Its name is esoteric, but the diatonic phrygian tetrachord is perhaps the most common sequence in music. WNYC's David Garland tells NPR's Arun Rath how those four notes crop up from baroque to rock.

Triads are three-note chords made up of the lowest note (known as the root note), a middle note, (the third), and the top note (the fifth). But when you play a set of diatonic chords like this, built ...

Here’s how it works. Give your chord progressions colour and flair by introducing a handful of ‘out of key’ notes. We’ve previously looked at diatonic chords, ie, chords belonging to a scale or key.

In the summer of 1963, a strange record by a 12-year-old boy who’d already racked up a string of flops spent three weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100. It’s largely a showcase for that ...