# SCORECLUB NEW SITE



## ed buller (Jul 21, 2019)

Alain's wonderful courses have now migrated to a new website:






Home Page - ScoreClub


Golden-age level craft of composition for the modern-day composer. Real training that gets results to write like the masters.




scoreclub.net





great first new video studying Grieg and making a short score. This great resource has got better !

Best

ed


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## Gingerbread (Jul 21, 2019)

Alain's courses are certainly wonderful. But I admit I'm not crazy about this trend of everything migrating to a subscription-based model. I get that Alain wants to make more money with steadier revenue generation, but I'm not fond of seemingly everything in my life going subscription.


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## ism (Jul 21, 2019)

I'm just looking at Orchestrating the line 2 myself, which so far is really, with no exaggeration, quite possible the best online course I've even encounter. (With the caveat that I think I'd recommend it before OTL 1. Or rather, while OTL 2 really get to the heart of things, OT1 seems to go into an excessive catalogue of details that I'd rather come back to later having got stuck into the core OTL 2 techniques ...

... but the great thing about a subscription model is that you can do it whatever order you like. And the ability to cross reference courses is one of Alain's stated motivations in moving to a subscription model. Similarly, I'm also finding that OTL 2 seems to interact in hugely productive ways with Counterpoint 2 also. So this portends well to how the subscription model will allow even richer content.

So I absolutely agree that Alain does some great stuff.

But at $78us per month - $936 per year. This is actually slightly more than what a year of weekly lessons with a professional local composer would cost (not as experience a composer as Alain, to be sure, but a very excellent composers in her own right).

I'm a big fan of Alain's work, and of scoreclub, and I'm quite excited about this the possibilities of this new subscription model. But I'm not sure I know how to convince myself how it makes sense at this price point. This is not to say that it isn't that valuable enough to merit this kind of premium. But whereas I've been picking up about a course per year, generally on intro sales at typically less that $80-100, and working though them very slowly, now the cost to have access to even a single course is over $900 (in fact, over $1200 in local currency) per year?

Anyone else trying to get their head around this new model?


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## d.healey (Jul 21, 2019)

I've taken the subscription - with my discount for buying previous classes. Agreed with ism that OTL2 is fantastic. I would not keep the subscription for a full year. I'll binge watch everything in a few months and after that I'll just pay the subscription fee each time a new class comes out that interests me.


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## jonathanparham (Jul 21, 2019)

I'm still processing it myself. I'm not sure I understand the new model. Similar to ism, I just get a course or two then work through them at my own pace as my other gigs permit. On this forum and other local musicians, I always highly recommend scoreclub. But now it seems I can't tell someone to just buy a single course but have to have them 'opt' into something. However, I did get an email saying I had a discount because of the previous courses I had purchased.


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## Quasar (Jul 21, 2019)

d.healey said:


> I've taken the subscription - with my discount for buying previous classes. Agreed with ism that OTL2 is fantastic. I would not keep the subscription for a full year. I'll binge watch everything in a few months and after that I'll just pay the subscription fee each time a new class comes out that interests me.


I was just about to write yet another rant about capitalist business paradigms and how much I loathe the subscription model, but this is an excellent idea. I may take advantage of the discount (I have OTL1 + 2 which makes it $52 for me) and see how much I can digest in one month.

Alain's courses are absolutely top-notch, but when I got the ScoreClub email I was like, _et tu, Brute?_


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## Uiroo (Jul 21, 2019)

Well, it seems like a great motivation. "What, I save money if i learn faster? NO MINECRAFT THEN!"

Maybe i'll try this.


Does anyone know how much this differs from the Mike Verta Videos?


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## Quasar (Jul 21, 2019)

Uiroo said:


> Does anyone know how much this differs from the Mike Verta Videos?



For one thing, Alain appears to remain sober while recording his tutorials LOL. 

They're both great, but it's apples and oranges. ScoreClub is very structured and more traditionally organized in an academic way, in which you learn and apply highly specific concepts in one unit and then the next unit builds off of that... Mike's videos are much more spontaneous, conversational, with various seemingly random nuggets of wisdom scattered throughout. I like both approaches...


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## Gingerbread (Jul 21, 2019)

I'm sure I will eventually buy a few months of subscription, especially when a new course comes out. But yeah, at $78/month, that seems....high. Especially in comparison to other educational subscription websites.

