* Instructor Note: The Instructor Companion Site includes additional resources, notes, and sample solutions for activities and discussions. 

Course Description

Theory and analysis of popular music. Popular music, defined broadly, includes pop, rock, hip hop, rap, metal, jazz, folk, and musical theater and film repertoire. Topics include scales and modes, lead sheet and Nashville number notation, phrase structure, song forms, harmonic syntax, loops and harmonic chord schemas, tonicization and modulation, and rhythmic and timbral analysis in popular music. Students will develop basic proficiency in a DAW and music notation program. This course will culminate in a final composition or analysis project. 

Course Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Write and analyze harmonic progressions incorporating common popular music schema, sequences, secondary dominants, and modulation. 

• Write and analyze music using a DAW and music notation program. 

• Identify and describe formal structures common in popular music including periods, sentences, 12 bar-blues, and verse-chorus, strophic, and bar form. 

• Apply basic jazz voicing to harmonize melodies and write chordal accompaniments. 

• Understand the role of melody, texture, timbre, rhythm, and prosody in defining form and movement in popular music. 

• Describe differences and similarities in harmonic syntax common in popular music with common-practice Western art music. 

• Compose an arrangement of a short song and an original composition employing models and techniques learned in the course.