Prologue

Hooktheory I and Hooktheory II were created teach you how to craft melodies and chord progressions like professional musicians, and gain a deep understanding and intuition for how music works. Hooktheory I introduced you to Roman numerals and scale degrees, and laid the groundwork for arranging chords and melody into something that sounds great. But Hooktheory I really only scratched the surface of what is musically possible.

Hooktheory II begins right where Hooktheory I left off. You'll learn about seventh chords, embellishments, secondary chords, minor harmony, modes, modal mixture, and more; and you'll do so with the same fun, easy to understand approach we used in Hooktheory I, with its emphasis on practical usage demonstrated with rich examples from real songs.

As you read this book keep in mind that it's part of a larger ecosystem that makes understanding music and writing music more approachable and exciting. Hooktheory's innovative musical sketchpad, Hookpad, lets you experiment with ideas from the book, play with chords and melody, and write your own songs. Hooktheory's tab library, Theorytab, lets you see thousands of popular songs written out with the same notation used in this book. Both of these resources are available from the side menu of this app in the “Resources” section.