Music theory, in learning order
The rail below is the whole curriculum: 8 to 22 minutes per lesson, prerequisites stated, one engraved stave or fretboard figure each. No accounts, no pop-ups.
Step 01 · Rhythm · 9 min
Every piece of music implies a steady pulse, even when nothing in the arrangement plays it. Learning to locate that pulse is the first practical skill in theory, because every other term — bar, tempo, note value — is defined relative to it.
Step 02 · Rhythm · 11 min
Note values are a system of halving. Every symbol lasts exactly half as long as the one above it in the ladder, which means you only ever need to learn one rule and apply it four or five times.
Prerequisite · pulse-and-beat
Step 03 · Rhythm · 12 min
A time signature looks like a fraction and is not one. The top number tells you how many beats are in a bar; the bottom number tells you which note value counts as one beat. Everything else about metre follows from those two facts and the convention of accenting the first beat.
Prerequisite · note-values-and-rests
Step 04 · Rhythm · 13 min
Six-eight is the compound metre you meet first, and it is the one most often counted wrongly. The counting handles the notation; the conducting pattern handles the feel. Keeping those two jobs separate solves most six-eight problems.
Prerequisite · time-signatures
Step 05 · Rhythm · 12 min
Syncopation is not simply playing fast or playing off the beat. It is a specific effect: an accent, or a note's beginning, placed on a weak part of the metre so that the listener's expectation is deliberately contradicted.
Prerequisite · note-values-and-rests, time-signatures
Step 06 · Rhythm · 10 min
Tempo is the one musical quantity that is fully numeric and still widely misunderstood, mostly because the number is meaningless until you say which note value it counts.
Prerequisite · pulse-and-beat
Step 07 · Scales · 14 min
The major scale is not a fixed set of seven notes. It is a pattern of steps, and that pattern can be started on any of the twelve pitches. Understanding it as a shape rather than a list is what makes key signatures and transposition straightforward.
Step 08 · Scales · 12 min
Once a key is fixed, each of its seven notes has a name and a function. Scale degrees are those names, and they are the vocabulary you need before you can discuss chords or cadences at all.
Prerequisite · the-major-scale
Step 09 · Scales · 13 min
Every major key shares its seven notes with a minor key. Nothing is added and nothing is removed; the only thing that changes is which of the seven notes is treated as home. That single shift reorganises the whole hierarchy of tension.
Prerequisite · the-major-scale
Step 10 · Scales · 14 min
A key signature is a shorthand that says which notes are to be raised or lowered for the whole piece. There are only two orders to learn, one for sharps and one for flats, and both are fixed for all time.
Prerequisite · the-major-scale
Step 11 · Scales · 15 min
The circle of fifths is often taught as a memory aid for key signatures. That undersells it badly. It is a map of how keys relate to each other, and almost every question about modulation, chord function and transposition can be answered by looking at positions on it.
Prerequisite · key-signatures
The chord library is separate from the study path. Each entry gives its interval stack, a playable voicing and what it actually sounds like.
Am7 is the easiest seventh chord on the instrument: five of its six available strings can ring open or be fretted with two fingers, and the open strings are doing most of the work.
Cmaj7 in the shape every guitarist learns first: the low E string is not played, the A string takes the root at the third fret, the D string the third at the second, and the top three strings ring open.
Next lesson, “Triad Anatomy: Root, Third, Fifth”, appears on 2026-10-16.