Free Music Theory course from OU

VimFuego

oddly enough, following on from the thread about online music courses, this popped up in my FB feed (I'm out of tin foil, so my brain is in overdrive), but thought some might find this interesting, a free 8 hour intro to music theory from the OU: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/culture/music/introduction-music-theory/content-section-0?intro=1

I haven't had a chance to work through it yet, but it claims to go up to level 3.

Roland

Thanks Vim. That was an interesting couple of hours. Rather than register with the OU I downloaded the course PDF, and worked through that.

The course roughly covers what I was taught at school. The bit that my schooling didn't cover was conventions for notes and rests in complex time signatures.

Is it worth following the course? If you want to learn musical notation then yes. Is it better than reading a book? Well it's free. If you follow the online course, rather than read the PDF, then you'll be able to hear the notes too and take the tests properly. It's always going to be a dry subject unless you can relate it to the music you hear and play. A bit like learning the Highway Code and driving. What would be really interesting would be a guitar-related addendum, with notation examples from well known songs.

I know that some people don't want to make the effort to learn to read musical notation. This course should be on your New Year's Resolution list. Better still, make it your Q4 challenge.

duotone

Cheers!

http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/culture/music/introduction-music-theory/altformat-printable  —> PDF link if anyone fancies it...89 pages!