Music theory, in the order it should be learned.

Staff, clefs, note values, meter and key signatures — the shared measuring system that music is written in.

Goal of this unit: Read a single-line score aloud with correct pitch names and durations.

Measuring the distance between two notes by size and quality. Every chord and scale rests on this.

Goal of this unit: Name any interval from its spelling, and invert it.

The major scale, three minor scales, church modes, pentatonic scales, Japanese and Asian scales, and how keys relate.

Goal of this unit: Explain any scale by its degrees and place a key on the circle of fifths.

Triads and seventh chords, inversions and figured bass, roman numerals — and how they map onto chord symbols.

Goal of this unit: Spell chords correctly and label them with inversions and roman numerals.

What each chord does, how cadences are classified, harmonic rhythm, and connecting chords.

Goal of this unit: Identify the role of each chord in a progression and classify its cadence.

Ranges, spacing and doubling, forbidden parallels, chord connection, and realising a figured bass.

Goal of this unit: Harmonise a given bass in four parts and find the errors in your own writing.

Passing and neighbour tones, suspensions, anticipations, escape tones, appoggiaturas, pedal points, and melodic writing.

Goal of this unit: Name the exact type of every non-chord tone in a melody.

Motive, phrase and period, binary and ternary form, the 12-bar blues and popular song forms.

Goal of this unit: Divide a piece into phrases and sketch its form.

Secondary dominants, mode mixture, the Neapolitan sixth, augmented sixth chords, and modulation.

Goal of this unit: Explain chromatic chords by function and recognise how a modulation was made.

Tensions and altered chords, modal harmony, symmetric scales, tritone substitution and chord–scale thinking.

Goal of this unit: Connect popular-music notation and function back to classical theory.

Hearing intervals, chords, cadences, melodies, harmony and rhythm. This runs alongside every other unit.

Goal of this unit: Write down a short melody and a harmonic progression by ear.