Theory dictionary

Every term in one honest sentence. These are the same plain-language definitions the Theory Aide extension shows as tooltips inside Ableton Live.

• authentic cadence V to I, the full stop: the leading tone and tritone both paid, the phrase filed as finished.
• avoid note A scale tone leaning a semitone above a chord tone: fine to walk through, rude to sit on.
• bar A group of beats, most often four, marked by the heavier grid lines.
• beat The steady pulse under music, the thing your foot taps.
• borrowed A chord taken from the parallel major/minor for extra color.
• breath point The gap where a line pauses to inhale before the next phrase begins.
• build A stretch that raises tension by stacking density, register, and activity, aimed at a drop.
• cadence How a phrase's harmony lands: the punctuation mark at the end of a musical sentence.
• call and response One phrase asks and another answers: the question-and-answer pairing under most melodies.
• cent One hundredth of a semitone, the unit for measuring tiny differences in tuning.
• characteristic note The one note that separates a mode from plain major or minor, the note that makes it that mode.
• chord Several notes sounding together, heard as one object with a mood.
• chord tone A note belonging to the current chord: furniture, always safe to land on.
• chord-scale The scale a chord implies, and the chord a scale implies: one object read in two directions.
• circle of fifths The twelve keys arranged in a wheel so neighbors differ by one note. Distance on the circle is harmonic distance.
• clave The five-hit timekeeping pattern Afro-Cuban music is built around: a tresillo-shaped call, then a two-hit answer.
• consonance The smooth, settled quality of intervals whose waves fit together simply.
• contour The overall shape of a melody: where it rises, peaks, and falls.
• contrary motion Two voices moving in opposite directions. The most independent, strongest motion.
• deceptive cadence V to vi, the swerve: the melody resolves but the bass steps aside, a comma disguised as a period.
• density How many notes sound at once or in quick succession. How full it feels.
• diatonic Belonging to the key: built only from the scale's own notes.
• dissonance The rough, restless quality of intervals whose waves never settle.
• dominant The tension chord that wants to fall back to the tonic (the V).
• dominant seventh A major triad with a flat seventh on top: the pulling chord, restless by construction, which blues repurposes as home.
• dorian A minor mode brightened by a natural sixth: the hopeful minor of modal jazz and funk.
• downbeat Beat one, the accented first beat of a bar, where the count starts over.
• drone A note held or repeated under everything else, giving the ear a fixed home to measure against.
• drop The arrival a build points at: dance music's section-level cadence.
• equal temperament Tuning that splits the octave into twelve identical steps, so every key is equally playable and equally, slightly, out of tune.
• frequency How many times per second something vibrates. In sound, faster means higher.
• grid The piano roll's lattice of time slices; its width is the subdivision you are editing on.
• half cadence A phrase that stops on V: the question mark, tension left ringing.
• half-diminished A diminished triad with a minor seventh softening it: the shadowy seventh chord on the key's seventh degree.
• harmonic minor Natural minor with the 7th raised back up, so the dominant chord pulls home again.
• hertz The unit for frequency: one hertz is one back-and-forth per second.
• hidden fifth Both voices leap the same direction into a 5th, a softer parallel-5th.
• hidden octave Both voices leap the same direction into an octave.
• implied harmony Chords your ear assembles that nobody plays: melody and bass conspiring to suggest a progression.
• interval The distance between two notes, counted in semitones and heard as a flavor.
• just intonation Tuning built from pure small-number ratios: flawless in one key, unusable in the others.
• key The gravity field of a scale: one note is home, and every other note is heard by its distance from home.
• leading tone The note a semitone below home, which pulls strongly up to it.
• locrian The mode on the seventh degree, with a diminished home chord and no stable fifth, so it barely works as a key.
• lydian A major mode with a sharp fourth: floating and weightless, the wondrous major.
• melodic minor Natural minor with the 6th and 7th raised, so a line can climb to home in even steps.
• melody A sequence of single notes heard as one continuous line with a shape.
• meter The repeating pattern that groups beats into bars: the count you keep without noticing.
• minimalism The concert tradition built from loops, pulse, and gradual change: dance music's older cousin.
• mixolydian A major mode with a flat seventh: the bluesy, rock dominant that will not fully resolve.
• modal interchange Borrowing systematized: treating all seven parallel modes as one shared pantry of chords.
• mode A scale defined by which of its notes is treated as home; the same notes yield a different mode from each starting point.
• natural minor Major with the 3rd, 6th, and 7th lowered a semitone: the default minor palette.
• oblique motion One voice holds while the other moves.
• octave The distance between a note and the note vibrating twice as fast. They sound like the same note, higher.
• parallel fifths Two voices a 5th apart moving the same direction, the classic counterpoint no-no.
• parallel key A major and minor key sharing the same home note but different notes (C major and C minor): the pair borrowing pulls from.
• parallel minor The minor scale on the same home note: C major's parallel minor is C minor.
• parallel motion Two voices moving the same direction by the same interval.
• parallel octaves Two voices an octave apart moving together, collapsing two lines into one.
• pentatonic A five-note scale with no semitones, so nothing in it clashes or demands resolution.
• phrase A run of notes heard as one musical sentence, with a shape and a breath at the end.
• phrygian A minor mode with a flat second: dark and tense, the Spanish and metal sound.
• pitch How high or low a note sounds, set by its frequency.
• plagal cadence IV to I, the amen: a landing with no leading tone, settling instead of snapping.
• progression A sequence of chords heard as one unit: the ingredients are the chords, the recipe is the order.
• quantize Snapping notes to the grid, pulling every hit onto the nearest slice.
• register How high or low the notes sit overall.
• relative key A major and minor key that share the exact same notes, differing only in which note is home (C major and A minor).
• relative minor The minor key sharing a major key's notes, home moved to its 6th degree: C major's relative is A minor.
• rest A deliberate silence: a slice of counted time left empty on purpose.
• roman numeral A chord named by its scale degree instead of its letter, so the name survives a key change.
• root The note a chord is built from and named after.
• scale A chosen set of notes defined by a pattern of steps, repeating every octave.
• secondary dominant A V chord aimed at a chord other than the tonic, briefly making it feel like home.
• semitone The smallest step on the piano roll: one row up or down. Twelve make an octave.
• seventh chord A triad with one more third stacked on top: four notes, and a lean the plain triad lacks.
• similar motion Two voices moving the same direction by different amounts.
• subdivision The slicing of each beat into smaller equal parts: eighths, sixteenths, triplets.
• subdominant Harmony that pulls away from home and sets up tension (the IV side).
• syncopation Accents landing off the strongest beats, giving a pushed, lively feel.
• tempo How fast the beats come, measured in beats per minute (BPM).
• time signature The two numbers, like 4/4, that say how many beats each bar holds and which grid division counts as one beat.
• tonic The home chord or note, where the music feels at rest.
• tresillo The 3+3+2 rhythm: two hits in a long stride, one arriving early, with the gap doing the pushing.
• triad The basic three-note chord: a root, a third, and a fifth, stacked.
• triplet Three equal slices where two would normally fit, giving a rolling, rounded feel.
• tritone The interval of six semitones, splitting the octave exactly in half: restless, and the engine inside the dominant seventh.
• vamp One or two chords looped as a bed to play over: harmony parked so everything else can move.
• voice One continuous musical line in a texture, whether or not anyone is singing.
• voice leading How each line moves note-to-note from one chord to the next.