The Music Stem / Courses
Courses
Music Courses
Every course on The Music Stem, with its lessons and a listening example. Each one opens in the app.
Learn to listen
Every musician begins with the ear. These lessons train your attention and memory, and give you the words to describe pulse, contour, timbre, texture and form.
- Sound and Listening. Hear and describe pulse, melodic contour, timbre, texture and form in any music you meet.
- Pitch and the Staff. Read any note in treble, bass, alto and tenor clef, with its octave, its accidental and its keyboard key.
- Keys and Scales. Build major and minor scales, read any key signature and identify each degree of a scale.
- Intervals and Chords. Identify any interval by size and quality, and spell and hear triads, inversions and seventh chords.
- Harmony and Cadence. Label chords with Roman numerals, name cadences, harmonize a simple melody and transpose it to a new key.
Choose a tradition
The Music Stem teaches three great traditions side by side. Choose the one that calls you first. You can study the others at any time, and each one sheds light on the rest.
- Western Music lessons. Pulse, meter, melody, harmony, form, and production.
- Hindustani Music lessons. Sa and swara, drone, raga, tala, characteristic phrases, and improvisation.
- Jazz lessons. Time and swing, blues and song forms, harmony, improvisation, and ensemble playing.
- Western Rhythm and Meter. Pulse, notation and composition
- Hindustani Swara and Tala. Relative pitch and cyclical time
- Swing Time and the Blues. Collective time, blues and improvisation
Learn your instrument
Put what you hear into your hands or your voice. Each path starts from the first note and ends with a short performance of your own.
- Piano and keyboard. Find your way around the keyboard, read simple lines and play a short piece with both hands.
- Guitar. Strum in steady time, change open chords cleanly and play an eight-bar piece.
- Bass. Hold a groove with roots, octaves and fifths, and lock in with the drums.
- Drums and percussion. Keep steady time on kick, snare and hi-hat, and play fills that land back on the beat.
- Voice. Sing in tune at a comfortable pitch, shape phrases with your breath and sing with expression.
Study harmony, form and production
Go deeper into how music is made. These courses teach harmony, form, arranging, improvisation and production. Each ends in a project of your own.
- Harmony. Hear and use predominants, applied dominants, borrowed color and reharmonization.
- Form and counterpoint. Grow a piece from a single motive into phrases, contrast and a complete form.
- Arranging. Score music for a small ensemble with clear choices of register, voicing, groove and density.
- Improvisation. Improvise over a blues with guide tones, motifs, silence and rhythmic variety.
- Production. Record, balance, shape and mix a track, and listen at safe levels.
Play together
Music is shared. These courses teach the listening that holds a group together: giving space, keeping time, passing a phrase and ending as one.