Fundamentals of Rhythm contains 28 lessons in three parts. The first two parts interlock: Part 1 includes lessons 1-8 and 14-18, while Part 2 includes lessons 9-13 and 19-23. Students who already know the basics taught in Part 1 can therefore proceed directly to Part 2, while students who need both parts can learn the topics in a logical order. Part 1 includes the basics of reading rhythm notation, including note durations, ties, dots, the most common time signatures, tempo markings, and how to read a musical map. Part 2 includes less-common time signatures, less-common durations, and how to handle complex rhythms within most time signatures. Part 3 (lessons 24-28) constitutes an introduction to advanced practices like irregular beat divisions and asymmetrical time signatures.
Fundamentals of Melody and Harmony contains 28 lessons in three parts. All three parts interlock. Part 1 (lessons 1-4, 8-9, 11-14) includes the basics of reading pitches on the staff in treble and bass clefs, including key signatures and major and minor scales. Part 2 (lessons 5, 15-18, 20-21, 23-24, 26-27) covers the rest of the theory fundamentals needed to prepare students for Diatonic Harmony: intervals, triads and seventh chords. Part 3 (lessons 6-7, 10, 19, 22, 25, 28) includes topics that are part of a complete fundamentals course, but may not have been learned by students who already know the material in Parts 1 and 2. These include octave-transposing clefs, C clefs, modes and some other scales, and extended tertian chords.
There are two standalone lessons that go along with the Fundamentals courses. These are topics that fit within the fundamentals portion of any theory curriculum, but do not fit precisely into either the Rhythm category or the Melody and Harmony category: Dynamics and Expression, included with Part 1 of the Rhythm course, and Timbre and the Harmonic Series, included with Part 3 of the Melody and Harmony course.
Diatonic Harmony includes 28 unique lessons as well as lessons 26 and 27 from Fundamentals of Melody and Harmony, included as a bridge from that course to this course for students who otherwise don’t need to take Fundamentals. In this course, students learn the way that functional tonal harmony works through composition exercises (harmonizing melodies, realizing figured bass, and writing chorale phrases on given progressions) and through analysis of works from the repertoire. Beyond the voice leading required for the composition exercises, topics covered include cadences, non-harmonic tones and bigger-picture concepts including phrases, periods, sentences, and sequences. The course finishes by introducing two of the central concepts of chromatic harmony: modulation and tonicization.
Chromatic Harmony consists of another 28 lessons that pick up where Diatonic Harmony leaves off, expanding on the concepts of tonicization (using secondary function chords) and modulation (using various techniques. Several other types of chromatic chords are also covered, including mixture chords, the Neapolitan, and augmented sixths. The course concludes with another big-picture look at the structure of music, covering binary and ternary forms.