Glossary
Jazz terminology, pitch terminology, and a few app-specific terms — defined in plain language. Flip to this when something in the app reads as gibberish.
Jazz vocabulary
Anacrusis (also called pickup) — One or more notes that lead into the first downbeat of a phrase. I've Got Rhythm opens with an anacrusis: three pickup notes before the downbeat. In the app a tune's pickup is engraved as a short first bar — the bar numbers start counting after it — and the tune editor's Pickup control adds one. The enclosure trick's drill figure opens with one too: its approach notes sit in a pickup bar ahead of the first landing.
Approach note — A note (often chromatic) used to lead into a target note, creating forward motion. Bebop is built on chromatic approach notes — playing a half step above or below a chord tone before resolving to it.
Arpeggio — Playing the notes of a chord one at a time instead of simultaneously. A C major 7 arpeggio is C–E–G–B.
Avoid note — A note that's in the scale but tends to clash if held over a chord. The 4th degree of Ionian over a major-7 chord is the classic example: it's diatonic, but landing on F over a Cmaj7 sounds wrong because it's a half step above the 3rd. You can pass through it; you just don't sit on it.
Backing track — The accompaniment the app generates for Side B, Tricks, and Tune Practice: bass, comping (piano or organ), and drums. It's generated fresh each time from a seeded engine, not a looped sample. Four styles: Swing, Bossa Nova, Ballad, Straight.
Bebop — The style of jazz that came out of the early 1940s — Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell. Fast tempos, complex harmony, eighth-note lines built on chromatic approach notes and bebop scales (eight-note scales engineered so chord tones land on strong beats).
Blue note — A note slightly out of the key — usually the b3, b5, or b7 — that gives blues and jazz their characteristic color. The b5 in particular is the signature blues color.
Bomb — A single accented bass-drum hit dropped off the grid, used as punctuation rather than timekeeping. Philly Joe Jones' signature; the app's drummer plays them on the and-of-3 at four-bar boundaries.
Call and response — A musical conversation: one voice plays a phrase, another answers. The app's Side A is built around this — the app calls, you respond.
Chord tone — A note belonging to the current chord (root, 3rd, 5th, 7th). The "important" notes in a phrase usually land on chord tones; everything else passes between them.
Chromatic — Moving by half steps (semitones). A chromatic line moves note-by-note through every available pitch. Chromatic approach means approaching a target note by half step from above or below.
Circle of fifths — The ordering of all 12 keys by ascending fifths: C → G → D → A → E → B → F# → C# → G# → D# → A# → F → C. The app unlocks new keys in roughly this order, slightly modified for pedagogical reasons.
Clave — The two-bar rhythmic key that organises Afro-Cuban and Brazilian music. The app's bossa plays it on the rim of the snare, and picks one side of it (the "3-side" or the "2-side") for the whole phrase rather than flipping mid-stream.
Comping — Accompaniment played by a piano or guitar — the chordal "comping" that fills in the harmony underneath a soloist.
Cross-stick (also side-stick) — Laying the stick across the drumhead and striking the rim: a dry, woody click instead of a snare crack. It's the bossa's clave voice, the ballad's colour, and the "Moanin'" figure on beat 4.
Concert pitch — The actual pitch sounding in the air, regardless of what your instrument's sheet music reads. A B♭ tenor sax reading a written C is sounding a concert B♭. The app stores everything in concert pitch internally and translates to your written pitch only at display time.
Diatonic — Notes belonging to the current key's scale. A C-major scale has 7 diatonic notes (C D E F G A B); the other 5 chromatic notes are non-diatonic.
Dominant — A chord (or scale) with a major 3rd and a minor 7th. The V chord in a major key. Wants to resolve down a fifth to the I.
Enclosure — Surrounding a target note with notes above and below it before resolving. A common bebop figure is to enclose the 3rd of a chord by playing the note above, the note below, and then the 3rd itself. One of the app's two tricks, drilled on three parallel ladders — over major, minor and dominant chords — each open from its first rung.
Fill — A short drum figure that marks a seam in the form — the end of a section, the turn into a new chorus — rather than keeping time. In Mankunku, fills only fire on tunes, because a two-bar vamp has no seams to mark.
