Music Foundations
Drastically reducing your musical options while putting together chords, bass-lines and melodies will not only make composing music much quicker and more enjoyable; your chords will be solid, your bass-lines will be groovier, and your melodies will be catcher! Mostly in life fewer choices isn’t better, but in the case of writing music that works in most popular genres of music, it is. If you have been making music for a while without this knowledge, gone will be the vibe-killing days of you fumbling around on a keyboard for hours hitting and hoping, or blindly dragging notes around in your DAW wishing they would work better together, quicker. This course is not playing scales like you’d get at old-school piano lessons; you will be shown how to write music in your piano roll (or equivalent) by sticking to easily rememberable rules, alongside some very cool online musical shortcut aids that we’ll show you.
- Rhythm
Rhythm & your body
Note lengths and starting position
Bars, beats, syncopation & polyrhythms
Rhythmic precision – swing vs. straight vs. swag - Keys and Chords
All about keys – happy and sad chords
How to find the key of a song – the root note
Scales and arpeggios in practice
Musical frequency spectrum - Intro to Written Music
Understanding and creating chord charts
Chord progressions
Time & key signatures
Dynamics – score examples – Beethoven’s 5th score example
Song structure and form - Musical Notes & Chords in Relative Context
Pedal tones and leading tones
Modulations & key changes
Melody, bassline & harmony - Translating Ideas in Practice
Articulations
Musical phrasing on instruments and vocals
Dynamics & the importance of silence
Riffs and riffing
How to write a hook - Presentation and Critique of Student Projects
The importance of electronic tools for composition
Lead lines, pads and rhythmic section
Transposition in practice and theory
When & how to break the rules
Many learners these days like to use their own laptops on our courses, so we have made space in our studios for people who wish to do just that, and altered the price structure keeping the course fee low, but introducing a supplement of $75 for those learners who wish to use a school iMac loaded with Ableton, Pro Tools and Logic Pro X. We have more spaces than we have iMacs so please ensure you book your iMac if you need one as the course fee is non-refundable if you turn up with no workstation to work on. Controllers, keyboards, headphones and audio interfaces are always provided for everyone. Your hardware and software must be up to date and fit for purpose. Please email if you’re unsure as we won’t be able to hold up the class with any hardware or software issues in session time.
If you have any questions, feel free to send us a message or call (424) 653 6481. To go ahead and book, you can use the ‘BOOK NOW’ buttons, and we’ll look forward to seeing you soon!
2017 | $999
Sundays | 11 – 6
February 19, 26, March 5, 12, 19, 26
Summer School | 11 – 6
August 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26
Sundays | 11 – 6
October 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, November 5
2018: Same schedule
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Check out the student feedback from our longer Songwriting Music Producer Diploma ↓
