From the Triad to Grips

Why it is not another theory book

Every figure is drawn by the code the app runs on.

The staves, the keyboards, the fingering, the degree labels — none of it is typeset by hand. The book calls the same chord engine that grades your playing in Cadenza, so the page and the screen cannot disagree with each other.

That is also why it is honest about size. Sixty-four entries, each one a chord or a run drawn in full; no filler chapters on shapes you will never play, and no exercises whose answer the book does not show you.

What is inside

Thirteen chapters, in the order a hand learns them.

Part one — up to Grips

1. The keyboardBefore the first chord: the two intervals everything is built from, and the three ways each looks under the hand.
2. TriadsThe first chord, built the way every chord after it will be built — the fifth first, then the third inside it.
3. Seventh chordsThe same triad with one more note, found by counting down from the root above rather than up from anywhere.
4. Sevenths in the right handThe same four degrees split between the hands: the root underneath, 7·3·5 above it.
5. ShellsTake the fifth out. What is left still says which chord it is — with three notes instead of four.
6. Suspended chordsTake the third out instead and put a neighbour in its place. The chord stops being major or minor.

Part two — with Grips

7. The GripThe root leaves the hand. Four notes, two ways of stacking them, and everything after this is built on it.
8. The wrapYour hand already holds five notes of a seven-note scale. The two that are left are lying in its gaps.
9. Continuous inversionA chord is not three positions with a switch between them. It is one shape repeating up and down the keyboard.
10. SwitchesOne hand shape, many chords. Each colour is a single finger standing somewhere else.
11. CadencesTwo chords joined to a third. II–V–I is what all of it is for.
12. Over the bassA shape you already play, put over a bass that changes what it means.
13. Bass, melody and GripBoth hands at once: the bass, the tune, and the Grip between them.

Before you buy

What it is, and what it is not.

• A PDF, not a printed book. A5, laid out for paper — print it yourself or read it on a tablet on the music desk. Nothing is posted to you.
• Both languages, one purchase. English (77 pages) and Lithuanian (75 pages), delivered together.
• It stands without the app. There is a Grips trainer in Cadenza that drills exactly this method, but the book does not require it — and the app does not require the book.
• Examples are written in C. Once a shape is learned, moving it is the exercise; the book says so instead of reprinting twelve keys.
• No licence, no activation. It is a file. It is yours.