Where you are now — the end of the theory half

If you read this far while actually playing the examples, you are no longer in the state of "I can't write because I don't know the terms". Here is what you picked up.

What you now have

• Note names, scales, and where bright and dark come from (part one)
• How chords are built and which seven live inside a key (part two)
• What chords do, and why the standard progressions are standard (part three)
• How a melody should move over chords (part four)
• Odd meters, and what lies outside this theory (part five)

What comes next

• Part 6 (chapters 26–33) — the places programming actually goes wrong: counting intervals, clashing notes, sus4 and add9, voicing, velocity, diminished chords, the three minor scales, and song structure.
• Outside this series — arrangement (distributing parts across instruments) and mixing (balancing level and frequency). Both are ears and experience more than theory.
• Modes — Dorian, Lydian and the rest, for when you want colours outside major and minor.
• Rhythm in more depth — syncopation, swing, polyrhythm.
• Reading and writing notation — not required, but useful when handing music to other people.

The practice that beats theory

This has been a series about theory, but the thing that improves you fastest is the number of times you write something. Ten eight-bar fragments will teach you more than one perfectly polished song. Generate over different progressions in ChordMelo, keep the ones you like as MIDI, and the fragments accumulate.

That is the theory half. Part six moves to the stage of actually making it sound: fixing clashing notes, arranging chords across registers, setting velocity — the things you wrestle with in front of a DAW every time.