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A suggested path through the ideas behind Eardle's exercises — read at your own pace, jump to any topic any time.
Musical Alphabet & Octaves
The seven letter names music is built from, and how octave numbers work.
Note Reading & Staff Basics
A minimal reading primer — Eardle trains your ear, but this helps you follow the notation used in explanations.
Accidentals & Enharmonic Equivalence
Sharps, flats, and why C# and Db are the exact same pitch.
Semitones and Whole Tones
The smallest unit of musical distance, and the building block for every interval, scale, and chord.
Scale Degrees & Movable-Do Hearing
Hearing notes by their function in a key, not their absolute pitch — the foundation relative pitch is built on.
Major Scale Construction
The whole-whole-half step recipe that builds a major scale starting on any note.
Key Signatures & the Circle of Fifths
How the twelve major keys relate to each other, one perfect fifth at a time.
Minor Scales: Natural, Harmonic, Melodic
Three closely related scale forms sharing one tonic, each used for a different musical purpose.
Interval Naming & Quality
How an interval's number and quality combine into its full name.
Consonance & Dissonance
Why some intervals sound stable and restful, and others sound tense and want to resolve.
Interval Ear-Recognition via Reference Songs
Using songs you already know as memorable anchors for each interval.
Compound Intervals
Intervals that stretch beyond a single octave — 9ths, 10ths, and beyond.
Triad Construction as Stacked Intervals
Every triad quality is just two stacked 3rds — major or minor, in one of two orders.
Seventh Chords
Stacking one more 3rd onto a triad for a richer, more harmonically active sound.
Sixth Chords
A close cousin of seventh chords — stacking a 6th on top of a triad instead.
Suspended & Added-Tone Chords
Chords that replace or supplement a triad's 3rd for an open, ambiguous color.
Extended Chords: 9ths, 11ths, 13ths
Stacking 3rds past the 7th for jazz harmony's rich, layered sound.
Chord Inversions
Rearranging which chord tone sits at the bottom, without changing the chord's identity.
Chord Voicings & Playback
Close vs. open spacing, and harmonic vs. arpeggiated vs. bass-note-first playback.
Functional Harmony Basics
Tonic, subdominant, and dominant — the three roles every chord in a key can play.
Cadences
The harmonic punctuation marks at the end of a phrase — authentic, plagal, half, and deceptive.
Common Progressions
The pop I-V-vi-IV loop, the 12-bar blues, and the other chord skeletons behind popular music.
Secondary Dominants
How any diatonic chord can temporarily borrow its own dominant.
Minor-Key & Modal Progressions
How the minor scale you use shapes a progression's dominant, and how borrowed chords add color.
Altered Dominants
Raising or lowering a dominant chord's upper extensions for extra pre-resolution tension.
Jazz ii-V-I and Extended Harmony
The most common chord movement in jazz, and the extensions built on top of it.
Modes of the Major Scale
The same seven notes, renumbered from a different starting degree.
Pentatonic & Blues Scales
Stripping the major scale down to five forgiving notes, then adding one 'blue' note back in.
Melodic Minor Modes
Melodic minor's own family of seven modes, central to jazz improvisation.
Whole Tone & Diminished (Symmetric) Scales
Scales that repeat one interval pattern around the octave, with no single strong tonic.