Fall 2018: Improvising and Writing By Hand for Composers
Enrollment has closed for the fall live semester.
Welcome
Week 1 - Building Your Foundational Vocabulary
How to Use the C Major Chart
C Major v2
Learning Chord Progressions for Composers
Post Your Insights and Questions for Week 1 Here!
Masterclass #1 Replay
Week 2
01 - Understanding Intervals
02 - Making Intervals Intuitive
03 - Chromatic Intervals
04 - Making Triads Intuitive
05 - Dominant 7th
Download: Accompaniment Figures
Example: Writing Out Intervals as Your Play Them
Masterclass #2 Replay
Post Your Insights and Questions for Week 3 Here!
Week 3 - Progressions and Functional Harmony
Download: Week 3 Vocabulary - Progressions
Week 3 - Intro
Combining Beginnings, Middles, and Endings
Connecting Progressions with Emotions
Improvising with the Progressions
Improvising a Beginning Idea
Post Your Insights and Questions for Week 3 Here!
Masterclass #3 Replay
Week 4 - Composing Your Basic Ideas
Sketching a Basic Idea, Part 1
Sketching a Basic Idea, Part 2
Post Your Insights and Questions for Week 4 Here!
AOC - Fall - 2018 - Week 4 Masterclass Unedited
Week 5
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AOC - Fall - 2018 - Week 5 Masterclass Unedited
Week 6
Post Your Insights and Questions for Week 6 Here!
AOC - Fall - 2018 - Week 6 Masterclass Unedited
Let’s get back to basics. We’ll be examining the fundamental building blocks and vocabulary of composition.
We take a deep dive into scales, intervals, triads, and seventh chords.
More on harmony. This week really breaks down how harmony works, very clearly.
We start writing out 8 measure themes. This is where things really start to click.
We’ll focus on getting the harmonic tools under our fingers at the piano. We’ll also cover minor harmony, and modulation.
A decent melody is extremely powerful and not too difficult to write, if you know just a few key tools.
See how the techniques from melodic composing and harmonic composing come together beautifully.
We’ll look at other kinds of forms and how your music can be reorganized, and still maintain it’s character.
Everybody loves embellishments!
As we finish our pieces, we’ll look at how music and time relate through beginnings, middles, and endings.
More than just writing accompaniment patterns, you will learn how to orchestrate for the piano.
We’ll finish with a nice little show and tell :)
My goal is that by the end of the semester, every decision you’ve made in your piece, is deliberate. There will be discoveries and happy accidents along the way, but each one will be backed up with real understanding.
You will have a great piece of music that you can be proud of.