## 17. Theory in Styles

Theory in styles is the rest of this course put to work inside particular practices: the scale a jazz player chooses over each chord, the extended and substituted chords those tunes are built from, the cadence-free chord loops of popular music, the theory already built into a DAW, and the traditions none of it describes.

Source: https://musictheory.center/course/contemporary
Level: Intermediate · Applied · 5 sections
Before this: Chromatic Harmony, Form and Structure

### Chord-Scale Thinking

https://musictheory.center/course/contemporary#chord-scale-thinking

> Play the first: one chord, struck again under every note of a line climbing over it. Play the second: the same chord, and a line that differs from the first by exactly one note. Play them back to back until you can say which note moved and where in the line it was. Then play the third, where a different chord is underneath, and the fourth, where two lines run over one chord and only one of them has a note that fights it.

**Plays:** A chord, and a line climbing over it (D3 F3 C4 D4 E4 F4 G4 A4 B4 C5 D5) · The same chord, a different line (D3 F3 C4 D4 E4 F4 G4 A4 Bb4 C5 D5) · A second chord, with a line over it (G2 F3 B3 G4 A4 B4 C5 D5 E5 F5 G5) · A third chord, and two lines over it (C3 E3 B3 C4 D4 E4 F#4 G4 A4 B4 C5 F4)

The staff draws the line of the first clip: eight notes from D up to D, no accidental anywhere, the sixth of them a B. Lower that B a half step and you have the second clip, and nothing else about either clip changes. The table underneath does the same job for all seven chords a major key supplies a seventh chord on: each row pairs one chord with the scale that contains its notes, and names the note or notes of that scale a player has to decide about. Read the last column down and a single principle accounts for every entry in it — a scale note that is not in the chord and sits a half step above one of its notes is the one that clashes, and the rows where no such note exists are the easy ones.

- **The chord is restruck, not sustained** — Every step of the first four clips sounds the chord again underneath the next note of the line. [Dm7](https://musictheory.center/chord/d-m7) there is voiced D3, F3 and C4 — root, third and seventh, with the fifth left out so the note of the line makes a fourth note rather than a fifth.
- **One note separates the first two clips** — Both lines run D, E, F, G, A, then a sixth note, then C and D. The first plays B4 as that sixth note and the second plays B♭4. Neither of the two belongs to the chord underneath, so what changes is the colour of the line and not the chord it sits on.

| Chord in C major | Its chord-scale | The seven notes | The note to decide about |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [Cmaj7](https://musictheory.center/chord/c-maj7) | Ionian, or Lydian for a brighter one | C D E F G A B | F, a half step above the chord’s E. Raise it to F♯ and the scale is Lydian and the clash goes |
| [Dm7](https://musictheory.center/chord/d-m7) | Dorian | D E F G A B C | None. E, G and B are the scale’s three notes outside the chord, and each sits a whole step above one of the chord’s — which is why this pairing is the easiest of the seven. Lower the B to B♭ and the scale is Aeolian instead |
| [Em7](https://musictheory.center/chord/e-m7) | Phrygian | E F G A B C D | F, a half step above the root, and C, a half step above the chord’s B |
| [Fmaj7](https://musictheory.center/chord/f-maj7) | Lydian | F G A B C D E | None. G, B and D are the scale’s three notes outside the chord, and each sits a whole step above one of the chord’s — G above F, B above A, D above C. The raised fourth is what buys that |
| [G7](https://musictheory.center/chord/g-7) | Mixolydian | G A B C D E F | C, a half step above the chord’s B |
| [Am7](https://musictheory.center/chord/a-m7) | Aeolian | A B C D E F G | F, a half step above the chord’s E |
| [Bm7b5](https://musictheory.center/chord/b-m7b5) | Locrian | B C D E F G A | C, a half step above the root |

**chord-scale theory**

**Definition.** Chord-scale theory is the practice of pairing every chord in a progression with a scale that contains that chord’s notes, so that a player improvising over the chord has seven pitches to draw on and a stated reason for each of them rather than four chord tones and guesswork.

The move it makes is small and it changes everything. A [chord symbol](https://musictheory.center/course/chords#reading-chord-symbols) names four notes; a chord-scale names seven, of which four are the chord and three are the colour. **The chord tones say what the chord is and the other three say what it feels like.** Over [Dm7](https://musictheory.center/chord/d-m7) the pairing is Dorian, and the note that makes it Dorian is the sixth degree, B — the difference between the first two clips above and nothing else. Swap that B for a B♭ and the same chord is being read as Aeolian, which is darker, more settled, and much less like jazz. One chord and one scale paired together like that is a **chord-scale relationship**, which is the phrase jazz teaching uses for the individual pairing; the doctrine that every chord in a tune has one is the theory.

What makes the system teachable is that the seven pairings in the table are not choices at all: play a [major scale](https://musictheory.center/course/scales#the-major-scale) and take the chord and the scale from the same degree, and the pairing falls out. Dorian over the second-degree chord, Mixolydian over the fifth, Lydian over the fourth. The choices begin one step later, when a player takes a scale from somewhere other than the key — Lydian over [Cmaj7](https://musictheory.center/chord/c-maj7) to raise the fourth, or an altered scale over a dominant — and those are decisions about colour made chord by chord.

The one thing to carry away is the last column. A scale note that is not itself part of the chord and sits a half step above one of its notes will beat against it every time it is sounded with it, which is why jazz teaching calls such notes avoid notes and tells beginners to pass through them rather than land on them. That is not a prohibition. It is a description of what the interval does, and a player who knows which note it is can use it on purpose — what varies between styles is only whether the roughness is heard as a fault or as a resource.

**Good to know**

- (Fact) Two pitches a half step apart interfere audibly when they sound together — the roughness Chapter 5 called [dissonance](https://musictheory.center/course/intervals#consonance-and-dissonance). A scale note a half step above a note of the chord underneath therefore produces that roughness whenever the two are sounded at once, regardless of style, instrument or century.
- (Convention) The [mode](https://musictheory.center/course/modes#what-a-mode-is) names in the table are being used as **chord-scales**, which is a different job from the one Chapter 9 gave them. There, Dorian named a tonal centre: a whole piece measured against D, with D as home. Here it names a set of seven notes to play over one chord lasting two bars, after which the reference note changes with the chord. The same seven names carry both meanings and nothing in the notation distinguishes them.
- (Tendency — jazz teaching since the 1950s and the college jazz programmes built on it, where the approach was systematised into a curriculum. Bebop players a generation earlier thought in terms of chord tones with chromatic approaches to them, and much modern jazz teaching has gone back to that) A minor seventh chord is paired with Dorian, a dominant seventh with Mixolydian and a major seventh with Ionian or Lydian, and a player reaching for one of those over the matching chord will sound idiomatic without having decided anything. The pairings are defaults to depart from rather than answers.

