Below are the Write Like Mozart Week 3 Notes that I sent my students last year when we took the Write Like Mozart class together. In this installment, I offer a reference sheet for non-chord tones, thoughts on working with sequential progressions, and a number of hints in completing the assignments and applying what you’ve learned.
This is the third post in this series.
Below are the Write Like Mozart Week 2 Notes that I sent my students last year when we took the Write Like Mozart class together. I include a summary of figured bass notation, a summary of part writing rules, and some information on how to check your part writing electronically. This is the second post in this series.
In my last post, I introduced the online Write Like Mozart class offered by Coursera. I promised to post some of my notes I sent my high school students from when we collectively took the class last year.
I have logged into the January 2015 offering of the course, and it appears that the videos have not changed since I took the class. The supplemental notes I offer below for Write Like Mozart Class Week 1 are largely unedited from what I sent to my students last year.
This time last year I started a fabulous free online class called Write Like Mozart. This class is offered through the Coursera, a conglomeration of high quality online classes offered by major universities around the world. Write Like Mozart is taught by Peter Edwards of the National University of Singapore. The class is being offered again starting this week (January 13, 2015), and it is a great time to join in. Because the videos are all online and the assignments are not due until the following week, it is no problem to join the class late. I encourage anybody with at least a high school or College Freshman year understanding of music theory to partake.
As an educator, I found that the Write Like Mozart class offered me new ways of teaching music theory. Some of the key approaches within this course are:
In my studio, the new year marks the beginning of composing season, during which each of my students will write at least one composition. A couple of my students typically will write one or more pieces on their own, but most of my students need some level of guidance and encouragement to get them from the beginning of the piece to the end. Some of my youngest students will take only a couple of lessons to complete a short piece. Usually at least one student hates everything he or she writes. In this case, the process reminds me of one of those made for TV movies I saw as a kid, where I am the farmer blindfolding the panicking horse so that I might lead it out of a burning barn. But most of my students enjoy the process and are quite proud of the end result.
I require my students to compose for several reasons: