read the analysis sheets, hear what the music is doing, play it yourself
built on your BELIEVEYOUME & Hooray For Earth ixi sheets · one day at a time · guitar or bass in hand
You already know the basics. What you want is to look at one of your ixi sheets, the ones that pin a sung note against the chord stack under it, and actually hear what that little ^3 or ^b7 means before your hands even move. This course gets you there in ten short sessions. Every day teaches one idea, shows it in a real bar from a song on your pages, and hands you a move for guitar, a move for bass, and a line to sing.
Work one day per sitting, about twenty minutes with your instrument. Tap hear it on any example to play the notation out loud. Tap the notation image to study it. By Day 10 you read a sheet cold and run your own close listen on any song you love.
An ixi sheet stacks three staves that line up bar for bar: the voice on top, the guitar in the middle, the bass on the bottom. Two little labels do all the work. Learn these six lines and the whole sheet opens up.
| "Bb/D" | The chord tag, in quotes, sitting above the staff. It names the chord sounding right now. A slash like Bb/D means a B-flat chord with a D in the bass. |
| ^3 ^b7 ^9 | The interval tag over a vocal note. It names that note by its distance from the current chord root. This is the heart of ixi: the melody note is always read against the chord under it. |
| root / 1 | The voice is singing the same note the chord is built on. Solid, settled, no tension. |
| b3 / 3 | The third, minor or major. This one note decides whether the chord sounds sad or bright. Watch it more than any other. |
| 5 | The fifth. Open and strong, the note inside every power chord. |
| b7 / 7 / 9 | The color tones above the triad. A b7 leans and wants to move, a maj7 glows, a 9 floats a step above the octave. |
| #4 / b5 | The tritone, the most restless interval there is. When you see it, expect unease. |
That is the entire language. Everything below is ten days of hearing it and playing it until it is second nature.
Pick any chord. Pick any melody note over it. The note has a name relative to that chord: root, third, fifth, seventh, ninth. That name is the note's job, and it is what every ixi tag reports. A B on its own is just a B. A B over a G chord is the major third. A B over a C chord is the major seventh. The chord underneath is what gives the note meaning.
Hold a G major chord. Play a B on top, that is the major 3rd. Now slide to C, the 4th, then D, the 5th. Say each job out loud as you play it.
Play a G root. Play the note a major third above it (B), then the fifth (D). Feel the distance in your hand so you can spot a third and a fifth by feel.
Strum G, sing the root. Then sing up to the third and hold it. You just sang a ^3. Sing the fifth and hold that. Name what you sang each time.
A chord is a root, a third, and a fifth. The root and fifth set the frame. The third sets the mood: a major third sounds bright, a minor third sounds dark, and they sit only a half-step apart. A power chord is a root and fifth with the third left out, which is why it sounds neither happy nor sad, just strong. Most of BELIEVEYOUME is built on power chords, so the album keeps handing the third-decision to someone else, usually the singer. Hold that thought for Day 3.
Play a C5 power chord (root and fifth). Add the major 3rd (E) for C major, then swap to the minor 3rd (E-flat) for C minor. One finger moves, the whole mood turns.
Play C, then E (major 3rd), then C, then E-flat (minor 3rd). Same root, two thirds. Your ear learns the half-step that flips the color.
Hum C. Sing a major third above, then a minor third. Feel how a single half-step down turns a lift into a shadow.
Here is the move that makes this record what it is. The band plays a third-less power chord, so the chord has no mood of its own. Then the singer lands on the third, and the singer's one note is what makes the whole thing major or minor. On Asleep In The Trunk the guitar runs a third-less F engine and the voice sings A natural on the word "for," and that sung A is the major third the band left out. On The Alligator the same thing happens: the bass decides the chord, the voice supplies the third. When you sing over these songs, your one note completes the chord the band left open.
Hold an F5 (F and C, no third) and let it ring. Do not add a third with your hands. Leave that empty seat for your voice.
Hold a low F under the chord. You and the guitar give the frame, nothing more. The mood is still undecided until the voice arrives.
Over that F5, sing A natural, the major 3rd. Now sing A-flat, the minor 3rd. You just flipped the whole chord with your throat. That is the ixi thesis of Asleep.
This is the most beautiful trick on the album, and it is the whole point of an ixi sheet. On Endless Summer the voice holds a single D and never moves it. The chords move underneath. Over B-flat that D is the major third. Over a C7sus2 the same D becomes the ninth. Over D minor the same D is the root. One pitch, three jobs, and the singer does nothing but hold the note. This is called recoloring, and once you hear it you hear it everywhere. It is why a held note can feel like it is changing when it is the ground moving under it.
Move through Bb, then C, then Dm while a friend or a loop holds a D above. Or play the D yourself on a high string and let it ring across all three chords.
Walk the roots B-flat, C, D under a held vocal D. Your motion is what recolors the singer's note. The bass is the storyteller here.
Sing one steady D and hold it while the chords change beneath you. Feel it turn from bright third, to floating ninth, to settled root without you doing a thing.
