The Complete Composer Forge Curriculum

Hey everyone, this is the complete composer forge curriculum reveal. Now, in the last two months, I've been busy researching a lot of programs on music composition that I could find all across the web. Now, this is everything from conservatories, what you find in music university degrees, other online courses and programs, anything that I could find on the internet, I probably found it, and apps and YouTube channels and stuff. And the goal was to find the most structured, complete, and efficient way to learn music composition.

Now, back in October of last year, I did a Google survey, and I got 169 responses in the end. Now, some of the questions that I asked were about what you want to learn or what would help you most as a composer studying composition. And this is the results. In terms of the topics that you wanted to see, it was melody writing and thematic development, which goes under composition, music theory, which is under music theory, orchestration, arranging, and emotional storytelling. Those were the top five composition topics. And after looking at all the results, I didn't know how to break down the different things that you needed to learn as a composer. But then it kind of came to me like how I would split everything up into the different areas.

Now the other interesting thing was an overwhelming number of people wanted to continue learning through video courses. I thought that maybe like workshops or coaching or something would be more popular, but it seems that the video courses are still the most wanted and that's probably because most of you are from Udemy anyway. Now the next question which was what prevents you from achieving your composition goals. 50% said not enough time to practice or compose and that's not much I can do about except that I could make it more efficient in terms of the time that you put in so you're not watching like super long videos and it kind of gets straight to the point but still enough to give a really good education. The next was 42.6% don't know what to focus on next. technical knowledge gaps and lack of structured learning path.

So this was also an overwhelming response. 62.1% said there that a clear structured path from beginner to advanced is the most important factor and that was much higher than say like personalized feedback and having practical projects that build the portfolio and flexible learning. So after looking at all of this, I came up with the the platform idea which I've explained in a previous email that was sent in October and November. And then it actually took me a while to research everything. So I ended up gathering a ton of resources, a lot of online courses like these MOOs which are massive open online courses and then like textbooks, apps, YouTube channels across the five different areas. So this is kind of how it coalesed in my mind the five different areas that you'd need which brings me back to this post. So you'll find the link curriculum.composerforge.com composerforge.com directly in the email where I sent this post and also this video and it kind of explains um how the system works but I will explain it right now anyway.

So the five tracks which I revealed in my previous email a while ago was five things. So theory, composition, orchestration, production and business. Now actually about twothirds of you were interested just in like the art of composition and not professional or career oriented. So it's kind of more like an optional path and you don't have to do all the tracks obviously you do what you need to do. So here's like the complete breakdown of how I would structure each area. Now there's 180 modules to get the most uh complete education and the way it's sort of laid out. So this is a platform well composer forge is a platform where you can take all these tutorials and they'll be like online video tutorials as you're used to and it's designed to be sequential so it makes sense. So if you wanted to well you're meant to take the modules one at a time and each module comprises like different lessons. Now this is only showing kind of some of the topics. It's not actually the lesson breakdown yet. I will show that in the next few weeks. But basically you're getting an entire like conservatory level education at a much cheaper price. Like you don't have to pay that much and you can learn everything that you need to be a composer.

So each of the five tracks breaks down into three different levels. So first you have the foundation level, then the development level which is like intermediate and then mastery which is advanced. And each level has 12 modules. So that's a total of 180. Now obviously based on what you already know, you wouldn't be starting everything from scratch unless you're a complete beginner. So what you would do initially is there'll be a placement quiz for each of the five tracks. You can take one track and by track I mean like the vertical column which are the five different areas that I broke this whole thing down into. So say your theory is lacking. So but you already know like probably all the basic things then you could start a bit further down. Or if you already know most of it then you can unlock the whole track and just fill in your gaps. Like say you don't know what modal interchange is using borrowed chords or only like some things interest you and you don't want to learn absolutely everything then I don't see why you have to learn everything although it's probably best to if you want the most complete education but there'll be an option to lock and unlock the modules.

