Rock Orchestration & Composition (ROC) is a course that I created with Donato Begotti. I teach ROC from 2011 exclusively in Milan at the Rock Guitar Academy (www.rockguitaracademy.com), for classes and individually.

These are two videos I recorded for promoting the course. They contain two songs that I’ve composed for the purpose of illustrating some of the content that I teach in ROC.

ROC Course Syllabus

Rock composition and orchestration course that teaches: composing effective melodies and progressions, writing for brass and strings. Essential for completing the guitarist.

Thematic Areas

  • Harmony
  • Melody
  • Orchestration

Harmony

  • Introduction: from the semitone to diatonic scale harmonization.
  • Functions of different chords within the tonality
  • Modal harmony
  • Four-voice writing and counterpoint rules
  • Applications of inversions and bass melodic line
  • Power-progressions for composing a song
  • Modal interchange
  • Different cadences
  • Functional and non-functional secondary dominants
  • Modulation mechanisms
  • Augmented and diminished chords
  • Reharmonization techniques
  • Structure in a song

Melody

  • Creating an effective independent melody
  • Open and closed phrases
  • Rhythm
  • Accents
  • Resolutions
  • Symmetry
  • Melodic profile and contour
  • Melodic placement

Orchestration

  • Distinction of material into: foreground, middle ground and background.
  • The string section (violins, violas, cellos and double basses)
  • Writing for strings
  • Using strings as background
  • The brass section (trumpets, trombones, sax, horn and tuba)
  • Writing for brass
  • Using the brass section to accompany a melody or enrich a groove
  • Analysis of great orchestrations in rock (Metallica S&M, Evanescence, Aerosmith the work of David Campbell, Michael Kamen etc.)

Artists analyzed

  • Rock: Queen, Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, Toto, Green Day, Muse, Nickelback etc
  • Metal: Metallica, Malmsteen, Dream Theater, Symphony X etc
  • Pop: Beatles, Sting, Elton John, Robbie Williams etc
  • Classical: Debussy, Stravinsky, Ravel, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Beethoven etc