Day 2 said the third decides the mood. What if the song refuses to decide? On My Mirror Hates Me the voice sings G-sharp then G-natural over an E pedal, the major third then the minor third, and the chorus stacks both at once so the chord is bright and dark in the same breath. On Endless Summer the held D bends a half-step to C-sharp in the same slot, and that one step flips the home chord from B-flat major to B-flat minor. Nothing else changes. The whole quality of the chord hangs on whether the voice sings the higher note or the lower one.
Hold a B-flat with the third on top. Move only that top note down a half-step, D to D-flat, and hear major slump into minor. Everything else stays put.
Hold the root steady while the third above flips. Your job is to stay still so the ear hears the third do all the work.
Over a held E, sing G-sharp, then G-natural, then trade them back and forth. That wobble between bright and dark is the sound of My Mirror.
Above the root, third, and fifth live the color tones. A sus chord takes the third out and puts a 2 or a 4 in its place, so it hangs unresolved until the third returns, the C7sus2 in Endless Summer is exactly this. A dominant 7th (the b7) leans hard and wants to fall home. A major 7th glows and lingers, the A-flat major 7 that lights the "dance Lazarus arise" call. A ninth floats a whole step above the octave, and you already met one on Day 4 as Endless Summer's recolored D. These are the tags you will see most after the third.
Play a sus2, then drop the 2 to the 3rd and feel it resolve. Then play a major 7 chord and let it ring, that soft glow is the maj7 sound.
Under a dominant 7 chord, play the root, then step to where it wants to fall (down a fifth). Feel the b7 pulling the whole chord home.
Over a held root, sing a whole step above the octave, that is the 9th. Sit on it and feel it float without leaning. Now sing the b7 and feel it lean.
A mode is a major scale with one or two notes shifted, and each shift has a flavor. Mixolydian is major with a flat 7, and that lowered seventh gives it a rooted, rock, slightly bluesy pull, it is the sound of So Far So, whose verse is in D Mixolydian. Lydian is major with a sharp 4, and that raised fourth makes it float and brighten past ordinary major, it is the sound of the closer Jackie in A-flat Lydian. You do not need to memorize seven modes. Just hear what one flat 7 or one sharp 4 does to a room.
Play a major scale. Now flatten the 7th and play it again, that drop is Mixolydian. Reset, sharpen the 4th instead, that lift is Lydian.
Drone the root on a low string. Over it, walk up to the flat 7, then another day the sharp 4. Hear how one note recolors the drone.
Over a held root, sing the flat 7 and feel the bluesy tug. Then sing the sharp 4 and feel the float. Those two notes are the whole lesson.
This album loves to step to chords that live below the key, the flat side. The Alligator moves from its home chord up to the flat-3 (a I to b-III move). Not Too Much rocks a whole step down from B-flat to A-flat. Broken Satellites ends on a flat-7 outro that never resolves. And the darkest color of all is the tritone, the exact half-of-an-octave span, which Lazarus walks in the bass and Not Too Much reaches when its outro ends a tritone from home. Flat-side chords darken a song from underneath. The tritone is the sound of something unresolved and uneasy.
Play a C chord, then jump up to E-flat, the flat-3. Then try C down to B-flat, the flat-7. These outside-the-key jumps are the album's whole harmonic accent.
Play C, then the note exactly a tritone away, F-sharp, and back. That jarring distance is what Lazarus walks. Sit in the discomfort of it.
Over a held root, sing down to the flat 6 and the flat 7. Those flat-side notes are the color of these choruses. Feel them pull the mood down.
A cadence is the feeling of arriving home. The strongest one is the dominant chord (the V) falling to the tonic (the I), that drop is the most settled sound in the music. Some of these songs refuse to give it to you. Broken Satellites lives on its own dominant and treats a B-flat surface as home over an E-flat center, so it always sounds like it is leaning. Jackie ends the album on an A-flat to C-minor vamp that just cycles with no closing cadence. Endless Summer frames itself with a dominant and finishes on a bare power chord with no third, leaving the major-or-minor question open. When a song feels hypnotic or unfinished, this is usually why.
Play a V chord, then the I. Feel it arrive. Now play a two-chord vamp and loop it four times. Feel how it never lets you land. That difference is cadence.
Walk the root of the V down to the root of the I, the strongest resolution in music. Then hold a loop and feel your line circling without a home.
Sing a line that ends on the tonic and feel it settle. Then sing one that ends on any other note over a vamp, and feel it hang. That hang is the album's ending.
Time to put it together. Open a sheet you have not worked through bar by bar, The Mutiny is a good one (a root clamp that moves to the flat side and resolves on a late shared D), or take Not Too Much from the top. Read every chord tag. Read every ^ interval tag and say the job out loud. Then play the guitar part, play the bass roots, and sing one line while you watch the tags recolor under it. You now have all nine ideas from Days 1 through 9 in your hands and ear at once.
Play the chords straight through and mark where a power chord leaves the third for the voice, and where the harmony steps to the flat side.
Play only the roots. Notice every place the root moves by tritone or to the flat side. The bass line is the map of the whole song.
Sing one section and, on each note, name its job over the chord. When you can do that in real time, you have graduated.
This is the ixi method itself, boiled down to six questions you can ask about any song. Run them in order with an instrument in hand.