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Tuning
- Twelve fifths and seven octaves, which are not the same thing
- A second comma, arriving by a different road
- Keys that had characters, and could be measured
- Nineteen, thirty-one and fifty-three
- The wolf at the end of the chain
- Where to hide the comma, which is the only real question
- A tuner counts beats, and that is the whole method
- The pitch nobody agreed on, for four hundred years
- A memory for the note itself, and it is dated
- A guitar cannot be in tune
- A fraction of a comma
- What a temperament cannot do
- A comma under the threshold
- A comma is a polyrhythm that never closes
- A tuning is not a table of cents
- Every universe has one, or none
- A note that is never at its pitch
- A wind instrument is a thermometer
- The note that is sharp because of where it goes
- The note that moved by a minor third
- Two names for one key
- A standard is a specification
- Blowing harder is playing sharper
- The pair tuned apart on purpose
- The partial the lips cannot reach
- Every partial beats at its own rate
- The hand that changes the bore
- What the climb was a search for
- A horn has one length per partial
- The hand goes in, and the note jumps
- It was never the strings that stopped the climb
- A resonance has a strength as well as a frequency
- The higher note speaks sooner and takes longer
- A woodwind cannot be pulled to a new standard
- The instrument that cannot be moved
- A standard moves the page, and not the seam
- A standard is a point, and a performance is a band
- An orchestra is given a note
- Who listens to whom when an orchestra tunes
- The unison is the coarsest thing in the room
- A consensus with nothing to hold it
- One fluctuation or two
- How hard the note was struck
- Counted in the decay, or not at all
- The tuning a string quartet cannot change
- The cello cannot hear its own tempering
- An open string pulls the quartet flat
- A guitar tuned by harmonics hides a comma
- A string that decays twice is counted early
- One tuning has no comma to place
- The quartet settles at two pitches, not four
- A tuning is right for some chords and wrong for the rest
- Counting beats moves the price of a chord, not the tuning
- The chord a tuning gives up is a fingering
Rhythm
- Rhythm is a circle, and the bar line is a choice
- Beats of unequal length
- The milliseconds that are the groove
- The beat is inferred, and sometimes wrongly
- A rhythm fast enough to be a chord
- The beat has a preferred rate, and it is not the notation's
- As evenly as possible, which turns out to be a famous rhythm
- Two clocks at once, and where they agree
- A process that enumerates its own form
- The third pattern nobody played
- Which of the two is the beat
- The bell is not a polyrhythm
- One player is not two clocks
- The right period at the wrong phase
- Syncopation is a number about the metre
- No term for an unequal beat
- The deviations are not noise
- Swing is a ratio, and it is not two to one
- The ratio that stops being two
- The rotation the necklace cannot see
- The time signature is a claim
- The note that has a length
- How unequal a beat is allowed to be
- What the clave buys with its unevenness
- The short note is sitting on the floor
- A note is heard after it starts
- A quantity resting against a wall
- A low note cannot start on time
- The shape a wall leaves behind
- A cycle that says where it is
- The hardest place is also the latest
- Which notes have to be played early
- A family of readings
- How many bars an ensemble needs
- A note starts twice
- The passage that separates two players
- The cycle that outruns the memory
- The parent nobody measured
- The frontier and the ruler
- How long a limping bar can be
- What the tongue actually removes
- Twelve violins are more punctual than one
- Where the note is costs more than which note it is
- The longest silence is not a third axis
- A twenty-five is a nine until its last unit
- The other censuses keep evenness, not locating
- The accent buys two units, however loud it is
- Knowing every metre is slower than knowing none
- The bell pattern is slowest only to a perfect memory
- A dancer who comes in late needs the downbeat marked
- Repetition buys least where it is needed most
- A late dancer needs the landmarks, not the rhythm
- Against a pulse the bell pattern is the easiest to place
- An expectation cannot rescue a cycle too slow to time
Timbre
- A string does everything at once
- The shape of a note, which is most of what an instrument is
- The room is part of the instrument
- A vowel is two resonances
- The ear hears the list, not the shape
- How long a room rings, and where the formula stops
- The first fifty milliseconds
- What makes two partials one note
- The body is the filter
