Whether you are a songwriter who wants to get started with writing commercial music or a chronic learner who has always wanted to understand how and why music conveys emotion more effectively than anything else, this course offers insights that you'll find very rewarding.
Learn by watching 3 walkthroughs on emotional music cues conveying "urgent", "calm" and "spooky". Watch and listen as the music speaks for itself AND you get step-by-step explanations about how the music examples work. These lessons are learned from my award-winning songwriting, studio production work and academic study in music and compositional theory.
I've always believed that music is one of the most powerful ways to convey emotion and help a group of people "get on the same page." Rhythm, harmony and melody all play a part, but a good composer can elicit specific emotions quickly - in order to do that, you'll need a strong vocabulary in basic music theory and you'll want to know what your ideas "sound" like before you even play a note. This course combines the art and science of this process. Plus, you'll get a full primer on music theory essentials like:
- Building major and minor scales by hand
- How major, minor and half-diminished chords are built from major and minor scales
- Learn to compose with chords as numbers, using numerals (how the pros do it)
- Write elegant, expressive and concise music that gets to the point and delivers the goods
Contents and Overview
After a brief introduction to there course details and your instructor, students will start by listening to 3 examples of music. Next, that music will be analyzed in terms of
- Rhythm
- Harmony
- Cadences
- Melody
- Color and Timbre
Next, you'll get oriented with a compositional approach to framing your musical ideas as "characters" and "situations". This approach is loosely introduced in the context of theme and variation - a common compositional approach.
Section 3 thoroughly explains how chord numerals work in the context of major and minor scales. This section explains concepts which music students may (or may not) be familiar with such as building scales, triads and 7 chords. This section also explains the appropriate nomenclature (for example a "five chord" or "root, 3rd and 5th"). This section will be a critical value to anyone without music theory training. However, students may skip this section if they already fully understand the rest of the course.
As we continue the course (in section 4) students learn about color and timbre - a crucial pair of elements for any composer to understand when writing emotionally focused music. Students will learn about register, range and timbral character.
After completing your training and background, this course will direct students through a 5 step melody/theme creation process and some clarification on how to create a musical "situation" to match a video game, film or TV scenario. Then, students will walkthrough 3 distinct and complete musical cues - each focused on either an "urgent", "calm" or "spooky" mood.
Each section of the course wraps up with a brief quiz that is designed to help students identify any areas of knowledge that they need to review. This course doesn't bog students down with a comprehensive compositional program. Instead, this course is designed in a workshop style - where students learn the most important take-aways and then are encouraged to try their hand and begin writing music that conveys emotion.
