# Art Of Composing lessons



## bigcatJC (Feb 9, 2020)

I hope this is the right place to post this. Does anyone have any experience with the lessons from Art of Composing website? The sample videos look straight-forward and clear, very much what I'd like. I also like that it seems to focus on composing in general rather than concentrating on film or trailer music specifically. If anyone has taken the courses, should I go through the free Build Your Composition Vocabulary course first, or jump into The Fundamentals of Composition?

If anyone had bad experiences with these lessons, can you recommend online courses you prefer?

And to nip things in the bud, I did a search for this subject and the search engine just seems to search for "composing." No luck.

Thanks in advance for any help.


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## Paul T McGraw (Feb 10, 2020)

There is lots of good information in the "Art of Composing" courses. These are more like college courses than is typical for online lessons. If you think of each as a college course, they are cheap. No comedy relief. But, if you need to cover the basics, harmony, melody, counterpoint, and form, these courses are better than reading a textbook by yourself. There are plenty of examples. And you will build a very solid foundation of knowledge.

I am a hobbyist composer, and also interested in learning everything about Music Theory and Composition techniques that I can find. I just really enjoy the topic. I have been lucky enough to take just about every online course I could find. Including these. There are lots of interesting and entertaining courses available. However, sometimes they aren't organized as well as these so you might feel like you are always missing something. That will not happen with the "Art of Composing" courses.

The two sites that to my mind are the most helpful to build a solid base of knowledge, are "Art of Composing" and "Score Club". If you complete all of the courses on these two sites, you will have learned almost everything included in a typical college degree program in Music Theory. There will of course still be more to learn, like modern harmonic usage, modern orchestration, and writing for media. But you will be well prepared for any of that.


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## Adam Takacs (Feb 10, 2020)

I like art of composing. Informative and clear.

You can try it for 25$ for a month.









Monthly Membership


The Art of Composing Monthly Membership gives you access to "The Fundamentals of Musical Composition", "Sonata Form", and any other courses created directly by Art of Composing.




courses.artofcomposing.com


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## Voider (Feb 10, 2020)

Well, I was really tempted by the price and the preview lesson. But then I found out, if you click on the "check out with paypal" button at the monthly membership, it sends you to a 404 error site, and if you hit the support tab on the top bar, it leads you to nowhere.

Seems like they don't care about their website and don't maintain it. That's pretty disappointing since the courses looked so promising. But functionality is for obvious reasons absolutely crucial for online courses.


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## nolotrippen (Feb 10, 2020)

Voider said:


> Well, I was really tempted by the price and the preview lesson. But then I found out, if you click on the "check out with paypal" button at the monthly membership, it sends you to a 404 error site, and if you hit the support tab on the top bar, it leads you to nowhere.
> 
> Seems like they don't care about their website and don't maintain it. That's pretty disappointing since the courses looked so promising. But functionality is for obvious reasons absolutely crucial for online courses.


Shoot 'em an e-mail. They might have been compromised and don't know it.


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## Voider (Feb 12, 2020)

nolotrippen said:


> Shoot 'em an e-mail. They might have been compromised and don't know it.



I did, 2 days now without response, tried on monday to get into their facebook group (which is purely inactive, no new members or posts for months) but they seem not to maintain that as well. 404 still exists.


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## wst3 (Feb 12, 2020)

Another vote for Score Club and Art of Composing - both excellent resources.

I also like Thinkspace.com - their Blueprints series was a lot of fun, and I learned some new stuff - a good combination.

Mike Verta has some really good videos, but they are long, and you really need to watch the entire thing for any given topic. Start with some of his free videos to see what he is all about.

There are other sources on the web, but once I found the four above I stopped hunting and started focusing - at least for now<G>!

I should note that I am also a big fan of books - perhaps it is my age?


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## ed buller (Feb 12, 2020)

I can’t recommend Scoreclub highly enough....fantastic resource and Alain has taught me so much....
best

e


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## ComposerWannabe (Feb 12, 2020)

Where does EIS stand in all of this?


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## borisb2 (Feb 12, 2020)

Voider said:


> I did, 2 days now without response, tried on monday to get into their facebook group (which is purely inactive, no new members or posts for months) but they seem not to maintain that as well. 404 still exists.


I think Jon is on to somehting else (he used to serve in the army) .. which is really a big shame if it's true. But all his posts, his interviews (with Samuel Adler (!) etc.) and the forum stops at about 2017 - no idea why .. wanted to ask him that.

I took the fundamentals course and together with motivic mastery at scoreclub this gives you a very solid foundation for building and developing melodies (not so much harmony)


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## bigcatJC (Feb 14, 2020)

Voider said:


> There are two blog entries from him in 2019 on the website: https://www.artofcomposing.com/?_ga=2.215218519.1915983723.1581351855-1537043571.1581351855
> 
> But yeah, he seems not to maintain the website, which is a shame. I think if you sell courses online and monthly memberships, you have some kind of responsibility. I'll move on to other websites, luckily we have a huge choice nowadays.


That's a shame...I liked the idea of buying the lessons all at once instead of a monthly membership like other sites, just so I could go at my own pace.

I just sent an email to the Art of Composing site and his personal site, too. I'll update if I get anything.


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## Voider (Feb 14, 2020)

bigcatJC said:


> That's a shame...I liked the idea of buying the lessons all at once instead of a monthly membership like other sites, just so I could go at my own pace.



You can buy the courses at once, the monthly membership is just optinal for those who don't want to purchase the full courses or have a try before. Paypal isn't working particular on the monthly membership or split payments, but on the full purchases.


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## bigcatJC (Feb 14, 2020)

Voider said:


> You can buy the courses at once, the monthly membership is just optinal for those who don't want to purchase the full courses or have a try before. But Paypal isn't working particular on the monthly membership or split payments, but on the full purchases.


Gotcha and understood


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## bigcatJC (Feb 14, 2020)

Just got a reply from Jon, he says he's looking into the error.


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## jonbrantingham (Feb 15, 2020)

This is Jon from Art of Composing. Sorry about the delay, but the PayPal button should be working now. Getting it working was a bit complicated, and today was the first day I could sit down and work on it.

Thanks for the patience.


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## Voider (Feb 15, 2020)

Thanks for fixing, maybe I'll give it another chance soon..


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## muadgil (Feb 17, 2020)

Hi

I'm at about 50% of the main Art of Composing course (Master the fundamentals of music composition)
and here's my experience about it : 
First, where I come from. I've been playing music (guitar) for almost 20 years, mostly as an autodidact. I've always been atracted to harmony, trying to deeply undertand how music works under the hood. I read a few books about it, watched many videos, and with time, I had a bit of knowledge about it. But that was all separated spots, pieces of a puzzle everywhere. Interesting but quite frustrating.

With AoC, all the pieces are finally getting together. And that's a hugely exciting experience for me.
The lessons are very well organized, and they develop in a very logical way. Explanations are very clear, Jon is extremely methodic, and that's really ticking my brain. 
I'm learning at quite a slow pace because I'm learning to play piano in parallel, and there are quite a few exercises in these lessons, all directly applied to composing.

I guess you got what I think about AoC  
It's a real eye-opening process for me. Best 100$ ever spent in my musical education. This is a ridiculously small amount of money for what you'll learn in there if you're not already familiar with how works harmony, creating melodies etc...

And of course you can try his free course first too check if you like how it is taught. No risks.

(sorry if it's not very well written but as a french, it's quite hard for me to express impressions and feelings in english)


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