A cadence is the ending to a musical phrase, the period to a sentence.  Cadences are usually comprised of two chords, sometimes more, and they appear after major points in...

We described earlier the definition of half and whole steps. These “steps,” in their technical term, are intervals. An interval is the distance between any two musical tones. There are...

Inversion involves the changing of the note order in a chord.  For example, instead of having the root on the bottom, you have the third be the most bottom note. One...

Key signatures define the key of the piece.  More specifically what notes are to be used, and depending on how the notes are used, what scale.  Key signatures are made by...

So you have song.  It can be anything, a pop song, a piano concerto, anything.  You have the score, but what do all of those notes mean.  How do the...

First off... What is a scale anyway? A scale is defined as a series of pitches that reach from a note and up one octave.  The more common scales, the major and...

The minor scale is actually three scales.  So really there are three minor scales.  In order to understand minor keys you must understand the following terminology: Scale Degree This refers to which number...

The term modes has its roots all the way back to Ancient Greece.  Modes were adopted by the early Catholic church and slowly formed into what we now know as...

Time signatures define how rhythm is to be divided in a musical piece.  A time signature is comprised of two elements, more specifically two numbers that are placed on top...

So far we've learned melodic intervals (melody) and harmonic intervals.  The next step is harmony, which is built upon harmonic intervals, using more than one harmonic interval creates a chord. When three...

Triads are used one after another to create chord progressions.  When a piece is in a major or minor key, each note of the scale can have a triad built...