How do you get others to learn your song without listening to your recording and reading a song sheet? Do you need to know any music theory to write a song? How can you make a song last beyond you and your lifetime?
Being able to express yourself through original music is quite a feat. It’s another to get someone else to learn your music. We will study established songs that have met the test of time.
Whether you’re a budding song writer or music theory aficionado, notating what you hear is a skill you can develop and get good at. It’s not just the pitch but also the duration of the note. You will need to accurately represent the timing, rhythm, the rests, the meter and other aspects of the song. Through this process, you can improve, correct, and refine your song.
Please don’t say, “I just press this key on the keyboard and the computer programme does it for me.”
Before I knew much about music theory, I wrote songs by hand and produced a solo piano (instrumental) CD which I submitted to audition and get into Utrecht Conservatory to study composition. Decades later, I realize the chords I used were common chord progressions. I couldn’t sing the songs then because I didn’t know about optimal vocal range and transposition. Now I am rewriting those songs so that I can sing them. Join me on this journey.
Learning Objectives
- Build music vocabulary: notation, music symbols, expression and dynamics, time signature, key signature, chords
- How to determine the time signature, key signature, and other set-ups
- How to capture rhythm and timing
- Pitch and intervals
- Song forms
Testimonials
This excellent Melody course was an exploration of what make a melody famous. You learn to understand the construction of a melody from the simplex intervals, arpeggios, scales, repetition, modulation to others keys, and non-tonal notes used by the composer. Learning to listening to the music and the mood that produce to the listener with the different tool used, add another aspect you learn in this course. All this was make easy by our teacher Ann, her explanation, material provided. The intellectual curiosity provided by other members of this class, make this course very enjoyable. – Spring 2022
The Beginning Music Theory class was just what I needed as a beginning piano student to help build understanding of music.
I loved Annes upbeat and enthusiastic teaching style. She also has a way of making each student feel at ease and really wants to help each student.
Anne is a knowledgeable and passionate teacher who brings her own brand of fire to each and every class. I took both Beginning Music Theory and Harmony with her because I have never played an instrument nor learned to read music. As an adult learner, I needed to get a broader view of musical language than I expected to get from instrument lessons. Anne’s ukulele was a complete surprise, and even more surprising, I now own and actually play one (well…I CAN play some chords). If you’ve never played nor had college level instruction in an instrument, I strongly encourage you to take classes with Anne and punch through the wall of “music appreciation”.
– Stuart Gedal, longtime Manager and Corporate Trainer