superbb

Gracias

Super!

great

good

TQ

What began as a passing interest in improving my scant knowledge of music theory became a full on obsession by the end of this course. I was staying up until 9pm over my Christmas break, taking and re-taking quizzes and studying cadences, secondary dominants and modulation. Who would've known? Certainly not me when I began!

For me, playing music is a hobby. I've never studied it, taken graded exams or anything of that sort. I saw 'fundamentals of music theory', free of charge, and thought it would be a good place to start. A word of advice: this is certainly not for beginner musicians.

My only criticism of the course would be that the end of unit quizzes, and final exam, are a VERY steep climb from the comparatively pedestrian level of instruction (barring the rhythm section, which required a lot of further study to get my head around).

The formula seems to go: crawl (teach concept), baby steps (watch demonstration of concept), Olympic 100-metre sprint (answer university level questions). If you have the time and dedication to put into this course the rewards are plenty. You can take end of unit quizzes as many times as you would like, meaning the challenge just about meets the pace of learning.

I am thoroughly pleased with the time I put into this course, and I am excited to go back to my instruments (saxophone and guitar) armed with a greater understanding of these fundamentals, and indeed more complex concepts, of music theory.

Most of the course was delivered at a suitable pace, with plenty of examples. The one week where my eyes glazed over was week 3 (I think) which was all about time values of notes, etc. Fortunately, I already read music, and so managed to pass the assessment. Otherwise I think I'd have struggled. Even so, some of the questions really stretched my brain - many of them were NOT normal rhythms!

I felt that one or two of the questions in the final exam were quite complicated - cases where we were to disregard "passing notes" for instance, which was something I felt wasn't really covered in the course, and the one about "phrasing structure" (but that may have been in week 3).

In short, I'm not sure it's the FUNDAMENTALS (which to me means the basics) of music theory, but after well over 40 years of being able to read music, and over 20 singing in choirs, I finally understand the structures and names of chords, and simple progressions, and can work out an accompaniment for a simple tune, which was absolutely what I wanted to achieve. Thank you!

I am absolutely delighted to have had the opportunity to study the fundamentals of music theory from a prestigious university such as The University of Edinburgh for free online. I extend my most sincere gratitude to Coursera and the professors teaching the course for making this possible. The course makes it very easy to build knowledge going from week to week. The assignments are all challenging. In this way this course encourages studying to understand the concepts. I have attended the course as a beginner in music theory, having encountered only some very elementary concepts earlier. I have found all the teachers to be very pleasant and very clear in their explanations. I have given 4 stars to this course because I would have liked to learn more from the professors on some topics which were very briefly mentioned. Some of the courses have external links to Wikipedia instead of a more clear explanation. This are however the exception and not the rule. The majority of the course is well taught and presented.

I have played rock guitar for years, but have a gap in basic theory. This course was a good choice for me - it starts with real basics such as what pitch and duration are and how they are noted, but moves very quickly to multiple staves, chords, harmonies, cadences and chord progressions.

A couple of the video lectures are very informative and worth watching more than once. The added "home" video made by one of the instructors working through various chord progressions and added later stands out as worth watching more than once.

I would have liked more support for understanding chord progressions, modulation and cadences in the written materials. The examples given are useful, but I didn't feel quite ready for the analysis skills expected of me in the final exam. Still, I learned a lot, and very happy that I took this course. I haven't magically gained ability to sight read, but the extra practice made me feel that it would be in reach if I wanted.

A very interesting course but also very challenging if you have no previous musical knowledge. The videos are generally very clear and easy to follow(love the accent!), but the actual test questions are way more difficult. Also the content is often presented in the wrong order: eg, including inverted chords in test questions before the topic itself is dealt with. The supplementary material that is often mentioned is basically the same content as the videos, but thanks to that, and to the fact that most of the questions in the forum go unanswered, I've discovered lots of other useful web pages. Personally I seem to have run out of time after completing 80% of the course, but hopefully I can re-enroll and with what I've learned so far, complete it successfully this time. I'd definitely recommend the course but be warned, it's a challenge and you'll definitely need other sources of information to help you through it.

I found the course very challenging, it started off very exciting still challenging but by the 2 week the work became very inundated. I was very grateful for for the ability to extend your deadline datesand having former knowledge & music experience . Be cautious with using your extentions also because then at the end with part 2 of your final, you run the risk of not having someone to grade your final leading you to have to wait for the next group. Keep in mind you have to complete the course in 180 days. This course you must have some knowledge of music and an instrustrament, I disagree that this course is for beginners,especially if you never took music intro. Other wise course was very exhilarating when it came to challenge, well at least for me. The instructors were very clear with their instruction with exception of 1

Excellent course.

Less than excellent quizzes and final exam. There is an enormous gap between the material presented in the lectures, both in terms of format and information, and the various assessments.

I am an advanced-level amateur pianist and read music easily. I recognized the Beethoven sonata movement which was used for the final exam, and could play it as I considered the exam questions. It would certainly be helpful for students to know which composition they are analyzing. Perhaps the instructors might consider providing the title? (The choice of this sonata for the final exam is a little puzzling, though, since the musical examples in the lectures were mostly simple popular songs.)

Still I want to stress that this is a high-quality course on a complex subject. The professors are knowledgeable and articulate.

