The Musically Fluent Course

1. The Rhythmic Matrix

• Regular groove patterns — using simple mantras
• Sense of poetry, cadence, storytelling
• Attack and flow, accentuation (loud/late/long) —  energy
• Elasticity — rubato, lilt, swing, feel
• 3 ways of experiencing rhythm —  gestural, percussive & lyrical
• Different tempos, dynamics, articulation to affect the story

2. Rhythm cells

• Improvising, writing & reading duple, triple and quadruple cells —  clapping/playing/chanting words on a single tone
• Experiencing each cell as a complete unit like a word unfolding in the matrix
• Exploring how our conditioned rhythmic sense is affected by verbal language and our "karaoke", mimetic musical sense — hence the need for this training (or retraining) — this blockage becomes stronger when tonality is added.

1.

• Tonal intention comes from dynamic rhythm first — attack, flow cadence)
• Sonority — making the tone feel “supported”, float, bloom, bite, explode etc. (timbre in the dynamic sense)
• Embodied connection of brain to your instrument or voice for natural expressive (non-mechanical), efficient technique — again based in rhythm but the beginning of inhabiting the tonal field
• The keyboard map (and vocal map) — red and blue groups: keyboard harmony training, the foundations of musical literacy
• Tonal centre — intention, feeling the "home and away" sense, again from rhythm first — the poetic cadence of the groove
• Improvising, writing and reading  (using just 1, 2 and 3 lines) musical shapes in the matrix, first on 2 tones/keys and then on small blocks of 3 & 4 notes — introducing the sense of harmonic and auxiliary notes

2.

• The 12 major and 12 minor harmonic blocks in 5 structural sets
• Improvising simple musical patterns using single blocks, then symmetrical pairs, randomly across the full range of the instrument, to develop structural awareness
• Awareness of major and minor tonality and root/tonal centre within the harmonic block structure
• Exploring how the blocks in the keyboard map and vocal map relate and enhance other instruments' tonal maps, including irregular ones and how practising scales, arpeggios and broken chords and the tragitional theory of linear scales and chords blocks structural awareness 

3.

• The staff (treble, bass, alto, tenor clefs and transposing instruments — any and all, as desired — simple representation of the diatonic blocks (key signatures)
• Improvising, writing and reading on single harmonic blocks, in symmetric pairs, relative major-minor pairs, and random pairs on each 12-tone area, on the 2 butterfly areas and then on the 29-tone area
• Each of the 12 diatonic blocks has a family of 6 harmonic blocks the "plug" into it — sensing the middle/flat/sharp positions of the 3 relative major/minor pairs of harmonic blocks
• The circle of 5ths — tonal symmetry of the whole tonal matrix clearly revealed in the keyboard map
• Improvising, writing and reading melodies — over drones to generate a powerfully anchored tonal centre — using harmonic and diatonic blocks (auxiliary notes)
• Building on these skills to improvise, write and read increasingly complex music including writing/reading using multiple staves (the grand staff or ensemble music)

1. Rhythmic subdivision — reading cells with stems & beams

2. Two or more layers of rhythm

3. Syncopation

4. Grace notes (and spread chords for keyboard, harp etc.)

5. Tuplets and cross rhythms — including compositie cross rhythms

6. Irregular matrix structures and rhythms

1. Chromatic auxiliary notes, pentatonic blocks and blue notes

2. Chromatic harmonic and diatonic block changes

3. Whole tone and diminished blocks for tonal ambiguity and colour