Forewords

I've always enjoyed figuring out what makes a piece work. What is going on? And what about it do I like? (or not like!) This has been my approach as one of the authors for this book and the online courses. I try to make sense of what we're hearing, and to explain how all the components fit together. From there, you can take what is useful and apply it to your own writing.

If you are new to composing music, this book/course might not be the best starting point. However, it may be a good fit if you are: (1) comfortable with scales, chords, and music notation; (2) familiar with functional harmony and analyzing music; and (3) you have some experience writing music. The book is mainly intended for someone who would like to expand their toolset.

Being a music enthusiast as a kid, I took my first "official" music composition lesson at the age of 10. While I was an okay child pianist, becoming a lifelong composer had always been my dream as a kid. After spending a year learning intervals, chords, scales, and part-writing, my instructor suggested that I start writing music using the theories we had studied. Standing in front of a huge piece of manuscript paper, I was puzzled. "Exactly how and when am I supposed to use all this stuff I've learned?"

Fast forward 10 years later. As a music college student, I was pounded with a huge range of theories: modal harmony, compound chords, reharmonization, etc. School lectures were good, and theory books useful, yet the same question lingered in my mind. Everyone could teach me what the theory was, but no one was able to teach me how I should assemble that theory into a good piece of music. Sure, learning what modes are and how they are structured helped in becoming a better musicologist but it didn't do much in terms of becoming a better composer. Learning the diminished scale's structure was one thing but actually applying the scale in practical writing was another.

How does music create emotion? And what devices can we, as composers use to get that emotional impact to resonate with the audience?

This is the question that I ask myself the most when starting a new scoring project. Regardless of whether I'm writing music for a blockbuster film trailer or scoring a student film my intent is always the same, to maximize the emotional impact of the scene through the use of smart compositional devices.

Thanks to the rapid development of online media platforms, acquiring information has never been easier. As a result, there is incredible accessibility to music education resources, although many are of questionable quality. It's common to come across inaccurate information, misusage of musical terms, and hasty conclusions of a debatable subject without considering room for discussion.

In 2017, we began our journey to create a reliable teaching resource that we can share with the broader music community. Because many musical terms or evaluations are not universally unified, varying considerably between schools, even a single musical term or piece can be dissected and analyzed in different ways depending on your educational background. For this reason, we based our database on Berklee's harmony principles, which have been systematized and proven reliable over many decades.