Welcome to the course a practical guys to music
expression. My name is Pedro.
I am a composer for media and guitarist.
And with this course, I wish to provide you with insights and
some tools based on practical examples that will enable you to
unlock your creative potential in music.
Whether you are starting out to see my bro, musician or an
Enthusiast. This course was made to help you
overcome. The difficulties of implementing
your musical ideas in a way, that actually expresses your
intense without being dominated by the music.
And instead you dominate the flow of musical events.
You are creating in, whatever. Genre, you are composing.
He's course will also help you to get fast the blank page
block, how to plan your musical composition, and how to use your
current knowledge of Music Theory, without losing your
musical, Instinct in the process and also to have fun making
music Any of this resonates with you, then this is a good place
to start the journey to find your own voice in your
Creations. The focus of this course is not
in music theory, since this is not its purpose.
And also because I assume that you already have a basic
knowledge of things like scales or chords.
Instead. We will be looking on focusing
more on how you can use. Contexts.
Images ideas emotions to give us a hint.
It's on how he can use the various musical elements to
express ourselves in our music compositions.
It is expected that you use. What is discussed in this course
and apply it in a project that will be proposed to you.
My goal is that, by the end of this course, you will be able to
express yourself through music and hopefully you will be able
to use this information as guidelines.
So you can experiment and develop your own ideas thoughts.
All senses workflow, expand your knowledge and be the musician.
You want to be? Conveying emotions and
experiencing emotions, largely depends on social and cultural
aspects. And that said you should be
aware of the emotional qualities.
You perceive when you listen to certain sounds chords rhythms
Melodies, so you can translate that into your music, the
manipulation of musical elements in order to convey emotions
comes as far as from the Renaissance period musical
practices, which in turn comes from the ancient Greeks idea.
About the symbiosis of oratory and music and how one should
influence the other. For instance, in Renaissance,
certain instruments would be used to depict contexts or
Associated to certain characters, fast tempo, agitated
basis and frequent, modulations were commonly used to express
anguish excitement, terrorism or rage and ascending melodic lines
in minor tonalities would be used to depict suffering.
This way of thinking, and ways to use the musical elements has
influenced modern music too. So all that said, everything
Counts from the way you sing The Sounds, you choose the way you
play your instrument, the chords, the melodic lines and
motives scales rhythmic approach and so on.
Well, then taking all this in consideration should get your
creative juices started. And now let's make a quick
overview of the musical elements.
So we are all on the same page. Bitch, that is how high or low
we perceive a sound which can be organized in patterns or
succession of sounds or notes. This is the category of Harmony
cards and scales or melodies. Rhythm is the time element of
music. It is related to the duration of
sounds and to a given rhythmic pattern in time.
Usually, we hear these in relation to a steady pulse and
mentally organize this pulse or Tempo into m.
Pitch and Rhythm are actually closely related either because
of the words we use to make up the melodic line that depending
on the way. We sing it, have a rhythmic
Cadence to it. Or if it's instrumental music.
We use the Rhythm to give a sense of flow to the melodic
lines and motives don't color or tomber refers to the quality of
the sounds. We hear making it possible for
us to distinguish between a trumpet and the clarinet.
For instance, this property also helps.
To create Variety in our music and as said, we can use Tumblr
as a way to evoke certain atmospheres or associate a
specific instrument to a character or situation to give
you an idea about how important Tony's.
Let me show you the impact of the choices you make, regarding
the instruments, you are going to use in your compositions as
it can help. You achieve that dramatic effect
you have in your mind. and now, See if you can identify
all the instruments in this next example.
Dynamics refers to how loud or soft a sound can be.
Form is also one of the elements of music and although it is not
related to the production of sound /, say it is a very
important aspect of the storytelling side of music.
It is how we organize or arrange, our musical ideas into
sections that may or may not be repeated throughout the music.
And finally texture is how the melodic rhythmic and harmonic
materials are combined in a musical piece.
Basically texture can be sparse. More advanced depending on how
many voices or instruments are playing as a way of showing how
influential and evocative the musical elements can be to one
another. You will be hearing a first
example with drums bass Rhythm and solo guitar.
The following example is derivative, meaning that I took
one of the elements of the First music piece and built the second
piece of music around it. In this case.
It was the drums. I took the same basic Rhythm and
just change the tempo, making it faster automatically.
It suggested a completely different musical idea and
around it. I compose the different bass and
guitar Groove and at some point. I also started hearing a brass
section that I also added. Okay, so far, everything sounds
like cooking adding ingredients and whatnot, but it's not like,
we are so far from the truth. If you consider the ingredients,
to be the musical elements, and the way you combine them
triggers, different moods or responses to your music in the
following video. I will be presenting ways of how
the musical elements can be worked into your music by
associating them to Extra. Musical, Concepts ideas,
emotions and enabling you to better, express yourself through
music. Talk to you there.
