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Welcome to Write Like Mozart,

an introduction to classical music
composition.
My name is Peter Edwards and I'll be the,
the host,
the tour guide, I guess the instructor for
the next six weeks.
Before I get to an overview of the class,
what I wanted
to review was the expectations I have in
terms of your knowledge.
The things I'll assume that you're
familiar with.
From the very first video.
This isn't a typical music theory class.
It's not a music rudiments class.
We don't reivew the really basic stuff.
I'll assume you already have some of that
knowledge.
So let me review what that knowledge is.
First is an ability
to read both bass and treble clefs.
For some people you say are upper wind
players or upper string players.
You may be quite comfortable with treble
clef but
not so much with bass clef, or the
reverse.
You play cello or bass, and you're
comfortable
with bass clef, not so much treble clef.
It'll be important to have a familiarity
with both of these things.
A fair degree of comfort with both of
them.
Also a familiarity with music, rudimentary
music terminology like, note value names.
Now I use the words quarter and eighth
and half and sixtheenth and thirtysecond,
and whole note.
If you've learned the British terminology
that should be fine.
I hope you'll, be comfortable with the
translation.
I won't use the British terminology of
quaver and crotchet and things like that.
But it shouldn't be too much of a problem
I imagine.
If you need to, sort of, do a quick
translation
in your mind from, say, say quaver to
eighth note.
Key signatures.
It's good if you know all the key
signatures, but to be
honest, you won't need to know much beyond
four sharps or four flats.
But a comfort with reading key signatures
would be important.
Familiarity with reading meter and time
signatures.
And of course, a familiarity with major
and minor scales.
It's not so important that you know all
the details of these
different minor scales like the harmonic
and melodic and natural things like that.
But a familiarity with them will be
important.
Also the ability to read, both melodically
and
harmonically, intervals up to at least a
tenth.
Up to a twelfth will be good too, but up
to a tenth is probably enough.
I'll also assume that you're familiar with
the
basic chord types that you'll find in
tonal harmony.
So tonal harmony is triadic in nature, so
I assume that you have familiarity with
the triads.
The major, minor, and at least the
diminished triads.
Augmented triads we won't see, but, of
course always good to know it.
And as well seventh chords.
The ones at least that we find in
classical music.
So the dominant seventh chord, or the
major/minor seventh chord.
Minor seventh chords, and to a certain
degree major, major seventh chords.
But then also the diminished seventh
chord, and the half
diminished seventh chord.
Basic Roman numeral analysis We'll be
starting with really basic chord
progressions, so
having a basic understanding of Roman
numeral analysis in the beginning is fine.
We'll do a lot of Roman numeral analysis,
and I'll be using these symbols a lot.
So over the course of six weeks, you'll
probably develop your skills with it.
And I guess that's more or less it.
But I should say if you feel, oh, I'm a
little bit shaky on some of these
things, then please understand that
there's a lot,
there are a lot of resources on the web.
And one that I think is quite useful is
musictheory.net.
So if you feel like you need a refresher,
visit the
website and review some of these things
before even beginning week one.
Well, of course, we can't cover everything
in six weeks.
We have a limited amount of time.
So, what will we do over the next six
weeks?
In week one,
we'll talk about chord voicing, and even
talking about chord voicing, we're
already talking about stylistic traits of
music from the late 18th Century.
We'll talk about basic chord progressions,
or harmonic progressions, in root
position.
And we'll do four part, four part voice
leading, and I'll teach you the various,
what
are essentially algorithms, for moving
from chords of
different distances away from each-other
in root position.
And we'll look at the, perhaps the most
basic
kind of texture that we find, which is
homorhythmic homophony.
We too will build off of those
basic progressions by expanding beyond
root position.
Chords, and introduce the use of
inversions.
I'll also introduce keyboard voicing and
how to go about making an accompaniment.
Week three.
We'll look at sequential progressions.
Perhaps you're already familiar with
sequential progressions.
The circle of Fitz for instance, is a very
common progression that
you find in a lot of different genres and
periods of music.
You find it in classical music as well,
so we'll definitely look at that in week
three.
Along with two other sequential
progressions.
We'll also look at non core tones, the use
of patterns, and
a texture type called polyphony.
Week four, we continue with our basic
progressions, but adding in diatonic
substitutions, and I should say, but as we
go along over the course of weeks we
will be enriching a kind of, say, palette,
of harmonic possibilities.
We start with very progressions and root
position and add in certain kinds of
inversions.
We won't add in just any kind of
inversion.
I'll show you certain
kinds of inversions that are used.
And you'll have kind of a, well, what you
see on the website, which is a compendium
of harmonic progressions that you find.
So, one five one progression.
But what kind of inversions do we find,
and what
kind of substitutions do we find with
that, for instance?
So, anyway, we'll talk about basic
progressions with diatonic substitutions
in week four.
That is substitution, substituting one
chord for another chord in the same key.
Cadences, that is how we end phrases.
Melodic writing
techniques and the building blocks of
form, which are called period forms.
When we take two phrases and put them
together, they create what's called a
period form.
Week five, we'll continue looking at
basic progressions.
But this time with chromatic
substitutions.
That means if you take, a, a chord and you
substitute it for another
chord, but that other chord is not using
the notes of the original key.
We have what's called a chromatic
substitution.
We'll also talk about more elaborate
versions of period forms.
And I'll introduce you to two voice
counterpoint.
Week six, we'll talk about what I call
progressions within progressions.
It's completely possible in classical
music to take a simple progression in
one key and insert another progression
in another key within that original
progression.
