Assignment 1 Learning Music

Learning Music is an extension of Ableton’s website that teaches the general rules of song composition digitally across various genres and provides many examples of each method and section that they introduce.

I really appreciated the time I spent with the website, there were many things I had to do my own research on to form a slightly deeper understanding for myself for things such as Chords, Beats (as the pulse of a song), Major and Minor Scales, and Song Structure in a general sense.

As a fan of dance music I was really excited to see a section dedicated to showing us how to construct a four on the floor beat. Getting to play with this in a hands on way I think really inspired me to try and make something similar on Logic and maybe eventually even give some production a shot. I spent a lot of time on this one as it was quite pleasant to play with and very intuitive.

As someone who really hasn’t spent much time at all with music theory beyond my instrument experience in childhood, having a section dedicated to minor and major scales really helped me brush up on my understanding of their importance. This will definitely be something I spend more time learning and understanding as it is pivotal to the creation and understanding of music.

Lastly, the section that I felt helped my understanding of music the most (though I still have tons to learn and all of this also gave me many more questions) was the section on song structures. Being a fan of lots of music with sometimes irregular structure It felt really nice to have this very digestible breakdown of segments of a song with crystal clear descriptions and time stamps. This was my favorite section genuinely because it felt the most like a learning experience.

Learning Music really helped me get excited for the things that I will be learning in this class, things which I was not giving enough thought too in my blind enjoyment of music.