Learn music theory

• The staff and clefs — Five lines, two clefs, and how notes sit on them.
• Note names — The letters A to G on the staff and on the keyboard.
• Note values — Whole, half, quarter and eighth notes: how long notes last.
• Time signatures — Counting beats in 4/4, 3/4 and 6/8.
• Sharps, flats and naturals — Half steps, whole steps and the black keys.
• Major scales — The pattern of whole and half steps behind every major key.
• Key signatures — Why G major has one sharp, and the circle of fifths.
• Minor scales — Natural, harmonic and melodic minor.
• Intervals — Measuring the distance between two notes.
• Triads — Stacking thirds: major, minor, diminished and augmented chords.
• Seventh chords — One more third for richness and tension.
• Inversions — Which note is in the bass, and what ⁶ and ⁶₄ mean.
• Roman numerals — Naming chords by the scale step they are built on.
• Tonic, predominant, dominant — The three jobs chords do — and the colours on this site.
• Cadences — Musical punctuation: authentic, half, plagal and deceptive.
• Applied chords — V/V and friends: borrowing another key's dominant.
• Modulation — Changing key, and where music likes to go.
• Chromatic chords — Borrowed chords, the Neapolitan and augmented sixths.
• Phrases and periods — Musical sentences, questions and answers.
• Sonata form — Exposition, development and recapitulation.