MUSICAL BACKGROUND PARTS: Organizing Your Beautiful Chaos

This course is geared to benefit all musical creatives in vital ways, taught in a way that's accessible to nearly any training level. It teaches the timeless, universal nuts and bolts of award-winning musical presentation, so that you can make your music the best that it can possibly be--whether you are a songwriter, self-produced indie, arranger, producer, composer, instrumentalist, or simply play an instrument at any level.

It's actually two courses combined into one, covering a LOT of ground and delivering many valuable tools. Here's what's in it:

CONTEXT:

- Composing, Arranging, Producing: where they overlap, and where they don't;

- Mission statement of an arrangement;

- Different types of changes to music, and their different impacts;

- The "Who, Why and What filter";

LINEAR BACKGROUND:

- Introduction to "vertical and horizontal axis" thinking

 - Common tones

 - Pedal tones

 - Thumb lines

 - Doubled thumb lines

 - Obligatos (and six different definitions for the term)

 - Counter-melody

RHYTHMIC BACKGROUND:

- Pads

 - Top voice-leading

 - Ostinatos

 - Sparsity vs. Clutter

 - De-cluttering your parts and production

- Implied harmony

 - Separating problem intervals

 - Concise writing

 - Contrasting your parts by sonic texture

 - Contrasting your parts by what they do

CAPSTONE: APPLYING YOUR TOOLS & MANAGING YOUR ENTRANCES

- What "Free Areas" are

 - The Envelope

 - Un-painting yourself from a corner

 - Passion vs. Perfection

 - Reinforcement, review & highlights

 - A few perspectives & tips on audio engineering

 - Final reminders & wrap up