In these couple of videos, I'll be presenting you with two case
studies one in each video. But first we must have a message
to convey an idea or feeling. If you have a clear idea about
what you want to say. It is already a way of
eliminating, the blank page block and get you started.
One thing is to know about the musical Theory and another is
figuring out a way to use it without getting too Technical
and allowing your instincts and knowledge to kick in when
needed. Oddly enough.
The first thing you need to do in order to get your creativity
going is to somehow impose some rules.
This doesn't mean you will be restricted.
In fact, you will be eliminating that feeling of I can do so much
in anything. I want that I can't make up my
mind. What to do.
As soon as you have, imposed some limits, meaning you have
chosen a topic to talk about it is time to unleash your
creativity. As an example.
We will be considering apathy and almost leaving kind of state
where you just perform your routine tasks day after day
without much thought, while bearing the feeling of emptiness
to Aid, our thought organization.
We will be considering three variables that will help us
build a possible story. We for our music composition,
looking at the acronym psycho neb.
These variables are psychologic context.
And ambient. Our goal will be to associate
our ideas to these variables, which could turn out something
like this, apathy, Conformity, sameness and emptiness.
Go to the psychologic field. Getting up every day for work
and happy with this way of living finding strength to carry
on and change. All in ourselves tries to reach
out because we don't want a bleak future for our character.
All these belong to the context. And finally working in the big
city, a jungle of concrete, sounds of traffic horns.
People talking go to the ambient section.
I'm not going to get too much into it as we already have more
than enough to illustrate what we want.
And now this is where the music comes in.
Everything that was written will be.
Considered as a potential extra musical cue our job will be to
associate them to musical elements and translate those
into music. And I will guide you through
this process. Let's put our creative minds to
work. This is how I chose to use music
theory and Associate it to extra musical cues to depict the sense
of emptiness. I used space chord voicings in
fourths and fifths or a sense of coldness Detachment and
vagueness played by the I know and also complemented by a drone
sound harmonically. All these are based in the root
of C, since this example, tends to the representation of an
inner struggle representing, the core of the individual, I chose
to relate the harmonic changes as much as possible to The
Chosen route Note opting by using it.
As a pedal, note throughout the harmonic changes.
This also helps to convey the monotony and dullness.
For sameness working in day's passing by, I use repetitive
melodic and rhythmic patterns, or ostinatos chord changes with
little voice movement. And also use the drums that
despite its somewhat jagd Rhythm, it transmits a sense of
continuity, mainly because of the symbols work.
To depict confusion traffic, and people's voices.
I used contrasting cords from different tonalities.
That swirl around our head, as if they were everywhere, these
cords still maintain the same vagueness and for that, I used
suspended chords. And finally, for the inner self,
reaching out or forcing and suggesting changes.
I used the diminished Scale based in C representing his
condition as a passive person. In contrast with chrome.
Static movement from inner voice, struggling to reach out
for this. I change the route or the center
to F minor harmonic scale, the dissonance represents the
struggle to be heard and meanwhile, it is also the reason
why the bass and drums are at a lower volume in this section as
if it was trying to overpower the apathy.
Now that you listen to all the examples.
Let me show you how this sounds when put together.
Although this is what I came up with, depending on your personal
style. You will get a different result.
It will all depend on the way you manipulate the musical
elements. For instance.
I use Timbre to choose the instruments that will help me to
convey the message. I intended Associated them with
ideas traits of our character or its inner self.
In this case. The inner self was represented
by strings as for the rhythmic approach played by the drums.
It was chosen for its contemporary Urban feel only by
changing these two elements. You would get significantly
different results. I will now show you a second
example to illustrate. What I am suggesting, I
purposefully chose other instruments to work with and had
a different rhythmic approach, which led me to a different
approach on the overall Arrangement and style.
The main ideas regarding chord changes and Melodies were
maintained so it can still Relate to the main message.
Here are the main changes for the repetitiveness.
The vagueness. Traffic and voices for contrast.
And the inner self voice. And now here's the overall
result. Alaric could have been written
and then sung in order to reinforce the message.
You could even choose different ways of seeing the parts in a
way that would best describe the situation.
For instance, in the inner self voice part.
You could try to sound as if he were begging to be heard, almost
crying or even a cry or shout for attention.
It will all depend on your personal style or the next
video. We will be looking at how you
can work with images or graphics.
Cues and still have the approach suggested using the psycho named
variables and Associated them to extra musical cues using the
musical elements. By now, you may already be
familiar rised with apps icon am approach discussed in the last
video. So we will just dive right into
the second case study. However, this time we will be
applying these variables based on an image.
The first case study was based on how to depict Concepts ideas,
or emotions in a musical way. The second case study is more
based on specific events and movement or action that is in
tandem with the story. Development.
And without further Ado, here is the image.
We will be working with looking at the elements present in this
image. I get this sense of adventure
magic and fairy tales. The owl is a central figure and
I consider it to be the hero that everyone is putting their.
