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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Fundamentals of Music Theory by The University of Edinburgh

4.5
stars
1,775 ratings

About the Course

This course, revised in 2022, will introduce you to the theory of music, providing you with the skills needed to read and write Western music notation, as well as to understand, analyse, and listen informedly. It will cover material such as pitches and scales, intervals, clefs, rhythm, form, metre and time signatures, phrases and cadences, and basic harmony. This course covers the fundamentals of Western music theory, from the absolute basics to some more advanced concepts. As such, it delivers material for beginners and offers much to experienced musicians alike....

Top reviews

GE

Apr 1, 2021

Very good course which hammers home the essentials.

Good enthusiastic lecturing and importantly on completion progressed onto Coursera Musicianship Specialisation which I have now almost completed

SS

Aug 22, 2017

It was a very nice course. We were able to understand the basics of music theory and how the notations and chords work. Thank you so much to the entire staff of Edinburgh University and Coursera..:-)

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476 - 500 of 570 Reviews for Fundamentals of Music Theory

By Juan P T A

Aug 27, 2020

i didnt like the fact that use wikipedia as a reference

By Jay M

Nov 10, 2024

Good introductory course but complicated at the end.

By Nery Y H A

Sep 21, 2020

Debería tener referencias de libros, no Wikipedia.

By Liwei Z

Mar 30, 2019

No explaination for the answers in quizs.

By Gurashish S

Apr 6, 2020

week 3 could have been elaborated more.

By Dhruv S

Jan 4, 2023

Can be a bit more clearer and detailed

By Tansel S

Sep 5, 2017

A bit fast but extensive course.

By Gilbert P

Feb 19, 2017

really helpful, but also tough

By Lemuel P

Jun 4, 2017

this course is great

By Fernando B

Nov 12, 2020

Muy bueno el curso

By Krista H

Mar 4, 2020

GOod for beginners

By Tayo O

Jun 24, 2020

I learnt a lot...

By Megan M

Dec 20, 2016

Very interesting!

By Madhur S

Dec 30, 2021

great experience

By Alberto I

Jul 16, 2020

Its good course

By degreeuserdf t

Nov 9, 2021

great course

By Leonardo B

Oct 27, 2021

Excelente

By Percy Y

Feb 27, 2017

Wonderful

By Ro

Jan 6, 2018

good.

By Aien K

Jun 2, 2021

Good

By James N B

Jun 2, 2020

I have very mixed feelings about this course. On the one hand it was rich with content, and proved a tough challenge for the its whole duration, managing to include a great deal of theory in a short space of time. I have learnt a lot from it so I can't fault it there. However, the course is strewn with small errors and mistakes, which did surprise me as I found myself quite often confused about something only to realize it was a mistake on their part. The other aspect that seriously lacks from this course is the communication with the "instructors". I say this because the videos were clearly filmed a while back and the content is not updated. Questions and doubts take several days to get answered and it just seems quite lazy in all honesty. In addition to this, none of the exams/tests are looked at by the instructors, not even the final exam, which is in fact marked by other students. So although the content is rich and well explained, it does not really feel like an active course, rather a series of YouTube videos with a few questions added in. If you are confident that you can solve doubts and issues yourself, then I highly recommend this course, however if you are a complete beginner and want more guidance, I would perhaps look elsewhere, or at least do this course with someone else.

By Louis O

Jan 5, 2017

Pretty good in overall, but there are a few points that could be improved:

- The content is taught in a weird order and the difficulty doesn't increase steadily. For example, week 4 and 5 feel like they have been made separately and about the same subject, but week 5 goes further. The last video of week 5 is interesting, but it seems improvised...

- There could be more examples, especially from modern music. John from week 5 uses examples from the Beatles, which is great, but he's the only one. Week 3 has pretty much no examples at all.

- Suppplementary material and notes are uneven from week to week. Week 2, 4 and especially 5 have good summaries of the videos and examples, but week 3 almost only has links to wikipedia...

- The final exam is VERY difficult. There are some crazy chords and rhythm to analyse and there are advanced questions on points which have been seen very quickly in the videos.

I can't really compare since I new some of the content of the class, but I think it's weel made for beginners as well as for intermediate musicians. But you'll probably need to do a bit of research yourself if you want to be ready for the exam.

By Jorge A

Jul 16, 2020

The idea of the course is pretty well organised until you arrive to week 4, when the extension of the explanations do not match the importance they give to them. In upcoming weeks, they expect yo to know a lot more that it has been explained about certain topics. Meanwhile, some videos are overlapping and going too much in depth in subjects that are not key in the development of the topic.

Also, the technical quality of some of the videos (and their audios) are a lower than expected.

To summarise, I am happy I took the course because I strengthen and remembered some concepts in which I was rusty, but I would have appreciated a better structuring of the syllabus.

By Aniketh K

Oct 29, 2021

Definitely not for beginners. Although the first two weeks may seem alright, the following weeks are very difficult to understand as everything is rushed through. The final tests almost seemed impossible for me to clear but I've managed to clear it finally within time. I have a small background in music and yet I struggled. So please do not think that you can take this course lightly. If you have some background knowledge, you can do it without much issues. Else it's not such a good choice. I repeat, please note that this is NOT a course for beginners. Happy learning :)

By Andrew M

May 26, 2020

The course is really a challenge and should not be labelled 'for beginners' in my opinion. Worth persisting though but no way is it 8 hours, you need to commit to additional research and reading outside of the material and be prepared for several resits if you have no formal music training or qualifications behind you. Having said that I really enjoyed completing it and valued the learning which I have applied together with a parallel guitar course also from Coursera. Thank you for this opportunity if your keen and committed, go for it.