MINI-COURSE
Foundations of making music
WITH GUY MICHELMORE
FREE
Taught by professional composer Guy Michelmore, this mini-course offers a solid foundation to build you skills. We’ll cover the basics of writing melodies, building chord progressions, creating interesting rhythms, and developing musical ideas – and provide plenty of practical tasks along the way.
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What You'll Learn
module 1
A quick introduction to the composition process. We’ll look at where ideas come from and how you can reliably create your initial creative spark
module 2
An exploration of how chord progressions work, why they’re important, and how harmony informs the other aspects of a composition. We’ll also show how to create your own progressions with a real-time scoring demonstration.
module 3
Melody
A discussion of how melodies are linked to the chord progression, and how you can use different techniques to create themes and motifs. You’ll also see Guy compose a theme with accompanying chord progression.
module 4
Rhythm
Rhythm stands apart from melody and harmony, but is equally as important in creating a great piece of music. Here we discuss giving your music its own rhythmic identity and how rhythm applies to melody, harmony, and structure.
module 5
Texture
Developing the layers of your arrangement is as important as the music content itself. Here we show how to develop a great sound, complete with a composition demo that uses texture to breathe new life into your music.
module 6
Taught by an award-winning composer
"These courses are the best medicine for writer's block ever."
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PRACTICAL projects
ACTIVE LEARNING
Alongside engaging video tutorials, you’ll get plenty of hands-on activities – because the best way to learn is by doing.
You dive into MinusONE projects – downloadable stems with step-by-step tutorials – each designed to help you sharpen one important skill at a time, whilst also avoiding the 'fear of the blank page'.
DISCORD SERVER
LEARN WITH FELLOW Composers AROUND THE WORLD
This course includes lifetime access to our ever-growing community of music makers on Discord. You can chat to other people taking the course, pick up and share tips, and grow your network. You can also share your MinusONEs and Projects from the course to gain useful feedback and pointers from your peers. Don’t worry if you’ve never used Discord before, it’s simple to get set up, and totally free.
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