Form — The repeating chord structure of a tune. Body and Soul has an AABA form: an A section, repeated, a contrasting B section (the bridge), and a return to A.
Changes — The chord progression of a tune, considered on its own. "Playing the changes" means improvising lines that follow the harmony rather than sitting on one scale. A chart with no melody is a changes-only chart.
Chorus — One complete pass through the form. A solo is measured in choruses, not bars.
Head — The written melody of a tune. Convention plays it once at the top, once at the end, and solos on the changes in between. Mankunku follows the once-at-the-top half of that rule literally: with tune practice's Head switch on, the melody plays one chorus and then the chart clears for you.
Lead sheet / chart — The one-page written form of a tune: melody on the staff, chord symbols above it, section letters and repeat markers defining the form.
Volta (first/second ending) — Numbered endings on a repeated section: play the section, take ending 1, repeat back, then take ending 2. In jazz form terms ending 1 is usually the turnaround into the next chorus and ending 2 is the way out.
Ghost note — A note played very softly, often barely audible. Adds rhythmic texture without melodic weight. Lester Young and Stan Getz are full of ghost notes.
Guide tones — The 3rd and 7th of a chord: the two notes that actually define its quality and that move by step from one chord to the next. A comping instrument that plays nothing but guide tones still spells the changes, which is why the app's piano thins down to them on the sparser bars.
ii-V-I — The most common cadence in jazz. In C major: Dm7 → G7 → Cmaj7 (the ii, V, and I chords of the key). In C minor: Dm7b5 → G7alt → Cm7. The ii-V-I is the chord progression jazz musicians practice most.
Improvisation — Composing in real time. The whole reason ear-training and lick-practice matter: when you can hear and play in real time, you can improvise lines that respond to the harmony as it goes by.
Interval — The distance between two notes, measured in scale degrees (a third, a fifth) or in half steps (5 semitones).
Leap — An interval larger than a step (more than 2 semitones). Leaps create melodic shape; too many leaps in a row make a line sound disjointed.
Lick — A short melodic phrase (usually 1–4 bars) that fits a particular harmonic context. Musicians build vocabularies of licks by transcribing them from records or learning them from teachers, then drilling them in every key.
Modal — Music built on a single mode (a single scale) sustained over many bars, instead of moving through chord changes. Miles Davis's So What is modal: 16 bars of D Dorian, 8 bars of E♭ Dorian, 8 bars of D Dorian.
Mode — A scale built by starting on a different degree of an existing scale. The C-major scale starting on D is D Dorian. Starting on E is E Phrygian. Starting on F is F Lydian. Same notes, different tonal center, different sound.
Passing tone — A non-chord tone connecting two chord tones by step. Adds melodic motion without changing the harmonic implication.
Pentatonic — A 5-note scale. Minor pentatonic (1, b3, 4, 5, b7) is foundational in jazz, blues, rock, and most folk traditions. Major pentatonic is its bright counterpart.
Phrasing — How you shape a line — where you breathe, where you accent, where you let notes hang. Two players can play the same notes and make completely different phrases out of them.
Push (also anticipation) — Landing an arrival a half beat early, on the and-of-4 of the bar before, and letting it tie over the barline. Both the app's piano (off-beat comp hits voice the next chord) and its drummer (crash plus kick on the and-of-4 into a new section) do it.
Quartal — Built from fourths instead of thirds. McCoy Tyner is the canonical quartal pianist; quartal voicings have a more open, modal sound than triadic voicings.
Reharmonization — Changing the chords underneath a melody. The same melody can be played over many different chord progressions. Bill Evans was a master of reharmonization.
Ride bell — Striking the raised bell of the ride cymbal instead of the bow. Hard, cutting, and used to mark an arrival — Art Blakey's calling card. The app reaches for it when it doesn't crash.
Rhythm changes — Shorthand for the 32-bar form of George Gershwin's I Got Rhythm. AABA structure, with the A sections moving I-vi-ii-V repeatedly and the B section cycling dominant 7 chords down a major third. The other big "standard form" alongside the 12-bar blues. Oleo, Anthropology, Cotton Tail, and many bebop heads use rhythm changes.
Scale degree — The position of a note in a scale, numbered 1 through 7 (or 1–8 for bebop scales, 1–5 for pentatonic). The 5th of C major is G. The b3 of C minor is E♭.
