Welcome to the compiled documentation for Prime Period Theory (PPT). This site serves three primary purposes:
1. A Perspective on Music
PPT offers a descriptive framework to analyse and conceptualise music, treating pitch, rhythm, and timbre as unified expressions of prime-generated periodicity.
2. Interactive Components
Interactable music reference tools that bring PPT to life. These components are used throughout the documentation to demonstrate theoretical concepts, but are also independently usable by anyone who wants to integrate them into their own projects. Recent additions include interactive Control Panels, Sequencers, and an EventBus architecture that allows components to communicate and respond to user inputs dynamically.
3. OKF Knowledge Library
An agent and human-readable knowledge bundle structured in the Open Knowledge Format (OKF). Referencing standards like Karpathy's LLMWiki and Google's Open Knowledge Format, this semantic core is browsable as raw concepts or easily importable into any LLM conversation context.
Sample LLM Prompt
Please read the Prime Period Theory knowledge bundle at https://ppt.midlifemuso.com/okf-bundle.txt. Reply with a short confirmation that you understand the core concepts, and wait for my next instructions.About the Project & Author
Hi, I'm Sharim Chua, a multi-instrumentalist and engineering leader based in Melbourne, Australia. Like many, my early musical history was rooted in classical piano training. However, I found it restrictive—the focus was heavily on rote memorisation and technical drills rather than true expression. It wasn't until I stepped away, learned guitar, and eventually returned to the piano that I discovered a renewed love for music through an ear-first, intuitive approach.
Prime Period Theory (PPT) was born out of my desire to apply first-principles systems thinking to my music pedagogy. Drawing on over two decades of experience scaling systems at companies like Amazon and DoorDash (Respec.work), and my work as a coach at Midlife Muso, I wanted to bridge these two worlds.
I approach music as a language. Just as there are immense benefits to understanding the grammar and structure of spoken language, the same holds true for music. From early childhood, we are taught to classify the visual realm with high specificity—learning shapes, colours, and dimensions. Yet, in the auditory realm, our vocabulary is often limited to coarse concepts like high/low, fast/slow, and loud/soft.
This framework serves as a descriptive, not prescriptive scaffold to bridge that gap. By recognising that these aren't disconnected concepts but rather different manifestations of timing at macro and micro levels, my goal is to simplify and scale back traditional notation without the burden of overly technical language. PPT is designed to serve as a shared grammar and vocabulary—a way to understand and communicate the structures of melody, rhythm, and harmony in our listening, playing, and composition, rather than simply inferring them from notes on a page.
This continues to be a work-in-progress project that I intend to contribute to for the foreseeable future, refining concepts and building out new interactive tools over time.
Licensing & Open Source
Prime Period Theory is an open framework. The theoretical concepts, documentation, and OKF knowledge bundle are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. You are completely free to use, share, adapt, and build upon these concepts for any purpose, provided you give appropriate attribution.
The interactive Web Components and underlying source code for this documentation are licensed under the MIT License, allowing you to freely integrate these tools into your own projects.
Get Involved
Whether you're an educator, a musician, or a technologist, I'd love to hear what you think of the framework and its tools. This perspective has been evolving over many years through interesting conversations about the nature of music, and I would love to have more of those with people. Please reach out if you'd like to discuss these ideas, share how you're using PPT, or contribute to the project!
