He says that he was a student of Juan de Monte and that he obtained the chair of music at the University of Salamanca for his commentaries on the works of Boethius (cum Boetium in musica legeremus).
In 1482, when he published his Musica, he revolutionarily proposed a new, five-limit division of the monochord, breaking from the Pythagorean system that had dominated the medieval ars antiqua through Boethius and Guido of Arezzo.
This system of musical tuning yielded consonant perfect fourths and fifths, but the thirds and sixths were rough.
Afterwards he worked in Italy, primarily at Bologna, where his theories engendered serious controversy, even polemics, from conservatives such as Franchino Gaffurio.
Less successful was his attempt to replace hexachordal notation with a system of eight syllables denoting the eight sounds of a diatonic scale: psal-li-tur-per-vo-ces-is-tas.