**You already know this**

- The seven modes from Chapter 9 — the notes of one major scale started from each of its degrees in turn, so that the same seven pitches make seven different patterns of steps — which are the scales this section pairs with chords — https://musictheory.center/course/modes#the-seven-modes
- Seventh chords from Chapter 10 — a triad with a fourth note a seventh above the root, which is the smallest chord that tells you its own quality — which are what every scale in the table above is chosen for — https://musictheory.center/course/chords#seventh-chords

**Where this goes**

- Choosing a scale for a chord you have never seen, at the speed the chord goes past, is what improvising actually consists of, and it is the skill the last chapter builds the practice routine around — https://musictheory.center/course/applications

**In real music**

- Miles Davis — “So What” — the first sixteen bars sit on one minor seventh chord and go nowhere. Listen to the soloists over those bars rather than to the chord: with no progression to follow, every note they choose is a choice about which scale is being read over the chord

**Try it on your instrument:** Play a minor seventh chord on your instrument — D, F, A and C if you have the range for it — and then play the eight notes D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D one at a time above it, striking the chord again under each one or looping it in your DAW if you cannot reach both. Then play the same eight notes with B♭ in place of B. Say out loud which of the two you would use in a jazz tune and which in a folk tune, and which note you had to change to get from one to the other.

[Enter a chord’s notes and see every scale that contains them](https://musictheory.center/tools/scale-finder?n=D+F+A+C&t=D)

**Check:** One chord, struck again under each of eight notes climbing over it. Two scales fit that chord and differ in their sixth degree only. Which of them was played?

- Aeolian — the sixth degree was B♭ **(correct)** — Correct. The line was D, E, F, G, A, B♭, C, D, and its sixth note was B♭. Against the D, F and C of the chord underneath, that flattened sixth is the darker of the two colours and the one a folk tune would use.
- Dorian — the sixth degree was B — Dorian has B natural as its sixth degree: D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D. This clip played B♭ there, a half step lower. Play the first chip at the top of the section, which is the Dorian line over the same chord, and then this one — the sixth note is the only place they differ.
- Phrygian — the second degree was E♭ — D Phrygian is D, E♭, F, G, A, B♭, C, D. Its second degree is E♭, and the second note of this clip was E natural, a half step higher. The two scales agree from the third note onward, which is why the second note is what would settle it.
- Mixolydian — the third degree was F♯ — D Mixolydian is D, E, F♯, G, A, B, C, D, and its third degree is F♯ — a major third, which would have fought the F in the chord underneath. The third note of this clip was F natural, and that F is one of the three notes being struck under the line.

### Jazz Harmony

https://musictheory.center/course/contemporary#jazz-harmony

> Play the first: three chords, three different notes in each. Play the second: the same three chords with a fourth note added to every one of them. Play the third: the outer two chords have each had one of their four notes swapped for another, and the middle chord has been replaced by a different chord altogether, whose bass sits a half step above the bass of the chord that follows it. Play the second and the third back to back and ask what the middle chord of each has in common with the other.

**Plays:** Three plain chords (D3 A3 D4 F4 G2 B3 G4 C3 C4 E4) · The same three with one more note in each (D3 A3 C4 F4 G2 B3 D4 C3 E4 G4) · Three chords, the middle one replaced (D3 C4 E4 F4 Db3 B3 Ab4 C3 D4)

The vocabulary, in the order a player meets it. Nothing in the table is a new kind of harmony: an extension is one more third on a stack Chapter 10 already built, an alteration is a chromatic note of the kind Chapter 14 already named, and the substitution in the third row is a dominant chord doing the job of another dominant chord. What is new is how densely jazz uses all of it and how much of the practice is assembled from one two-chord unit, which the fourth row names and the two rows after it build out of. The two facts underneath take the third clip apart note by note.

- **The substituted chord shares the pair of notes that pulls** — [G7](https://musictheory.center/chord/g-7) is G, B, D and F. [D♭7](https://musictheory.center/chord/dflat-7) is D♭, F, A♭ and C♭ — and C♭ is the same key as B. Both chords therefore contain that B and that F, sounded at exactly the same two pitches in both clips, B3 and F4. What changes is the bass: instead of falling a fifth from G to C it falls a half step from D♭ to C.
- **A four-note hand leaves notes out, and the fifth goes first** — [Dm9](https://musictheory.center/chord/d-m9) in the third clip is voiced D3, C4, E4 and F4 — root, seventh, ninth and third, with the fifth dropped. [Cmaj9](https://musictheory.center/chord/c-maj9) is voiced the same way. The fifth is the note a chord can least afford to be identified by, so it is the note a jazz voicing sheds first.

| Device | What it is | Example in C major |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Extensions | Thirds stacked past the seventh: the ninth, the eleventh and the thirteenth, which are the second, fourth and sixth degrees an octave up | [C9](https://musictheory.center/chord/c-9), [Cmaj9](https://musictheory.center/chord/c-maj9), [Dm11](https://musictheory.center/chord/d-m11), [G13](https://musictheory.center/chord/g-13) |
| Alterations | The ninth or the fifth of a dominant chord raised or lowered a half step, which sharpens the pull of the chord it lands on | [G7b9](https://musictheory.center/chord/g-7b9), [G7#9](https://musictheory.center/chord/g-7sharp9), [G7#11](https://musictheory.center/chord/g-7sharp11), [G7b13](https://musictheory.center/chord/g-7b13) |
| Tritone substitution | A dominant chord replaced by the dominant chord whose root is a tritone away, which contains the same third and seventh as the chord it replaces | [D♭7](https://musictheory.center/chord/dflat-7) in place of [G7](https://musictheory.center/chord/g-7), both of them landing on [C](https://musictheory.center/chord/c-maj) |
| The ii–V–I | The minor chord on the second degree, the dominant on the fifth, the home chord: the unit most standards are assembled from, in every key they pass through | ii7 · V7 · Imaj7 |
| Turnaround | Two bars at the end of a chorus that use up the time and hand the tune back to its own first chord | I · vi · ii · V |
| Rhythm changes | The chord scheme of Gershwin’s "I Got Rhythm", reused for hundreds of other tunes; its bridge is four dominant chords falling by fifths, III7–VI7–II7–V7 | The bridge, in C: [E7](https://musictheory.center/chord/e-7), [A7](https://musictheory.center/chord/a-7), [D7](https://musictheory.center/chord/d-7), [G7](https://musictheory.center/chord/g-7) — though the tune itself is usually played in B♭ |

**jazz harmony**

**Definition.** Jazz harmony is the harmonic practice of jazz: chords built past the seventh into [ninths, elevenths and thirteenths](https://musictheory.center/course/chords#extensions-a-first-look), dominant chords whose ninths and fifths are raised or lowered to sharpen their pull, and progressions assembled almost everywhere out of the two-chord approach that ends a phrase.

