Part B
The Composer's Path
The source course, lesson by lesson, mapped onto the music you want to write: Meshuggah, Radiohead, King Crimson, Hamasyan, Nancarrow.
Orientation
How this path works: the method, the toolkit, the caveat discipline, and the same-ear thesis. Read it before you start Part A.
The Ear
Five lessons of listening and transcription. No composing yet, by design: the source course spends its first five lessons the same way.
Rhythm as Structure
The center of gravity for the music you want to write. Six lessons that treat rhythm the way the source course treats pitch, as material to be composed, from Stravinsky's cells to Meshuggah's cycles to Nancarrow's canons.
Counterpoint
Independent lines, from species exercises over an ostinato to interlocking guitars and micropolyphony.
Harmony as a Living System
Modal harmony, the Lydian universe, the symmetric scales, voice-leading, and inversional thinking, each one taken to the keyboard.
The Classical Style: Surprise, Symmetry, Drama
Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven read as working technique, then found again in modern long forms.
The Chromatic Universe
Rows, hexachords, constellations, and rotations, used as riff generators rather than as doctrine, with the caveats stated out loud.
Gesture, Space, Timbre, Process
Three lessons on the parameters that are neither pitch nor rhythm, and that decide how the music actually lands.
Virtuosity as Compositional Material
One long lesson on writing difficulty that carries structure instead of decorating it.
Integration
The synthesis and the capstone: a six to ten minute instrumental work with a technique inventory that cites this curriculum.