Harmony Gym

Levels

Intermediate

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Theory

  1. Enharmonic Intervals: When the Same Sound Is Two Different Intervals

    Counting semitones names an interval's quality but not its number — which comes from the letters, and is why two identical-sounding distances can be different intervals.

Chords

  1. Diminished and Augmented Chords

    How diminished and augmented triads are built from stacked thirds, why both sound unstable, and where they show up in real music.

  2. Chord Inversions

    What a chord inversion is, how to recognize the same triad with a different note in the bass, and why musicians use inversions at all.

  3. Building chords

    Build any triad on your own instrument — the four qualities mixed together, then the same chords with a different note in the bass.

  4. What a Chord Symbol Does Not Establish

    A chord symbol fixes which notes belong to a chord and almost nothing about how it is played — not the register, not the spacing, not the doubling, and not the bass unless it says so.

Harmony

  1. Where ii, vi and iii Sit: The Chords That Stand In

    The three minor chords of a major key are not lesser versions of the major ones — they are substitutes, and knowing which one stands in for what is how a progression gets colour without losing its shape.

  2. The Minor Key, and Why Its Dominant Is Major

    A minor key has no leading tone of its own — so it borrows one, which is the whole reason the harmonic minor scale exists.

  3. Secondary Dominants: Borrowing a Pull

    Any chord in a key can be treated as a tonic for a moment and given its own dominant — which is how a progression gets a chromatic note without leaving the key.

  4. Modal Borrowing: Chords from the Parallel Minor

    A major key can take chords from the minor key on the same tonic — iv, ♭VI and ♭VII — and the effect is a change of colour without a change of home.

  5. Modulation: Changing Key Without the Listener Noticing

    How a piece moves from one key to another through a chord that belongs to both — and how that differs from the borrowing and tonicisation of the last two lessons.

  6. Reading a Progression: Everything at Once

    What to ask, and in what order, when you meet a progression you have never seen — the whole module used as a single procedure.

Ear training

  1. Chord quality by ear

    Listen to a chord and name what it is — major, minor, diminished or augmented.

  2. Singing a Note Back: The Ear Test You Cannot Fake

    Hearing a note and recognising it is one skill; producing it with your own voice is a harder one — and the only one that proves you actually have the pitch.

  3. Singing an Interval: Finding a Note You Have Never Heard

    Two notes arrive at the same instant. Pulling them apart — singing the lower one, then the higher — is a different skill from remembering one note, and a harder one.

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