The two tracks
This site is built as two interleaved tracks through one encyclopedia, an idea borrowed with gratitude from Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler's Gravitation, the physics textbook famously written that way. Track 1 is the course. Track 2 is the depth.
Track 1: the spine
One ordered chain of articles that is complete on its own: read only these, in order, and you have genuinely learned to speak music. Every spine article carries previous and next links, so you can simply keep pressing next.
- What is a note
- Pitch and octave
- The piano roll
- Intervals
- Triads
- The major scale
- Melody
- Keys
- The circle of fifths
- Voices
- Motion types
- Counterpoint
Track 2: the paths beyond
Everything off the spine assumes Track 1 but is never required by it. Skipping Track 2 costs depth, never continuity. It grows in named reading paths, each hanging off particular spine articles, and each path below lists what has shipped so far, in reading order. More lands as it is written.
The math of sound
The arithmetic under all of it: notes as numbers, consonance as ratio, rhythm and pitch as one continuum. Grows out of What is a note, Pitch and octave, The piano roll, Intervals.
Harmony, continued
Chords past the triad: naming them by their job, then why some orders of them feel inevitable. Grows out of Triads, Keys, The circle of fifths.
The big picture
Form and arrangement: how minutes of music hold together, and where a track keeps its tension. Grows out of The piano roll, Voices, Melody.
The climb
Time, phrasing, and the modal ascent as one path: safe palette, then phrasing, then palettes, then application. Grows out of The piano roll, Melody, The major scale, Keys, The circle of fifths.