Everything in it is an intensification of something the harmony chapters already built. Chapter 10 [stacked thirds](https://musictheory.center/course/chords#stacking-thirds) and stopped at the seventh; jazz keeps stacking, and the ninth, eleventh and thirteenth are simply the next three. Chapter 14 reached outside the key for a dominant aimed at a chord other than home; jazz does that between almost every pair of chords in a tune. **What is genuinely new is density and rate.** A standard changes chord twice a bar for thirty-two bars, and every one of those chords carries four to six notes.

The unit the whole practice is built on is the pair in the fourth row of the table: a minor seventh chord on the second degree, then the dominant seventh on the fifth, then home. Learn to hear those two chords and you can hear where a tune is going, because a standard that visits four keys in thirty-two bars announces every one of them the same way. Bebop players wrote new tunes over the chords of old ones and inserted extra pairs wherever a bar could be spared, which is why the repertoire sounds like one long chain of them.

The substitution in the third row is the neatest trick in the book and it takes one sentence to explain. A dominant seventh chord pulls because of two notes a tritone apart — its third and its seventh — and a tritone divides the octave in half, so that same pair of notes is the third and seventh of a second dominant chord, the one a tritone away. Play that second chord instead and the pull survives intact while the bass slides down a half step into the arrival instead of leaping down a fifth.

**Good to know**

- (Fact) A tritone is six half steps, and six is half of twelve, so a tritone measured upward and the same tritone measured downward land on the same two pitch classes. B up to F is a tritone and F up to B is a tritone. That is why one pair of notes belongs to two dominant seventh chords — the ones on G and on D♭ — and why either chord can stand where the other is expected without the pull changing at all.
- (Convention) Alterations are printed as a suffix after the seventh, with the altered degree and its [accidental](https://musictheory.center/course/notation#accidentals) in brackets or not depending on the publisher: G7♭9, G7♯9, G7♯11, G7♭13, and G7alt for a dominant with several of them at once and the player left to choose. The order the alterations are listed in is house style rather than rule, and two fake books will print the same chord two ways.
- (Tendency — the jazz standard repertoire — the American songbook tunes of roughly 1920 to 1960 and the bebop tunes written over their chord schemes. Modal jazz from 1959 onward deliberately does without the pair, holding one chord for sixteen bars instead, and a great deal of jazz since has followed it) Any chord in a tune can be preceded by the minor seventh chord a fifth above the chord that leads to it, turning one arrival into a two-bar approach. Read a lead sheet looking for those pairs and most of a standard resolves into four or five of them strung end to end, each announcing a different key.

**You already know this**

- Secondary dominants from Chapter 14 — a dominant seventh chord built on the fifth degree of some chord other than the home chord, which makes that other chord sound briefly like home — of which the substitution in this section is a re-spelling — https://musictheory.center/course/advanced-harmony#secondary-dominants
- The chord progression from Chapter 11 on the second, fifth and first degrees, built there from plain triads, which is the same three chords this section adds a seventh and then a ninth to — https://musictheory.center/course/diatonic-harmony#common-progressions

**Where this goes**

- A thirteenth chord has six notes and a horn section has five players, so deciding which notes of it are actually sounded — and by whom — is an arranging decision before it is a harmonic one — https://musictheory.center/course/orchestration

**In real music**

- Bart Howard — “Fly Me to the Moon” — the first four bars fall by fifths — A minor seventh, D minor seventh, G seventh, C major seventh — and the last three of those are the two-chord approach and its arrival. Listen to the bass on the first four chord changes and you will hear the fifths falling
- Billy Strayhorn — “Take the "A" Train” — the second half of the opening eight bars is the same two-chord approach, D minor seventh to G seventh, repeated and then landing back on C. Listen for the point where the tune stops climbing and the chords start moving twice a bar

**Try it on your instrument:** Play the [two-chord approach and its arrival](https://musictheory.center/progression/ii-v-i) in a key you know: the minor seventh chord on the second degree, the dominant seventh on the fifth, the home chord. Play it three ways. First with three notes in each chord. Then with four. Then replace the middle chord with the dominant seventh whose root is a half step above your home chord — in C that is D♭ seventh — and leave the other two as they were. Say which of the three versions moves its bass the least, and whether the ending still sounds like an ending.

[Move the ii–V–I into every key you practise in](https://musictheory.center/tools/chord-transposer?c=Dm7+G7+Cmaj7&to=F)

**Check:** Two chords, and then the clip stops. Predict the chord a jazz tune would put next.

- A C major seventh chord **(correct)** — Correct. The clip is D minor seventh — D, F, A, C — then G seventh — G, B, D, F. That G seventh holds a B pulling up a half step to C and an F pulling down a half step to E, and C major seventh is C, E, G and B, which supplies both landing notes. Those three chords in that order are the unit most of the repertoire is assembled from.
- An F major seventh chord — F major seventh is F, A, C and E. It does contain the C the leading tone wants and the E the seventh wants — but it also keeps the F that the G seventh’s own seventh was trying to leave, and puts it in the bass. A dominant chord points at the chord a fifth below its root, and a fifth below G is C, not F.
- An A minor seventh chord — A minor seventh — A, C, E, G — is what a deceptive ending gives, and it is a real move: three of its four notes are in C major seventh, so the chord half-satisfies the pull. But it is the surprise rather than the default, and the question asked what a jazz tune would normally do next.
- A D♭ seventh chord — D♭ seventh — D♭, F, A♭, C♭ — is the chord that could have stood in place of the G seventh, not the chord that follows it. Putting it after the G seventh gives two dominant chords in a row a tritone apart, which postpones the arrival rather than making one.

