different pitches and durations that makes sense as music. Here you learn what turns a row of notes into a melody, why rhythm is half of it, the difference between moving by step and by leap, how a melody is organised around points of arrival, and what a very simple children's song shows about all of this.
- Tuning and temperamentWhy a piano cannot be perfectly in tune in every key. Here you learn how instruments are tuned by fifths and fourths, why twelve pure fifths do not close into seven octaves, what the Pythagorean comma is, what equal temperament gives up so that every key works, how these differences are measured in cents, and why singers and violinists do not play tempered.
- TupletsThree notes where the beat would hold two. Here you learn what a tuplet is, how the triplet is written and read, the groups of five, six and seven, the duplet and quadruplet of compound meter, tuplets with unequal values and rests, and the ratio that says exactly what a group means.
- Voice motionWhen two melodies sound together, one moves against the other in only a few ways. Here you learn contrary, similar, parallel and oblique motion, why one book counts three and another four, parallel and hidden fifths and octaves, horn fifths, and the acoustic and stylistic reasons theory grew wary of parallels.
- Key signatures, and the order that never changesThe accidentals gathered at the start of the staff, the fixed order they appear in, and the trick that reads the key in a second.
- Scale degrees, and the names that describe relationshipsThe seven places in a scale, each with a name saying what it does in relation to the tonic; thinking in degrees instead of notes is what lets you play the same piece in any key.
- Irregular and changing metersSome measures have five or seven beats, and they cannot be split into equal twos or threes. Here you learn how the ear hears them anyway, as short and long groups; how the grouping is written; what the books call them; and what happens when the meter itself changes from one bar to the next.
- ModePlay the white keys from C to C, then from A to A. The notes are the same, and still the two scales sound different, because the semitones fall on different degrees. That way of placing tones and semitones is the mode. Here you learn how mode and tonic together name a scale, why there are seven possible modes and two in everyday use, and what the books disagree about.
- Brazilian rhythms, and what tells one from anotherSamba, baião, xote, maracatu and frevo read by what distinguishes them — where the accent falls and how the pulse divides; each has a clapping pattern that fits in two bars, and that is where you start.
- Inversions, and why the bass decides the weightThe same three notes with a different note underneath are still the same chord — but they do not weigh the same, and that is why a sequence of chords sounds like music instead of blocks.
- Recognising a chord's quality, and the note that decidesHearing whether a chord is major, minor, diminished or augmented without counting notes; the third is the only note that changes between major and minor, and the difference is enormous.
- The major diatonic fieldSeven chords born from a single scale, and the reason each quality lands exactly where it does.
- Seventh chords, and the tritone that moves harmonyA fourth stacked note turns the chord from a state into a direction, and a single internal interval explains why.
- Altered chordsChords built by raising or lowering a note of a diatonic chord. Here you learn to build them, why Med recognises them by their diminished third, why that third almost always appears inverted, as an augmented sixth, and why the word "altered" means different things in different books.
- Beating timeShowing the beats of a measure with the hand. Here you learn the patterns for two, three and four beats, where the downbeat and the upbeat land, the pattern for six, how a slow tempo subdivides the beats and a fast one joins them, and the two ways books conduct five and seven.
- CounterpointThe art of writing two or more melodies that sound together, each worth hearing on its own. Here you learn what makes a line independent, the cantus firmus and the voice that accompanies it note against note, why four-part writing is contrapuntal even though it looks like chords, and where counterpoint meets harmony.
- Melodic manipulationHow a single melodic idea yields a whole piece. Here you learn retrograde, tonal and real inversion, transposition within the key and sequence, augmentation and diminution, shifting chords in blocks, and some twentieth-century techniques, with one short melody passing through all of them.
- Motive and themeThe smallest ideas of a work, and the largest. Here you learn what a motive is and why four notes can carry a symphony, Med's inciso as impulse and repose, the rhythmic motive, what makes a melody a theme, and how motive and theme relate to the phrase and to form.
- Polyrhythm and polymeterDifferent rhythms at once, and different meters at once. Here you learn polyrhythm, with its complementary and contradictory kinds, three against two and four against three, the hemiola that swaps two groups of three for three groups of two, and polymeter, the staves in different meters whose downbeats keep meeting again.
