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What Courses Have You Purchased For Your Education?

robgb said:
This is exactly the kind of instructor I'd want. Someone who took it upon him or herself to figure it out on their own. I'm self-taught as a novelist. Never took a class. I spent years learning how to write fiction and honing my craft. I've been published by the Big Five publishing houses. No editor or other writer said to me, "We don't value your work because you're self-taught." Instead, they weighed my value based on the books I wrote. There's no reason why composers should be any different. If you love what they've composed, produced, orchestrated, and they are good teachers, it shouldn't matter a hoot whether or not they have formal training or they learned on their own.
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I said in my post that it doesn't mean they don't have anything worth hearing or aren't good at what they do, but it isn't exactly a selling point for me.

SimonCharlesHanna said:
It does say something though if they can't be bothered learning music theory. I'd also be concerned of whether or not they are offering well informed advice.
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Exactly
 
FWIW, what I believe - and what I teach - about theory is that it is a wonderful way to discuss and analyze music, but it does not provide a set of rules the following of which will guarantee a good or compelling piece; despite many composers' wish otherwise. I was paying my bills as a composer well before learning formal theory, and when I did, it put names to things which I'd already learned through trial and error; things which I had a true and practical understanding of, if not a formal name for. Learning theory was a bit like organizing my closet - everything was already in there, it just helped organize it a bit better. It did not make me a better composer; it made me more capable of describing my devices to other composers. I never think about theory, even unconsciously, when writing. Analyzing my own pieces after the fact is as foreign to me as it is for anyone else. It tends to be that pieces which "work" make a lot of sense, theoretically - this follows since theory was largely reverse-engineered from great pieces written without it. But the illusion that a piece which works in theory must have been built with theory is just that. I've found that those who write from theory outward tend to write boring, predictable, but theoretically impeccable pieces. But with 7.2 bn people on the planet, statistically, there must be a couple, right? Anyway, we learn by doing. Go and do.

_Mike
 
Thinking back, I feel that learning theory, harmony, counterpoint, and even history as a child jogged my creative side and sparked my interest in composition in the first place. Without it, I don’t think my understanding of progression, modulation, etc. would be as strong, and I see it as a true fundamental base for me.

Listening to music with a theoretical background allowed me to appreciate and understand the devices behind the pieces I’ve grown to love, and it’s only helped me in my work. There’s always something new to discover.
 
SimonCharlesHanna said:
It does say something though if they can't be bothered learning music theory. I'd also be concerned of whether or not they are offering well informed advice.
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Again, I'm not sure it matters as long as the work they produce is good or great. Clearly if their examples are shit, you should probably shy away. But not everyone needs to take the same path.
 
robgb said:
Again, I'm not sure it matters as long as the work they produce is good or great. Clearly if their examples are shit, you should probably shy away. But not everyone needs to take the same path.
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Just because their work is good doesn't mean they are any good at explaining it though, and in my honest opinion — it shows minimal respect for the craft if you can't really put what you're doing into words we can all understand.

Maybe it's just me, but I think that a teacher, especially one I'm paying to teach me, should be held to a higher standard than that.
 
robgb said:
Again, I'm not sure it matters as long as the work they produce is good or great. Clearly if their examples are shit, you should probably shy away. But not everyone needs to take the same path.
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What Chris said above, but I did want to make clear that I am not saying you need formal understanding to write good music.
 
ChrisSiuMusic said:
Without it, I don’t think my understanding of progression, modulation, etc. would be as strong, and I see it as a true fundamental base for me.
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Then the question we have to ask ourselves is: can we write a pop tune? Can we write a simple pop tune right now with a catchy melody that people can't get out of their heads? Can we sit down, write it and sell it right now? Because if we can't then we're not in control. We don't have control of our craft. And if we don't have that then we can take all of our Theory and pound it sideways. How are we going to do something complex if we can't even do the simplest thing?