It's sort of like Duolingo if you have used that to learn languages. You can pretend like these are five different languages and you can take all five at once or three of them or two or you could do one first and then change to like three or four and then usually they'll ask you in that app if you've taken the language before is it completely new and then you kind of start there and you can't skip anything. So, at the moment, I'm not sure if I should do it like that or I should just let let people, you know, study whatever modules they want and skip around, but it's mostly like it kind of builds like each module builds on the previous knowledge. So, if there's like something missing, then it might not be like as smooth as it could be. So, the way it works is say like you're new to orchestration or maybe not. Maybe if you've taken my orchestration courses, like you know a lot of that already, but maybe the theory, cuz I didn't teach a lot of theory in my courses, maybe your theory is lacking. And the composition stuff, like maybe half of it is like you didn't learn counterpoint or all these like more classical things, the different forms and maybe your production is also not really good. So then you can start much lower uh much more advanced in the orchestration path and then you can start maybe I don't know module 15 in the composition track and theory you can start right from the beginning. So I think you get the idea and I will have like guidelines where it's like if you want to start say orchestration you definitely should have some theory and some composition knowledge first because orchestration is like an intermediate and even advanced topic and production I think you should have like some composition at least and probably a little bit of the orchestration or not necessarily depends on what kind of music you want to make. to say a more like electronic then you'd want probably production composition and theory.

So I'd encourage you to go and look at this preferably on a desktop but it doesn't really matter. The mobile is a bit like you have to expand and collapse it. So it's a little bit harder to see everything like at a glance. So I'd recommend looking at it on a tablet or a desktop. And right now there's just these little arrows here that show what you can learn or the learning objectives basically. And in the later emails I will send more information about each module breakdown. There's like specific lessons in there so you can see even more because right now it's still quite high level even though I think it's very detailed already. And also I think the business column is kind of interesting. I don't think many programs cover like absolutely everything whereas I tried to include everything here. So like this is the music column is kind of like a music/ business entrepreneurship program in itself and you certainly don't find too much detail about this on the internet in terms of like online courses. So have a look at all this and see sort of what is interesting to you or what you would use or what is missing because I know that I had the video game music course but that's kind of a specialist spin-off and this is like your really complete foundational stuff before launching into like film music game music but let me know what you actually think or want.

So, I've got in this post after this video, which will be stuck in here. What I really want to know is am I building what you want? Does this sound exciting or interesting? And maybe like some of you if you have ideas or feedback. So, I'm looking for 10 to 15 people to have a quick chat, like a video call or a voice call if you're not comfortable with that. Just about 15 minutes to discuss what you think about this concept. and I like really appreciate it. You can just click the green button and it'll take you to the Calendarly link where you can book a time slot. So, I'm running calls from January the 26th to February the 6th, which is about uh one week almost 2 weeks, like 12 days. And this will give me even more information about what you really want me to create. And the motivation for this was when I was learning composing or starting to learn it ages ago now. And there wasn't really a good place to go where I could sort of learn and track everything. And I know it's like so many skills, right? It's so technical but still creative. And then it's like theory as well. It's just so many different skills is different from a lot of the other arts. So I hope that this would actually be helpful for your education. and learning off random places on the internet is a bit hard as well, like tons of Udemy courses and it's kind of like neverending rabbit holes and you don't know what to improve. But Composer Forge also has a feedback or extra feedback option if you want to have personalized feedback on your work and I'll explain that as well in the next few weeks.

So anyway, hit the green button if you want to have a chat or if you just want to email me as well, that's also fine. Now, I might take a little bit longer to get back to emails, but I will get back. And I already had some people that were really enthusiastic and interested when I first brought up the composer forge idea. And that was a while ago. So, I sorry for the delay, but now is the time period when I actually am ready to take the feedback calls because I had so much to do before that like I had to research all the curriculums and build other like composition tools for the Udemy audience. So, if you book a call, I just want to know sort of what tracks you're most interested in. Is this actually what you want? And I would really appreciate your feedback. And hopefully, this is something that you're excited about just as much as I'm excited about this. So, hopefully I'll chat to you soon.