Why Learn the Melody and Chord Progression? One of the best ways to master composition is to memorize the musical meaning of a passage, and be able to use it in a different way. Memorization, …
Counterpoint Part 1: Why You Should Learn Counterpoint
I've often taken a survey of my own compositional capabilities, and come to the conclusion I have one truly great weakness. That weakness: Counterpoint. Counterpoint as Evidence of True …
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Melody Writing – Part 4: 10 Great Melodies
There are just too many great melodies to pick from. None the less, I picked 10. These are guys that you can consider kung fu masters of melody. Like Mr. Miyagi says, "Everything is Melody... I mean …
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Melody Writing – Part 3: Generating Melodic Ideas
The hardest part of composing is staring at a blank page. It is easy to get caught up in the nothingness and find yourself completely out of ideas. So here are a few tips for generating melodic …
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Melody Writing – Part 2: The Tools of Melody
When composing a melody, you have to be able to simultaneously comprehend all of the different aspects of a melody, while at the same time, push them out of the active working part of your mind, so …
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Melody Writing – Part 1: Creativity and The Importance of Melody
I am a huge proponent of studying music theory. I have many reasons for this, but the main reasons really comes back to this - good music theory is written by very smart people thinking very deeply …
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