YC Masterclass Revival?

"If YoungComposers was to revive the masterclass forum, would you participate or utilize them? What topics would you like to see covered?"

I would like an weekly or bi-weekly young-composer lesson.

Where an more seasoned composer gives an assignment to youngster composers to make certain musical forms or musical excersizes in certain scales. Things we can get wiser by. and provide an lesson. I would sign up for this. Interactive would be nicer, then just reading the lesson.

Greetings

I would be very interested in learning anything I could from the more experienced composers on this site. i would do my best to participate in every one.

I'd love to see classes on things that traditional theory books don't cover but that are central to composition:

• Thematic development
• Structuring a work
• Techniques for revising a work
• Writing for different instruments (above and beyond what you'd get in an orchestration text)

Agreed with all of the above. I think there's always more to YC than just showcasing members' works. Anything that helps us to become better composers would be welcome.

I think some contemporary techniques would bring useful composition tools, but I don't know if this stuff would be interesting for anyone:

• New scales, new modes, mixing modes.
• Triadic extension: non functional triad harmonies, layering,
• Composing by interval sets.
• Parallelism, stasis, planing harmonies
• Quartal harmony, quintal harmony, harmony by seconds and clusters
• Mixed and odd meters, no meter
• New Forms
• Chance, indeterminacy, aleatory
• Graphic notation
• Etc...

I would be interested. Besides what was said above, I think it should also include the following:

1. Use of composition software, sound samples etc. This has become something like a necessity for composers at present. It would be great to learn more than we know and to cover things beyond the basics (while covering/reviewing the basics also).

2. Composing in sonata form and the other large forms with practical examples or exercises.

3. Theory, harmony, counterpoint as general topics and different aspects of them.

4. Orchestration, and discussing (the orchestration of) various classics from the orchestral repertoire.

I don't know much about how the masterclasses worked. So I think it would be useful if the format or possible future formats were mentioned. Would such "masterclasses" be using just threads or video presentations, etc.? Maybe they would also rely on texts.... An idea would be to invite a well-known contemporary composer/musicologist/performer to present such a masterclass, or to conduct a question-answer session in a thread or the chatbox. I think everyone would benefit from such a session.

Heck yes I'd be open to a masterclass! I'd also think it best if there were a mix of straight-up lessons ( the kind you just read/watch, I don't know how you're planning on doing this) as well as some actual assignments like those suggested above, but really I'm up for just about anything. All of the ideas above seem appealing to me.

I never teach just by standing up at a board and instructing students on how to achieve something, unless the task is really, really, complicated. There are always questions being tossed around the class. I'm trying to think of the best way to do this on a forum. I'll open another thread with my ideas.

I'm not sure if it was a master class, but I stumbled upon a page of this site a while back that explained in awesome detail the various string section techniques. It was extremely helpful. Unfortunately, similar pages didn't exist for other types of instruments. I'd love to see members who are well-versed in particular instruments (especially winds) lead detailed and down-to-earth discussions about their instruments, hopefully with a live (or live-ish) Q&A. 

I'll try to find the page I'm talking about.

9 minutes ago, Noah Brode said:

I'm not sure if it was a master class, but I stumbled upon a page of this site a while back that explained in awesome detail the various string section techniques. It was extremely helpful. Unfortunately, similar pages didn't exist for other types of instruments. I'd love to see members who are well-versed in particular instruments (especially winds) lead detailed and down-to-earth discussions about their instruments, hopefully with a live (or live-ish) Q&A. 

I'll try to find the page I'm talking about.

 

Yes, i believe that's how they were conducted here before I was here. However, I don't really think that's conducive to learning and I want to make it as engagable and dynamic as possible.

I'm going to clarify that I mean simply reading about techniques is not conducive to learning. QA's are good, but application is the best way to reallyunderstand it as it would be presented

Yeah, I'm not really sure what the best format is, but I'd definitely like to work on instrumentation and orchestration in some way if possible. It's awesome that you're thinking of reviving the master classes -- thanks!

I'm thinking of doing it in a way that you would normally do an instrumental masterclass. Have signups to write a piece based on specific criteria then review them with specific pointers based on the objective of the masterclass. I would give some basic learning points for the class, the pieces would be short (32 or 64 bars) and the reviews would be public to the forum.

All of that sounds great to me!

Someone please do an class on the compositional agents Olivier Messiaen used!

Alright, we now have a masterclass forum!
http://www.youngcomposers.com/f100/masterclasses/

Please respond here if there are specific things you want covered in these classes: