Welcome! This course is part of my "Composer Roadmaps" Series, which are courses that focus on the more elementary, beginner-to-intermediate end of the skill spectrum. Like the term "roadmaps" suggest, these courses are also broader in focus and are intended to take you from where you are today to the next point in your composing journey quickly.   

The material for this course was taken from the third and last part of my larger, 15-hour "How to Compose with MIDI and Virtual Instruments" course that I first released in 2019 (and have since updated with newer software and hardware thoughts and recommendations). Given the gargantuan size of that course, it made sense to offer the individual course sections on their own for those composers who were not looking for the entire breadth of content... at least not all at once.


ABOUT THIS COURSE:

In this course I will teach you how to compose a piece of music from start to finish. Featuring an original composition created for this course ("The Heart of a Hero"), I demonstrate my entire process from concept, to composition, to structuring, to orchestration, to performance fine-tuning (for realism), and finish up with mixing and mastering.
 
But since I believe that one of the best ways to learn is to learn by DOING, we will apply the principles we learn in REAL TIME and each compose a piece of music, side-by-side, step by step, throughout the course. I think that this is a systematic, practical and results-oriented way to teach the process.   
 
Here's how this will work: in one lesson I will teach some basics about composing a melody, and then I will apply the principles myself and compose my own. That lesson's assignment for YOU will be to create your own melody following the principles taught in the lesson. And then in the following lesson we will go through the next step of the process together, and so on until, by the end of the course, we each have a completed piece of music. 
 
You will also have access to the MIDI and WAV files of this piece "The Heart of a Hero" to load into your own system and study in depth.

SPECIFIC TOPICS COVERED:

  • The mindset of the computer-based composer
  • Melody writing basics
  • Structuring and plotting out your piece in your DAW
  • Principles of orchestration and voicing
  • Fleshing out an arrangement
  • Shaping performances
  • Handling dynamics and swells
  • Making orchestration choices
  • Fine tuning your piece
  • Mixing + mastering approaches

 
Prerequisites:

  • HARDWARE/SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS: You will need to be set up with a DAW and virtual instruments
  • SOFTWARE-SAVVY LEVEL: Basic knowledge of how your DAW and virtual instruments work is necessary, but it can truly be basic
  • MUSICIAN SAVVY-LEVEL: You do not need to be an experienced music. You do not even need to know how to read music, but I do recommend that. If you know some basic terms and concepts (like "melody", "harmony", "chords", "dynamics", etc.) and have some basic idea of how these concepts work on music, then you can learn from this course. 
 
 
With all that said, let's get composing!

LESSON ASSIGNMENT: Familiarize yourself with the course architecture and interface.