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Coursera – Developing Your Musicianship [free]

vishalicious

vishalicious

Mar 31, 2011
213
134
51
Yonkers, NY
uglybass.wordpress.com
#1
Hi All,

I know there are a lot of beginner bassists (like myself) on here who ask about music theory. Coursera (an online school) is offering a free introductory class called Coursera – Developing Your Musicianship that's going to start on Monday, Feb 2nd. Its going to go over some basic stuff and looks like it will end with students composing a blues song. Its being taught by a Berklee professor named George W. Russel, Jr.

If you're interested, check it out here:

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
 
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#2
This is not particularly challenging, but worth it if you're just starting out. It covers intervals, basic blues progression, pentatonic minor scale, dom7 chords, song forms, time signatures, major and minor triads, etc.
 
#5
Sav'nBass said:
I actually started in the Jazz Improv and Musicianship class...
Click to expand...

How do you like that class? I have mixed feelings about the beginner one that I'm taking. I don't think that its explaining things very deeply yet, but of course, I've only had one session. I've found the online forums to be full of useful information though (much like here).

Also - what do you think of this? One of the other students posted a link to it in the Coursera forum for the intro class in a thread for one of the ear training assignments:

Improvise For Real
 
#6
I would call the Jazz Improv class a rapid summary of what one might do over a period of a year or more, but condensed into 5 weeks. If you're an absolute beginner at improvising, then you will probably be overwhelmed. OTOH, if you're intermediate, you might pick up a few ideas to add to your current approach. It's just too short a time frame to have much new information stick.

It's free, though, and they offer it repeatedly. It's worth the effort, just because of the exposure.
 
#7
INTP said:
I would call the Jazz Improv class a rapid summary of what one might do over a period of a year or more, but condensed into 5 weeks. If you're an absolute beginner at improvising, then you will probably be overwhelmed. OTOH, if you're intermediate, you might pick up a few ideas to add to your current approach. It's just too short a time frame to have much new information stick.

It's free, though, and they offer it repeatedly. It's worth the effort, just because of the exposure.
Click to expand...

I like that the classes are free and repeatable - not because I can take them over again to brush up on things, but more because I like reading the discussion forums to see how people approach answering questions and solving problems there, and once we begin this peer-reviewing for the homework assignments, I really want to read other people's answers to the questions that we were assigned. Its a little different from these forums because the entire group is focused on answering specific questions at the same time, so I get to explore other people's thoughts on problems that I've tried to answer/solve and see how they can push me along.

I do think that the beginner's class is a little lacking in depth and explanation though, but it could just be me and how I'd like to be taught. Other people in the class are really enjoying themselves.
 
#8
Hi All,

Just an update for those of you who are interested. The Developing Your Musicianship class finished last week. It had some interesting moments, but overall, I wasn't impressed with the level of detail for most of the sessions. I wrote about each of the lessons as I went through the material on my blog, so if anyone wants an overview of the material, feel free to look here. It has links to posts about the individual lessons:

Coursera: Developing Your Musicianship

I thought that the overall lack of detail might be a characteristic of Coursera, but I accidentally joined a songwriting class during the last week when browsing their catalog. It was much more involved than the one I took. From there, I looked at two more, and found them to be much more comprehensive as well (Intro to Music Production and Intro to Guitar), so any failings I found with the class aren't a reflection of Coursera - it was just that particular course.
 

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