So we'll take a look at how that's done.
We'll also take a look at one of the most
common
tools used in late 18th century music,
which is the Alberti bass.
And we'll discuss rounded binary form.
Every week I hope to offer you a number of
resources to help you learn.
Now some people feel that watching the
videos
is how you learn but that's not completely
true.
The videos help, and they certainly do
provide the bulk of the learning.
But in order to learn how to do what we
need
to learn in this class, we have to
actually do it.
So this is a class where we learn by
doing.
So that means in addition to the video
presentations on topics,
I'll also give demonstrations about how to
use these new ideas.
Or these new techniques I'm showing you,
to create music.
And we'll also look at some examples from
the repertoire.
And analyze them, and see how the
composers using
the things that we talk about to create
their music.
In some
works I even insert what's called guided
practice.
It's, it's like a video presentation, but
instead you have, step-by-step, something
to do.
And you take one step, and then I take the
step with you, and I explain the answer.
Then you take the next step, and then,
you, you continue the video.
And I explain how to do that next step.
So that I can give you guided practice.
Each week there'll also be
self-assessment, and I'll give a solution
key for all the self-assessment.
Now, in what we're doing, some weeks.
You know, in the very beginning, it'll be
okay to have a solution, because
you won't have many options.
But as we go on in weeks, even the
self-assessments will be hard to evaluate
using the solution key.
There won't be a single answer to them.
And so there will be a lot of
possibilities.
We can use the discussion forums as a way
to, to clarify things and, and solve
problems together.
I'll also provide you handouts that will
give you kind of
like a list of things you need to be
watching out for.
And you can, kind of a checklist that you
can check your work against.
Finally, there will be, in addition to
handouts, there
will be reference materials that are
available on course pages.
Go to them if you need to review some of
the things that are in the videos.
This may be a bit quicker as a form of
review.
And I highly recommend that, in fact, if,
if I'm going to be talking about,
if you see a video, it's going to
be addressing basic harmonic progressions
with inversions.
Then go to
the compendium of chord progressions and
look at
some of the examples of inversions before
you
even watch the videos so that you have
some basis and some foundation for
watching the videos.
Then if you have additional questions, or
you want to look at a summary of some
of the things I talked about in the
videos, and go back to those reference
materials again.
One of the things that I think
distinguishes this from sort of garden
variety music
theory class is that all of the
assignments are compositions.
And the class is called Write Likes Mozart
for a reason.
The point of learning all of the things
we'll learn about this
style of the music is so that we can
actually make it.
So, assignments, most of which will be
self-assign, self-assessments,
will all be compositions, or compositional
in nature.
And if we look at this list of
things that you'll compose, it's actually
pretty amazing.
And if you get to the end of six weeks and
you're able to do these things,
it will be a huge advance, probably, for
many of you, of where you are right now.
So what will we do?
Well, we'll look at a four voice chorale.
We'll compose a four voice chorale.
A duo for instrument and piano.
A three voice polyphonic passage.
Two voice contrapuntal phrase, and an
entire dance for piano.
Now some of these will be exercises of
nature.
That is the two voice contrapuntal phrase
for instance is a single phrase.
It could find its way into a composition
as a single
phrase but it's not a complete piece in
and by itself.
The four voice chorale will be a small
composition, a complete composition.
And the dance for piano will also be a
complete composition but nonetheless it
will all be composition based.
Well, since we'll be composing a lot,
we'll need to write down
a lot of music so we need to deal with
music notation.
Now as far as I'm concerned, for any of
the self assessments, any method of music
notation is acceptable.
If you want to do everything by hand.
Or if you want to do things computer
generated
it's fine.
For many of you, you already may have
a program like Finale or Sibelius that
you're using.
And of course you're welcome to use either
of those programs.
If you don't already have a music notation
software
program, of course you could also buy
Finale or Sibelius.
They're a bit pricey in their full
versions.
But you can purchase them.
But there are a number of other options as
well.
There's some free music notation software
options.
The two main ones I'm familiar with are
Noteflight and MuseScore.
Now, MuseScore is a downloadable software
that you install on your
computer, and Noteflight is more like the
Gmail of music notation software.
That is, you have an account online and
all the music notation is done online,
your scores
are stored in the cloud and It's actually
a
really nice way if you want to share your
scores,
embed them in blogs, websites, and things
like that.
Actually a really nice option.
so, if you're looking to maybe learn how
to
use a music notation software program, but
you're not looking
on, into spending like $500 to do so, then
you might want to try one of these free
versions.
MuseScore is a bit more like Sibelius.
I think it takes a barely a sense of kind
of model.
Finally, I should say that exercises and
assignments
are going to be given in two formats.
The Noteflight template, and PDF.
Now, the nice thing about a Noteflight
template is that
it's something that I can create in
NoteFlight and share with well,
16,000 or 20,000 people, however many
students want to, to do the assignment.
It's no problem.
I can save it as an activity and you can
each just get a link to it and you can
have it in your own account and work on
the assignment
and then it saves to your own account.
So I'll be
using that since it is all web-based.
I'm going to use that as a, as a format
for the class.
But at the same time, I'll also make PDFs
available for those of you who want to
just,
use them in their own music notation
programs, or
if you just want to do them by hand.
If you want to use the note flight
templates, you do
have to sign up for an account, but the
account is free.
So that's not a big deal.
Well, I guess that's about it in terms of
an introduction.
Let's move on now and get right into the
thick
of things and start with talking about
chords in classical music.