Online composition lessons
Daniel Fladmose
“Composition is a very complex discipline — I have devoted my career to helping composition students, from beginner to advanced.”
I am a Copenhagen-based composition teacher offering online composition and music theory classes. I have a big desire for teaching and coaching, and this has become my main mission.
I offer
- Detailed feedback I read through the score and comment on the smallest details, which reveal a great deal about the composer’s way of thinking — for better and for worse.
- Music theory that applies to the student’s goals.
- Orchestration courses based on many years of teaching.
- Personalized workshops with real musicians.
- Mentorship and guidance for the long road of becoming a composer.
- A real community a social framework built around the students.
My work teaching composition is highly acclaimed, and I can point to being one of the most active and engaged teachers in Denmark.
- 01
Head of composition
For ten years I have been head of composition at the two music programmes MGK Copenhagen and MGK Zealand.
- 02
Nationally selected
I am one of the most chosen teachers in the national KODA culture-teaching scholarship.
- 03
Across Denmark
I work with festivals and ensembles all over Denmark.
Score annotation during online lessons
Composition teaching works very well through Zoom, with easy annotations and score look-throughs.
“Daniel was the person who guided me into the world of music composition, which I will be forever thankful for! He’s an inspiring and patient teacher, who is extremely important to the community of the new generation of composers. If you’re new to composition and consider taking lessons, Daniel would be my warm recommendation!”
Leon Thomsen · Google review Read the reviews on Google
Contact
You can have a free first talk with me.
For composition lessons, music theory lessons, workshops or institutional inquiries, use the contact form or write to me.
Hear my music
Music theory for composers — the misconceptions
Music theory can and should uncover some of music’s secrets and mystery. But in practice, music theory is one of music’s greatest weaknesses. It is misunderstood, over-interpreted, misused, overlooked, oversimplified and overcomplicated — widely, both on the internet and in the institutions of learning.
It is one of my foremost missions to make music theory relevant to a composer, and that begins with understanding that music theory does not really describe the music, but the human being. When you understand theory in that light, you immediately understand why some rules — for example the prohibition of the parallel fifth — apply in some situations but not in others.
There is no signpost, and neither textbooks nor YouTubers can teach a student where and when the rules fit in. It requires an insight into the listening human being as well as the composer themselves. This approach gives a universality and freedom that is, unfortunately, hard to find among composers today.
If you seek answers in the riddles of music, I would love to open this world for you, and we use the same method that composers from Mozart and Beethoven to Schönberg learned from — but we also use the modern knowledge of psychology that has come since them.
Tools and resources
Alongside the lessons I build small tools for problems I keep meeting in teaching: notation, counterpoint, instruments and theory. They are free and need no sign-up.