Jazz Composition

Jazz composition is a rich 100-year tradition that covers everything from the majestic and highly detailed constructed compositions of Duke Ellington and others, to loose, spontaneous creations of melody over a one-chord vamp. This course focuses on the most common type of jazz composition—the “short form,” which has been the essence of jazz repertoire since the beginning. It is flexible enough to include blues and several standard song forms, as well as variations and combinations of them.

Jazz Composition will guide you through a carefully chosen set of concepts that inform mainstream jazz songwriting. You’ll learn variations of form, building from the blues structure, creating a compelling chord progression, and melodic development, as well as working with motives, different meters, and modes. The course features jazz classics as models by composers including Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, Harold Arlen, Wes Montgomery, Herbie Hancock, and more.

You will learn one or two new compositional concepts per week, and immediately put them to use in composition exercises. Some of these exercises will immediately result in finished tunes, while others will be building blocks for later lessons. Each week, you will upload your work for the class to review, in order to share insights and solutions to challenges.

The goal of the course is to teach compositional techniques that help you create jazz tunes that have a balance of melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic appeal to keep your listeners and players coming back to them again and again. The work you complete in the course will provide the foundation for a number of pursuits, including composing an album’s worth of instrumental material for yourself or another recording artist, collaborating with a lyricist, writing a jazz musical, composing for a modern dance company, or creating songs for an independent film or video.

• Yes, I'm ready to enroll
• I'm interested and have a few questions