By popular request, we've brought back our original Alexander Publishing First Music Semester - Home Study Bundle - the first to be used in a MIDI home recording studio where you record what you write. Equals roughly one college semester of music study.
Comes with (in order of suggested study):
- Applied Professional Harmony 101 - PDF eBook
- The Instant Composer: Counterpoint by Fux - PDF eBook
- Professional Orchestration Volume 1: Solo Instruments & Instrumentation Notes - PDF eBook
See the individual product pages for more information about each title in this Bundle.
About Applied Professional Harmony™: 101
Endorsed by winners of the Academy, Grammy and Emmy Awards, Applied Professional Harmony 101 is the first harmony book that combines writing and recording your work so that you learn harmony, songwriting skills, arranging, and recording/production skills with virtually every exercise you do.
The first section of the book teaches Music Basics, which covers the fundamentals of music including pitch names, rhythm, where chords come from, scales, modal chord scales, correct chord notation and much more. This is an easy section of the book, requiring mostly memorization, that will give you the firm foundation you need.
The second section of the book initiates you into the skill-based world of writing music. You'll start to build chord connections and chord progressions. You start simply by working with triads, then connecting four-part chords, then building longer chord progressions. You'll learn how to create the two types of background lines common to all types of music. Plus you'll learn to use rhythmic figures like triad arpeggios, triplets, and broken chord patterns - the stuff that all rock, pop, jazz and classical music is made of. Then you'll begin learning how to do four-part chorale arrangements by studying the Bach chorales. You'll also learn the art of stylistic analysis, meaning the stuff that defines how a song or arrangement or score or songwriter gets that sound and feel. 376 pgs.
Praise for the Applied Professional Harmony Series
Henry Mancini, 4x Winner of the Academy Awards (Oscar) and 20 Grammy's
Peter Alexander in his series, Applied Professional Harmony, has created what I feel will be standard text in schools for many years to come. In a thoroughly readable style, he has managed the neat trick of erasing the lines between so called 'popular' music and 'classical' music. Read and Learn.
John Tesh, 6X Emmy Winner and 4 Gold Albums
If I had these books when I was in college, I'd have stayed in music school.
About The Instant Composer™: Counterpoint by Fux
The Instant Composer: Counterpoint by Fux, is based on Fux's classic work translated into modern easy-to-read English, with a newly added Music Basics section. Fux's method trained Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and many other distinguished and successful composers. It's a great place to start for learning counterpoint. You'll learn compositional techniques of how to write in each mode up through 3-part counterpoint. 561 pgs.
About Professional Orchestration.™ Vol. 1: Solo Instruments and Instrumentation Notes
Recommended by winners of the Academy, Grammy and Emmy Awards,Professional Orchestration. Volume 1, Solo Instruments and Instrumentation Notes is the first orchestration book to be written on the scoring stages in Los Angeles, with instrumentation notes checked and edited by the elite film studio musician community. As Jerry Goldsmith's (Star Trek, The Mummy, Air Force One, Total Recall) orchestrator commented one day over at Warner Brothers, "You've got everything in here that we steal from!"
Professional Orchestration. Volume 1 covers all the main orchestral instruments, and percussion, with electronic scoring notes. Where available, nearly all the book’s examples, by instrument, are organized by demonstrating the instrument in its low, medium, high and very high ranges. By organizing the examples this way you'll learn: how each instrument sounds in each major range break, where composers write across the range breaks, how the instrument projects in each range break, at what dynamic levels to write background instruments based on the dynamic of the solo instrument, and compositional insights for each solo instrument.
As a result, you’ll learn from common practice how and where specific devices and combinations work best. No other orchestration method teaches you this way. 772 pgs.
Praise for Professional Orchestration Volume 1
Jerry Goldsmith, Academy and Emmy Award Winning Composer
The best orchestration book since Forsyth.
Conrad Pope, Multi-Award Winning Orchestrator
Peter Alexander was the "real deal". Though I'm not a "fan" of most orchestration books, Peter's is one that I think many musicians will find to be not only informative but inspiring as well.
Bruce Broughton, Emmy Award Winning Composer
Professional Orchestration offers more opportunities to see and hear the combinations which formerly could only be imagined.
Paul Thomson, Spitfire Audio, Winner, Aerial and Montreux Advertising Festival Awards
Every time I open this book I learn something new.