And now, back to our regularly scheduled blog…. already in progress? No? Well, sort of, now.
Music 30/30 – Day 11
I took a bit of a slight detour in my musical training today. I still spent some time going over the basic rules for Second Species Counterpoint, which was interesting, but I’ve also been realizing that so far I’ve had a very strong focus on more or less “pure” music theory, which the counterpoint work so far is reminding me lends itself very well to classical music. I know it applies to other forms of music as well, and having good fundamentals is going to be really important for making really quality stuff, but I’m also not certain that its where I need to be focusing right now, given my stated goals. I’ve been enjoying the heck out it, sure, and I’m sure I’ll keep going at it for a while at least, but I also wanted to start some new threads of investigation to see if I can’t get something a little more directly in tune with where I’m trying to go.
To that end I picked up a different course from this same instructor (J. Anthony Allen, if anyone is wondering. He has a Ph.D. in music, is a collage professor, and an award winning composer and performer, and has some very excellent music courses on Udemy, including the Complete Music Theory course I’m enrolled in.) This new course focuses in on composition for electronic music, so rather than focusing on sheet music and piano parts, he’s using a digital audio workstation, drum loops, piano rolls, and the like, which is a very similar setup to where I’m going anyway. Since I know I already appreciate his teaching style it should be a good fit, and hopefully a good segue into the more specific if somewhat theory light classes I already have from others on writing music for games.