### Pop and Loop-Based Harmony

https://musictheory.center/course/contemporary#pop-and-loop-based-harmony

> Play the first: four chords, played twice through without a break. Play the second: the same four chords entered at a different point, again twice through. Play the third: two chords alternating. After each one, say which chord you would call home — and then imagine the clip starting again from its own first chord the instant it ends, and ask whether anything would be wrong with that.

**Plays:** Four chords, twice round (C3 C4 E4 G4 G2 B3 D4 A2 A4 F2 F4) · The same four, starting somewhere else (A2 C4 E4 A4 F2 F4 C3 G4 G2 B3 D4) · Two chords, back and forth (C3 C4 E4 G4 F2 F4 A4)

Five patterns, all of them short enough to memorise in one hearing and all of them designed to be played again immediately. Read the third column and the same phrase keeps appearing: nothing is owed at the end, so nothing has to arrive. That is the difference between these patterns and everything in Chapter 11, where a progression was a sentence with punctuation. Here a progression is a circle, and where a listener hears home is settled by the arrangement rather than by the chords. The first two rows contain the same four chords, which is what the first two clips demonstrate.

- **The first two clips contain the same four chords** — [C](https://musictheory.center/chord/c-maj), [G](https://musictheory.center/chord/g-maj), [Am](https://musictheory.center/chord/a-m) and [F](https://musictheory.center/chord/f-maj) in one order; [Am](https://musictheory.center/chord/a-m), [F](https://musictheory.center/chord/f-maj), [C](https://musictheory.center/chord/c-maj) and [G](https://musictheory.center/chord/g-maj) in the other. Not one note differs between them. What changes is which chord the ear takes as home, and that is decided by which chord comes first — which, in a pattern that repeats forever, is a decision somebody made rather than a property of the chords.
- **The one move the pattern never makes is the strongest one** — In [C](https://musictheory.center/chord/c-maj), [G](https://musictheory.center/chord/g-maj), [Am](https://musictheory.center/chord/a-m), [F](https://musictheory.center/chord/f-maj) the chord on the fifth degree is always followed by [Am](https://musictheory.center/chord/a-m), never by [C](https://musictheory.center/chord/c-maj). The chord that hands back to the opening is [F](https://musictheory.center/chord/f-maj). So the pull that Chapter 11 called the strongest in the key — fifth degree to first — is the single move these four bars are arranged to avoid.

| Chords in C major | Numerals | What it does | Where you meet it |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| C · G · Am · F | I V vi IV | Opens bright and never closes; its last chord hands straight back to its first | "Let It Be", The Beatles, and "Don’t Stop Believin’", Journey, both open on it |
| Am · F · C · G | vi IV I V | Reads as sad although not one note has changed; the same four chords entered two places later | Ballads and singer-songwriter verses, in numbers too large to count |
| C · Am · F · G | I vi IV V | The older turn, and the one that does end on the chord that pulls home | American popular song of the 1950s and early 1960s |
| C · F | I IV | A two-chord vamp. Nothing is owed and nothing arrives, so every other element of the track has to carry the interest | Gospel vamps, funk, and a great deal of dance production |
| Am · G · F · G | i ♭VII ♭VI ♭VII, in A minor | Descends and comes back; sounds modal rather than cadential because there is no leading tone anywhere in it | Rock and film music from the 1960s onward |

**loop-based harmony**

**Definition.** Loop-based harmony is harmony built from a short chord pattern that repeats without a break: the same two, three or four chords in the same order, played round and round, with nothing inside the pattern marking an end and nothing to distinguish the last time round from the first.

Producers and songwriters rarely name the practice at all; what they name is the object. A **chord loop** is the thing itself — four bars of chords on a timeline, dragged, copied and stretched under everything else — and most writing about pop harmony is writing about chord loops rather than about the habit of building from them. Popular music has always been simpler harmonically than jazz, but the difference this section is about is not simplicity. It is punctuation. A progression in Chapter 11 was a sentence: it set out, it created an expectation, and a [cadence](https://musictheory.center/course/diatonic-harmony#cadences) at the end settled it. A loop has no cadence strong enough to close, and the four-chord pattern almost every reader has heard a thousand times is arranged so that the strongest one — the chord on the fifth degree followed by the home chord — never occurs. What the wrap does make is the other kind: the fourth-degree chord falling to the first, which Chapter 11 called a plagal cadence and described as a benediction rather than a conclusion. It settles the four bars about as firmly as an amen settles a hymn, which is to say not firmly enough to stop them going round again. **The pattern is built to have no audible seam, because a seam is where a listener would notice the repetition.**

That leaves the question of where home is, and the answer is that the chords do not decide it. The first two rows of the table are the same four chords entered at two different points, and each version has its own name in the literature because each sounds like a different progression. What settles it is where the bar line falls, which chord the singer lands on, where the bass sits and where the loop is cut on the timeline — all of them arrangement decisions, which is why the same four chords carry a triumphant chorus in one record and a lament in another.

One consequence is worth stating plainly, because it disappoints people who come to pop from the harmony chapters. There is frequently nothing to analyse. A track can run four chords for three minutes without a single event a [Roman numeral](https://musictheory.center/course/diatonic-harmony#roman-numerals) would capture, and everything that happens to it — the parts entering and leaving, the filter opening, the drums dropping out before the chorus — happens somewhere other than the harmony. Chapter 16 gave that arrangement its plan; this section only removes the expectation that the chords will supply one.

**Good to know**

- (Convention) Numerals for a repeating pattern are written from whichever chord the pattern is taken to begin on, so one set of chords has several names: [I–V–vi–IV](https://musictheory.center/progression/i-v-vi-iv) and vi–IV–I–V describe the same four chords entered at two different points. Which analysis is correct is a question about where the downbeat and the vocal fall, not about the chords, and a published analysis should say which it assumed.
- (Fact) Four chords of one bar each in four-four at 120 beats per minute take eight seconds. A three-minute track is therefore about twenty-two passes of that pattern, and a listener hears the same four chords twenty-two times whether or not they ever notice it once.
- (Tendency — Anglo-American popular music since roughly 1990 and the dance and hip-hop production that shares its methods, where the repeating pattern has largely displaced the cadential progression. Popular song before about 1965 cadences at the end of nearly every phrase, and so does the entire jazz repertoire of the previous section) Where the music comes to rest in a repeating pattern is decided by the arrangement rather than by harmonic pull, because the pattern contains no closing cadence to settle the question. Move the bar line and the same chords acquire a different home; move the vocal and they acquire another.