- Rhythmic engravingThe same rhythm can be written in several ways, and only some of them let you see the beats of the measure. Here you learn Lacerda's rules for dots, ties, beams and rests, all with one idea behind them: the reader should see where each beat falls, without having to count.
- Text settingWhen a melody has words, the stressed syllables have to fall on the strong beats of the music. Here you learn what text setting is, how words stressed on different syllables fit the measure, the feet of ancient poetry and the rhythmic figures that came from them, the difference between syllabic and melismatic singing, and why a misplaced stress is heard at once.
- TextureHow many lines sound at once, and how they relate. Here you learn monophony, solo and in unison, the two kinds of homophony, polyphony in which no voice is in charge, heterophony, one melody sung several ways at once, and why hardly any piece keeps a single texture from start to finish.
- The circle of fifths, and the map it drawsThe twelve keys laid out by fifths, in a circle that explains the order of the accidentals, measures how closely keys are related, and shows where chord sequences prefer to walk.
- The three minor scales, and the problem each one solvesNatural, harmonic and melodic are not three matters of taste; they are three answers to the same structural defect.
- TonalityStop a familiar tune one note before the end and you feel exactly where it should land. That pull towards one note, and the order of importance it gives every other note and chord, is tonality. Here you learn what the books mean by it, how key and tonality differ, which degrees fix the centre and which decide major or minor, and how a piece leaves its main key and comes back.
- Chord symbols, and how to read one without memorising anythingThe songbook's notation read by fields, root, quality, extension, alteration and bass, each one answering a question.
- Church modesDorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Ionian and Locrian: the seven ways of placing the semitones have names from the music of the medieval Church. Here you learn each mode's final and its colour, how to recognise a mode by the one note that sets it apart from major or minor, why the books count four, six or seven, and where the modes are still heard.
- Sixth chords, and the rest the seventh does not giveA sixth added to the triad, which sounds like rest where the major seventh would sound like colour; the ending chord par excellence in bossa and choro, and the chord charts confuse with the relative's minor seventh.
- Transposition, and the music that changes pitch without changingMoving the whole piece by a fixed interval, preserving every internal relationship and every spelling; if it sounds different, something was transposed wrong, and thinking in degrees is what makes it automatic.
- Extensions, and the thirds that keep going above the seventhNinth, eleventh and thirteenth are the stack of thirds continued past the seventh; they are colour, not structure, and the practical rule is knowing what to drop when you run out of hand.
- Harmonic function, and the three places a chord can beEvery chord in the harmonic field plays one of three roles — rest, departure or tension — and it is the role, not the name, that decides what it can do in a song.
- Harmonic rhythm, and how fast the chords changeHow fast the harmony changes is a decision separate from how fast the music goes; speeding it up before a cadence is one of the most reliable signals that a phrase is ending.
- Chord origin and affinityWhere chords come from and what draws them together. Here you learn to find the major chord, the dominant seventh and the dominant ninth in the harmonic series, why the minor chord does not turn up there so easily, why leading-tone chords are dominant chords without their root, and how the number of shared notes measures how closely two chords are related.
- Imitation and canonOne voice says it, another repeats it. Here you learn imitation, with its leader and follower, the two intervals that describe it, free imitation and the strictly ruled canon, the round as an infinite canon, mirror, crab, fifth and mensuration canons, how to write a round, and the invertible counterpoint of Bach's inventions.
Harmony and repertoire
depend on nearly everything above- Pentatonics, and the scale where nothing sounds wrongFive notes instead of seven, chosen so that no combination clashes; the scale of almost everyone's first solo, and the reason it is so safe and so directionless.
- Relative and parallel keys, and the two ways major and minor are relatedA minor key can be related to a major one by its key signature or by its tonic; they are different relationships, with different uses, and confusing them is the commonest mistake in reading a signature.
- Atonality and polytonalityTwo ways out of tonality: holding more than one centre at the same time, or refusing any centre at all. Here you learn what bitonality and polytonality are, the Petrushka chord, what atonality gives up, and why there is no modulation in atonal music.
- Closely related keysThe five keys that sit one accidental away from any key, and why a piece travels to them before going anywhere else. Here you learn to find the direct and indirect neighbours, to count the notes two keys share, and why the parallel key, far away by signature, sounds close.
