The Nightfly

Steve, here is my intended course for you. Please read through and tell me if there is anything that you are already familiar with. Or if there is anything specific that you want to add. This is just an overview, there might be things that I will add later on. These are just what came to my mind right now.

Lesson Overview

Scale formation in 20th Century Music
-Five-note scales
-Six-note scales
-Seven-note scales
-eight-note scales
-other possibilities
etc..

Exercise 1: Compose melody with given scales

Chords
-Conventional triads
-triads with added notes
-quartal and quintal chords
-whole-tone chords
-polychords
etc..

Exercise 2: Compose chord progressions

Melody and voice leading

-Tonal melody
-New stylistic features of 20th century music

Composition: From here on we start to write a composition

Harmonic Progressions

-New approaches to harmonic progressions
-polytonality
-atonality
-pandiatonicism

Rhythm

-Syncopation
-Changing time signatures
-nontraditional time signatures
-polymeter
-ametric music
etc..

note: you don't need to do anything right now. I will start the lessons tomorrow and give you an assignment.