**You already know this**

- Cadences from Chapter 11 — the chord pairs that end a phrase, the strongest of which is the fifth degree falling to the first — which is the one move the patterns in this section are built to do without — https://musictheory.center/course/diatonic-harmony#cadences
- Verse–chorus form from Chapter 16, and the point made there about these very four chords — that which of them a stretch starts on does more to how it feels than which chords it contains — which is the plan these patterns are arranged into, one or two of them per stretch — https://musictheory.center/course/form-structure#song-forms

**Where this goes**

- A pattern that never changes chord has to change in every other way instead, so what enters the texture and what leaves it is not decoration on top of the arrangement — it is the whole of it — https://musictheory.center/course/orchestration

**In real music**

- U2 — “With or Without You” — four chords run from the first bar to the last and never change. Listen for the entry of the bass and then of the drums: those entries are the only thing telling you a new section has started, because the harmony says nothing about it at all
- Journey — “Don’t Stop Believin’” — the piano figure that opens the record is four chords going round, and the same four carry the verse underneath the voice. Listen to the opening twenty seconds twice and try to say where the pattern begins — the answer is not obvious, which is the point

**Try it on your instrument:** Play a four-chord pattern you know and play it four times without stopping. Now start it on its third chord instead and play that four times. Record or remember how each version felt, and say which chord you would call home in each. Then take the version you like less and change only where you put the strongest beat — start the pattern half a bar earlier — and play it again. Nothing about the chords has changed and something about the music has.

**Check:** Four chords, twice through. These are the same four chords the section opened with, and a pattern of four can be entered at any of four points. Which chord does this clip enter them on?

- The one minor chord of the four **(correct)** — Correct. The eight bars are A minor, F, C, G, A minor, F, C, G. A minor — A, C and E — is the only one of the four chords with a minor third in it, and it is the chord the clip starts and restarts on. Entering the same four chords there rather than on C is the whole of what makes them read as sad.
- C major, the chord this key is named after — C major — C, E and G — is in the clip: it is the third bar and the seventh. But it is not where the clip enters. The opening chord has a minor third and C major has a major one, and the first chip at the top of this section is the version that does start on C.
- The chord on the fourth degree — F major — F, A and C — is the second bar and the sixth. It is the chord that arrives immediately after the one the clip enters on, and it is major, which the opening chord is not.
- The chord on the fifth degree — G major — G, B and D — is the last bar of the clip, not the first. If the clip had entered on G, the chord straight after it would have been A minor, because that is the chord that follows G in this rotation — and what actually follows the opening chord here is F.

### Theory in the DAW

https://musictheory.center/course/contemporary#theory-in-the-daw

> Play the first: four chords, each struck twice, evenly spaced. Play the second: the same four chords struck twice each again, except that the second hit of every pair arrives later than halfway through its beat. Play them one after the other and say which one you would tap your foot to differently. Then play the third and the fourth, where the four chords are identical and only the lowest note changes.

**Plays:** Eight even hits (C3 C4 E4 G4 G2 B3 D4 A2 A4 F2 F4) · Twelve slots, a strike on two of every three (C3 C4 E4 G4 G2 B3 D4 A2 A4 F2 F4) · A different bass note under each chord (C3 C4 E4 G4 G2 B3 D4 A2 A4 F2 F4) · One bass note under all four (C2 C4 E4 G4 B3 D4 A4 F4)

The grid below is the first clip drawn out: four beats, each divided in two, at eighty beats a minute. Click a cell to accent it and press play, and you have the whole of what a DAW does to time. The table underneath is the translation key for the rest — every column on the left is something a reader has already met in this course under a different name, and the right-hand column says where. None of it is new theory. It is the same theory with the labels changed, which is why a producer who has never read a bar of notation can be fluent in all of it and still be unable to say what any of it is called.

- **The two rhythm clips last the same time and divide it differently** — The first divides each beat into two and strikes both halves, so the two hits are the same length. The second divides the same beat into three and strikes the first third and the last, the first hit ringing on through the middle third rather than stopping for it — so the first hit of each pair is twice as long as the second. Four beats at eighty a minute is three seconds either way; what moves is where the second hit of each pair lands, and how long the first one lasts.
- **A bass that refuses to follow is one chord’s worth of effect** — The fourth clip plays [C](https://musictheory.center/chord/c-maj), [G](https://musictheory.center/chord/g-maj), [Am](https://musictheory.center/chord/a-m) and [F](https://musictheory.center/chord/f-maj) over C2 throughout. Three of those four chords contain a C already, so only the [G](https://musictheory.center/chord/g-maj) is left sitting on a note that does not belong to it — and that single bar is the entire difference between the third clip and the fourth.

| In a DAW | What it is, in theory | Taught in |
| --- | --- | --- |
| The rows of the piano roll | The twelve notes of the chromatic scale, one row each, repeating at every octave | Chapter 2 |
| The vertical grid lines | Metre and subdivision: heavy lines are bars, lighter ones beats, lightest the divisions of a beat | Chapters 3 and 15 |
| Note length, drawn as width | Note values — whole, half, quarter, eighth — expressed as duration on a ruler instead of as a printed symbol | Chapter 3 |
| Scale lock, or scale highlighting | A key: the seven notes the music is measured against, with the other five greyed out or made undrawable | Chapter 8 |
| Transpose | Moving every note by the same interval, which is what changing key does to a melody | Chapter 8 |
| The chord track | A progression written out in advance, which the other tracks are then told to follow | Chapter 11 |
| Quantise, and the swing or shuffle amount | Rounding every note to the nearest grid line, and then moving the off-beat divisions later by a stated fraction | Chapter 15 |
| The velocity lane | Accent: how hard each note is struck, which is what makes one beat of a bar sound stronger than another | Chapter 15 |

**DAW**

**Definition.** A DAW — a digital audio workstation — is the program a piece of music is assembled in: a timeline of parallel tracks into which audio recordings and note events are drawn, edited, arranged, processed and mixed, with the whole arrangement editable after the fact.

