This class has been developed to help singer-songwriters and musicians playing Western-style traditional music expand their skills in selecting chords, composing melodies and improvising.  It’s a class about understanding how music works so that you can make your music unique.  The ability to read standard musical notation is very helpful but not essential to getting the most out of this class.  This is a demonstration/discussion class.  During the week we’ll cover four main topics:  1) Overtones, Intervals and harmony. 2) Scales and modes, 3) Chords: How to spell them, how they relate to melody and one another to create harmonic movement and 4) Modal Interchange.  When you complete the class you should be able to identify chord progressions, understand the nomenclature used to identify chords and intervals, understand musical modes, and create fresh and exciting melodies and harmonic progressions using the technique of intermodal exchange.  Students will have access to a website to support their studies after the class concludes.