Hope on, we have a dark Forest where our hero will find.
All sorts of perils in ordeals. And after that, he would get to
this clearing with the lake after escaping the woods and get
some do rest from there on our hero resumes, his quest and
flies. The Majestic mountains as he
watches the sunrise leading the way to the next set of
Adventures. And obviously this may suggest a
different thing to you and that way you would end up doing
different music based on your interpretations.
In the first case study, the music structure was more of how
a song would work with an intro verse and a clearly defined
Chorus for demonstration purposes.
I chose not to develop the whole idea, but the parts are there.
R, but this time, we will take a different approach closer to
what would happen in a symphonic poem.
Here. You won't have anything like a
modern song structure as the music follows the stories events
as they unfold nevertheless. And as I will show you, you will
find some elements or motives that are repeated throughout the
music. And now all that said, let us
begin. Here are the apps icon M
variables. Or the psychologic filled.
Our hero is Relentless heroic Brave and also tense because
after all he is going to face many dangers for the context
field. You have fight through obstacles
in ordeals in the dark Forest escapes the woods and gets to a
clearing with the lake after resting.
He watches the sunrise and resumes his quest in the ambient
field. We have the Dark Forest itself
with its Twisted paths and trees and darkness.
We have the lake and the Majestic mountains.
Here's how I use the elements in music theory, to give voice to
the message. I want to convey.
As I generally approached. I used Woodwinds to represent
our hero, although sometimes it is supported by strings gestures
and Brass will be in charge of representing enemies in danger.
I also use the Celesta to imbue a certain sense of magic and
mystery due to its dreamy quality of the Tambour.
Also, in a general way, I made use of diminished scales
material and the sonority of the lydian mode because of the
implied augmented fourth interval, its dissonant quality,
and big witty. And as a way to represent, two
distinct and opposing characters.
In this first example, in order to symbolize the tension while
walking about in the woods, you will hear the strings executing,
a tremolo Harmony wise. It is all based on minor chords.
The Bases and Celli. Begin with the melody and major
third apart, and then proceed throughout with a perfect fifth
interval, which is a strong interval on its own and hints to
the brave quality of our hero. The fact that these intervals
are used in such a low register, it is because it helps to
provide that sense of dense environment filled with tension.
Now, you will hear our Heroes theme executed in English horn
and then supported by the first violins.
The said, the melody is built over a Harmony based on monetary
course due to this dark and Grim situation.
You will also hear some muted brass because it stands for the
danger or enemies lurking. And still hidden from sight.
I use contrasting dissonant chords and cluster brass effects
to enhance the disparity between the heroes goals and There's,
which are total opposites. Alongside with the Heroes theme,
I use the woodwinds violence. Celeste in a complimentary way
to symbolize our hero flying around in the woods while
providing that sense of mystery and magic.
And right before the end, the ascending melodic gesture.
From the violence, represents the flight towards the imminent
battle. The tribal, like percussion sets
the tone for The Battle Before Our Hero, dives into it.
Woodwinds and Brass are respectively, representing the
antagonists and their distance related scales and tonalities.
While interacting, the meter is also changing quite frequently
and the offbeat accents, made by the strings represent.
The erratic flying and unpredictability of the fighting
in the dense Woods. In the end of this example, you
will finally notice the strings playing a run and then the
melodic gesture that represents our hero flying away and Escape.
That dangerous situation. The melodic gesture from the
violins that you heard on the previous example is now fading.
As our heroes is a clearing and the lake where he will rest in
this section. You will only hear Woodwinds and
Hurting strings in the high register.
If you look at the image, you can see that there are
reflections in the lake surface. That is represented by the
Chimes tree for its sparkling sound.
And by the harp with its arpeggios in an attempt to
illustrate the watery environment slowly, the harmony
becomes less tense as the hero rests and recovers.
This example and the next, Mark the reappearance of the main
theme and it's variations harmonically.
The chords used are more stable or consonant representing Our
Heroes recovery, and thus the slower Kestrel build up.
Here is the main theme again in the final section of our musical
story. And finally, the strings are
playing two complementary roles. The low strings are setting the
pace with accents that give a sense of promptness to the next
Adventures while the high strings.
Are also adding momentum. Phantom by executing arpeggios
throughout and that's it.
The music ends in a high note, suggesting other Great
Adventures for our hero. And now, here's the overall
result. At some point, you may want to
focus on a specific area or aspect of the image and develop
on that. For instance.
You could make a whole song about the perils encountered in
the dark forest, or if it happens to be of great
relevance. You may want to make a song just
about the sunrise. This is a way of showing you how
you could probably make a music album solely based on the
elements found in the given image.
What it evokes and then build on that to make your story line.
Next, I will be doing a recap of all that was discussed
throughout these videos. Also, you will find guidelines
for a project assignment so you can put into practice your
skills. Based on what you have learned
by watching. This course.
I will see you there.