Path
What to study before Chromatic chords
The Neapolitan sixth and the augmented sixths, and where each one resolves. Below, the concepts that come before, in the order in which one explains the next. Signed in, you see the same path minus what you already hold: your path.
Properties of sound
The four properties every musical sound has at once: duration, intensity, pitch and timbre.
Note
The seven pitch names, and the sign that puts one of them on the page.
Tone and semitone
The smallest distance Western music uses, and the whole tone built from two of them.
Interval
The distance between two sounds, counted by note names, melodic or harmonic, simple or compound.
Interval quality
Perfect, major, minor, augmented and diminished: what separates two intervals that share a number.
Major scale
Seven degrees built on a fixed sequence of tones and semitones, and the reference everything else is measured against.
Triads
Three-note chords stacked in thirds, and the four qualities that result.
Diatonic harmony
The chords that arise from stacking thirds on each degree of a scale, and why each quality lands where it does.
Harmonic function
The role each degree plays — tonic, subdominant, or dominant — and the tension that moves one to the next.
Seventh chords
The fourth note stacked on the triad, and the five qualities the repertoire actually uses.
Secondary dominants
Chords from outside the key that act as the dominant of some degree other than the first.
Chromatic chords
The Neapolitan sixth and the augmented sixths, and where each one resolves.