I'm for whatever works, however we get there. But what I'm really for is control; choice. We could fill a phone book with composers fluent in theory; the same cannot be said of composers truly in control of their life's destiny through their music. Of course if that isn't our goal, then it doesn't matter. If it is, then control is what steals our future back from pure chance. If theory has given you that power then, brother you keep on it and never look back!
 
mverta said:
Then the question we have to ask ourselves is: can we write a pop tune? Can we write a simple pop tune right now with a catchy melody that people can't get out of their heads? Can we sit down, write it and sell it right now? Because if we can't then we're not in control. We don't have control of our craft. And if we don't have that then we can take all of our Theory and pound it sideways. How are we going to do something complex if we can't even do the simplest thing?

I'm for whatever works, however we get there. But what I'm really for is control; choice. We could fill a phone book with composers fluent in theory; the same cannot be said of composers truly in control of their life's destiny through their music. Of course if that isn't our goal, then it doesn't matter. If it is, then control is what steals our future back from pure chance. If theory has given you that power then, brother you keep on it and never look back!
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That's a great question; I remember you discussing that in one of your lectures! For me (and I'm sure for many others), theory solidified my grasp in my understanding of musical devices and taught me new structures, although as far as I can remember, improvising short tunes and humming all over the house (annoying my parents to no end) has been a part of my life :)
 
As a hobbyist who is progressing only very slowly I find that looking back on my older work, it shows where I've learned "a bit" of theory, and in my output it showed as a step back. I think I would have hugely benefitted from getting Mike's advice on theory and learning through transcription, before touching any of the theory. It's not that the theory is bad, but without the right context for how to wield that weapon in your arsenal, it's easy to cut your own legs off.

Also having been academically trained in something other than music, that I also persued self-taught in addition to that, I am very open to the reality that sometimes formal education isn't necessarrily a good education, and some self-taught people will indeed be objectively better - both at doing and at teaching it.
 
MVerta: "I never think about theory, even unconsciously" you don't know what you think about unconsciously - at least not consciously ;)
teasing aside, I understand your point as: you know what you know about theory so well that you don't have to consciously think about it in order to apply it. Which also derives from you having learned much of it by practical explorations first. And it's hard to separate the two aspects now that you have learned theory.

I do not agree that "theory..does not provide a set of rules the following of which will guarantee a good or compelling piece". depends what exactly you mean by "good" and "compelling". But in the general sense of the words: absolutely it does. One just has to know theory well enough and have practiced its application enough. Much music that functions perfectly well for many media projects and gets you paid can be written very quickly, with perfectly happy customers just by applying tried old music theory rules. I-IV-V chords with diatonic melody, anchored around chord tones - proper phrase building, standard instrumentation to make a cheerful country tune for a small mobile game - I happily do it any day and several times a day too, if needed. (of course that's not all I do) And while I speedily apply such principles (or rules if you will) I might even get inspired with some extra fun stuff as well.

Maybe you rather mean "original and inspired"? But even if that: applying theory does not preclude inspiration nor originality - neither of which means that it has to be outside any rules to be accepted as such. and nothing really guarantees inspiration anyways - we just can do our best to help it along.

to me "writing from theory outward" is just a potential part of the path to mastery. a phase we go through. And it's not a straight path either - more like a circling around the great mystery.
 
back to the original topic: I too found several of the Thinkspace courses very good. I think their whole setup and concept is excellent and Guy is excellent at presenting the material.

I found many useful courses on LinkedIn Learning in a wide variety of topics. mixing, music business, software tutorials, production. but also, and that's almost more important to me: on film making, communication, business in general, investing and drawing (a hobby I wish I had more time to pursue). MacProvideo also has some good courses on many of the same topics. Online course spaces like this abound today - there's almost too much to pick from.
 
wolf said:
back to the original topic: I too found several of the Thinkspace courses very good. I think their whole setup and concept is excellent and Guy is excellent at presenting the material.

I found many useful courses on LinkedIn Learning in a wide variety of topics. mixing, music business, software tutorials, production. but also, and that's almost more important to me: on film making, communication, business in general, investing and drawing (a hobby I wish I had more time to pursue). MacProvideo also has some good courses on many of the same topics. Online course spaces like this abound today - there's almost too much to pick from.
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Thinkspace seems to go very in-depth, and I agree that Guy is awesome. His upbeat fun style makes the whole experience enjoyable. Lynda is also a great website to learn from.
 
Here's an example of the type of composer I'm talking about. Self-taught. Doesn't read music. Hasn't studied theory.

 
robgb said:
Here's an example of the type of composer I'm talking about. Self-taught. Doesn't read music. Hasn't studied theory.
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I don't understand how not knowing theory or being unable to read music could possibly be a plus in a teacher.

One of the main reasons I'd seek out a teacher would be for him/her to say, "look, I can hear what you're trying for in this spot and it's not working because..." Music, at least a lot of commercial music, is not an uncharted wilderness that nobody has ever explored; on the contrary, a lot of ideas "just work," and I like a teacher who can help me get there faster. Not a cookie-cutter, but "here are three or four ways you could improve this passage," and start from there.

"I'd Like More of That Please"

We all can come up with four bars, maybe eight or sixteen, that sound really good. But then what? What if you have four weeks to write and produce a finished score of 70 minutes? It's a lot faster and less painless if you have three or four ways of looking at those sixteen bars you already wrote and analysing them, so you can work out what, exactly, is unusual and / or appealing about them. Theory is very good at helping to do that, and at propagating, extending that bit you already composed so it forms the basis for a lot more music.

I do like a lot of music written by self-taught composers -- we can all think of them. Nevertheless, when faced with a ferocious deadline and needing to produce a thick stack of full-score orchestral music, either you need to know how to get the notes down the way you want or surround yourself with a lot of orchestrators help get it all done.

Maybe some find it more admirable to be self-taught? That's one thing when it comes to novels, but another, I think, when it comes to the orchestra. If you have a meaty project and a deadline, typically there's just too much to figure out if you're starting from scratch.
 
JohnG said:
I don't understand how not knowing theory or being unable to read music could possibly be a plus in a teacher.
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It's not necessarily a plus. But it's not a minus, either. That's my point. For me, personally, I want a guy who works and thinks the way I do. But clearly your mileage varies.

As for the rest of your post, Henson's multitude of credits hasn't kept him from being continuously employed and meeting deadlines.
 
JohnG said:
Maybe some find it more admirable to be self-taught? That's one thing when it comes to novels, but another, I think, when it comes to the orchestra. If you have a meaty project and a deadline, typically there's just too much to figure out if you're starting from scratch.
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People like cheering for the underdogs. They like the romanticism that comes with art being seemingly limitless, and bound only by the extent of one's imagination; where we don't really know where this genius and beauty comes from.

The introduction of things like music theory or "rules" removes the veil and reveals a logic, order, and method to it all — a craft.

So the idea — to someone who really loves music, but is not as interested or unaware of the workings "beneath the hood" — that the piece they love so much is the product of various formulas being applied to create something aesthetic, rather than purely a conjuring of the soul, seems to cheapen the whole experience.

Harmony, counterpoint, structure, phrasing, orchestration, etc. are all the result of all of mankind's existence and study of music, and the "rules" (and when and why to break them); the theories were established for a reason: They undeniably work.

I've never felt my music suffered yet from learning more about music theory and I find it fun. And it seems that every time this argument pops up, someone inevitably says "Some people know a lot about theory and their music sucks!" :confused:

Well, I have yet to hear someone who was really knowledgeable of theory, and how to apply it, who actually makes bad music. :)
 
Chr!s said:
Well, I have yet to hear someone who was really knowledgeable of theory, and how to apply it, who actually makes bad music. :)
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Um, about 95% of composition majors....ha. But I definitely agree that learning theory is a good thing and beneficial.
 
Chr!s said:
Well, I have yet to hear someone who was really knowledgeable of theory, and how to apply it, who actually makes bad music. :)
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I like the rest of your post but this ^^ -- sadly...too many counter-examples, alas.
 
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