Key Information
About the content
This course will introduce you to the tools and techniques you need to write your first song.
Each week, using specially-commissioned lyrics, we’ll build up a song and encourage you to do the same. World-renowned musician, Martin Simpson, will use the same words and techniques and we’ll check in with him each week for inspiration and guidance on the songwriting process.
We’ll also talk to experts in music and psychology as well as established musicians and songwriters to find out what makes a song successful.
Syllabus
- Setting words to music
- Time and pitch
- Working with melody
- Chords and chord progressions
- Song forms
- Arranging your song
Instructors
Adam White
Professional Musician and Associate Lecturer in Music with The Open University. Formerly Course Director for Music at the Department for Lifelong Learning at the University of Sheffield.
Content Designer
The University of Sheffield is one of the world’s top 100 universities with a reputation for teaching and research excellence.
The University of Sheffield’s diverse student population of nearly 25,000 of the brightest students from 117 countries learn alongside over 1,200 of the world’s top academics. The campus is based in the heart of Sheffield, a large, green city in the north of England.
Leading experts teach on the University’s courses and its students rated their learning experience as the best in the UK in the Times Higher Education Student Experience Awards, 2014-15.
The University conducts research that matters. In the most recent UK Research Excellence Framework, 86 per cent of its research was assessed as world-leading or internationally excellent. The University has five Nobel Prize winners among its former staff and students.
It uses its research power to tackle big problems; global issues such as climate change and sustainable energy. It is reinventing engineering, changing the landscape of urban regeneration, protecting the vulnerable and standing up for freedom of expression.
The University remains true to the ideals of its 1905 founders and works hard to ensure that people from all backgrounds have opportunities to learn and the chance to fulfil their potential.
Platform
FutureLearn is a massive open online course (MOOC) learning platform founded in December 2012.
It is a company launched and wholly owned by The Open University in Milton Keynes, England. It is the first UK-led massive open online course learning platform, and as of March 2015 included 54 UK and international University partners and unlike similar platforms includes four non-university partners: the British Museum, the British Council, the British Library and the National Film and Television School.
