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Music Hub guides
Clear guides to start and progress: which chords to learn first, which harmonica to pick, how to transpose to your voice. Only theory and facts, with links to the Music Hub tools.
Getting started9 guides
The basics to settle first: naming notes, reading a chord chart, understanding a key signature.
Easy chords for guitar and piano: the complete beginner's guide
What a chord is, the logical order of the open chords to learn first, on both guitar and piano, and how to stay in these easy shapes for as long as…
Understanding keys and key signatures
How to read a key signature on the staff, the order of sharps and flats, the circle of fifths to find them all, enharmonic keys, and sight-reading…
Major and minor scales to get off to a good start
What a scale is, the formula for the major and the minor, why the harmonic and melodic minors exist, and how to build any scale…
How to read a chord chart
Decode the letters, the suffixes (up to 9th, 11th and 13th chords), the boxes and the repeats to play any song straight from its…
Finding the chords of a song by ear
Starting from the bass line, testing the I-IV-V, narrowing the field with the diatonic degrees of an already-known key, telling major, minor and…
Tab or Chord Chart: What's the Difference?
Two notations, two logics: tab tells you exactly where to put your fingers on one specific instrument, a chord chart describes the harmony and…
Reading sheet music: the clefs, the staff and note values
The staff's five lines and four spaces, what the treble and bass clefs fix and where their shapes come from, the mnemonics for naming each line, the…
Reading and Writing Drum Notation: the Staff, Symbol by Symbol
The neutral clef that replaces the treble or bass clef the moment a staff notates an instrument rather than a pitch; the convention, born from the…
Do-Re-Mi note names versus letters: reading the fixed-do and German systems
Where do-re-mi and the letter names A B C D come from, why German scores write H for the note you call B, how a sharp or a flat is written in the…
Theory and harmony10 guides
How chords follow one another and why some sequences work: progressions and richer voicings.
The four chords behind pop songs: the I-V-vi-IV progression
Four chords, hundreds of pop songs: the theory behind the I-V-vi-IV loop, its history, its variations, and how to transpose it into any…
Intervals: naming, recognising and building
Naming an interval between two notes, from second to octave, without settling for a raw count of semitones: why a third and a fourth never take the…
Seventh chords: dominant, major 7, minor 7
How a seventh chord is built by stacking thirds, why C7, Cmaj7/CΔ7 and Cm7/C-7 name three very different sounds, and why the tritone in the dominant…
Suspended, diminished and augmented chords
The sus2, the sus4, the diminished, the half-diminished (m7b5), the diminished seventh and the augmented: their note-by-note construction, the…
The ii-V-I cadence in jazz: full theory and improvising over it
Jazz's single most fundamental progression, taken apart in depth: degree construction, voice leading, the minor version, turnarounds, tritone…
Song structure: verse, chorus, bridge
Verse, chorus, pre-chorus and bridge: what really sets these four blocks apart beyond a dictionary definition, what stays fixed from one pass to the…
The twelve-bar blues progression
The three-chord skeleton that carries the whole of the blues: the I-IV-V, the quick change that breaks the monotony of the opening bars, the…
The circle of fifths: a practical tool, not just a map of key signatures
The circle of fifths is not only there to remind you of a key signature: it is a tool for reading at speed, for transposing by rotation, for spotting…
Chord substitutions and reharmonization, explained in depth
Replacing one chord in a progression with another without losing the harmonic thread: tritone substitution, diatonic substitution by third, secondary…
Singing a vocal harmony for two or three voices
Building a second vocal line that fits an already-sung melody: the two reference intervals, third and sixth, above or below, and why that gap changes…
Scales and improvisation4 guides
The melodic material to improvise over a chart without playing outside it.
The Dorian and Mixolydian Modes for Improvising
Interval formula, characteristic note, the right chord or vamp, and the difference with functional harmony: everything you need to improvise with…
Lydian, Phrygian, Aeolian, and Locrian: The Four Modes That Complete the Picture
Dorian and Mixolydian cover most modal improvisation situations, but four modes still remain to explore in depth: Lydian and its augmented fourth…
Major and minor pentatonic scales
How the major and minor pentatonic scales are built from their parent scale, why removing exactly two degrees makes them almost impossible to play…
Building a Solo: Phrase, Motifs and Silence
The guides in this collection devoted to the pentatonic scales, the dorian and mixolydian modes, the four modes that complete them, and the ii-V-I…
Instrument technique16 guides
The gestures specific to one instrument: tuning, fretting, strumming, fingering.