If the price were substantially lower, I'd be far more likely to just sign up, and let it run, learning at my own slow pace. But at that price, I'd have to be very conscious to cancel after binging the course. I wonder if pricing it so high defeats the purpose.


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## ism (Jul 21, 2019)

d.healey said:


> I've taken the subscription - with my discount for buying previous classes. Agreed with ism that OTL2 is fantastic. I would not keep the subscription for a full year. I'll binge watch everything in a few months and after that I'll just pay the subscription fee each time a new class comes out that interests me.




Yes, I can't decide whether it's ridiculous or sublime. I own 4 or the 9 existing course, so that apparently gives me a $14 discount, and I decided to take some time off in the summer to really focus.

But it seems that once you unsubscribe, you loose the discount for already owning courses.



Still, it's sublimely wonderful to have access to all the courses for the next month. And already three revelations:

1. Buying the first "essential training course" at $230 (or so? if I recall correctly) would, as I has suspected, have been a poor investment as I've already studied plenty of voice leading. It's a good crash course on applying voice leading to composition though. Still it's helpful to go through it quickly, at least to set the common language for the other courses.


2. My decision to *not* buy OTL 2 was an extremely bad one. As it turns out this is *exactly* the right course for me at the moment. To the point that it feels like something of a singular moment where everything that's unique about Alain's approach really comes out.


3. The whole of these courses is absolutely more than the sum of their parts. OTL2 and Counterpoint 2 in particular I'm finding hugely generative in the way they play off each other. Similarly OTL 1, which I was a little lukewarm about when I first bought it, takes on new value when placed in the larger context.


With more to follow I'm sure. So lots to love about the subscription model in the short term.


At the same time, I can't help feeling that the subscribe and binge model is singular unsuited to all that is best about scoreclub. At the very least, the feeling that one is "on the clock" and needs to get through things quickly is directly at odds with the need to take time after nearly every video and do something practical, not just to solidify the concept, but to play and experiment.

With the exception of, for instance, being able to take time off in the summer to focus, speed binging on these videos is somehow just a lot less fun.


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## ism (Jul 21, 2019)

Uiroo said:


> Does anyone know how much this differs from the Mike Verta Videos?




There are very significant differences. Although there is quite a lot of overlap.

I'm still trying to get my head around all of this, but at the moment the Holy Trinity of really innovative new media pedagogy in composition are

Mike Verta - Drunken rants on how to write music, par excellence.

Alain - who is the closest to academic teaching, yet really manages to connect theory to real world practice.

Ludwin (https://www.musicnewapproach.com) - somewhere in between. His books are, I think, based on the powerpoints for his (composers guild?) seminars aimed at processional film composers.


And in much the same way that the scoreclub courses together are more than the sum of their parts, I really feel that if you study these three very different approaches together, you get something that's more than the sum of the parts.


For instance, Ludwin's book on "Developing Variation" looks to be a superb accompaniment to Alain's "Motivic Mastery" - with the caveat that I've so far only glanced at the later. Ludwin's carefully curated examples, (and accompanying audio) in general can hugely compliment Alain's "over the shoulder" approach, and vice versa. Mikes (actually not really all that drunken, except occasionally for some bits at the end if we're being honest) informal seminars are the most difficult to place pedagogically, but he has a certain genius for being able to get straight to the heart of "what you *actually* need to know", and you get a different, and very compelling sense of process as a result.


Also, these guys are great composer in their own right (each sometimes uses his own scores as examples), so each has a genuine "masterclass" component, that is not merely good pedagogy, but lets you watch a composer in action. But - crucially - with enough access to their conceptual process to really learning something that someone who was merely a good teacher could probably never teach you on their own.

(True, there's plenty of "live composing" videos free on YouTube, and while they can be fun, they sometimes feel a bit like how I imaging it might feel to watch Einstein, if he'd had a "live physics" vlog, but talked mostly about issues of penmanship (choosing the right pencil etc) as he proceeded to discover general relativity. Fun to watch, maybe, but not necessarily giving a lot of insight into what's actually going on)


And it's not that I don't have critiques of all three of these approaches also - none are perfect, and I look forward to ever greater innovation in online composition pedagogy. But on the whole, it's a great time to be studying composition online.


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## ed buller (Jul 21, 2019)

I hear you ....but....we are talking about a Large takeout...or two small ones....a month...to access everything !

