Posted
At Coursera.org they have just started a course entitled 'How to write like Mozart'.. All courses at Coursera.org are free.
They are quite large (sometimes 65000 students in class) so there is no teacher interaction.. They have video lectures, text files, and links to things.
I joined the Mozart course and it looks pretty thorough, (and perhaps a bit hard for me)... This knowledge could only benefit our use of Synfire Pro.. You may still be able to join.. Courses are 6 weeks, and repeat fairlly often.. There is no down side.. You can withdraw, or fail. You can repeat the course again. (I've taken the songwriting course twice. It's excellent, taken from a Berklee online course)... All courses are donated by different colleges around the world.. There's many other subjects available.. Not a lot of music ones.. but they are good.
Just wanted to let folks know..
Thu, 2015-01-15 - 09:47 Permalink
Cheers Mark,
just signed up so its still available. The next weeks course material is released this friday and its not clear if this weeks material will remain available, so just in case, if anyone else is interested in joining, do it today. Looks like there is about 2 hours of video to watch for this week and a quiz.
Thu, 2015-01-15 - 20:43 Permalink
The material remains available for the whole course.. If you go to the video lectures page, you'll see several icons on the right side of each segment. These are text files of that lesson, a pdf.. some have a .xml file, and an mp4 of the video.
I download of all these into a week/lesson folder for future reference.. I also use a desktop picture taker, and make still shots of the pictures that are in the movie, for a quicker reference.. They can help when doing the assignments.
Make posts in the 'discussion area', cause that helps your grade to a degree. These classes can get quite large (songwriting had 65,000 last year - it's a great course). You are graded by your peers.. The computer selects who will grade you, so if you get someone who doesn't understand the lecture, he might grade you wrong.. Don't sweat it. There's really nothing you can do about it. It's the knowledge you walk away with.. The 'certificate' business is a vanity thing.. Although there might be a few schools who would give you some credit towards a degree..
These are real college courses. Coursera approached colleges all over the world, and most offered up a few of their courses for free.. It's a great concept.. You can take them again any time. The Berklee music courses cost about $1200 on their website. I've taken Pat Patterson's Songwriting courses three times.. Each time I get more from it..
I tried Gary Burton's jazz improv, but dropped out cause you really should become familiar with all the different modes (Dorian, Mixylodian, Aeolion, etc) in all 12 keys - 120 scales.. I will have to get a handle on that to make full use of his course.. But it is excellent.
I also took a course on the Beatles music.. Gave me a lot of insight into aspects of good songwriting, without heavily going into music theory.. Have fun..