This is a very accessible introduction to Western music for readers of all backgrounds. It is not particularly long at about 130 pages but it avoids overwhelming technical jargon and instead focuses on cultivating lifelong listening habits through clarity, context, and cultural insight.
His tone is inviting and informative, and is suitable for people from all walks of life and age groups, be they high school or college students, adult learners, or educators looking to inspire their students with a useful resource.
The book covers a range of musical styles and historical developments, emphasizing how music reflects and shapes everyday life. Anecdotes and stories are woven throughout, adding warmth and the opportunity to relate to the material.
It is a very balanced book and introduces key composers and periods without becoming encyclopedic. There is also a handy study guide and glossary to support deeper engagement and further research.
This book is a valuable reference when learning music history and inspiring musical curiosity without getting lost in technical terms and concepts.
I would recommend this as a good introduction to music appreciation.
This assignment from the How to Write Music course from ThinkSpace Education was concerning harmony and how it works with a melodic line.
Initially this module dealt with diatonic chords and how to create a fundamental harmonic progression and then looked at ways in which to make things more interesting. In particular the idea of harmonic development.
The course only dealt with a subset of the many ways of adding harmonic interest to a chord progression as the goal of the course is to get you creating music as quickly and painlessly as possible, not stressing over the minutia of theoretical concepts.
As such it looked at methods of development like integration, evolution, expansion and variation along with reflection and reduction. It also looked at techniques such as the use of pedal tones and rhythmic development.
There was also a section on how you would put a melody to the harmonic progression using chord tones and neighbor tones if your idea started with a harmonic idea.
They introduced a very handy pyramid to explain the harmonic order of priority indicating which chords were likely to have the greatest precedence in a progression and what is likely to follow and where interest can be added based on functional harmony/
A section on chord voicings and inversions followed, before moving on to different chords like suspensions and extensions such as 7th, 9th, 11th, and 13th chords.
Looking at the effect of pedal notes on how a progression can be varied was very interesting.
This then led to the assignment, which was to experiment with creating harmonic progressions and adding variety and interest to them, and so that is what I am going to do.
Hearing the story of John Lennon through the eyes of his first wife, Cynthia, was an interesting perspective after reading a multitude of different biographies of John Lennon in the past. (paid link) John by Cynthia Lennon was a fascinating account of John, subtitled as “The bestselling classic written by Beatles legend John Lennon’s first wife Cynthia”.
It was revealing to hear of the early years of their relationship at art school and how her potential career never really had a chance after the Beatles rise to fame began.
It was a story of a hard life and mixed emotions. In her own words “… so much that I have never said, so many incidents I have never spoken of and so many feelings I have never expressed: great love on one hand; pain, torment, and humiliation on the other. Only I know what really happened between us, why we stayed together, why we parted, and the price I have paid for being John’s wife.”
It was fascinating to have an account of those years she spent with John, of his rise to stardom, and the subsequent decline of their relationship under the eyes of the world. It must have been incredibly difficult.
The relationship with John’s aunt Mimi was also good to read about, and how that affected things for the Lennon family.
Although not much that is new is revealed it is always nice to hear things from someone that was there, and her personal perspective on things was valuable.
This was an interesting read and I would recommend it to anyone that would like to understand more about John Lennon as a young man thrust into the centre of the music world.
The assignment for module 2 of the How to Write Music course from ThinkSpace Education – should I choose to accept it, which I will, is to work on some ideas for motifs, harmonic progressions, or rhythms.
The philosophy behind this is to work on generating and recognizing ideas, particularly for motifs and removing the terror of the blank page.
The course gave a number of different methods that can be employed to spark these initial ideas and how we can work on generating usable motifs, and some we should just throw away. There were many good suggestions and I will be using many of these methods to generate ideas.
One of the things mentioned was the use of improvisation to generate small snippets and motifs that can be developed and used to build phrases. Since I play the guitar this is something that I can relate to, although it is a lot less natural on the keyboard, but then it does not really matter what instrument the idea begins on, despite the likelihood that you will get different ideas with different instruments related to standard patterns employed when improvising.
The guidelines for this assignment are to find a place without interruption where you will not feel inhibited, have a recording device recording and then start improvising around different patterns or chords.
This is something that I may well do when I go away for a few days into nature and see what comes to me. Then also do the same exercise at home and other places and see whether location has any effect on how easily, or difficultly, the ideas come.
I do like that one of the important guidelines for this assignment is to prepare a hot beverage of your choice – well a coffee it is then.
In this tutorial we shall look at the suspended fourth chords and how they are built. We will also explore what they can add to your music. There is also the suspended second chord that will be discussed also in the silver members tutorial. If you wish to learn more about the suspended second chord please consider signing up to silver membership.
Some common modern day examples are ‘Pinball Wizard’ by the Who that uses suspended fourths resolved to major chords. Other examples are songs like ‘Free Fallin’ by Tom Petty, ‘More than a Feeling’ by Boston, etc. there are many, many examples and you have probably heard the sound innumerable times.
Suspended fourth chords — commonly labeled sus4 — are among the simplest yet most expressive tools in modern harmony. They replace the third of a chord with the fourth, creating a sound that feels open, unresolved, and emotionally charged.
What are suspended chords?
