Concepts
The encyclopedia half of Theory Aide: one idea per article, explained in plain English first, with the real analysis engine embedded where seeing it work beats reading about it. Jargon links to the dictionary. New articles accumulate one at a time.
Counterpoint
The craft of keeping simultaneous melodies independent, with the actual Counterpoint Checker running live in your browser.
Intervals
The distance between two notes, counted in semitones, heard as a flavor. Taste seven of them with two live tones.
Keys
Pick a scale and one note becomes home. Hear the same melody land, then hang one row short, and feel the gravity.
The Math
A note is a number, and consonance is arithmetic. Then twelve fifths refuse to fit inside seven octaves, and the whole system has to cheat to survive.
Melody
Steps, leaps, and contour: what makes a sequence of notes feel like a line with a shape instead of a list.
Motion types
Parallel, similar, oblique, contrary: every pair of moving voices is doing one of four things, ranked by independence.
Organizing time
Hear a rhythm accelerate until it becomes a pitch, then ride the zoom lens from song form all the way down to timbre. It is time slices all the way down.
Pentatonic and blues
Drop two notes from the scale and every clash disappears. Roll random phrases over a drone and hear why the box is where phrasing gets learned.
Pitch and octave
Double any frequency and you land on the same note, higher. Hear the octave melt into one sound, then bend it and hear it argue.
Roman numerals
Every major key hands you the same seven chords, and numbering them frees a progression from its key. Watch the letters change while the numbers hold still.
The circle of fifths
Twelve keys arranged so neighbors differ by one note. Click around the wheel and hear how far from home you are.
The major scale
The step pattern most Western music walks on, climbable from any root. Two two one, two two two one.
The piano roll
Pitch up, time across, length is duration. Live's grid is real notation, and you can already read it.
Triads
Stack two thirds and you have a chord. Build all four flavors and let the real engine name what you're hearing.
Voices
A voice is one continuous line, whether or not anyone is singing. Your bass and your lead are already two of them.
What is a note
A note is a number: how many times per second the air moves. Dial a frequency, watch the wave, and hear it.
The beat
Identical clicks, evenly spaced, and your body does the rest. Tempo as beats per minute, and why 128 BPM feels different from 90.
Meter
Nothing in the clicks says which one is first. You decide, and the accent makes your decision public. What 4/4 actually says, and six pulses cut two ways.
Subdivision
The beat holds still while the space inside it gains structure: eighths, triplets, sixteenths, and what Live's grid menu is actually choosing.
Rests and space
A rhythm is a pattern of filled and empty cells, and the empty ones are placed, not left over. Load a full bar and delete your way to a groove.
Phrasing
A phrase has a beginning, a shape, and a breath, and phrases pair up as question and answer. Why four and eight keep showing up, and the delayed answer move.
Modes
Take one set of notes and move the home around it and you get seven moods, the modes. The secret is that the mode lives in the bass, not the scale.
Minor scales
Keep every note of the major scale and just move where home is. That single move is minor, and it is the keyhole into the whole world of modes.
Borrowed chords
Keep the home, import the paint. Why the minor iv in a major song hits like it does, and where rock got its flat VII.
Seventh chords
Stack a fourth note on the triad and stability becomes attitude: dreamy, pulling, mellow, or shadowy, and the key hands you one of each for free.
Progressions
The same four chords can march or wander, and the difference is the ordering. The pull, in plain terms, and where the falling fifth gets its gravity.
Cadences
Phrases end, and there are only a few standard ways to land: the full stop, the amen, the question mark, and the swerve. One phrase, four endings.
Chord-scale thinking
A chord and a scale are one object read two ways, and the dice from the pentatonic sandbox come back to prove it: same white keys, moving landings, and suddenly the line speaks.
Energy
"Progressions are a trap in dance music," says half the dance floor. Tension is a budget, the zoom level that spends it is a choice, and a drone can carry a progression nobody plays.