Music theory
How music is put together: intervals, scales, keys, chords, and the way a melody is shaped.
Music theory
How music is put together: intervals, scales, keys, chords, and the way a melody is shaped.
Level 1
What a note is, the seven names that repeat, and the difference between a tone and a semitone.
What a note is
Before tones and semitones: what a note actually is, why the ear hears an octave as the same note, and why seven names are enough for any instrument.
4 minStart →
Melody and harmony
The two directions music happens in: one note after another, and several at once. Almost everything after this is one of them.
6 minStart →
Tones and semitones
Two white keys, and whether anything sits between them. The answer is not always yes — and where it is not, the rest of theory follows.
5 minStart →
Sharps and flats
The black keys finally get names — two each, and which one is correct depends on where you came from.
6 minStart →
The major scale
Two distances in one fixed order — and every key signature in music is a consequence of it.
8 minStart →
What finishing this level means
- Name what follows any note, and what an octave does to its name
- Tell a tone from a semitone
- Name the black keys as sharps and as flats
- Spell a major scale from any of its starting notes
Level 2
Where the accidentals of a key go: written once at the front, not on every bar.
Key signatures
The accidentals a key needs, written once at the front instead of on every bar.
7 minStart →
Phrases, verses and choruses
Music comes in sentences, sentences group into sections, and the sections come back. That is what a song is made of.
7 minStart →
What finishing this level means
- Name a key from its signature, up to one sharp or flat
Level 3
The circle of fifths in both directions, and the triad that makes a key a key.
The sharp side
Why each new sharp key is a fifth up from the last, and keeps everything the last one had.
7 minStart →
The flat side
The other direction round the circle — where flats accumulate in the reverse order.
7 minStart →
Triads
Three notes stacked in thirds — and the single note that decides whether it is major or minor.
8 minStart →
Chords in order
One chord is a colour. Two in an order is a journey — and that is what almost every song you know is made of.
7 minStart →
What finishing this level means
- Name and build the key signatures to three sharps and three flats
- Spell any major or minor triad
Level 4
Three forms of minor, and the triad built from two minor thirds.
The minor scale
The same seven notes, started somewhere else — and why that changes everything.
8 minStart →
Harmonic and melodic minor
Why minor has three forms and major has one — and what the extra sharps are for.
9 minStart →
Diminished triads
What happens when both thirds are minor — and why nothing rests there.
7 minStart →
What finishing this level means
- Spell the natural, harmonic and melodic minor scales
- Spell a diminished triad on any root
Level 5
The fourth note on the stack, and the far side of the circle of fifths.
Seventh chords
A fourth note on the stack — and the one that gives harmony its direction.
9 minStart →
The far keys
Four sharps, four flats, and where counting gives way to recognising.
8 minStart →
What finishing this level means
- Spell dominant, major and minor seventh chords
- Name the key signatures with four sharps and four flats