Theory I for the Aspiring Composer

The class is a music theory course, with the end goal of creating a basic and original musical composition. Students will utilize the theory that they learned in the course to create the composition. 

There are two classes each week. During the first class I will introduce a set of musical theory principles to learn, and during the second class we will practice those rules or principles. Students will be then invited to complete a short assignment after the second class, which will be reviewed briefly during the next week. 

During the last week of class, we will discuss how to put some of those ideas together into a basic composition. Because my experience in music school dealt with what is called voice leading, the way I will discuss composition and theory will be for four choral voices or piano (such as a chorale or hymn). But students are welcome to experiment with other forms of instrumentation while utilizing the discussed musical theory ideas. 

I will be doing a lot of talking as the instructor, but will ask questions and will attempt to demonstrate visually the theory through musical notation, as well as playing the theory on a keyboard. Students are welcome to message me with questions about the theory or how to do the assignments. 

Required experience: Students need to be familiar with how to read music, and ideally know where to find notes on the piano, although they don't need to know how to play the instrument. It's also best if students have some kind of background in an instrument or with singing, although that's not required either. I'll be starting with how to put notes together into scales and chords, so it's best if the student at least knows how to read music. 

As part of the music reading it's helpful if students can read treble and bass clef. If not I'm happy to review the clefs as well, those students might need to do their own outside practice so they can quickly identify where a note is on sheet music. 

We will go fairly quickly through the course, so students need to be prepared to receive a lot of information. The assignments will be a good way for them to process what we learn, but they will need to be ready to be inundated with musical ideas. 

Topics and General Schedule: 

Week 1 (Week of May 30): Major Scales and Key Signatures 
Week 2 (Week of June 6): Minor Scales and Key Signatures 
Week 3 (Week of June 13): Major and Minor Triads (Chords) 
Week 4 (Week of June 20): Augmented and Diminished Triads (Chords) 
Week 5 (Week of June 27 and July 4): Tonality and the I Chord 
Week 6 (Week of July 11): The Dominant or V Chord 
Week 7 (Week of July 18): The Subdominant or IV Chord 
Week 8 (Week of July 25): Creating our Compositions 

Finally, I hope to use this class as a springboard for further classes in music theory and composition, where we can build on the basic concepts.