Book · Music
Beginner to Composer in 14 Days · Digital edition
How To Use This Book
Introduction
You better believe it, in fourteen days you’ll have your very own composition, even if you’ve never played the piano before. You will start by learning the fundamentals of music and begin improvising and unlocking your innate creativity. Lessons are sequential, so be sure to work through each one in order, taking notes on your worksheet as directed.
Your Worksheet is where you’ll gradually build your composition, before translating it to a professional lead sheet.
Your Lead Sheet is a clear articulation of your music which can be read and played by other musicians.
As your piece becomes established you will encounter more ways to develop your composition, like techniques to help you refine your melody, and more interesting patterns for your left hand.
Whenever you see the instruction Time to choose you’ll need to pick the ‘ingredients’ for the music you’re about to make. There are only three kinds of ingredients: notes, chords and rhythms – that’s it. Time to choose lays bare these underlying elements and structures of music, peeling back the composer’s curtain if you will.
Time to choose is also designed to push you, to coax you out of your comfort zone little by little so that progress is inevitable. You might choose something you’re not yet familiar with for example, or something you haven’t practised for months. Although we typically resist challenge and change, dipping your toe into unchartered waters is the best way to learn.
Throughout this book you’ll find exercises that I’ll ask you to try for just one minute. It might not seem like a lot, but in my experience bitesize practice is the way to go. Even when a task seems daunting, you can always manage a minute, and more often than not things are never as hard as we think they are going to be. I like to tell my students, the point of exercises is not to succeed every time. Success is simply doing the exercise, getting from beginning to end. I also encourage repetition, multiple passes at each exercise until you feel like you’ve had a breakthrough. Some aspect of the exercise begins to feel like second nature. Repetition isn’t sexy but it sure as hell works.
You can find videos demonstrating the exercises in this book on my YouTube channel: