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.

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.

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

There is a lot of good things to be said about this course, as it goes pretty in depth about music theory and other relevant aspects. However, there is also a lot of room for improvement as well, as the difficulty level at times seemed pretty intimidating for a beginner course, such as in one particular week (4 or 5, can't exactly remember), where there was very little explanation but a lot of advanced stuff being tested. Overall, it was a great learning experience.

I've found this course very helpful to improve my knowledge of music theory. Some teachers are very clear and passionate about what they teach. However I don't think I would recommend this course to those who know nothing about music, I think it is necessary to know at least how to read music. I found the quizzes and the final exam very challenging and difficult but they helped me maybe more than the lessons themselves to get a better view on this subject.

I think that this is an excellent course and I got a lot out of it. However, at times, I found that the quiz and exam questions were far extended beyond the material covered in the lecture. For example, in lectures, the keys were often limited to C Maj, and A Min, but the quiz questions would be much more difficult extending to keys with many more sharps and flats. It might be that further examples, or lectures could be added to address this.

This was a great course in general. I could finally understand some concepts that I have been longing to know for a long time. Very well displayed. Specially Week one - two - four. Week three was a quiet disappointing and the last week was somehow boringly presented. Personally I loved Dr.Moir and Dr.Moran weeks. All in all this was a great course and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to start understanding music theory.

T​his course helped me get farther than ever before will music theory. Most of the instructors and material are excellent. There is a lack of emphasis on the timing and rhythm components, as well as a lower level of lessons for the same topic. Overall the course goes from basic to challenging pretty quickly, but with proper time dedicated it really does a great job cover the Fundamentals of Music Theory

I think it is a really good course, unfortunately too advanced for someone that is just starting to play the recorder and recognises the notes and so on. Also the fact that the notes are ABCDEFG instead of DO.RE.MI.FA... made thinks a little bit confusing for me. I learnt some stuff until 3rd week where started to be quite complicated, 4th week was frustrating. Maybe in the future I'll come back to it.

Great content for an introductory course regarding the topics they covered - helped me fill in missing gaps of knowledge. Lots of clear examples too. My criticisms of the course are:

- Usage of English terminology for rhythms (i.e. quavers, etc.)

- The last video explaining cadences in depth has a lot of audio issues - the instructor is quiet and there are suddenly large spikes in volume from noises

I could give five stars, but I've ended up with four and I'll explain why. The course is awesome, instructors are great. The problem is the pace. At some point you have to absorb a considerable amount of information in a short period of time. Of course, it's not a reason to avoid the course, but this feedback could be useful for further adjustments reflecting in a better product for all community.

This course was really good and I learned a lot, but the teachers jumped around a lot and assumed that the students knew a lot of information already. I was able to survive simply because I had studied about a third of the information presented already. It is a very good course, but not complete. More explanations and examples of HOW to do/calculate the concepts presented would be nice.

This course it is a great tool to study about music theory and it helped me to increase my knowledge about this topic. However, I don't think that it's an introductory course, because the quizzes of the latests weeks(3,4,5 and 6) had a gigantic raise of difficulty, Therefore, if you're a beginner in music theory or if you don't know anything about it, I wouldn't recommend this course.

Generally this course has good subjects and syllabus. In some parts of course they teach reasons of the subjects and it becomes more logical for me. The only reason that I gave four stars is lecture videos are not enough for the final exam. Especially for part 2 of final exam, some questions are more detailed for given lectures. However, it was a good introduction for music theory.