I found the course really great in the beginning, it really opened my eyes to some of the fundamental bases, but a certain point it got too complex for a person who is not a piano player and never read musical notation before. I would not recommend this one to complete beginners, since it certainly requires a certain background in basics, especially the last 2 weeks of it. I would rather add more practice into interval and chord spelling on the staff (like the chords are shown once or twice on the piano keyboard, and then the test gives you an uncomprehensible symbol stack asking what chord it is ??? why not explaining these symbols more elaborately?)It took me personally a lot of effort and digging extra literature to be able to finalize it. But I'm happy I did. Many thanks to everyone who made it!

The course is mostly great. Some lectures are disappointing but the rest of the course is solid. I can honestly say I learned a lot. Topics covered seemed appropriate. I didn't opt to get a certificate and I'm not sure I'd recommend it, so keep that in mind when you read my review.

Forums are an invaluable resource. It's a shame Coursera doesn't seem preoccupied with quality of the forums with regards to mentors. As of now there is only 1 mentor and Coursera isn't recruiting any others. Also keep in mind the course has been all but abandoned by the University of Edinburgh.

TL;DR: if you're not afraid of doing research yourself on the forums and other sites on the internet then this course could be great for you. If you want something self-sufficient then you might be better off taking another course.

This course is NOT easy.

I signed up for it thinking "Oh, I'll finally learn what diminished and augmented means" and so on, but I got much more than I bargained for, but in a very good way. This course forces you to raise your own standards about how deep you're willing to go into music theory, but leaves you better educated forever more. You learn to analyse proper classical pieces, and after completing it, will be in a position to be handed just about any piece of sheet music and not feel completely lost staring at it.

Word of warning, though, substantial self learning is required, and having access to atleast a two-octave keyboard (digital piano/midi controller etc.) is a must in my opinion. Still, well worth the time I spent on it.

The videos were very well presented, and the information was very clear. This made me more comfortable with the learning, as I was assured that the information was coming from a credible source.

The reading resources and links were also very helpful, and the quizzes and exams were a good balance of relevant questions and challenge.

The only downside was that the quizzes were not accessible for weeks, and I am unsure as to why. I would assume that the lecturers write a new quiz after each enrollment, but f this could be made more clear to students, it would create less confusion.

Overall, this was my first Coursera course, and I was very pleased with the quality!

It's a good course considering the amount of content and the time allotted to complete it (6 weeks). For the pedagogical staff: certain concepts could be explained in depth (especially week 3). Some reorganization of the content is desirable. Apart from this, great job done by the instructors.

For prospective students: Please apply the concepts learnt in each week by practicing it on your instrument even if it is not a piano (guitar for me) before attempting the quiz and final exam.

Don't hesitate to go beyond the content given here for further explanation.

Do not ignore assignment review requests from your peers.

Enjoy!

Really enjoyed taking on the challenge of this music theory course. Starting out as a drummer, notes on the treble and bass clef were absolute alien entities to me, but this course has changed that. Would recommend 100%. My only complaint is that the last few weeks' exams ramp up the difficulty significantly leaving you feeling like you missed something in the lectures. I think some of the harder topics could have been broken down better for people who have never been introduced to them before. Further reading and research is necessary for completion.

It was a great adventure to learn basic music theory. Thank you!

Explanation in the videos were simple and well understandable (I have non-native English).

However chord and cadence related questions in quiz and final test were more complex compared to the simplified explanation. Therefore

identifying chords and cadences correctly was a challenge for me as a complete beginner. Apart of that I owe a big thank, as this course has unsealed a complete new World for me. This new World is MUSIC. Thank you.

I enjoyed the course and learned quite a bit. Will probably take othe music courses on Coursera. I think, however, that the course either needs to be a little bit longer to explore some of thw topics in more depth or the final exam needs to be made easier. It seemed that even with studying, some of the questions on the exam were too hard for the amount of instruction time given to them. Overall, a good course and I would recommend takng it if you are interested in diving deeper into how music is created.

This course was perfect, except for Week Three, which was problematic for quite a few of us, if the Discussion Forums are anything to go by.

Either way, I learned a lot, and I am proud to say I can now read music, which was the main reason I went into the course. Most of the instructors used the piano to teach, and the addition of the auditory experience really enhanced my learning on this course. I would definitely recommend this course, and be happy to take another course with these instructors.

At the beginning, I thought the course was very good for beginners or people that know how to play an instrument well but would like to know more about the theoretical background.

However, the last two sessions were very hard and there could have been more detailed course material throughout the course and more exercises to make sure the concepts are well-understood by all students.

Nevertheless, the course proved to be very useful and enabled me to analyse a musical piece, which made it worthwhile.

Good. But sometimes the course jumps way too fast. Since I have already studied music theory, I joined this course to observe how music concepts are presented by the faculty; methodologies used; practical demos. While I liked the approach and the shared presentations very much, I felt, it could have been graded more gradually.

Also, as an introductory course, perhaps its better to put in less concepts with more application to real day to day music, rather than covering wide ground.

I'm a musician and a teacher and took this course just to refresh some concepts. I learnt a lot but I found this course too theoretical. I missed the music here! There is one professor who is amazing and played a lot (forgot his name, he plays cembalo). The other ones were too serious and too theoretical. Have in mind that this is a difficult course. You have to know music in order to be able to pass the quizzes and the final exam (which are both difficult). Thanks a lot! / Antonia