- The other wolf
- An instrument points
- The room chooses the harmonic rhythm
- Where a room stops being a room
- A room does not decay evenly
- The first eighty milliseconds are a different room
- The spectrum that was supposed to explain the gamelan
- One voice over ninety players
- The bell decides what gets out
- The sound a listener knows best
- What a choir does that a soloist cannot
- The mark that is not a level
- The note that gets duller as it dies
- An instrument is not one timbre
- Which instrument is underneath
- Which player on which note
- A section against another section
- The pulse that was assumed
- What the mouthpiece is actually for
- The corner does not come back a corner
- A dynamic mark changes what a note is
- Four terms, and only one of them binds
- The flare that makes a series harmonic
- The crossing belongs to the felt
- The bell is tuned for the cup
- Two players on one note
- The piano is tuned wrong on purpose
- A section has a loudest member, not a colour
- The blend table has a row for every note
- One cup and seven lengths
- The top that falls while the note lasts
- The middle nobody could have guessed
- The collapse belongs to the bass
- A fifth on a piano is not a fifth a second later
- The blend arrives before the note does
- An inversion lasts as long as its outer sixth
- A doubled pizzicato gives its note away early
- A room keeps a pizzicato from giving its note away
- A bow holds the number a blow hides
- The room is the slower of the two
- A damper changes the clock, not the colour
- One note in the compass loses its pizzicato
- A damper cannot reach into the room
- A seventh chord cannot be spaced to last like a triad
- Only the player hears a staccato end
Scales
- A scale is not a set of pitches
- What a raised seventh is for
- Five notes, and no semitones
- Seven of the twelve, chosen unevenly
- Two sizes of every step, which is why the names work
- Keys are neighbours, and the map is computed
- The same seven, started later
- A scale without an octave, and the spectrum that asks for it
- Where the chain was never closed
- Every interval a different number of times
- The same algorithm made a Cuban rhythm
- Why seven
- Nothing in the census knows which note is home
- Parallel and relative are two different maps
- Seven rotations that are not seven modes
- The circle is a circle, and the map is not
- The only sizes a fifth will make
- A scale built downward from a fourth
- A melody is a walk, not a set
- A degree is where it goes next
- The stave is not a ruler
- The one note that decides the mode
- The set with fewer modes than notes
- The clef is an integer
- The listener the model was never run for
- The notations invented for the overflow
- The axis that is not a time axis
- The number every claim here has been quoting
- A modulation and a borrowing are one number apart
- The margin the dynamic program already had
- How much music a page holds
- How much of the reading arrives late
- The page is read by an eye
- A reader does not read notes
- The scale least committed to its own instrument
- A boundary costs the same wherever it is put
- A note lasts until the next one starts
- Leaps do not fall where offbeats do
- One number for a page
- A boundary beside a fifth
- The best seven of the twelve
- The unequal scale that is easier to name
- Two cues meet in a corner
- A bass line is not a list of roots
- The smoothness is in the skips
- A scale is committed to how long its instrument rings
- Given the bar in octaves, the degree comes back
- A sharper cue is worth nothing to a reading that moves
- The scale belongs to the ringing instrument
- The tempo moves a scale further than the touch
- The notehead that is not a note
- The two parameters turn out to have a ceiling between them
- The ceiling is thirteen bars with names
- A wrong bar beats the same on either instrument
Intervals
- Two notes and a ratio, which is the whole of consonance
- The note that is not there
- A third is rougher in the bass
- Beats are arithmetic that anybody can hear
- Three is the largest agreeable number
- The ear sorts into boxes, and the boxes are the theory
- The ear makes its own sound, and it is not the missing fundamental
- A spectrum chooses its own scale
- Roughness cannot choose a scale
- A dissonance has to last
- Which harmonics carry the pitch
- The same chord is harsher when it is louder
- The third the model has no opinion about
- The mode with no fifth
- The inversion that cannot end a phrase
- The root an ear supplies
- A chord is a register
- The same distance, under two names
- The series is not a chord
- The series has three tops
- How many boxes an octave holds
- The chord that is not played at once
- An interval is two errors
- The note that sounds twice
- How much an anchor would have to be worth
