Teoría I para el aspirante a compositor

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 will be two videos released each week, and the students will be free to finish the videos at their leisure. Each will video will introduce a topic and then have an optional assignment at the end for practice. Students will be welcome to reach out with questions or problems that they are having understanding the material. All total there will be eight topics over a four week period. 

During the last two weeks of topics, 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. 

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; -First Topic: Major Scales and Key Signatures 
               - Second Topic:  Minor Scales and Key Signatures 
Week 2; -Third Topic:  Major and Minor Triads (Chords) 
               -Fourth Topic: Augmented and Diminished Triads (Chords) 
Week 3; -Fifth Topic: Tonality and the I Chord 
               - Sixth Topic:  The Dominant or V Chord 
Week 4; -Seventh Topic: The Subdominant or IV Chord 
               -Eighth Topic: Creating our Compositions 

All videos will be released on Monday and Wednesday by 8:00 AM, Mountain time zone, each week of the duration of the flex course. Students will be instructed on the above topics via video, including being taught how to build each of those topics, how to analyze them, and then will be given assignments on how to practice the above topics. 

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.