- Exotic scalesThe gypsy scale, the Neapolitan, the six-note scales and the whole-tone scale: scales from outside the major-minor system, kept by folk music and sought out by composers. Here you learn to build each one from a scale you already know, why the augmented second gives them their flavour, and why the same pattern of intervals changes name from one book to the next.
- Harmonic and melodic majorThe major scale with a lowered sixth, or with a lowered sixth and seventh on the way down: the mirror of the minor scale's forms. Here you learn to build both, the chords they bring into a major key, and why one book calls them scales while another calls the same chords borrowed.
- Suspended chords, and what is left when the third goesThe third replaced by the fourth or the second, which leaves the chord neither major nor minor; it almost always resolves to the third straight after, and when it does not it becomes a colour of its own.
- Authentic and plagal modesTwo melodies can end on the same final, use the same notes and still belong to different forms of a mode: one climbs above its final, the other circles around it. Here you learn what separates the authentic from the plagal form, the hypo- names, the recitation tone, how to identify the mode of a melody, and the point where the books do not agree.
- Cadences, and how much each one concludesThe formulas that end a musical phrase, from full stop to comma, and why each one sounds as conclusive as it does.
- Diminished chords, and the symmetry that erases the rootMinor thirds stacked until the chord turns symmetrical, with no settled root; the same chord has four readings, and the spelling chooses which one counts. It is the passing chord of choro.
- Functional ear training, and hearing the degree instead of the chordHearing which degree a chord occupies in the key, and not only its quality; the skill that lets you accompany a song you have never heard, and the trick of singing the tonic while it plays.
- Minor key harmony, and the field that is not one fieldThe minor harmonic field comes from three scales, not one, which is why the same degree turns up with different chords; the major fifth degree is the choice that brings the music home.
- Modal transpositionD Dorian on the white keys is only the model. Here you learn to write any mode on any note, by the quickest route, finding the major scale the mode lives in, and by the other, altering one note of the scale with the same tonic; to answer the three questions that usually come up, given the note, given the interval and given the key signature; and why the two routes give the same sound with different key signatures.
- Non-chord tones, and what the melody does between the right notesThe melody notes that do not belong to the chord, classified by how they arrive and leave; much of what sounds like a strange chord is only a passing note over an ordinary one.
- Roman numeral analysis, and the chord described by the place it holdsRoman numeral notation describes a chord by the position it holds in the key, not by the note it sits on; the case of the numeral carries the quality, and thinking this way is what lets you transpose a whole song in your head.
- Transposing instrumentsThe clarinettist reads C and the piano hears B flat. Here you learn why some instruments sound different from what is written, the rule that tells how each one sounds, how to write a part for one and how to read its part at the piano, why piccolo and double bass do not count as transposing, what double transposition is, and the key-signature choices that still divide scores.
- Transposition by clef substitutionTransposing without rewriting anything: the note stays in the same place on the staff and, read in another clef, takes the name it needs. Here you learn the difference between written and read transposition, how to find the right clef for each interval, why seven clefs cover every transposition, what to do with the key signature and with accidentals, and where the technique is still used.
- The II–V–I, and why three chords are enoughPreparation, tension and rest in three chords; the most frequent sequence in popular music, what makes it work, and how to spot it in any chart.
- Harmonic progressionThe order in which a piece's chords appear. Here you learn how a progression leaves the tonic and comes back to it, the commonest progressions in Western music, the direction the functions usually take and when music goes against it, root motion by fifths, thirds and seconds, the Picardy third, and what makes a chord connection smooth or angular.
- Modal interchange, and the colour that comes from the parallelChords taken from the parallel key, which change a degree's colour without changing centre; the minor fourth degree in a major piece is the most frequent one in Brazilian song and the easiest to hear.
- Secondary dominants, and the chord that arrives a bar earlyChords from outside the key that work as the dominant of a degree that is not the first, and why they make the next chord sound inevitable.
- Voice leading, and why the smallest movement is usually the bestHow each voice moves from one chord to the next; common tones stay put, the rest move by step wherever possible, and the dominant's tritone resolves by contrary motion.
