A TONEBAS E COU RSE

Composition
with Sérgio Assad

By The tonebase Team www.tonebase.co

Composition Course
About Your Instructor
Born into a musical family in Sao Paulo,
Brazil, Sergio Assad is a guitarist,
composer, and arranger who often
performs in the Assad Brothers duo with
his brother, Odair. By the age of
fourteen, Sergio was already arranging
and writing his own compositions. After
studying with Brazil’s best-known
teacher of the time, Monina Tavora,
Sergio went on to study at Rio’s Escola
Nacional de Musica for composition and
conducting. To date, he has completed
over three hundred arrangements for
various chamber music settings,
including for Yo Yo Ma, Paquito D-
Rivera, and the singer Luciana Souza.
02
Additionally, his arrangements have
covered composers from virtually every
classical era, from Scarlatti to Gershwin.
He has composed over fifty works for
guitar, several of which have been
performed by internationally renowned
symphony orchestras. While Sergio has
taught master classes worldwide and been
on the faculty at several schools, he is
currently teaching at the San Francisco
Conservatory of Music.
Learn more about Sergio and his musical
projects at https://assadbrothers.com/
Composition Course 03

INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the tonebase Composition
Course! This course is an excellent first step
toward the world of composition and
harmony. If you’ve never written as much
as the shortest melody before, don’t worry.
While sharing his step-by-step process,
Sergio Assad writes a sixteen-bar
composition for the guitar, walking you
through the process of writing your own
from scratch. While this course is geared
toward those who play guitar, anyone is
willing to watch, regardless of your
primary instrument or background in
music theory. Whether you’re a music
theory expert or don’t know the first thing
about chords, this course will get you
writing in no time!

Both composition and harmony are

complicated subjects that take lifetimes
to truly master. While this course
introduces these concepts in fair detail,
nothing beats practice! The more
familiar you are with these concepts,
the easier they will get, so take your
time with the material. However, as
Assad asserts in the first lesson,
anybody is capable of writing a melody,
regardless of their instrumental
technique. So let’s get started.
Composition Course 04

LESSON 1:
GETTING STARTED
SINGING EXERCISE

If you’ve ever wanted to start writing music but

always find yourself feeling uncertain, just
remember that you don’t need tremendous skill or
knowledge to begin composing. Sergio Assad began
composing songs for himself after having only
played guitar for one year, at the age of 14.

For him, singing was the most useful aid in coming

up with melodies- not noodling on the guitar until
they came out. Singing allows you to express exactly
what is in your mind with the most natural
instrument of all, your voice. It removes the
technical limitations of your instrument and
sidesteps the tendency that young musicians often
have to feel uncomfortable with improvising. While
it may be nerve-wracking at first, playing from the
heart, rather than from the score, can be quite fun!

ASSIGNMENT #1

Come up with a short, repeated sequence of

chords (perhaps E minor and A minor) and
try to sing a melody while playing them.
Don’t worry about singing perfectly - just let
the music out! If you want, you can also hum.
Over time, this will help reveal your true
compositional voice. If you’re stuck, watch
the video lesson and listen to what Assad
sings.
Composition Course 05

Now, it turns out there are a couple more steps to

composing a finished piece of guitar repertoire!
Don’t let that worry you- in this lesson, Assad
guides you through the entire process,
introducing one element at a time. He also goes
deep into different harmonic possibilities, and
which notes can be added to chords to get
different colors. 

Before diving into the language of chords and

scales that composers use to build melodies, let’s
review a few of the basic concepts of musical
harmony.

CHORDS

Depending on your current level of knowledge, you are free to skip as much as you feel
comfortable with. However, there’s no harm in taking a few moments to review!

Notes are arranged into scales, either Major or Minor, and these form the basis of
virtually all Western music. Below are two scales beginning on the note C, Major on the
left and Minor on the right.

Chords, three or more notes played together, are constructed from these scales. A C
Major chord, for example, begins on C and contains two other notes from the C Major
scale stacked in thirds above it (C, E, and G). The E is called the third of C Major, and the
G is called the fifth. Chords can be stacked from any note within a scale. By stacking thirds
above each note of a scale, six other chords can be generated.
Composition Course 06

For example, the key of C Major contains D minor, E minor, F major, G major, A minor,
and B diminished. All of these chords are considered to be in the key of C Major.

Similarly, examine all the chords contained within A Minor:  B diminished, C major, D
minor, E minor, F major, and G major.

The chords contained within a particular scale are called diatonic chords, since they
come straight from the notes within that key. Musicians often label diatonic chords with
roman numerals, like I, IV, or V, which define the chord in relation to the key. (Ex: If I is
A Minor, IV is D Minor, VI is F Major, etc.) 

There is one more quality of chord that’s useful to know for this exercise, but not
essential: the half-diminished chord. Half-diminished chords can be found by stacking
a seventh chord with the seventh note of a Major Scale. A B half-diminished chord
contains the notes B, D, F, and A.
Composition Course 07

ASSIGNMENT #2

To help develop a greater understanding of major and minor chords, stack each
note of the G Major scale in thirds, and label the chords that result. The first one
is completed for you. When you're done, check your work on page 24!