The DAW grew out of the **sequencer**, which is not another name for it: the hardware boxes of the 1980s and the software descended from them recorded and replayed note events and never touched audio at all, and the note editor at the centre of a modern DAW is what is left of one. Most of this course is already inside that editor, under other names. The **piano roll** is the clearest case: a grid with pitch running up the left-hand edge, one row per key, and time running along the bottom. Every row is a half step, so the rows are the [twelve notes](https://musictheory.center/course/pitch-and-notes#the-twelve-notes) of Chapter 2 and nothing else; a note is a rectangle whose vertical position is its pitch and whose width is its length. That is a staff with the scale steps replaced by half steps and the [note values](https://musictheory.center/course/rhythm#note-values) replaced by lengths — which is why an accidental is a decision on a staff and merely a different row in a DAW, and why nothing in a piano roll can tell you whether a black key is a G♯ or an A♭.

The grid behind the notes is metre. Quantising snaps every note to the nearest grid line, and a swing or shuffle setting then moves the off-beat divisions later by a percentage — 50% leaves them exactly halfway, and settings between 55% and 66% approach the long-short division that Chapter 15 called [swing](https://musictheory.center/course/meter-and-groove#swing-and-shuffle), with 66% landing on the triplet. The second clip above is that triplet division exactly: each beat divided into three, struck on the first third and the last, with the first hit holding through the middle one. Nothing about it is a production technique. It is a rhythmic convention several centuries old, exposed as a slider.

The gap between the two vocabularies is worth naming, because it is where most confusion about whether producers "need theory" comes from. A DAW knows pitch and time and knows nothing else: it has no idea what key a piece is in unless told, cannot tell a chord from four simultaneous notes, and will let a writer draw anything at all. The theory in this course is not a constraint the software imposes. It is the set of names for what is already on the screen, and the value of having them is that a name is something you can reason about and a shape you happened to draw is not.

**Good to know**

- (Convention) The piano roll puts pitch on the vertical axis with low notes at the bottom, time on the horizontal, and a keyboard down the left edge to label the rows. Nothing about music requires that layout — a staff also puts pitch on the vertical axis but measures it in scale steps rather than half steps — and the difference between the two is exactly why a DAW has no concept of an [enharmonic spelling](https://musictheory.center/course/pitch-and-notes#sharps-flats-and-enharmonics).
- (Constraint — note editing against a fixed grid, which is how every mainstream DAW behaves by default. Recorded audio, tempo-mapped performances and the groove-template and humanise features the same programs ship are the ways out of it) A grid is a set of equally spaced instants, and quantising moves every note to the nearest of them. Any rhythm that is not a division of the bar the grid is currently set to therefore has to be drawn by hand off the grid, or the grid has to be changed first — which is why a triplet against a grid of sixteenths is a chore in every DAW ever shipped.
- (Tendency — mainstream DAWs as shipped and the loop-based production they were designed around. Notation-first programs and the film and library work done in them set tempo maps and metre changes as a matter of routine) A DAW’s defaults push a writer toward four-four, toward one tempo for the whole piece, and toward lengths that are powers of two, because that is what the grid, the loop markers and the arrangement snapping are set to out of the box. A writer who never changes them will produce music with those properties without ever deciding to.

**You already know this**

- The chromatic scale from Chapter 2 — the twelve notes between one note and the note of the same name above it, each a half step from its neighbours — which are the rows of a piano roll, one to each — https://musictheory.center/course/pitch-and-notes#the-twelve-notes
- Swing from Chapter 15 — the long-short division of the beat, written as two equal notes and played as the first and third of a triplet — which is what a swing or shuffle percentage sets — https://musictheory.center/course/meter-and-groove#swing-and-shuffle
- Accent from Chapter 15 — the beats of a bar heard as stronger than the ones around them, which is what makes a count into a metre — which a DAW sets note by note in its velocity lane — https://musictheory.center/course/meter-and-groove#accent-and-feel
- Note values from Chapter 3 — whole, half, quarter and eighth notes, each half the length of the one before — which in a piano roll are widths rather than printed symbols, so a bar of four quarter notes is four boxes of equal size — https://musictheory.center/course/rhythm#note-values

**Where this goes**

- Choosing which sound plays which line is arranging, and in a DAW it is a drag rather than a rewrite — which is why the questions the next chapter asks about register, texture and doubling arrive far earlier here than they ever did on paper — https://musictheory.center/course/orchestration

**Try it on your instrument:** Open your DAW and build a four-bar chord pattern: four chords, one to a bar, drawn in as note events rather than played in. Play it back. Now find the swing or shuffle control and set it to something between 55% and 66%, and play it again — then set it back to 50% and play it a third time so you hear what you changed. Finally, write a bass part that plays the root of each chord, duplicate the part, and edit the copy so that every note of it is the root of the first chord. Say which of the two bass parts makes the second bar sound like a departure, and why.

**Check:** A piano roll can be locked to a key, so that the rows the key does not use disappear. In one locked to C major, climbing from E up to G, exactly one row between them is missing. Which note is on it?

- F♯ **(correct)** — Correct. The clip plays E, F, F♯ and G — every half step from E up to G. C major uses E, F and G and does not use F♯, so the F♯ row is the one that disappears and E, F and G end up adjacent.
- F — F is the fourth degree of C major and stays exactly where it is. The clip plays it as its second note, a half step above the E, and a locked piano roll keeps every row the key actually uses.
- E♭ — E♭ is not between E and G at all — it is a half step below the E the clip starts on, and the question asked about the rows above it. E♭ is also absent from C major, but it is not the row this climb passes.
- None; E and G are already next to each other — There are three half steps from E up to G — E to F, F to F♯, F♯ to G — but C major gets from E to G in two steps, a half step to F and a whole step to G. The clip sounds all three half steps, and the F♯ is the one the key leaves out.

### Beyond the Western Tradition

https://musictheory.center/course/contemporary#beyond-the-western-tradition

> Play the first: eight notes, one after another, and nothing else. Play the second: the same eight notes with something sounding underneath each of them. Play them back to back and ask what the second one has added, and what it has decided on your behalf. Then play the third, which is twelve bars on three chords, and notice what kind of chord all three of them are — including the one the twelve bars begin and end on.

**Plays:** Eight notes on their own (C4 E4 G4 A4 D4) · The same eight notes with more underneath (C3 E3 G3 A2 F2 G2 B2 D3 C4 E4 G4 A4 D4) · Twelve bars on three chords (C3 Bb3 E4 G4 F2 Eb3 A3 C4 G2 F3 B3 D4)

Five traditions, and one column saying what this course’s harmony chapters have no way to write down about each. The column is not a criticism of those chapters and not a compliment to the traditions. It is a statement of scope: a system of description built for one repertoire will describe that repertoire well and will silently drop whatever it has no symbols for. Read the middle column first and notice how few of the five organise themselves with chord progressions at all. The table is a map of the edge of the course, and every row of it is a subject somebody spends a lifetime on.

