Welcome

You can already play the keyboard, and you know your notes and chords by shape and by ear. This tutor fills in the part that usually gets skipped: why those notes and chords work the way they do.

Everything here is hands-on. Every keyboard diagram is clickable and will actually play the note through your speakers, so play along on your own keyboard as you go.

Every lesson ends with a Quick Check question you can retake as many times as you like — the numbers and choices are freshly generated each time. Each chapter also ends with a short Chapter Test pulling one question from every lesson in that chapter, also regenerated on every attempt.

Work through them in order the first time — each lesson assumes the one before it. Click a note or chip below to hear it, and click "1 · Half & Whole Steps" in the sidebar to begin.

1 · Half Steps & Whole Steps

Music theory measures distance between notes in steps, not letters. On a keyboard this is easy to see because every key — white or black — is the same distance from its neighbor.

• Half step (semitone): the distance from any key to the very next key, white or black, with nothing in between. C to C#, or E to F.
• Whole step (tone): two half steps. C to D, or E to F#.

Note the two spots on the keyboard where there's no black key between two white keys: B–C and E–F. Those are already a half step apart, naturally.

2 · Intervals

An interval is just the distance between two notes, given a name. The name has two parts: a number (how many letter-names the notes span, counting both ends) and a quality (major, minor, perfect, etc.), which tells you exactly how many half steps that is.

The Major 3rd and minor 3rd are the two you'll use constantly — they're what separates a major chord from a minor chord (Lesson 6).

3 · The Major Scale

Every major scale — no matter what note it starts on — is built from the exact same recipe of whole (W) and half (H) steps:

W – W – H – W – W – W – H

Start on any note, apply that pattern, and you get a major scale. That's the entire rule. Sharps and flats appear automatically wherever the pattern needs a half step but the "natural" white keys don't provide one.

4 · Key Signatures & the Circle of Fifths

Instead of writing sharps or flats in front of individual notes every time, a piece of music declares them once at the start as a key signature. The Circle of Fifths is a map of every major key, arranged so that each key clockwise adds one sharp, and each key counter-clockwise adds one flat.

• Order sharps appear in: F# C# G# D# A# E# B# ("Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle")
• Order flats appear in: Bb Eb Ab Db Gb Cb Fb — the exact reverse.

5 · Minor Scales

Every major key has a relative minor: a minor scale made of the exact same notes, just starting on the 6th degree of the major scale instead of the 1st. C major and A minor share every note — they're relatives.

6 · Building Triads

A triad is the simplest chord: three notes stacked in thirds — a root, a note a third above it, and another note a third above that. The size of those two thirds (major = 4 half steps, minor = 3 half steps) determines the chord's quality:

7 · Diatonic Chords

If you build a triad on every note of a major scale — using only notes that already belong to that scale — you get seven chords that all "belong" to the key. This is called harmonizing the scale, and it's why certain chords always show up together in songs written in the same key.

Each chord gets a Roman numeral for its scale degree. Upper-case = major, lower-case = minor, lower-case with a ° = diminished:

I   ii   iii   IV   V   vi   vii°

8 · Chord Progressions

A progression is just a sequence of diatonic chords (Lesson 7) played in order. Because they're all Roman numerals, the same progression works in every key — I–V–vi–IV sounds like "that pop song" whether you play it in C or in A.

9 · Voice Leading Basics

Once you know a progression, how you actually place the notes on the keyboard matters. Voice leading is the simple idea of moving each note in a chord to the nearest note of the next chord, rather than jumping to a fresh root-position chord every time. Smooth voice leading sounds connected; jumping around sounds disjointed, even though the chords are identical.

Below is the same progression — I – IV – V – I in C major — played two ways.

✓ Chapter 1 Test

Nine questions, one pulled from each lesson in this chapter. Numbers, keys and answer choices are freshly generated every time you take it, so feel free to retake it as many times as you like.

10 · Seventh Chords

A 7th chord is a triad (Lesson 6) with one more third stacked on top — four notes instead of three. That fourth note adds color and, in many cases, a sense of pull or tension that a plain triad doesn't have.

11 · Chord Inversions

So far every chord has been in root position — root on the bottom, then 3rd, then 5th (then 7th). But you can put any chord tone in the bass instead, which is called an inversion. The notes are identical; only the order (and the bass note) changes.

• Root position: root in the bass.
• 1st inversion: the 3rd in the bass.
• 2nd inversion: the 5th in the bass.
• 3rd inversion (7th chords only): the 7th in the bass.

Sheet music and lead sheets often write inversions as slash chords — a chord name, a slash, then the bass note. "C/E" means a C major chord with E (its 3rd) in the bass.

12 · Modes

A mode uses the exact same notes as a major scale, just starting (and centering) on a different degree. Same white keys as C major, but start on D instead of C, and you get a completely different pattern of whole and half steps — and a different mood.

13 · Secondary Dominants & Borrowed Chords

Two easy ways to add color outside a key's own seven diatonic chords (Lesson 7):

• Secondary dominant: temporarily "borrow" the V chord of a different scale degree to pull strongly toward it. "V/V" means the V chord of your V chord; "V/ii" means the V chord of your ii chord.
• Borrowed chord (modal mixture): borrow a chord from the parallel minor key for extra color — the minor iv and the major ♭VII are two of the most common.

✓ Chapter 2 Test

Four questions covering 7th chords, inversions, modes, and secondary/borrowed chords — freshly generated every attempt.

14 · Harmony in House Music

House music runs on the same theory as everything above — it's just applied differently. Instead of a long, evolving chord chart, house tracks usually loop a short 2–4 chord progression for most of the song, letting the groove, bassline, and production carry the energy.

• Standard, energetic house tends to sit in major keys; deep house leans toward minor keys and the Dorian mode (Lesson 12) for a moodier feel.
• Common loops: I–V–vi–IV (bright/pop-influenced), I–IV–V (simple and classic), ii–V–I with 7th chords (jazzy, deep-house flavored), I–VI–IV–V (progressive-house build), or even just a two-chord vamp or a single repeated chord.
• House is a sample- and groove-driven genre — producers often build around a vocal line or sample rather than sticking rigidly to one key.

15 · Basslines & Groove

A house bassline is usually built straight from the chord tones of whatever's looping above it — mostly the root, often bouncing to the octave — and it's rhythmically locked to the four-on-the-floor kick (a kick drum hit on every beat, the backbone of house at roughly 110–130 BPM).

Below is the loop from Lesson 14 with a simple root/octave bassline pulse added underneath — the kind of pattern you'd program under a chord loop in a DAW.

16 · Arrangement Basics

Because house is loop-based rather than built from distinct verses and choruses, its arrangement is really about tension and release across sections — often kept stripped at the start and end so DJs can mix in and out cleanly.

✓ Chapter 3 Test

Four questions covering house harmony, progressions, basslines, and arrangement — freshly generated every attempt.