Sequence — A melodic pattern repeated at different pitches. Playing 1-2-3, then 2-3-4, then 3-4-5 is a sequence.
Side A / Side B — Two of the app's practice modes. Side A is Ear Training (call and response). Side B is Lick Practice (12-key drill over a backing track). Named for the two sides of an LP, in keeping with the Blue Note Records aesthetic. Tricks and Tune Practice sit alongside them.
Spang-a-lang — The standard swing ride pattern: quarter notes on every beat with a "skip" eighth added after 2 and 4. Onomatopoeia, and the closest thing jazz has to a metronome.
Standard — A jazz tune that's part of the shared repertoire — All the Things You Are, Stella by Starlight, Autumn Leaves. Hundreds of them. Knowing standards is what lets a group of strangers sit down and play together.
Step — An interval of 1 or 2 semitones (half step or whole step).
Substitution — Replacing one chord with another that performs a similar harmonic function. The most famous is the tritone substitution — replacing G7 with D♭7 (a tritone away). Both chords share the same 3rd and 7th, so they resolve into Cmaj7 the same way.
Swing — A rhythmic feel where pairs of eighth notes are played long-short instead of evenly. The defining rhythmic quality of pre-modal jazz.
Syncopation — Emphasis on off-beats or weak beats, creating rhythmic tension against the underlying pulse. Most jazz rhythm is heavily syncopated.
Target note — A chord tone placed on a strong beat (beats 1 and 3 in 4/4). Strong-beat chord tones anchor a line so it sounds connected to the harmony.
Tonality — A key plus a scale type. C major is one tonality; C Dorian is another; G blues is another. The app rotates one tonality per day on Side A (the "daily key").
Triad pair — Two triads that share no notes, alternated to build angular lines out of a six-note palette — C and D over a Cmaj7, or D♭m and E♭m over a C7alt. A staple of post-bop and one of the app's two tricks, drilled as one ladder of eight families, from diatonic neighbours to whole tone.
Transposing instrument — An instrument whose written notes don't match concert pitch. Tenor sax is in B♭: when you read a C, you sound a B♭ (a major 9th lower than written, when treated as the same octave; actually a major 2nd lower in the same staff position). Alto sax is in E♭. Trumpet is in B♭. The app handles transposition automatically — you read in your written key, the app stores in concert.
Turnaround — A short cadence (often I-vi-ii-V) at the end of a chorus that loops the form back to the top. Builds harmonic tension that resolves at the next downbeat. Turnaround is also one of Lick Practice's ten progressions (I–VI7–ii–V, a bar each). Mankunku also plays a one-bar ii-V turnaround between cycles of a Deep Practice or Tricks drill, aimed at the key you're about to play.
Two-feel — Playing half notes in the bass instead of walking quarters, giving a section a lighter, more open lift. Jazz convention often puts the head in 2 and opens up to 4 for the solos. Mankunku's ballad style is permanently in 2; swing and straight may sit in 2 for the first chorus of a tune and then latch into 4 for the rest of the take.
Vamp — A repeating chord (or short pattern) sustained for a while. So What opens with a vamp. A Night in Tunisia has a vamp at the end of each chorus. Three of Lick Practice's ten progressions are two-bar vamps (major, minor, dominant), and every Tricks drill runs over one.
Walking bass — A bass line in steady quarter notes that connects each chord to the next, usually approaching the coming downbeat by a step or a half step. The default bass behaviour in the swing and straight styles.
Voice leading — Smooth connection between notes, particularly across chord changes — picking the closest available pitch on the next chord. Good voice leading is what makes a chord progression sound inevitable instead of jumpy.
Pitch and tuning
Cents — A measure of how flat or sharp a note is, in 100ths of a semitone. ±5 cents is "in tune"; ±20 cents starts to sound off; ±50 cents is the edge between two adjacent notes.
Clarity — A confidence number (0–1) reported by the pitch detector. High clarity means the algorithm is confident the note is real; low clarity means there's noise or the signal isn't strongly periodic. Mankunku ignores any reading below 0.80.
MIDI note number — A number representing a pitch. Middle C is 60; each integer is one semitone. A4 (the orchestral tuning A, 440 Hz) is MIDI 69. The app uses MIDI numbers internally because they make math (transposition, intervals) trivial.