- **The tune in the first clip belongs to no one tradition** — Its eight notes use five pitches — C, D, E, G and A — and a five-note scale of that shape turns up in Chinese, Scottish, Japanese, West African and Andean music among many others. Five notes spaced this way is close to the simplest thing a singing culture can arrive at, which is why hearing it in two places is no evidence of contact between them.
- **All three chords of the twelve-bar clip are the same kind of chord** — It plays [C7](https://musictheory.center/chord/c-7) for four bars, [F7](https://musictheory.center/chord/f-7) for two, [C7](https://musictheory.center/chord/c-7) for two, then [G7](https://musictheory.center/chord/g-7), [F7](https://musictheory.center/chord/f-7) and [C7](https://musictheory.center/chord/c-7) twice. Every one is a dominant seventh — a major triad with a minor seventh on top — including the chord the twelve bars begin and end on, which in Chapter 11 is a chord that exists only to pull somewhere else.

| Tradition | What it organises music with | What Chapters 10 to 14 cannot write down |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Hindustani and Carnatic classical music | Raga: a melodic framework with its own ascending and descending shapes, obligatory phrases, ornaments belonging to particular notes, and, in the Hindustani tradition, an associated time of day, sung or played over a drone | The ornament is part of the note rather than decoration added to it, and the intonation of particular degrees is not the keyboard’s and shifts from raga to raga. There is no chord progression here to analyse at all |
| Arabic, Turkish and Persian art music | Maqam — and, in Persian classical music, the dastgāh system and its radif — a melodic mode assembled from tetrachords, several of which contain intervals of roughly a quarter tone, together with conventions for how a performance moves through them | A quarter tone has no letter name and no key on a piano, and the staff of Chapter 4 has no sign for it, so neither that notation nor the harmony of Chapters 10 to 14 has anywhere to put it |
| Gamelan of Java and Bali | Two tuning systems — slendro and pelog — and a cyclic structure whose divisions are marked out by gongs | Neither tuning matches equal temperament, and the tuning differs from one gamelan to the next, so two ensembles are not interchangeable. The form is a cycle marked by the gong rather than a sequence of lettered sections |
| West African drumming traditions | A repeating timeline pattern, against which several drum parts run at once in different groupings | Every part shares the timeline and the pulse, but no one part’s grouping is the one the others are counted in, which is the assumption a time signature makes |
| Blues | A practice of bending and inflecting pitch in the voice and on the instrument, with the dominant seventh chord used as a chord to rest on | Blue notes lie between the flattened and the natural third and seventh and slide between them, so no printed note catches one. And a dominant seventh chord used as home is a chord that, in Chapter 11, exists in order to go somewhere |

**Western tonal tradition**

**Definition.** The Western tonal tradition is the body of music this course’s harmony chapters describe: music built from twelve equally spaced pitches, organised around a [key](https://musictheory.center/course/keys-and-key-signatures#what-a-key-is), harmonised in chords stacked in thirds, notated on a staff, and shaped by [cadences](https://musictheory.center/course/diatonic-harmony#cadences) that settle what earlier chords left owed.

That is a description of one tradition and not of music. Everything Chapters 10 to 14 say about chords, keys, functions and cadences is stated inside it, and none of it is a law that other music breaks. The table above names five traditions, each of which organises music with something the course has no symbol for: pitches between the keys of a piano, tunings that differ from one ensemble to the next, several simultaneous groupings of time with no shared bar line, a framework that carries obligatory phrases and ornaments rather than just a set of notes. **None of these is a simpler system or a less developed one.** Several are older than tonal harmony and at least as intricate, and all of them are studied for a lifetime by the people who play them. A tuning that makes a different compromise from equal temperament is not out of tune; it is tuned to something else.

The blues row is the useful one to sit with, because it is not distant at all. The blues is the parent of almost everything in this chapter’s first four sections, and it does two things the harmony chapters cannot describe. Its sung thirds and sevenths sit between the flattened and the natural note and slide, so the printed page rounds them to the nearest key and loses the whole expressive point. And its home chord is a dominant seventh, which Chapter 11 defines as a chord whose job is to pull elsewhere. A theory that declares the blues wrong has told you something about the theory.

None of that makes the course’s vocabulary useless outside its home — it makes it a vocabulary rather than a physics. The honest way in to a tradition you do not know is to ask what it organises music with before reaching for chords and keys, to name what your own description is dropping, and to learn the tradition’s own words for its own things. That question — what does this music organise itself with? — is where a guide to any particular genre has to begin, and so does the last chapter of this course.

**Good to know**

- (Fact) Equal temperament divides the octave into twelve equal steps, each a frequency ratio of the twelfth root of two, about 1.0595. No interval in it except the octave is a whole-number ratio, so every fifth and every third is slightly out of tune against the simple ratios the ear recognises. The tuning is a compromise adopted for a stated purpose — playing in every key on one fixed-pitch instrument.
- (Convention) The word "[scale](https://musictheory.center/course/scales#what-a-scale-is)" as this course uses it means an ordered set of pitches and nothing more. A raga and a maqam each carry a set of pitches, but also different ascending and descending forms, obligatory phrases, ornaments belonging to particular degrees, and rules about how a performance unfolds. Calling either of them a scale keeps the pitches and discards most of what the musician is actually working with, which is why the traditions themselves use neither word.
- (Constraint — the harmony chapters of this course, which teach common-practice Western tonality and the popular music descended from it. Nothing in them is evidence about music made under any other system, and nothing here licenses ranking one system against another) Everything the harmony chapters call correct or incorrect is correct or incorrect inside one tradition, in the way a spelling is: by the conventions of one language, which other languages do not share and are not violating. A progression that "breaks the rules" of Chapter 11 has broken a habit of nineteenth-century European practice, which is a fact about that practice and not about the music.