DOMINANTS

V, also called the dominant, is a

particularly special chord. Dominant
chords are most often followed by a I
chord, also called the tonic. This is
because, in C Major, for example, the V chord (G Major) contains a key note that suggests C
Major will come next. The note B, the third of a G Major chord (marked in red), wants to
move up to C, the tonic. This note, the third of a dominant chord, B in G Major, is also
called the leading tone.
Composition Course 08

To ensure that they will contain a leading

tone, dominant chords are given a major
third,. This is especially important for the
minor keys, where the V chord is minor by
default. For example, in the case of A Minor,
the V is E Minor (E, G, and B). The third of E minor (G-natural) is not a very strong
leading tone to A, so the G is replaced with G-sharp, a much better leading tone to A.
Listen to the difference on a guitar or a piano, and you will understand why musicians
make such a big deal about dominant chords.

All this is to say that V in a minor key will almost always be altered so that it contains a
major third.

When dominant chords resolve to tonic chords, tension is released. For this reason,
composers like to make dominant chords more tense in order to have a bigger release.
This is done by adding more dissonant notes.  Dominant chords almost always contain a
seventh. In fact, without the seventh, they’re nothing more than a major chord. For
example, if E major is a V chord and it’s functioning as a dominant, it will have a seventh,
a D-natural, added to it. With the seventh, a dominant chord can also be called a seventh
chord (ex: “E-seven”, written E7: E, G-sharp, B, and D).

ASSIGNMENT #3

Spell out a V7 chord in the following keys: D minor, A major, and C-sharp
minor. The first one is already done for you. Check your work on page 24!
Composition Course 09

SCALE-CHORD THEORY

Assad calls attention to the chords

I, IV, and V of a key. This
sequence, I-IV-V (1-4-5), is among the most commonly used sequence in popular music. In
the key of A minor, these would be A Minor, D Minor, and E7, notated above.

There are several different scales you could use over each of these chords. However, Assad
recommends certain scales that refer to a very idiomatic way of writing for classical guitar.
That is, they are usually easy to play on guitar and have been used in much of the most
popular repertoire. Play around with the following scales throughout the range of your
guitar, and use them to invent your own melodies. Assad suggests using the A Natural
Minor scale over the tonic chord, pictured below. The notes A, C, and E are chord tones,
suggesting they are more important for creating melodies.

Next comes D Minor, for which Assad uses the D Dorian scale. Here, D, F, and A are chord
tones.

Finally, over E7, Assad will use the A harmonic minor scale. Yes, you read that right- Assad
uses a scale that starts on A for an E chord. Why would he do that? It turns out that the
harmonic minor scale contains notes that sounds very tense over the E7. A harmonic
minor contains a G-sharp, an important note that also serves as the leading tone to A. In
this instance, since the chord itself is E7, the chord tones are still E, G-sharp, B, and D.
Composition Course 10

ASSIGNMENT #4

Experiment with these three scales (A natural minor, D minor, and A harmonic
minor) until they feel very comfortable. Play them across the range of the guitar,
in any order you want. No restrictions!

CHORD VARIATIONS

There are countless ways to alter chords
to make them more expressive. Below
are two that Assad uses early on in his
example composition:
A note that composers often add is the
sharp-five. The fifth note of E Major, B, 
Composers can also put a note in the
bass line other than the root. For a D
Minor chord, D is the root, and it’s most
common for D to also be in the bass.
However, as Assad does in his piece, it’s
also possible to put F in the bass instead.

is made even more F is the third of D

crunchy when the minor, so putting it
note a half-step underneath the other
above it, a C, is notes doesn’t change
played at the same the type of chord or
time. Most often, a clash with the other
sharp-five is added notes.
to a dominant chord.
Composition Course 11

SECONDARY DOMINANTS

To generate even more tension and release, composers like to use chords other than
diatonic chords. A common choice is to use what is called a secondary dominant. Remember
that V is the dominant to I because it’s a major chord built on the fifth scale degree (for
example, A Minor’s dominant chord is built on E).

Let’s pick another diatonic chord within A Minor, perhaps D Minor, the IV chord. A very
pleasing way to lead into D Minor would be with the dominant of D Minor, or A7. A7
would therefore be a secondary dominant in the key of A Minor.

To summarize, secondary dominants are chords that

are not diatonic, but function as dominant chords to
a chord that is diatonic. A nice way to transition to
this secondary dominant might be to have an A
Minor move into A7. This way, only two notes have
to change; the C in A Minor becomes a C-sharp, and
a G is added.

If these harmonic concepts are very new to you, take your time to study them before
jumping into composition directly. Of course, you are free to compose your own piece
with simpler chords and work your way up to these more complicated ones. Remember
that there are no firm rules on how to connect chords to one another!