Onset — The moment a new note begins. Detected by the app from a sudden energy spike at the start of the note.
Pitch detection — The process of figuring out which note is being played from the audio signal. Mankunku uses an autocorrelation-based algorithm called the McLeod Pitch Method.
App-specific
Backing style — Which band you practice with: Swing, Bossa Nova, Ballad, or Straight. Chosen per session on the Lick Practice and tune-practice setup screens (not in Settings). Ear Training never plays one.
Bleed filter — A filter that drops detected notes that look like room bleed from the speakers — the app re-hearing its own playback through your microphone. Helps when you're not using headphones. It always runs, but whether its result becomes your score is decided for you — Tune Practice uses it at every strictness level, and nothing else does. There is no user-facing toggle.
Combinatorial lick (or phrase) — A catalog phrase built by pairing a melodic shape (written as scale degrees) with a rhythm template, rather than written out by hand — under half the catalog: 471 of these, alongside 652 hand-written ones. Indistinguishable from a hand-written lick in use: same difficulty scale, same transposition, same scoring.
Curated lick — A hand-written lick that ships with the app: 652 of them, more than half the catalog. (Loosely, the whole shipped catalog is sometimes called curated, as opposed to your own licks.)
Daily key (Daily tonality) — The key + scale type Side A practises in. Chosen from the date and the tonalities you've unlocked, so it's the same on all your devices; it holds for two or three days while you have only a few unlocked, and changes every day once you have seven or more. Can be overridden on the Settings page, under Ear Training.
Detected note — A note the app heard through your microphone. Each detected note has a pitch, an onset time, a duration, and a clarity score.
Deep Practice — The single-lick drill launched from a lick's Practice button (or as a session type on the Lick Practice page). Continuous cycles through that lick's unlocked keys, worst key first, joined by a one-bar turnaround, with keys dropping out as you clear them at 95%. Launched from the report's Drill recommendation it runs the focus drill instead: that key alone on a tempo staircase until it's back at the lick's saved tempo, then the other keys re-admitted one per cleared rotation, weakest first.
Difficulty band — The 10-color name for a difficulty range. Beginner, Elementary, Easy, Moderate, Intermediate, Challenging, Advanced, Expert, Master, Virtuoso.
Fluency score — How a trick is graded: formula conformance at 70% plus rhythm at 30%, instead of a lick's 60/40 pitch and rhythm. Same 0–100 scale, same grade boundaries.
Conformance — Whether a note you played belongs to a trick's formula, judged by pitch class alone (octave never matters). Full credit for exactly what the formula calls for, 0.7 for the right device but the wrong member, 0.4 for something merely in the scale, 0.1 for a chromatic miss, 0 for a note you didn't play.
Grade — The label assigned to your overall percentage: Perfect (≥ 95%), Great (≥ 85%), Good (≥ 70%), Fair (≥ 55%), or Try Again (< 55%).
Insertion point — A window inside a tune's form where a known progression was detected and a lick will fit. Tune Practice schedules one scored window per insertion point and suggests licks that match the progression, transposed to its local key and ranked by how well you know them there. See Playing Over Tunes.
Connection bonus — Points mode's doubling rule: clear the 90% pass bar on two consecutive insertion points and the second one scores twice. Rewards coming out of one lick ready for the next.
Strictness — How much Tune Practice tells you about each insertion point. Guided names the lick to play, Standard names only the progression, Solo names nothing; at Standard and Solo any of your licks that fits the spot counts, and the best match is your result. It never changes how the app listens (any octave, at every level) or the grading scale.
Progression colour — Each of the ten progression types has an identity hue that follows it everywhere: the category pill on a lick card, the Side B session header, and the bands on a tune chart. Consistent colour means a ii-V is recognisable at a glance wherever it appears.
Practice tag — The mark that puts a lick in your Side B practice set: + Practice on its card on the Licks page, or ☆ Add to Practice on its own page. Tagged licks rotate through the keys they've earned in Lick Practice sessions, gaining keys toward all 12. A tagged lick also needs a progression tag before a session will schedule it.
Progression tag — One of the Practice over pills on a lick's page: which of Lick Practice's ten backing progressions the lick is served over. Seeded from the lick's category when you set it (only for progressions the lick's own chord changes fit), never guessed after that; pills that don't fit are greyed out with the reason.
