French Touch Composition is nearly a year old! How time flies.





The article series - focused on music analysis using French touch as the basis for examples - initially started out as a small hobby. I thought it’d be cool to put down some thoughts & observations on my favorite music for whoever would happen to stumble upon them. I was pleasantly surprised at the loyal community that’s sprouted up over the past year! Lots of passionate musicians & listeners have reached out to me and expressed their support for the project; this has meant more to me than can be put into words.





These experiences have led me to believe that French Touch Composition has a lot of potential, which I’d like to realize by giving it the proper nurturing that it needs to fully prosper. After a lot of thought & adjustments in my own life (I even sought out & recently got hired for a new job with a better schedule solely to be able to work more on FTC content), I was able to lay out a more fruitful content plan going forward.





There’s two main areas that this post will cover:

My new approach to standard content

French Touch Composition’s Patreon page announcement and outlining its content





Standard Content: Going Forward





This is how I will be treating all of the standard content that FTC puts out, including new additions. In short - more content, more often, more consistently! I plan to have at least one notable release out a month.





-Mini-Articles: While I like to write in-depth articles that contain a wealth of information on the subject at hand, they take a lot of time to create due to the nature of such a task & my busy schedule. I'll be posting mini-writeups in between the main articles as result in order to have content be released a lot more often & more consistently. but rest assured that I’ll always have a behemoth in the works!

-Discord: FTC has a Discord server - join us here ! It hosts a community of producers, songwriters, & avid listeners who mainly discuss French touch music, give meaningful insight on each others' work, and who ultimately support each other. We’d love to have you join the family!

-Twitter Content: After every article I always follow up with additional content on its subject via Twitter. I usually post myself going through the exercises listed at the end of each article over the course of a few weeks, along with other informative tidbits that tie into the article's main theme. I'll continue with this & plan to be even more consistent with posting going forward.

I'd also like to invite readers to follow along with the exercises on Twitter - to write their own songs using the concepts gone over. It would be fun to hold a contest of sorts for each article: participants would create a track that revolves around the given concept in a certain amount of time. At the end, I'll choose the song which best shows off the concept creatively & showcase it to the world. I will play with this idea going forward.

-MIDIs: I had relatively recently made + released a MIDI of Daft Punk’s Superheroes for download that got a lot of attention & many thanks. MIDIs don’t take too long to put together and people are genuinely interested in them, so it seems like a no-brainer to release even more going forward. I’ll eventually end up hosting them on the main site for download. My analysis notes on the music used will be available via Patreon (more on that below).

-Songwriting & Music Theory Lessons: I have had lots of people get in touch with me for advice on how to improve their own music. I’m always happy to lend insight! With all these requests, I figure that I should let it be known: I teach songwriting & music theory lessons.

Teaching is not new to me - I initially tutored through my college before starting my own local music mentorship business a year ago.

I use a unique approach that:





Teaches using the student’s favorite music - the reason why they're interested in music in the first place - as the basis

Addresses questions that truly matter to a practicing musician - how do I write a good melody? How do I make this part of the song more emotionally effective? What separates me from my favorite musicians skill-wise + how do I close that gap?

Is based entirely on hearing - not strange, arbitrary academic abstractions

If you:





Want to learn how music truly works in order to have infinitely better control over the artform

Wish to have a light shined on the best path & process to follow to improve your skills

Seek a trusted mentor for personalized, in-depth feedback + advice

Or simply need help with music courses in school - fundamentals, theory, sight singing/ear training etc., even to the point of being able to test out of the class





Then I recommend that you consider taking lessons! Please feel free to get in touch with me for more details & a free consultation:

frenchtouchcomposition@gmail.com





Patreon





French Touch Composition now has a Patreon page ! Please visit the page & read its ‘About’ section for the full story. In short - this is the best way to support FTC if you would like to see more content come from it more often. In return, I give my patrons my most sincere thanks as well as all of the patron-exclusive content outlined below:





-Cut Content From Articles: Every article that I’ve released so far only contains about 1/3 of the content that I originally wanted to include. Deadlines & not wanting to go too beyond the scope of the intended topic - despite excluding worthwhile information with this decision - lead to this. Patreon seems like the perfect way to revisit & flesh out each article, letting me realize each entry as I ultimately envisioned them.





You’ll be able to find the first entry of this sort already available on the Patreon page: “ How Daft Punk Wrote ‘Human After All’ In Two Weeks - Part 1”, expanding on FTC's first ever article.





-Insight Into The Next Article Being Written: The process for writing each article is a very rich & technical endeavor - I never immediately arrive at every detail to be covered. It takes a lot of exploration and reflection on the music to uncover its full nature, to comprehend it at a deep level from every angle. There’s a lot of educational value in the process itself, which I’d like to give patrons a view into so that they can learn from the adventure too. I will be documenting things like:





Interesting tidbits & oddities in the songwriting & production of the music being covered (+ ultimately what to make of them)

The analyzing process - my exploration & experimentation with the music, my hypotheses, working out & refining said hypotheses into solid concepts etc.

The writing process - how I take complex musical concepts & articulate them for laymen

Please join me as we plunge into the music's most raw details together!





-Notes on MIDIs: I make every MIDI of a song from scratch by simply listening attentively - I naturally learn a lot about the song this way. The notes that I'll write from the experience of creating the MIDI will include:

Music analysis: explaining the nature of the song, how it works, how it was likely written, what the artists were likely thinking when writing it etc.

Details in the music that are too cumbersome to include in the MIDI files themselves but that are nonetheless noteworthy & valuable - subtle, enriching variations; sound design tricks etc.

-Exclusive Discord Channel: Finally, I'll host interactive discussions on Patreon-only content on the patron-exclusive Discord channel + readily answer any questions people may have on the exclusive content.