Students who wish to take courses in the Film Scoring certificate program should have a basic musical background and should possess the following skills before beginning any coursework:
- Ability to read music: the musical staff and clefs, notes in both treble and bass clef, notes on the piano keyboard, accidentals, rhythmic values (i.e. whole, half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth, dotted values, etc.), simple and compound meters
- Music Theory Fundamentals: major scales, all forms of minor scales (i.e. natural, harmonic, melodic), major and minor key signatures, the circle of fifths, intervals and interval inversions, interval qualities (i.e. perfect, major, minor, diminished, augmented), chord qualities and inversion symbols, triads (major, minor, diminished, augmented), seventh chords (i.e. dominant sevenths, half diminished, full diminished, etc.)