And if you've already bought some the price comes down. It's about half the price of my cable....i know which is more useful....plus you can write it off.


best

ed


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## ism (Jul 21, 2019)

ed buller said:


> I hear you ....but....we are talking about a Large takeout...or two small ones....a month...to access everything !
> 
> And if you've already bought some the price comes down. It's about half the price of my cable....i know which is more useful....plus you can write it off.
> 
> ...




Yes, a very different value proposition for a professional, I don’t doubt. 

Which I think must be who this new model is targeting?


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## Quasar (Jul 21, 2019)

Gingerbread said:


> Yes, a very different value proposition for a professional, I don’t doubt.
> 
> Which is I think must be who this new model is targeting?



However one chooses to frame it or market it, it's targeting people who have a lot of money, because that's where the money is.

It would only take a handful of the many, many digital-age subscription services now available to make the monthly expense more than rent, utilities and food combined.


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## SoNowWhat? (Jul 21, 2019)

ism said:


> Yes, I can't decide whether it's ridiculous or sublime. I own 4 or the 9 existing course, so that apparently gives me a $14 discount, and I decided to take some time off in the summer to really focus.
> 
> But it seems that once you unsubscribe, you loose the discount for already owning courses.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the heads up on OTL2 and CP2. I have OTL1 and CP1 (along with a few others from Alain). I am currently weighing up whether I subscribe with loyalty discount and binge as well. I guess OTL2 and CP2 will be my starting point.

I would love to support Alain more as I do find his courses excellent but, I suspect I will consume in a piecemeal fashion. The way I run my business (not music, I'm afraid that is something of a luxury albeit one that keeps me sane) I have to stay light and flexible. Keeping costs to a bare minimum. Similar to what @Quasar said above, adding on several subs (I don't even have a Netflix sub or any pay TV actually) would just go against that and eat into money I'd rather use in other ways. And there's the time aspect too. Only so many hours in a day and I like to use the ones I have spare for writing music and yes, learning too (I've only been at this for over 40 years!, maybe I'm just slow).


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## jonathanparham (Jul 21, 2019)

ism said:


> At the very least, the feeling that one is "on the clock" and needs to get through things quickly is directly at odds with the need to take time after nearly every video and do something practical, not just to solidify the concept, but to play and experiment.


 This is why it takes me time to go through the material. I want to see the lesson, take notes, compose the exercise, mock it up, etc. Would I be wasting time by subscribing is what I'm asking myself. I started OTL 2 in February then got hit with a bunch of gigs and haven't been able to get back to it until now.


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## jonathanparham (Jul 21, 2019)

ism said:


> There are very significant differences. Although there is quite a lot of overlap.
> 
> I'm still trying to get my head around all of this, but at the moment the Holy Trinity of really innovative new media pedagogy in composition are
> 
> ...


 Good overview. This gets asked a lot in the forum.


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## wst3 (Jul 22, 2019)

I may, or may not, be in an unusual position (details omitted because), and there are months where I have sufficient time to pay attention to my studies, and there are months where I have zero time to do anything other than survive. It's random, and remains somewhat beyond my control for the most part.

I have two of Alain's courses, and I think they are excellent. But I still haven't completed either one. Sometimes it takes me forever and a day to accomplish even well defined goals. Just how things are at this point.

If there were a way to "pause" my subscription for those months where I just have no time I'd sign up yesterday. That is really the only piece missing (to my mind) from an otherwise well thought out plan. It is entirely likely that a pause feature would defeat the goals from Alain's perspective??

I will probably sign up for a month or two with my modest discount to see how much time I can carve out of a day when there is a gun pointed at my head. I'll be disappointed that I can't keep the material to revisit, but that's the penalty for missing the boat on outright purchases.

That, come to think of it, would be a benefit too.

As someone else pointed out, this can be a benefit or a curse for any one of us, depending on life situations.

If it does not work out for me right now I won't have a huge problem signing up again in the future, even without the discount. At which point the Pause feature becomes part of the equation.

Overall I distrust any subscription service. I'm old enough to remember when almost all software was sold by subscription - and that model went the way of the dinosaur for a reason. I think disadvantages still outweigh advantages in general, but in this particular case it could be a win for consumers if he can introduce new material in a timely fashion, and the consumer can keep up. Time will tell.


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