By studying many of the greatest themes to come out of Hollywood, this three-lesson course will teach you the most common harmonic progressions in Hollywood film music and the emotional and musical associations they tend to have. Learn how to use harmony to evoke the perfect emotions in your themes!
Lesson 1 – Diatonic Progressions
- Preliminaries
- Our Use of Chord Symbols
- Theme Harmony – General Principles
- Associations and Their Progressions in Major Keys
- Innocence – Reverence – Americana
- Noble – Heroic Quest – Majestic
- Personal Loss – Intense Sadness
- Emotionally Touching
- Emotionally Painful
- Of Great Importance
- End of a Phrase
- Associations and Their Progressions in Minor Keys
- Heroic – Beginning of a Phrase
- Beginning of a Phrase
- From a Past Time – Pirates
- End of a Phrase
Lesson 2 – Chromatic Progressions
- Associations and Their Progressions with a Major Tonic
- Awe-Inspiring & Fantasy-Based
- Heroic
- Outer Space
- Love, Romance
- Rural America – Cowboys – Action Heroes
- American-ness (Culture, People, Places, etc.)
- The Extraordinary, Wonder, Amazement, Otherworldly
- The Thrill of Discovery
- Associations and Their Progressions with a Minor Tonic
- Suspense, Mystery, Dark Humor
- Great Dangers – Mysterious Objects
- Evil, Villain, Antagonism
- Hope in Adversity
Lesson 3 – Advanced Techniques
- Associations of a Tonic-Chord Melody Over a Non-Tonic Chord
- Bittersweet Emotion
- Jubilant, Overjoyed
- Associations of Tonal Chords with Other Scales
- Octatonic Scales: Tension, Danger – Comedy
- Hexatonic Scales: Strange, Mysterious – Comedy
- Associations of Ambiguous Tonics
- Incomprehensible, Incredulous
- Ambiguity
- Surprise Chords for Distinctive Theme-Writing
- I–bIII
- bV–V
- bVI–biii
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“Outstanding. Another brilliant course. I am starting to see these progressions everywhere.”
“Having real-world examples from masters of melody showcases how powerful simple writing can be!”
“Excellent lessons. I’ve never seen this direct analysis of progressions as they relate to emotions before. Very helpful.”
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