In this introductory lecture, J. Anthony Allen (Jay) outlines the goals of his music composition course, aiming to demystify the myth of the solitary genius composer and provide practical tools for generating musical ideas. He emphasizes a hands‑on approach: using software to build chord libraries, exploring major/minor chords, chord progressions, and the concept of borrowing across sections like verses and choruses. He shares his own background—working with orchestras, film scoring, and personal music projects—to illustrate real‑world applications. The class promises a blend of storytelling, theory basics, and actionable process steps, encouraging students to experiment, accept failure, and learn through doing.
Chapters
Sa. Now, in order to do that, we have several different software programs that can do that for us. They're basically like a Microsoft Word kind of where in Microsoft. Add this one now and let's add another one there. So I'm just pasting this all over the place. Let's start this one over. So just. Just keep on going. Put one there. We like our audiences to have that recollection moment. Like, oh, I've heard this before. That's what we want to happen. Usually you don't have to have that. You don't have to have that at all, but we tend to like that. I'm going to talk about major and minor chords in a second, but let's just finish building out all our possible chords. So right now we have a chord with the root of C, a chord with the root of D, two different chord progressions. I'm thinking of this as like a verse and a chorus kind of thing to kind of more of a pop song. But it applies in really all music, this concept of borrowing. So I have a chord progression right there to finish the chord or the third. It could also be a note on the bottom to finish the chord. Right. Because these two thirds are either going to be the top two thirds or the top third or the bottom third. Hey, everyone, welcome to this class. Here's what we're going to do. In this class, my goal is to demystify the process of writing music. As I'll say in the class. You know, most people think of writing music as, you know, this genius person hiding out in an attic with a grand piano and a big white wig and writing music. They're basically picturing Beethoven. And, you know, Beethoven was a good composer, but that's not how it works in the modern world. Sometimes you just need a way to come up with some good ideas. You need to understand some of the fundamentals of how music works. And then you just gotta hit the ground running and try it. You're gonna fail a little bit. You're gonna write some stuff that doesn't sound great, and you're gonna learn from that. So that's what this class is about. It's about coming up with ideas, getting started, and demystifying the process of writing music. I'm gonna tell you a lot of stories about what I do. I'm gonna tell you about what some of my friends do, what some of my teachers have done, and then we're gonna talk a lot about theory, too. I've got a big chunk in this class about music theory. To get us started. It's not a comprehensive music theory class, but there's enough in here to get us off the ground if you don't have much theory background. Primarily, though, we're going to be talking about ideas and process for writing music and getting started writing music. So I hope you decide to join us. My name is Jay. You're going to learn a lot about me in the first couple videos. I'll give you my background, show you some of my music, and talk about some of the orchestras I've worked with and films I've done and things like that. Please jump in. Let's get started right away. It's going to be a really good time, and I'll see you inside the first lecture. Adios.