Proficiency — Your 1–100 level in each key and each scale type, adjusted from a rolling window of your recent accuracy. Proficiency is what gates ear-training content and drives key/scale unlocks. See Levels & Difficulty.
Tonal Mastery — Your average proficiency across all 12 scale types and all 12 keys, with never-attempted slots counted as zero. The headline progress number on the home and Progress pages.
Source — Where a phrase came from: curated (hand-written), combined (scale × rhythm pairing), generated (a trick's freshly made example), or yours (user-entered from the editor, user-recorded from a recording).
Tonality — A key plus a scale type. See Tonality under the jazz vocabulary above.
Transposition (in the app) — The runtime shift of a curated lick from concert C (where it's stored) to whatever key the day is in (or whatever key you chose).
Trick — A parameterized melodic device — an enclosure or a triad pair — practiced for fluency rather than exact reproduction. See Practicing Tricks.
Variant — One specific setting of a trick's parameters (Enclose the 3rd, above then below; Minor pair from the ♭9). Variants are what you unlock, star, and track progress against — eight per device, arranged on a mastery ladder.
Pass (on the mastery ladder) — One attempt at 90% or better inside a Trick Drill. Three passes of a variant, counted across all keys, unlocks the next rung. Not to be confused with the 95% needed to clear a key out of the rotation.
Continuous / Call & Response — Lick Practice's two modes. Continuous: the app plays the lick once as a demo, then you play it through your keys back to back over a non-stop band. Call & Response: in every key the app plays the lick first and you answer it.
Count-in — The bar (or bars) of click before the music starts. Lick Practice, Tricks and Tune Practice count in one bar; Record a lick counts in two, in woodblock, so the switch to the drum-kit click marks your entrance. Ear Training clicks a bar before each phrase but gives no count-off before your answer — you come in on the click that's still going.
Demo — In Lick Practice and Tricks, the app playing the line to you before your turn (the Listen tab, in red). In Deep Practice the first cycle always opens with one; later cycles only while the key at the head of the rotation is under 90% — and never on a refill cycle.
Focus drill (focus ramp) — The shape of Deep Practice launched from the report's Drill card: that key alone, 10% under the lick's saved tempo, stepping up after a clear and down (three steps) after a miss under 75%, until it's back at the saved tempo; then the other keys return one per cleared rotation, weakest first.
Home key (entry key) — The key a lick is written in, where its key ladder starts. A new lick has only its home key; the others unlock from there around the circle of fifths. For tricks it's your written C.
Lead-sheet row — The taller row in a Lick Practice session's chord stack that shows the line as sheet music. It appears for one key per lick — the most recently unlocked, while its rolling score is under 75% — and that key is played three times running in Continuous mode, only the last pass counting.
Phase of expertise — The four stages a lick's progress chart names: new (fewer than 12 keys unlocked), learning (all 12, under 120 BPM), proficient (120–149 BPM), expert (150 BPM and up). A mirror, not a gate.
Reading pause — The two bars the band vamps (a ii-V into the new key) before a lead-sheet row's first pass, when that key doesn't open the cycle — time to switch from playing by memory to reading. The tab reads Read, then counts you in.
Refill cycle — In Deep Practice, the cycle after you've cleared every key in the rotation: the full set comes back, the tempo steps up, and there's no demo.
Rolling score — A running average of your recent attempts in one key of one lick, weighted toward the newest. It decides which key Deep Practice puts first, whether a demo plays, and whether the sheet music shows.
Rotation — The keys a lick (or trick variant) cycles through in a session: the ones it has unlocked so far. In Deep Practice and Tricks, keys you clear at 95% drop out of it until the next refill.
Tempo Bump — The Deep Practice setup knob (0.5–5%, 1% by default): how much the tempo rises each time you clear the whole rotation, rounded up to a whole BPM. It also sizes the focus drill's steps, and governs Trick Drills.
OMR — Optical music recognition: software that reads printed music from an image. The PDF importer can take an .omr.json transcription from the repository's OMR tool for a more accurate melody.
Written pitch — The note names printed in your part, as opposed to concert pitch. The app shows keys, charts and note names in your instrument's written pitch (set by Instrument in Settings).