- The fourth top is the maker's
- Sixteen sweeps against sixteen
- A roughness with a rate of its own
- A beat has a depth, and six essays held it at one
- The quantity a rival account says is not there
- The beat a tuner can actually use
- The mean survives the window
- A beat is never one beat
- Roughness can be computed, and the answer looks like a scale
- Three beats at most, and only in the middle of the keyboard
- Every member of a beat family is the same depth
- A short note is heard more in tune than it is
- An interval is two posteriors subtracted
- Which end the mistuning is on
- The setting is not the preference
- The third sound magnifies cents, not hertz
- The tone on the root changes hands at the fifth
- A major triad's combination tones are its own notes
- The bass line under a passage in thirds
- A combination-tone bass needs a forte
- An open triad lasts as long as its tenth
- A minor triad can be spaced to last
- Three harmonics of the bass arrive before the bass
- The ghost bass drops a twelfth at a forte
- The notes in between
- The part of the error a key cannot touch
- The played notes already name the ghost bass
- A firm touch buys beats until the aftersound sinks with it
Harmony
- A progression is a path, and the map can be drawn
- Chords as a space
- The interval that inverts to itself
- The shortest move, which is what a chord change is
- Three notes at once, and why these three
- The progression that never comes home
- Two voices that stop being two
- The chord that did not come
- How often the chord changes
- A melody that can accompany itself
- Somebody has to pay the comma
- Where to put the third
- A dissonance is what has to be resolved
- What the rules cost
- Two criteria that are taught as one
- The resolution the metric cannot find
- One dominant among seven
- Three ways to measure how far a key is
- A stack that is not thirds
- Which notes are the chord
- Three notations, one progression
- Why the exercise is in four parts
- Two keys at once
- The alternation a key-finder cannot follow
- Three decisions that constrain each other
- A key-finder that keeps the order
- A count and a correlation
- Surprise is a number
- The ranking survives the dynamic and the chord does not
- A chord, given a key and a predecessor
- The passage built to make them disagree
- A loud chord is a smaller chord
- The listener who forgets
- Two surprises and one event
- The bars a key is made of
- The key-finder with no tonic
- The surprise of nothing happening
- Where the chord actually lands
- The long note and the strong note
- Four parts are easier to read than two
- A tonic bought with the function
- A fourth decision, and two that were never made
- Eighty-one chords, one number
- The chords never move the barline
- The chords are a weak witness to the barline
- The chords mark the barline by changing there
- A rough arrival is rough because of its spacing
- The change reading follows the chords, not the bar
- Asked for the rate, it answers a multiple
- Expectation is a curve, not a list
- The cadence as evidence
- The bass errs fast where the content errs slow
- A bass that holds through a change marks the barline
Perception
- The quietest thing audible, and why the volume knob is a tone control
- One sound hides another, and it hides upward
- A sound hides what came before it
- Two ears, and the whole of the difference is 655 microseconds
- The first wavefront wins
- How small a difference is audible
- The octave that is not two to one
- The chord is still major, and that is why temperament works
- Counting produced the hierarchy
- Consonance is half learned, and this is the half
- How far away the room takes over
- A return has to be remembered
- A pitch with nothing to match
- A voice is a stream, and the ear decides which
- The ear builds objects, and sometimes offers a choice
- The beat that is never sounded
- How late is a different note
- How much evidence a modulation needs
- Three answers to how finely a pitch can be heard
- What a tonic costs in seconds
- The part of the tune that is kept
- The pitch that moves the wrong distance
- How long a note has to be
- The beat that is not in the air
- A chord is not as loud as its notes
- The boundary that barely moves
- Playing louder is playing earlier
- Where the two ears stop agreeing
- A room with directions in it
- The spectrum that will not fuse
- An echo is prevented by the crowd around it
- The partials that do not die together
- The exchange rate nobody has
- A position and a width
- An equal note cannot be masked
- The cue that settles it
- A page has two decibels
- The turn is half the angle
- A smaller head in the same hall
- A blown note does not start late, it starts slowly
- Eleven partials is one too many
- A part entering is not a change of level
