Grammar of Music

Path

What to study before Closely related keys

The five keys a signature away, and why a piece travels to them before anywhere else. 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.

  1. Properties of sound

    The four properties every musical sound has at once: duration, intensity, pitch and timbre.

    Level 0

  2. Note

    The seven pitch names, and the sign that puts one of them on the page.

    Level 1

  3. Tone and semitone

    The smallest distance Western music uses, and the whole tone built from two of them.

    Level 1lesson Notes have names, and the names have a rule (First steps in theory)

  4. Interval

    The distance between two sounds, counted by note names, melodic or harmonic, simple or compound.

    Level 1lesson The distance between two notes (First steps in theory)

  5. Interval quality

    Perfect, major, minor, augmented and diminished: what separates two intervals that share a number.

    Level 1has practicelesson The distance between two notes (First steps in theory)

  6. Major scale

    Seven degrees built on a fixed sequence of tones and semitones, and the reference everything else is measured against.

    Level 1has practicelesson The major scale, from any note (First steps in theory)

  7. Scale degrees

    The seven places in a scale, each with a name that describes what it does.

    Level 1

  8. Tonality

    The set of functions the degrees and their chords hold in relation to one centre.

    Level 2

  9. Key signatures

    The fixed accidentals at the start of the staff, their invariable order, and the circle of fifths that organizes them.

    Level 1lesson Reading the key in one second (First steps in theory)

  10. Closely related keys

    The five keys a signature away, and why a piece travels to them before anywhere else.

    Level 3