The Venus Legacy - A Focused Course in Motif and Harmony

$35.99

Introducing The Venus Legacy – A Focused Workshop in Motif and Harmony

Discover the art of timeless composition in The Venus Legacy, a music theory course and study score that delves deep into the era of Cinematic music that used motif development and thematic reuse. This course will guide you through the essential skills of building a cohesive, long-lasting composition by focusing on a single melody and its variations

Audio of The Venus Legacy:

fisound · The Venus Legacy

In today’s musical landscape, the craft of motif and thematic development is becoming a lost art. The Venus Legacy seeks to revive this powerful technique, used by greats such as Wagner and Tchaikovsky, and teach you how to create music that evolves from the smallest fragments into symphonic masterpieces.

What You'll Learn:

Motif Creation & Thematic Development: Learn to compose using small, recurring motifs to create larger musical forms.
Break Free from chord progression constraints: Discover how to let your motifs guide your harmonic choices
Harmony Beyond the Basics: Explore how motifs interact with various harmonic contexts—transforming with modulation, key changes, and chord substitution.
Late Romantic Composing Techniques For Sweeping Cinematic Themes: Dive into the compositional styles of the late Romantic period, exploring chromatic mediant shifts, parallel minor borrowing, and unique cadences like the half-diminished two-one substitution. These techniques are extremely valuable to anyone wanting to get the cinematic sound, but do not want to create random, less memorable music.
Hands-on learning: Work with real musical examples, including our signature "Venus Legacy" theme
Practical applications: Apply advanced techniques to create rich, emotionally resonant compositions

Ideal for: Composers looking to expand their toolkit

Course Highlights:

Motif & Harmony Focused Study Score: A complete study score of "The Venus Legacy," featuring motifs, harmony charts, cadence substitutions, and key annotations.
Video Lessons: Step-by-step video tutorials breaking down advanced techniques, such as using motifs to shape transitions, modulations, and harmonic textures.
Motif Chart & Cadence Substitution: A handy guide to advanced cadences, including creative substitutions to enhance harmonic progression.
Bonus Modulation Techniques: Learn how to "reverse-engineer" modulations and create seamless shifts in tonality, a hallmark of master composers.

Why This Course?

The Venus Legacy is for musicians and composers who want to go beyond basic song structure and chord progressions. By focusing on motifs, you'll unlock the potential to build intricate, evolving compositions—ideal for scoring films, writing symphonic works, or developing advanced musical storytelling. You will learn how to think about composing with melody and themes first, before worrying about harmonic progressions.

Don't just write music - craft musical journeys. With The Venus Legacy, you'll learn to weave intricate musical tapestries that captivate listeners and stand the test of time.

Let this guide you into a new realm of composition where small, powerful motifs become the building blocks of vast, emotional landscapes.

Downloadable Course Includes:

2 Video Lessons Episodes in mp4 format
PDF The Venus Legacy Reduction & Analysis.pdf
PDF Motif Chart & Cadence Tricks.pdf
Music The Venus Legacy Audio Track in . wav format
980 MB Total Course Size

Great course!

This course is absolutely brilliant. Don't get fooled by the running time. It is full of tips and knowledge. All straight to the point!

Once again, a total winner.

I bought all these courses by Davis. I have seen many courses, and have a pile of the best music theory books anywhere. Although I classify myself 'only' as a guitarist,I do this as a 'safe bet' because I found the guitar easy (it's good to balance easy and difficult, in my opinion). I have studied classical piano for a few years, tonal harmony, the basics of orchestration, the basis of counterpoint, (and these 'basics' can be pretty powerful) and decent sight-reading at the piano. I mean, if it hasn't downed on you yet: no matter what your main instrument, you should take up the piano as a secondary one. Fast. So on the outside I am a guitarist, but 'inside' I am more than that, to simplify. And 'decent' sight-reading can translate to 'quite powerful!' compared to someone who doesn't have these skills. The fact is that you don't have to be a score reading wizard, and the benefits of being a fluent reader are incredible, for example I navigate the scores and (because of my background) the explanations by Robert Davis VERY smoothly. Which in turn makes it for faster learning.

So these courses are actually excellent for those like me who have already established a good basis (these courses are NOT for beginners, or people who can't read a bar of music to save their lives).

The first thing I commend in this course, are the excellent annotated scores. They clarify the musical material as much as possible, even using colour coding. This is super useful, as to me the best teaching is the one that doesn't waste time or words and immediately shows me what I can use and how I can learn it, or improve on it.

Secondly, I am a big fan of 'chords', which is ironic, as I am very well aware that NOT everything can be explained with chords....once your understanding of music theory goes past the intermediate level (to say nothing of the beginner one, and this is why so many whine about music theory and how they can't do anything with it: to reap the benefits you have to go beyond the basics, otherwise it will never make sense to you) you'll see that all the material that is not chord based, can mainly be explained as appoggiaturas, passing notes, auxiliary notes, suspensions, embellishments, etc.....never the less, as CH Kitson wrote: 'chords are the four walls of the house'. They have limits, but you'll always find them as a first attempt, quick way to understand a particular texture.

So the course has this element, harmonic reductions, or 'block chords' where possible. Great. The main element covered in this course, however, is the concept of motifs, what it means and how to use them. It's pretty clear to me that no music can ever be good without motifs....they are found everywhere from Yankee Doodle to all the works of all the best composers ever. Even in a jazz or rock solo, if you insert some of this after some 'licks', a motif will immediately stand out all the more, because it contrasts with the more free form stuff. (and why the free form stuff such as 'licks' -I hate that term- work even though they are NOT motifs, is an explanation for another day, but this too can be explained.).

I can see this powerful technique all traces back to the old counterpoint rules, i.e. the fugue. I am not a musicologist, but I am probably not far wrong, if I am at all.

In short, you can't be a good musicians if you don't know how to harness musical material such as motifs: they are the most important understanding of FORM. As Schoenberg wrote: 'Our minds can only understand things in patterns: it cannot comprehend what is formless'. Whether or not you like or understand Schoenberg's music (I don't, and few ever did), the man was a consummate and highly knowdgeable musician.

There's a zillion uses for motifs, regardless of what instrument you play or what type of music you write. One big advantage is that you can get a lot of 'musical mileage' with skilful use of motifs, and this is what Davis shows you in this course.

What are you waiting for? Jump in already.