Dear all - As one of my happy duties as orchestra director at the high school where I teach, I also teach a course called "Beginning Electronic Music," wherein I try to teach totally inexperienced and not-too-motivated high school students (with no musical background, I might add) how to "compose" using tools such as GarageBand, Sibelius, and Logic.
Most of them just want to write "rap beats," which is not a problem for me, but I really have been trying to introduce them to chord progressions and melodic composition, too. Obviously, writing good melodies is tough for any composer, even the best, but it's the area in which they definitely have the most problems. So, here (finally) is my question - what do you think are the best melodies out there, that I can use as examples of successful melodies for my students? (These can be from any genre - classical, jazz, pop, etc.) Also, for those of you who DO compose (I don't), do you have any suggestions for marrying a melody with the chord progression? It's boring if it matches too closely, and it can be jarring if it doesn't match at all (yes, I know about polytonality - we don't need to go there, yet) - so what do you think is a good balance? Do you start with chords and then go to the melody, or vice versa, or both (or neither)? I'm sending this out to several lists at once, so my apologies in advance for cross-postings. Thanks - The Befuddled Perfessor (Mr.) Jamin Hoffman _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
