A question for kcinsu

mathew, you studied composition in an university in boston. i know from several websites where you can learn about some music theory and stuff... i´m poor, live far far away and studying composition it´s pretty complex here - plus the schools here are dogmatic, boring, and old-schooled.

so, i´m searching for some resources for composition, stuff to read, in general. i´m mostly interested in pop music, nothing very complex, but i want to learn. is it worth it? anything to add to this?

thanks

ezeh

Are you asking about coming to Berklee?

http://www.musictheory.net/

http://library.thinkquest.org/15413/theory/theory.htm#

http://www.chordwizard.com/hmw.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-tone_system

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_composition

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonata_%28music%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugue

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerto

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aria

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorale

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_music

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/007285260...5Fencoding=UTF8

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/013189662...glance&n=283155

The last two links are the books that I'm using for my music theory class right now. The rest is free knowledge. If you find you still have questions after reading all of that, it may be a good idea to go to school and get learned proper.

The main thing I'm learning so far that I wouldn't have otherwise is the ear training and sight singing part. Both really help in the realm of composition.

oh yeah forgot some Jazz Theory:

http://www.petethomas.co.uk/jazz-theory.html

http://www.dolmetsch.com/theoryintro.htm (looks like a whole bunch of stuff, jazz included)

Get a good book on harmony first... Robert L Jacobs "Understanding Harmony" is superb... Not very long, but it covers so much ground...

It's one of those rare books which demystifies harmony and theory - very few seem capable of doing that - usually you'll find you struggle trying to learn rule after rule, whereas this book breaks it right down and gets you thinking about what you're doing... and that's what you need if you're going to study composition...

Composition itself is something you study by studying other people's music... So you need a good grounding in harmony, and you need to be able to read music pretty fluidly if you want to study the more interesting stuff...

Theory and harmony's really preparing yourself to start learning about music and composition...

If you really mean just simple pop music - like how to string a 3 chord Beach Boys song together, then there's Associated Boards books on popular music theory which should tell all you'll ever need to know in about 2 minutes...

theres plenty of stuff on the net, just search around. i dont have a book, or any links for you really... all my functional harmony stuff came from workbooks, made by berklee, for berklee students. I dont think you can buy them. but, I'm really not into functional harmony anymore, so im probably not the best one to ask. If you were looking for more modern techniques, I could give you a few titles... very good in content, although the explinations can be very obtuse.