Creating Music for Media, composition, improvisation... I am in Merrylands, and I have a Master's Degree in Music Composition.

Course setup

Introduction & The Music Compass



Hello and welcome to Creating Music for media. My name is Victor Spiegel and I have been in music for over 60 years. I started piano when I was 5, went into composition and now I have my own studio working with various projects, teaching, and writing, scoring and collaborating.

We are in my studio. I have a full velocity sensitive keyboard, I use Digital Performer for my DAW, and an iMac.
I will be guiding you through two rather large Meta Sections. The first part we will be talking about the Building Blocks of Music, or what I call the Music Compass.


The second meta-section we will be applying the various parameters we learned about in the Music Compass and how to combine them appropriately with an external image or project.


The skill sets you need for this course are a working knowledge of music history - meaning that you understand and are familiar with Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Impressionist, Nationalist and minimalist styles;, you are comfortable with music theory, able to read and write music, and able to play the piano. You should understand music composition enough to construct melodies, harmonies, and four-part harmony.


If you do not understand what I just said go and take those courses or take the first part of this course to get a handle on music composition. You will also need a Digital Audio Workstation and able to record multitrack, sync and lock to picture. Logic Pro, Digital Performer, ProTools are some examples of multi-tracking, syncable professional workstations. You will need some kind of midi keyboard- preferably velocity sensitive. Virtual instruments will eventually be needed- building your orchestra is your next step. We’ll talk about your studio further down the line.


Let’s get started. I will sometimes ask you difficult, strange or odd questions to pop you out of linear thinking to help get creative and get into our non-comfort zone. Creativity happens when you leave the known and enter the unknown. That’s where the good stuff happens. Learning what the masters have done is good, and that’s very important. The next step is off the cliff and into the place you have never been before. Scary, but where the Big Fun happens.


The very first question we need to consider is: What is music? Take a moment to stop this video and write down your thoughts about what makes something music. Be advised: If everything is music then what is Noise?



It could be that sound, organized sound, may be music. But do birds make music? And what about that insistent jingle in your head from a commercial or song that keeps looping? That’s not sound. That’s your brain. For the moment let’s see if we can deconstruct the concept of music and look at its component parts.


There is a copy of the Music Compass in the resources. Let’s take a look at it now.


These are some of the elements that make music. I may have left some out, or there may be too many - I don’t know. If you can think of other elements please let me know. But these are the ones I seem to work with most of the time.


You don’t need all of these to make it music. Any one of these can become what we would call music.


Over the following lessons we are going to look at these elements and talk about them, do exercises with them, and get our hands dirty messing about with them. This will also help you understand about music composition and different ways to approach designing sound.


For our first dip into the scoring pool let’s take one of the parameters from the Music Compass. Harmony. This is a simple exercise in 4-part harmony. Write 8 bars for a choir that moves from minor to major. End with a plagal cadence. Let’s see what we can do.

To review: Four parts of a choir consists of Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass. Almost everything we are doing to do that involves harmony will be placed in these parts. A plagal cadence is IV-I. Go.