# The ixi 10-Day Course

Read the analysis sheets, hear what the music is doing, play it on guitar or bass while you sing.

Live page: https://drwu-htmls.vercel.app/iximusic-course/

This is the text companion (sibling .md) for [iximusic-course](https://drwu-htmls.vercel.app/iximusic-course/). Part of drwu-htmls.vercel.app.

Built on Brandon's own ixi sheets, so every day points at a real bar in a real song:

- Overview: https://drwu-htmls.vercel.app/believeyoume-ixi-overview/
- Reference sheets: https://drwu-htmls.vercel.app/iximusic-analysis-sheets/
- Every ixi analysis: https://drwu-htmls.vercel.app/iximusic/

For a learner with basic theory who plays guitar or bass and sings. One day per sitting, about twenty minutes with the instrument in hand. Each day gives one idea, a real bar from a song on the pages, a guitar move, a bass move, and a line to sing. The page has see-it notation and a hear-it button on every example.

## The decoder ring

An ixi sheet stacks three staves that line up bar for bar: voice on top, guitar in the middle, bass on the bottom. Two labels carry the whole system.

- **Chord tag** (in quotes, above the staff): names the chord sounding now. A slash like `Bb/D` means a B-flat chord with D in the bass.
- **Interval tag** (`^3`, `^b7`, `^9` over a vocal note): names that sung note by its distance from the current chord root. This is the heart of ixi, the melody note read against the chord under it.
- root / 1: the voice sings the chord's own root. Settled.
- b3 / 3: the third, minor or major. The one note that sets bright or dark.
- 5: the fifth, the open note inside a power chord.
- b7 / 7 / 9: the color tones. A b7 leans, a maj7 glows, a 9 floats a step above the octave.
- #4 / b5: the tritone, the most restless interval.

## The ten days

1. **Name the note by its job.** A note has a name relative to the chord under it: root, third, fifth, seventh, ninth. That name is what every ixi tag reports. Open any sheet, read one `^` tag as "this sung note is the ___ of the chord."
2. **The third is the whole story.** Root and fifth set the frame, the third sets the mood, major bright and minor dark, a half-step apart. A power chord leaves the third out, which is why most of BELIEVEYOUME hands the mood-decision to the singer.
3. **When the voice supplies the third.** The band plays a third-less power chord, the singer lands the third, and the singer decides major or minor. True on **Asleep In The Trunk** (A natural on "for") and **The Alligator** (bass decides the chord, voice supplies the third).
4. **One note, three meanings.** **Endless Summer** holds a single D: major third over B-flat, ninth over C7sus2, root over D minor. The melody holds still and the harmony recolors it.
5. **The contested third.** **My Mirror Hates Me** sings G-sharp then G-natural over an E pedal and the chorus stacks both. **Endless Summer** bends D to C-sharp and flips B-flat major to B-flat minor on one half-step.
6. **Sevenths, ninths, suspensions.** A sus swaps the third for a 2 or 4 and hangs (C7sus2). A dominant 7 leans and falls home. A major 7 glows (the A-flat maj7 in **Lazarus**). A 9 floats. **Jackie** outlines maj7 and 9 in the vocal.
7. **Modes as color.** Mixolydian is major with a flat 7, rooted and bluesy, the sound of **So Far So** (D Mixolydian). Lydian is major with a sharp 4, floating and bright, the sound of **Jackie** (A-flat Lydian).
8. **The flat side and the tritone.** **The Alligator** moves I to flat-3. **Not Too Much** drops a whole step and ends a tritone from home. **Lazarus** walks a tritone bass. **Broken Satellites** ends on a flat-7 that never resolves.
9. **Cadence, or the refusal to land.** A cadence is arriving home, strongest as V to I. **Broken Satellites** lives on its own dominant. **Jackie** vamps A-flat to C-minor with no closing cadence. **Endless Summer** frames with a dominant and ends third-less.
10. **Read a sheet cold, then listen on your own.** Take a sheet you have not studied (**The Mutiny** or **Not Too Much**), read every tag out loud, play the guitar part, play the bass roots, sing a line and watch it recolor.

## The six-step close listen (keep forever)

1. Find home. What is the center of gravity, the tonic?
2. Follow the bass. Where does the root move by step, to the flat side, by tritone?
3. Find the third. In the chord, in the bass, or supplied by the voice? Major or minor?
4. Hold one vocal note. Does it stay put while the chords recolor it?
5. Mark the cadence. Does it land home on V to I, or vamp and hang?
6. Name the one move. Say the song in one sentence, the ixi way.

Source pages: `believeyoume-ixi-overview`, `iximusic-analysis-sheets`, `iximusic`, and the ten `believeyoume-*-v5` song sheets.