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.
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 on Side B: bass, comping (piano or organ), and drums. Plays underneath your practice.
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.
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.
Comping — Accompaniment played by a piano or guitar — the chordal "comping" that fills in the harmony underneath a soloist.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 — The app's two 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.
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").
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.
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.
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
Adaptive level — The 1–100 number that reflects how complex the material the app is feeding you is. Climbs when you're consistently above 85% accuracy in the rolling window; falls when you're consistently below 50%. See Levels & Difficulty.
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. Applied automatically during scoring; there's no user-facing toggle (an internal bleedFilterEnabled flag, off by default, controls whether its result becomes the primary score).
Combinatorial lick — A lick generated by pairing a scale pattern with a rhythm template. About 86 of these in the catalog, alongside the roughly 450 hand-written ones.
Curated lick — A hand-written lick. The bulk of the catalog.
Daily key (Daily tonality) — The key + scale type the app picks for you each day. Same pick for everyone on the same date. Rotates at midnight. Can be overridden in Side A's settings.
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.
Difficulty band — The 10-color name for a difficulty range. Beginner, Elementary, Easy, Moderate, Intermediate, Challenging, Advanced, Expert, Master, Virtuoso.
Generated phrase — A phrase produced by the algorithmic generator at runtime, based on your difficulty level and category settings.
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 from your book that match the progression and its local key. 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 and how strictly it listens. Guided (full cues, any octave), Standard (cues on approach, any octave), Solo (no cues, exact register). It never changes 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.
Pitch complexity / Rhythm complexity — The two underlying numbers that average into your displayed level (a plain mean of the two). They climb (and fall) independently based on your accuracy in each dimension. See Levels & Difficulty.
Practice tag — A star you can apply to a lick to add it to your Side B practice book. Tagged licks rotate through all 12 keys in Lick Practice sessions.
Proficiency — Per-key and per-scale tracking that drives the unlocking system. Different from the displayed level — your level is one number; your proficiency is many numbers, one for each key and one for each scale type.
Source — Where a phrase came from: curated (hand-written), generated (algorithmic), combined (scale × rhythm pairing), or user-created (user-entered for step entry, user-recorded for recordings).
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).