The guitar capo: how it works, types, and how to use it well
How a capo works, its different mechanisms, the tuning problems it can cause, how to place it correctly, and how it simplifies otherwise difficult…
Mastering barre chords on guitar
What a barre chord is, the E and A shapes, the half barre, the hand anatomy and neck physics that explain why it is hard at first, the correct…
The Power Chord on Electric Guitar: Construction, Shapes, and Distortion
Neither major nor minor: the root-fifth construction of the power chord, the E-string and A-string shapes, palm muting, why thirds turn to mud under…
Easy ukulele chords to get started
The ukulele's tuning changes everything compared with guitar: the instrument's Hawaiian and Portuguese origins, the reentrant G string, basic chord…
Building a Bass Line from a Chord Chart
From the root note alone to the root-fifth pattern, through passing notes, inversions and walking bass, all the way to syncopated funk and reggae…
Bass Groove: Playing With the Drums Rather Than Against Them
Locking to the kick drum, leaving space around the snare, playing ahead of, behind or right on the beat, the note duration that shapes groove more…
Drum Fills and Breaks: Leaving the Groove and Coming Back
This hub's 34 style pages, from rock to funk to swing jazz, reggae, or hip-hop, each explain how to hold down a particular groove. None of them say…
How a Drum Groove Is Built: the Grammar Common to Every Style
The three voices of the kit - kick, snare, hi-hat or ride - and how each one carries a different function; the backbeat, that accent on beats 2 and 4…
Getting Your Harmonica Bends Right: The Technique, the Intonation and the Diagnosis
This hub already has two harmonica guides. One explains the physics of the bend and the overblow, hole by hole: why a note can only ever drop, never…
Starting the harmonica: holding it and your very first notes
How to cup the harmonica in your hands, blow across the full width before isolating anything, the two embouchure techniques that isolate a single…
Standard Guitar Tuning: Why E-A-D-G-B-E
The six strings, the physics of the string, how to tune by ear or with a tuner, the exact frequencies in Hz, why new strings keep slipping out of…
Alternate Guitar Tunings: Drop D, Open Tunings and DADGAD
What each tuning frees up on the open strings, the style and repertoire where you hear it most, what it makes easy or impossible, the tension it…
Right-hand strumming patterns on guitar
How to count beats and offbeats before you even touch a string, the down-up motion that must never stop, the subtraction logic that generates every…
Chord inversions at the piano
How to move a chord from root position into its first or second inversion, what a slash chord like C/E actually encodes, how to walk a bass line down…
Left-hand accompaniment patterns at the piano
Single bass notes, root-fifth bass, the oom-pah pattern of the musette waltz or stride piano, the three-beat waltz bass, the broken arpeggio known as…
Singing While Accompanying Yourself on Piano or Guitar
This hub has two guides devoted to the voice alone, one for finding your key, the other for layering a second or third vocal harmony. Guitar and…
Finding your key4 guides
Adapting a song to your voice, your instrument or your capo, with the maths done right.
Transposing a song: the complete method, from capo to degrees
Work out the exact semitone gap, place the capo on the right fret, think in degrees on piano, and know the classic pitfalls of…
Saxophone transposition: reading a chart in Bb or Eb
Why what you read on your saxophone part isn't what actually sounds, the whole family from Bb to Eb, and how to transpose a guitar or piano chart for…
Finding the key of a song
How to spot the tonic by ear, what the dominant chord reveals, the chord-inventory method for a chart, modal songs and mid-song key changes, and the…
Finding your singing key
How to measure your tessitura between the lowest and highest notes you can hold without straining, what the classical voice types and their pop…
Gear and studio2 guides
Choosing and plugging in: which instrument for which key, which gear to record with.
Which harmonica for which key: positions, bends and tuning
Diatonic or chromatic, positions from first to fifth explained in depth, the physics of bending and overblowing, just versus equal-tempered tuning,…
Connecting a USB MIDI keyboard to a computer: the complete guide
The MIDI protocol explained in depth, class compliant versus proprietary driver, USB direct or 5-pin DIN, virtual ports, latency, virtual instruments…
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