Music theory you can hear
Music theory is mostly names for things you can already hear. These pages give you the name and then let you hear the thing, in the same browser tab, with nothing to install. Nothing here assumes you read music.
Start here
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Step 1
Intervals: the distance between two notes
A third, a fifth, an octave. What the numbers count, and why a fifth sounds settled while a second sounds like an argument.
Playable examples -
Step 2
Scales: seven notes and the gaps between them
A major scale is a pattern of steps, not a list of letters. Once you know the pattern you can build one from any note.
Playable examples -
Step 3
The circle of fifths, explained by ear
The most looked-up diagram in music, and the one most often taught as a thing to memorise rather than a thing to hear.
Playable examples
How the notes fit together
Start anywhere. Each of these stands on its own, and they all end up back at the circle.
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01
Intervals: the distance between two notes
A third, a fifth, an octave. What the numbers count, and why a fifth sounds settled while a second sounds like an argument.
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02
Scales: seven notes and the gaps between them
A major scale is a pattern of steps, not a list of letters. Once you know the pattern you can build one from any note.
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03
Major and minor: one note of difference
Move a single note down a semitone and a bright chord turns dark. Here is which note, and what it does.
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04
Chords: notes stacked in thirds
Triads, sevenths, and why the chords in a key are not a random assortment but a family with jobs.
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05
Key signatures: why sharps arrive in that order
F sharp, then C sharp, then G sharp. The order is not arbitrary, and once you see where it comes from you never have to memorise it.
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06
The circle of fifths, explained by ear
The most looked-up diagram in music, and the one most often taught as a thing to memorise rather than a thing to hear.
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07
Pentatonic scales: five notes that cannot clash
Take two notes out of the major scale and something odd happens: everything left over sounds good together. Handpans and guzhengs are built on it.
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08
Transposing: the same tune in a different place
Why a song moves when it changes instrument, what stays the same when it does, and what a hundred real melodies show about which instruments have to move most.
How the time is carved up
Pitch is only half of it. This is the other half, and it is the half most people find easier.
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01
Note values: how long a note lasts
Whole, half, quarter, eighth. A system of halving that is easier than the names make it sound.
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02
Time signatures: what the two numbers mean
Four four, three four, six eight. The top number counts, the bottom number says what it is counting.
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03
Reading a drum grid
A row per drum, a column per sixteenth. The notation drummers actually use, and how to read a groove off it.
Charts and tunings
Reference pages for the instruments people arrive already holding.
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01
Handpan scales: the chart, and how to choose
D Kurd, Celtic minor, Amara, Integral. What the names mean, which notes each one has, and why the choice is permanent.
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02
Guzheng tuning: the strings, the keys, the bridges
Twenty-one strings, five notes repeating, and two missing notes that a player gets back by pressing.
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03
Kalimba key counts: 7, 8, 17 and 21
What you gain and what you lose with each board, and why 17 became the one everybody sells.
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04
How to read kalimba tab
Numbers, dots and the middle of the board. Kalimba tab is not sheet music and does not pretend to be.
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05
Tuning a kalimba with the hammer
Push the tine in to go up, out to go down. Small taps, one tine at a time, and the mistake everybody makes first.
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06
Piano chords for beginners
The shapes for major and minor triads, the three chords that carry most songs, and how to move between them without lifting your hand.
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07
First guitar chords, and why they are those ones
E minor, G, C, D, A minor. The open shapes exist because of how the guitar is tuned, not because someone chose them.
Where the examples come from
Every button on these pages plays the same recordings the app does, rendered through the same engine. A chart in a PDF can tell you a minor third is three semitones; this can play you one.
And where they end up
The theory is here to be used. When a page mentions a scale, the instrument that lives on it is a click away, and the hundred melodies are written out with the reason each one is easy or hard.