**You already know this**

- The pentatonic scale from Chapter 7 — five notes with the two half steps of a major scale removed, so that nothing in it can clash — which is the tune the first two clips are built from and the one scale shared by more of the world’s music than any other — https://musictheory.center/course/scales#pentatonic-and-blues
- Polyrhythm from Chapter 15 — two groupings of the same stretch of time sounding at once, neither of them the one the other is counted against — which is the principle several West African drumming traditions build a whole ensemble on — https://musictheory.center/course/meter-and-groove#polyrhythm

**Where this goes**

- Asking what a record organises itself with before deciding which chapter’s vocabulary to reach for is the method the last chapter turns into a procedure — and it is where a guide to any one genre has to begin too — https://musictheory.center/course/applications

**In real music**

- Traditional — “Amazing Grace” — the tune uses five notes and never the fourth or the seventh degree of its key. Sing it through once and try to find a note that is not one of the five — the melody gives you no opportunity, which is why it can be harmonised so many different ways
- Chuck Berry — “Johnny B. Goode” — count twelve bars from the start of the first verse and you land exactly on the start of the second. Listen to the chord the verse begins on and the chord it ends on: both have a flattened seventh in them, and neither is going anywhere

**Try it on your instrument:** Play a short tune on your instrument using only the first, second, third, fifth and sixth [degrees](https://musictheory.center/course/scales#scale-degrees) of a major scale — no fourth and no seventh anywhere. Play it once unaccompanied. Then play it again with a chord under every note. Say what the chords added and what they took away. Then find a recording from one of the traditions the table names, listen to two minutes of it, and write down what the music is organised by — the answer will not be a chord progression, and the exercise is to say what it is instead.

**Check:** Eight notes, played once. Decide what is sounding underneath them.

- Chords, changing under every note of the tune **(correct)** — Correct. The eight notes are C, E, G, A, G, E, D and C, and under them are C major, A minor, C major, F major, C major, A minor, G major and C major — three notes under each, and a different chord under every note: the harmony changes at all seven joins, out of four distinct chords. The tune on top could belong to a dozen traditions. The chords underneath belong to one.
- One single note, sounding under all eight — A single sustained note underneath is how a great deal of Indian classical music is accompanied, and it would leave the tune’s own shape untouched. Here what is underneath changes: from the third note to the fourth it goes from C major to F major, which moves two of the three notes below the tune.
- A bass line moving one note at a time — A bass line would be one note at a time. Under each of these eight notes there are three — a complete triad — and the lowest of those three moves C, A, C, F across the first four notes, which is a change of chord rather than a moving line.
- Nothing; the eight notes were alone — Something is there. Play the first chip at the top of this section, which is these same eight notes with nothing under them, and then this one: the notes on top are identical and everything else is the difference.

### Key Takeaways

https://musictheory.center/course/contemporary#key-takeaways

- Chord-scale theory pairs each chord with a scale that contains its notes, so an improviser has seven pitches to draw on instead of four.
- Taking the chord and the scale from the same degree of a major scale produces the seven standard pairings: Dorian over the second-degree chord, Mixolydian over the fifth, Lydian over the fourth.
- A scale note outside the chord and a half step above one of its notes will beat against it, which is what jazz teaching means by an avoid note.
- Jazz harmony extends chords past the seventh, alters the ninths and fifths of dominants, and assembles most of a tune from chains of the two-chord approach on the second and fifth degrees.
- A tritone substitution works because a tritone divides the octave in half, so one pair of notes is the third and seventh of two different dominant chords.
- Loop-based harmony repeats a short chord pattern with no closing cadence in it, so nothing settles for good and the pattern can run for the length of a track.
- The same four chords entered at different points are analysed as different progressions, and which one is right depends on the arrangement rather than on the chords.
- A DAW contains most of this course under other names: piano-roll rows are the twelve notes, the grid is metre, scale lock is a key, quantise and swing are rhythmic conventions, and velocity is accent.
- A DAW knows pitch and time and nothing else, so theory is a set of names for what is already on the screen rather than a constraint the software imposes.
- The harmony chapters of this course describe one tradition, and traditions organised by raga, maqam, gamelan tunings, timeline patterns or blues intonation use things that vocabulary has no symbols for.
- A tradition is best approached by asking what it organises music with before reaching for chords and keys, and by naming what your own description is dropping.

### Questions

**What is chord-scale theory?**

Chord-scale theory pairs every chord in a progression with a [scale containing that chord’s notes](https://musictheory.center/tools/scale-finder), so an improviser has seven pitches and a reason for each rather than four chord tones. A minor seventh chord takes [Dorian](https://musictheory.center/course/modes#the-seven-modes), a dominant seventh takes Mixolydian, and a major seventh takes Ionian or Lydian.

**What makes jazz harmony different from classical harmony?**

Density and rate rather than kind. Jazz stacks thirds past the seventh into [ninths, elevenths and thirteenths](https://musictheory.center/course/chords#extensions-a-first-look), raises or lowers the ninths and fifths of dominant chords, and changes chord twice a bar, assembling most of a tune from chains of the two-chord approach on the second and fifth degrees.

**What is a tritone substitution?**

A dominant seventh chord replaced by the dominant seventh a tritone away. G7 and D♭7 share the same two notes, B and F, as their third and seventh, so either chord pulls onto C. Substituting lets the bass fall a [half step](https://musictheory.center/course/intervals#half-steps-and-whole-steps) into the arrival instead of leaping down a fifth.

**Why do so many pop songs use the same four chords?**

Because the pattern is built to have no audible seam. C, G, A minor and F never put the fifth degree next to the home chord, so nothing ever closes and the four bars can repeat forever. Where home is gets decided by the arrangement — the bar line, the bass, the vocal — instead.

**Do you need music theory to make music in a DAW?**

No, but a DAW is already full of it under other names. Piano-roll rows are the [twelve notes](https://musictheory.center/course/pitch-and-notes#the-twelve-notes), the grid is metre, scale lock is a [key](https://musictheory.center/course/keys-and-key-signatures#what-a-key-is), quantise and swing are rhythmic conventions, and velocity is accent. Theory gives you names for what is on the screen, and names can be reasoned about.

**Does music theory apply to music outside the Western tradition?**

This course’s harmony chapters describe one tradition: twelve equal pitches, [keys](https://musictheory.center/course/keys-and-key-signatures#what-a-key-is), chords stacked in thirds, [cadences](https://musictheory.center/course/diatonic-harmony#cadences). Raga, maqam, gamelan tunings, West African polyrhythm and blues intonation all use things it has no symbols for. The vocabulary is a language, not a physics, and other music is not breaking its rules.

### Other languages

- https://musictheory.center/course/contemporary/llms.txt
- https://musictheory.center/fr/cours/contemporain/llms.txt
- https://musictheory.center/es/curso/contemporaneo/llms.txt