Berklee College of Music's Online Classes on Cousera:
Music Theory, Improvisation, Production, and more
Developing Your Musicianship
Nurture your love for, and understanding of, music with this specialization. Learn the fundamentals of music theory, including major and minor tonalities, chord scales, song forms, and chord qualities. You’ll also practice training your ear to hear and recognize various intervals, chord progressions, and chord qualities. For the Capstone project, you will directly apply the knowledge you’ve gained to write and perform a short musical composition. This specialization begins with the basics of music and builds to more advanced concepts, providing you the knowledge you need to improve your skills as a musician.
Musicianship: Chord Charts, Diatonic Chords, and Minor Keys
Taught by Berklee College of Music professor George W. Russell, Jr., the course includes four lessons that delve into the next level of harmony and ear training. The course will introduce you to new key signatures, including minor tonalities, and how they are constructed. You will train your ear to hear minor intervals and 7th chords. You will learn how to build 7th chords, and how to build common chord progressions. You will also learn the major pentatonic scale and how to construct melodies using this scale.
Musicianship: Tensions, Harmonic Function, and Modal Interchange
The course will introduce you to new key signatures, and explore how they are constructed. You will continue to train your ear, learning to differentiate between the various intervals and chords that were explored in Developing Your Musicianship I and II. You will learn how to borrow chords from parallel tonalities (modal interchange), and how to write more common chord progressions.
Berklee's Developing Your Musicianship: Final Project
This course will guide you through the final project for the Developing Your Musicianship Specialization. This course will continue to help you apply the musical concepts you learned throughout the specialization, enabling you to create and perform a 36-measure composition. Taught by Berklee College of Music professor George W. Russell, Jr., the course includes four videos in which George models each stage of the project. Through peer feedback and discussion, practice, and applying what you’ve learned, this final project will hone your skills as a musician.
Jazz Improvisation (taught by Gary Burton!)
Nurture your love for, and understanding of, music with this specialization. Learn the fundamentals of music theory, including major and minor tonalities, chord scales, song forms, and chord qualities. You’ll also practice training your ear to hear and recognize various intervals, chord progressions, and chord qualities. For the Capstone project, you will directly apply the knowledge you’ve gained to write and perform a short musical composition. This specialization begins with the basics of music and builds to more advanced concepts, providing you the knowledge you need to improve your skills as a musician.
Art of Muisc Production
Nurture your love for, and understanding of, music with this specialization. Learn the fundamentals of music theory, including major and minor tonalities, chord scales, song forms, and chord qualities. You’ll also practice training your ear to hear and recognize various intervals, chord progressions, and chord qualities. For the Capstone project, you will directly apply the knowledge you’ve gained to write and perform a short musical composition. This specialization begins with the basics of music and builds to more advanced concepts, providing you the knowledge you need to improve your skills as a musician.
Yale University's Online Music Theory Classes at Alison.com
Music Theory: Instruments and Rhythm
The course Music Theory: Instruments and Rhythm teaches you to develop your aural listening skills by focusing on classical music and learning about different instruments and musical techniques used in classical musical pieces. The course begins by introducing you to music theory and describing different instruments and musical genres.
You will learn how aspects of classical music can be applied to other genres of music and the differences between motives and themes. Next, the course teaches you about the fundamentals of rhythm, in particular about musical notation and what different musical notes represent. You will also learn how to identify meters in musical excerpts including counting measures and musical dictation.
The course then shows you how to identify rhythm in different genres of music such as jazz, pop, and classical music. This course will be of great interest to both musicians who want to strengthen their knowledge around the basics of musical theory and learners who would like to learn more about music theory and improve their aural skills.
Music Theory: Melody and Harmony
This course, Music Theory: Melody and Harmony, teaches you how to identify different chords in a melody and the development of notes and musical scales. You will learn how to distinguish between major and minor scales by using your listening skills and through the works of Mozart and Wagner, you will learn how cadences and sequences can be used in musical excerpts.
This course also teaches you about harmony and bass patterns. You will learn about chord progressions and how to build chords in a melody. You will listen to blues and rock musical genres to get an idea of how chord progressions are used and learn how to identify between a regular and an irregular rate of harmonic change.
This course is suitable for beginners to music theory and for anyone that would like to strengthen their aural listening skills. This course is the second in the music theory courses; therefore, Alison’s course, Music Theory: Instruments and Rhythm, should be completed before starting this course.
Music Theory: Musical Form
This course, Music Theory: Musical Form, focuses on teaching you about the six models in classical music from sonata-allegro to rondo form. You will learn how each model was formed and the difference between each of them. This course also teaches you about the features of verse and chorus and how the same material can return at certain points in a musical piece.
The course discusses the four functional types that will show up in sonata-allegro form which are thematic, cadential, developmental, and transitional. You will learn when each of these types can occur in a musical piece and what they represent when used. This course also teaches you about musical techniques such as pedal point and ostinato.
This course is suitable for beginners interested in strengthening their aural listening skills and those with an interest in music theory. This course is the third in the music theory courses; therefore, Alison’s courses, Music Theory: Instruments and Rhythm, and Music Theory: Melody and Harmony, should be completed before starting this course.
Music Theory Diploma
This Diploma course in Music Theory starts by introducing you to music theory and teaching you to develop your aural listening skills by focusing on classical music and learning about different instruments and musical techniques used in classical musical pieces. You will also learn how aspects of classical music can be applied to other genres of music and the differences between motives and themes along with the basics of rhythm, in particular about musical notation.
TNext you will learn how to identify different chords in a melody and the development of notes and musical scales as well as how to distinguish between major and minor scales by using your listening skills and using the classics you will learn how cadences and sequences are used in musical excerpts. You will also learn about harmony and bass patterns, chord progressions and how to build chords in a melody. By listening to blues and rock musical genres you will hear how chord progressions are used.
This course will be of great interest to both musicians who want to strengthen their knowledge around the basics of musical theory and learners who would like to learn more about music theory and improve their aural skills..
University of Edienburgh and Michigian State University Music Theory Classes
Fundamentals of Music Theory
This course will introduce students to the theory of music, providing them 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, meter, phrases and cadences, and basic harmony. This course covers the fundamentals of Western music theory, from the absolute basics to some more advanced concepts and, as such, is the perfect course for beginners and more experienced musicians alike.
Getting Started With Music Theory
This course is a brief introduction to the elements of music theory for those with little or no music theory experience. We will explore pitch, rhythm, meter, notation, scales, keys, key signatures, meter signatures, triads, seventh chords, and basic harmony. If you listen to music or play music by ear, and you want to know more about how music is organized and notated, this course is for you. By the end of the course, you should know all major and minor keys, how to read and write in treble and bass clef using standard meters and rhythmic values, and how to notate and harmonize a simple melody. This course can serve as a stand-alone basic music theory course, or it can be a springboard to more advanced theory and composition courses. Your instructor is Bruce Taggart, Associate Professor of Music Theory at Michigan State University, in the College of Music, where he has taught undergraduate and graduate music theory since 1996.