As we have seen in earlier tutorials regarding triad construction in traditional harmony, chords are built in thirds:
A major chord = root + major third + perfect fifth
A minor chord = root + minor third + perfect fifth
Suspended fourth chords remove the third and replace it with either:
sus4 – add a perfect fourth instead of the third
This “suspends” the chord’s identity — it’s neither major nor minor — and creates tension that demands resolution.
The presence of a suspension is indicated by the insertion of the word sus and the interval that replaces the third
sus4
So a D suspended fourth chord would be indicated thus
Dsus4
This would be called D sus four.
The construction of suspended chords
As we have seen major and minor triads are created by stacking thirds – we shall see examples here using D as our root
Suspended fourth
So as you can see the construction of these suspended chords is quite straightforward.
Why Use Suspended Chords?
Suspended chords serve several harmonic and emotional functions:
Delay Resolution
Suspended chords postpone the arrival of the third, creating anticipation.
Often used before resolving to a major or minor chord (e.g., Dsus4 → D).
Add Color and Texture
They soften rigid progressions and add mystery or space.
Great for ambient, cinematic, and pop textures.
Create Movement
Suspended chords can oscillate (Dsus4 ↔ D), adding motion without changing root.
Useful in intros, interludes, and breakdowns.
Neutral Emotional Tone
Because they lack a third, suspended chords feel emotionally ambiguous.
Perfect for moments that need tension without commitment.
Final Thoughts
As you can see there are many uses for suspended chords. They can add variation and colour to standard chord progressions allowing us to express ourselves in new, exciting ways. To find out more about suspended second chords and expand upon this discussion of suspended fourth chords please consider signing up to silver membership.
Silver membership also allows access to more complete tutorials than those available to non-members and downloadable pdf versions of the full tutorials and numerous reference sheets to allow you to build your own composers toolkit.
I have now completed the first few modules of the ‘How to Write Music’ course from ThinkSpace Education and I think that it is going pretty well. I am enjoying it at least, which is important, and I am also learning things which is also important.
The course is very well presented and the videos are fun.
Thus far I have covered the first four modules which consists of
Introduction
The process
Where Ideas come from
Developing your Ideas: Chords and Harmony
and am working on the next module which is
Developing your Idea: Melody
The modules that I have covered so far have been very interesting and have also allowed me to consolidate and further existing knowledge. As I have mentioned on numerous occasions I I always feel that going over things that one already knows to some degree is useful as it acts to reinforce that knowledge. In addition, with the additional opportunities to apply those lessons it builds a greater association of theory and practice.
This course has been putting a great deal of emphasis on the foundational pillars of composition
Harmony
Melody
Rhythm
Structure and form
Texture
These are useful parts of the process to reiterate as they apply to all forms and genres of music but differ in the importance of each pillar and the application of them.
I am making my way through this course at a decent pace, but am making sure to follow all of the exercises and opportunities for practice as I feel that is crucial to gaining the most from these courses.
I shall be taking a few days off soon and hope to complete this course before then, but I will be taking all of these principles with me and hopefully will be utilizing them to compose by the sea. A good name for a piece maybe, ‘Coastal Composition’.
As I have mentioned many times before I have always been a big Beatles fan and that translates to the individual members of the band too. (paid link) Paul McCartney: The Life by Philip Norman was an incredible, informative read.
I remember when (paid link) Shout: The True Story of the Beatles by Philip Norman came out in 1981 and I had to strong arm the local library to get a copy of it – I was only eleven years old at the time with little expendable cash. There began my enjoyment of Philip Norman’s biographies, first of the Beatles and then of almost the entire band individually.
The author delves deep into the history of Paul McCartney and provides a very human account of the genesis of one of the world’s greatest songwriters and musicians.
At nearly 900 pages this book crams in an unimaginable amount of information about McCartney’s early years, Beatles years, Wings years, solo years and up to more recent times.
I have always enjoyed reading about the early years of the Beatles and their apprenticeship in Hamburg and Liverpool before finally breaking out into the big time, and no one could have been bigger, their music still loved , covered, and used all over the place fifty years on.
It was fascinating to learn more about his relationship with John Lennon and what came to be the most successful songwriting partnership ever, although whether it was a true partnership remains up for debate.
The madness of the Beatles years was described in stark clarity and the pressures of being a Beatle both personally and in public must have been unimaginable.
I may have gone off on a bit of a tangent there, in my enthusiasm, but nevertheless, this is a great book and well worth a read.
Now that I have completed the Getting Started with Songwriting course, my next foray into the ThinkSpace Education courses is a short course, rather than a free course, called How to Write Music.
I am looking forward to this as I do all of the ThinkSpace courses. I have been learning a lot and having fun whilst doing so following these courses.
So what does this next course deal with.
The modules are
Introduction
The Process
Where Ideas come From
Developing Your Idea: Chords and Harmony
Developing Your Idea: Melody
Developing Rhythm
Structure
Texture
Appendix, Bonus Webinar, and Downloads
This course deals with the pillars of writing music and given that it is a short course rather than a free course will no doubt go into greater depth in regard to each topic.
I think it is very useful to take courses like this that deal with ostensibly the same topics but from either a different perspective or viewpoint, with a different end result in mind, or just keep building on already acquired information.
I am a big believer in that idea of consolidating knowledge by repetition of learning. The more ways we can receive the same knowledge and the more ways in which we can apply it the better chance we have of truly digesting it and actually knowing.
