# Any course you'd recommend?



## vdk-john (Oct 21, 2021)

With BF approaching, I was considering a few courses, but I'd like some feedback as I'm not sure which one would be most beneficial in my situation. (maybe none of them?)

Music for me is a hobby and I have limited time. I have the basics of theory and I can come up with some simple melodies, harmonies, rhythms and improvise with a keyboard. I also have some basics concepts of mixing and "arranging" (but it's still mostly trial and error). However I feel I lack structure and a method, so that even if I can come up with some decent ideas I struggle to develop them further in a coherent way.


Recently I went through "Music Composition with the Piano: Ultimate Keyboard Theory" on Udemy by Jack Vaughan, and enjoyed it.

I was then considering "Cinematic Music - From Idea To Finished Recording" by Evenant because:
- it seems to develop further and in a structured way topics like how to come up with a motif / melody and from there how to develop a whole track
- it guides you through the creation of a track (if I understood correctly)
- it let you watch the author while he creates a track from start to finish

Another one I found is the Alex Pfeffer's Trailer Course; this is more specific for trailer music and I'm not planning on writing that specific style of music often, but I was curious if it could still teach me the correct approach which might then be transferable to other styles... (?)

Any feedback would be great; whether you went through any of the courses mentioned above or have others you'd recommend.

Many thanks


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## tc9000 (Oct 21, 2021)

Scoreclub seems to get a lot of good press on here. I've just started the Music Matters Keyboard Harmony course, as I lack basic harmony understanding, but thats likely not right for you.


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## Arbee (Oct 21, 2021)

Another endorsement here for ScoreClub, loved it.

I've also enjoyed these Udemy courses by Jonathan Peters previously:
https://www.udemy.com/course/music-composition-1/


https://www.udemy.com/course/music-composition-2/



My learning style suits a mix of online and books studied simultaneously, a kind of total immersion approach where I get different perspectives on the same subject material at the same time. On that note, I found the perspective in this ebook by David Fuentes very interesting https://figuringoutmelody.com/

I've also found the Izotope website a good free resource for the production side of things https://www.izotope.com/en/learn.html. 

Hope that helps! If I didn't keep learning and believe I'll write _and_ produce better music tomorrow, I probably wouldn't bother


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## darkogav (Oct 21, 2021)

Where was a thread on here at one point where some posters posted an accumulated knowledge base and list of readings, resources and books. You may want to look for that as well. I can't recall the exact thread name. It might be stickied somewhere.


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## vdk-john (Oct 22, 2021)

Thanks for the recommendations everyone.

I had a look at ScoreClub and while I can read/write on paper (I don't remember all the symbols for articulations/techniques though), I was looking for a more DAW specific workflow (for linear ones like cubase, studio one, etc.)

However the "essential composer training: foundation" course seems interesting and I like the bit of the description saying "You will be writing music from the get-go, rather than just doing boring exercises". 

Does anyone took this course and in case do you remember if it also covered arrangement/structure or, more in general, did the course make you write an entire piece or just some sections?

I also had a quick look at the Jonathan Peters courses a while back; the one I mentioned in my original post seems to cover very similar concepts.

At the moment I was hoping I could find something that would guide you through the process, from start to finish (without mixing and production; coming up with a sketch of a full piece would be enough); example: 

By the way, I also liked the fundamentals of musical composition from https://courses.artofcomposing.com/ and I just noticed they added some bonus content ("workouts" and "composing with") which might be interesting.

Thanks


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## JimDiGritz (Mar 1, 2022)

@vdk-john - did you ever find a good course that helped you?


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