- FugueThe form in which imitation reaches its highest organisation. Here you learn the subject and the answer, the exposition in which the voices enter one by one, the countersubject, the difference between a real and a tonal answer, the episodes and body of the fugue, and special devices such as stretto, pedal point and the double fugue.
- The blues scale, and the note that is only for passing throughThe minor pentatonic with one note added, the diminished fifth between the fourth and fifth degrees; it sounds good while it moves and harsh if you stop on it, and that is what makes the blues sound like the blues.
- Figured bass, and the numbers that describe what sounds above the bassThe Baroque notation for chords, numbers under the bass line indicating the intervals to play above it, and why it is not the same thing as analysis by degree.
- Symmetric scalesScales made of one interval pattern repeated until the octave closes. Here you learn why there are only two whole-tone scales and three octatonic ones, why these scales have no tonic that asserts itself, why Med calls them mathematical scales, and what Messiaen's modes of limited transposition are.
- Altered dominants, and the tension that strengthens the resolutionThe dominant chord with altered extensions — flat ninth, sharp ninth, raised fifth — which increase the tension without changing the function, because each alteration is one more semitone pointing at the arrival chord.
- Four-part writing, and the rules that keep the voices audibleHarmony spread across soprano, alto, tenor and bass, with the rules of doubling, spacing and movement that exist so that each voice keeps being heard as a line.
- Modulation, and what separates changing key from passing through oneThe change of tonal centre, confirmed by a cadence; without one, a chord from outside is just a chord from outside, and the listener feels the step without needing to analyse it.
- Musical form, and the music heard as a wholeHow sections are organised and repeated; nearly every song fits into a few letters, and knowing the form is what lets you play a piece by ear after two listens.
- Pedal point, and the harmony that moves over a note standing stillA sustained note while the chords change above it, creating dissonance without losing the centre; the dominant pedal builds tension, the tonic pedal settles, and both are everywhere.
- Species counterpoint, and the method that isolates one variable at a timeThe classical method of writing independent lines against a cantus firmus, one restriction at a time — first pitch alone, then rhythm, then dissonance; the school where voice leading was formulated.
- The turnaround, and the return that sounds like a consequenceThe short sequence that closes a section and hands the music back to the beginning, and why a well-chosen return makes the repeat feel inevitable instead of like starting over.
- Bossa nova harmony, and a wider vocabulary for the same grammarExtensions as the norm, frequent modal interchange, chained II–V–Is and voice leading that barely leaps; it is functional harmony with more vocabulary, not another harmony, and analysis by degree still holds.
- Choro harmony, and tonal grammar taken to its limitChained dominants, passing diminished chords, a bass always in motion and modulation between sections; the Brazilian repertoire where nineteenth-century functional harmony survived most intact, and why memorising the form is worth more than memorising the chords.
- Chromatic chordsThe chords with notes from outside the scale that classical harmony uses without leaving the key. Here you learn secondary leading-tone chords, the secondary supertonic, the passing augmented triad, the Neapolitan sixth and the augmented sixth chords, with the Italian, French and German sixths, and where each one resolves.
- Phrase and periodMelody is organised like speech, in phrases that end in punctuation. Here you learn what a musical phrase is, call and response, the period made of antecedent and consequent, why so many phrases are four bars long, and what happens when a composer shortens, lengthens or dovetails a phrase into the next.
- Tritone substitution, and the bass that falls by semitoneSwapping a dominant for the dominant a tritone away, which shares its inner tritone; it is what turns a II–V–I into chromatic downward movement in the bass.
- Binary and ternary formThe two-part and three-part forms, used for centuries in dances, songs and symphony movements. Here you learn the difference between open and closed form, binary and rounded binary, ternary and da capo, the minuet and trio, and the neighbouring forms: song form, bar form and music with no repeats.
- Pivot chord modulation, and the chord that is two at onceA chord read in two keys at the same time, serving as a hinge between them; how to find it, how to write it with two Roman numerals, and why it is the gentlest way into a new key.
- Large formsThe forms of the long movements of concert music. Here you learn the rondo and its variants, theme and variations, from the classical kind to jazz, sonata form with its exposition, development and recapitulation, the French overture, and the continuous forms built over a repeating bass: the ground bass, the passacaglia and the chaconne.
