Syncopation is the art of landing where the listener does not expect you to land. In a normally accented rhythm, the heaviest emphasis falls on the beat itself…
Read More
Two eighth notes look identical on a page. But how they are played — and how they feel — depends entirely on the style of music and the instructions (explicit…
Read More
Tool Number Three is a diagram. It looks like a clock — twelve positions arranged in a circle — but instead of hours, it shows key signatures.
Read More
A scale is not a melody. It is an ordered inventory of the pitches available in a given key — the pool from which melodies, harmonies, and progressions are…
Read More
An interval is the distance between two pitches. It is the most fundamental measurement in music theory — the unit from which melodies are constructed…
Read More
Here is a fact that might change how you hear music: every sound you have ever listened to is actually many sounds at once.
Read More
Music is repetition, variation, and contrast — in some combination, in virtually every piece ever written.
Read More
Musical phrases are the building blocks of melody — the smallest complete units of meaning in a piece of music. Music is a language.
Read More
The musical alphabet has seven letters — A through G — and the piano keyboard has twelve distinct pitches per octave.
Read More
The piano keyboard is Tool Number Two, and it is the most important physical diagram in the study of Western music theory.
Read More