As my hiatus from the Mastering Orchestral Composition with BBCSO course from ThinkSpace Education draws to a close I need to consider what I have learnt during this break, and also what do I have to look forward to as I embark upon module 3 – Creative Orchestration.
I have been refreshing the basics of music theory by looking at the videos in Guy Michelmore’s Music Theory playlist on youtube. There are 26 videos covering a huge variety of things, some that I knew, some that I could know better, and some that I did not know. Some of the things that were new, or I needed refreshment on, were things like chromatic mediants and secondary dominants.
There is a very definitely a difference between understanding the theory and actually implementing it in real world situations. These videos were great as they not only explained the theory but they then used it in fun and interesting ways to embed it more deeply in that well of knowledge.
So that was what I have been doing the last few days and now I am excited to be returning to the main course of study. What do we have in store?
The main topics look to be related to developing themes and phrases, looking at orchestration and the separate sections of the orchestra, then applying these by looking at themes and accompaniment, blending instruments, and using pedals and countermelodies.
There is lots of interesting stuff here and I am very excited to get going.
This module ends with a scoring project so that will be an adventure.
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