- A staccato is a dynamic mark
- The listener is given the top voice, and the bass as a sine
- A low chord stops being rough by stopping being a chord
- Read at two different heights
- An attack time is not an attack
- Where a wrong head gives itself away
- A subito piano is four seconds longer in the bass
- A clarinet keeps what a string loses
- The hall through a head
- The error that moves straight ahead
- The arch belongs to hearing, not to the series
- A bass chord low enough to balance has already hidden its tenor
Instruments
- A tube that skips every other partial
- The tube ends after it ends
- A cone is not a cylinder
- Above a certain note the holes stop working
- One hole doing a dozen jobs
- Where the hammer lands
- A hammer is not an impulse
- How much bow is allowed
- A bell has no fundamental
- What a drum is doing instead
- Two pipes for a note neither makes
- The bass a small loudspeaker does not make
- Two players and no clock
- The model has nobody in it
- The other instrument with a reed
- Two mechanisms, and the seam between them
- The reed is a valve, not a vibrator
- The note has to start somewhere
- What a tablature keeps
- The hole that spoils a note
- Three strings, and the note that comes back
- The hammer is not a point either
- The hammer that is heavier than its string
- The note the body will not let start
- The players who have to be early
- The same note is a different width
- Only two shapes make a series
- Two dials the player turns together
- The cutoff a maker can actually measure
- The hardest place on the fingerboard
- A note takes a number of periods to speak
- A family resemblance in the heights
- The vent a cone cannot place
- A hole is a short tube
- What a cup does to the support
- Three exciters and three wires
- The bow is not a point either
- The pitch that does not wobble
- The register where the series becomes a scale
- The resonator at the far end
- The mouth that decides nothing
- The cutoff that is a list
- The fourth player is a spectrum, not a decision
- The bow makes a corner
- The partials the tube makes itself
- The hair runs the wrong way
- What the rosin is worth
- What the second register is for
- A bar's partials are the odd numbers, squared
- One cut cannot place two partials
- The tube shuts on the partial the arch placed
- The four ways a marimba loses what its arch placed
- The partial that gets louder as it goes sharp
- The rate that does not rise with the partial
- An orchestrator doubles a line, not a chord
- Which notes go brassy first
- The throat that decides both
- The interval between two quills
- A bar and its pipe are one object
- Where a woodwind actually sounds from
Form
- A piece is mostly itself again
- How much of this is new
- A phrase is a number of seconds
- One of these eight-bar phrases accelerates
- An ending that exists so a bigger one can
- What makes an ending an ending
- The key plan is the form
- The bar above the bar
- A cycle cannot cadence
- The form a first hearing cannot have
- The same thing somewhere else
- Where a repeat is changed
- How long until it comes back
- The boundary is where the neighbourhood changes
- A metre has to be able to change its mind
- An ending is a deceleration
- An ending that can be heard coming
- A silence long enough to be an ending
- The leap that pays itself back
- The shape that survives everything else
- The twelfth, and where it comes from
- Where a phrase ends
- The repeat that is not in the notes
- What the onsets left out
- A boundary at a stated level
- Loud is relative, and it comes down slowly
- The level the tempo chooses
- The dynamics are in the score already
- A final chord is not made loud by adding to it
- Who plays what and how loud is one question
- The parameter that did not decide the answer
- A detector whose resolution the performance sets
- The reading was a step response
- A subito piano is a rate, not a level
- A rest is a diminuendo
- The dissonance arrives and the dynamic does not
- A soft chord has to fade in
- A rest needs a dry room
- A general pause is spent by the note after it
- An entrance is a change of colour
- The release is on the wrong side
- A part that leaves is not a part that arrives
- The chord that has room for an entrance
- Room is used up by whoever enters first
- A proportion is only as fine as its two durations
- A return is shorter than its first hearing
- A final chord stands out for a twentieth of a second
- A count is not an estimate
- A form is sharp at the bottom and vague at the top
- A golden section is a coin toss with six coins
- The ceiling everybody names is the loose one
- A louder final chord is a deeper silence and a brighter sound
- An exit is worth nothing until the tutti is given up
- Checkpoints sharpen the middle of a form, not its top