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

4.5
stars
1,715 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

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..:-)

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

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476 - 500 of 549 Reviews for Fundamentals of Music Theory

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.

By tim f

Mar 14, 2017

It was good, and i learnt a lot, but it vexed me that in the first lesson they stated you didn't need to read music to get on with the course, but everything from then on seemed to require reading music including an very difficult final test reading some complicated Beethoven apparently! I understand why they did it that way, as they are used to reading music, but music can also be described as actual note names and the theory will be learnt nevertheless, without the massive barrier of having to translate it all from musical notation.

By Kara O

Mar 13, 2023

The class started out well for the first couple of weeks- great videos and easy to follow and understand. The last two quizzes and the final exam were extremely difficult for a six week introductory class. There were items on the last quizzes and final exam that were not covered in any of the lectures, and I had to seek additional resources online to be able to pass them. It seems like quizzes should be reflective of what you are taught during the lectures and not include material above and beyond the level of teaching.

By Marc S

Aug 28, 2017

Good course covering some of the fundamentals of music theory. I found the difficulty of the quizzes to be disproportionate to the material in the lectures and some of the material could be explained better. It would certainly be a challenging course to more novice students. I would recommend "Getting Started With Music Theory" by Michigan State University as a prerequisite. The cadence of the material is a lot more systematic and incremental and what I learned in that course helped me get through this one tremendously.

By Marquad E

May 24, 2018

Areas where uncertainties are within the course melodic include phrasing and secondary dominants. I had make use of other online platforms to gather information on these two topics. Also, I feel that the exam is too difficult. I only learned a few things from it, not a great deal. But other than that, I learned quite a great deal and I am very grateful for it. I didn't really get how the circle of fifths worked before I was exposed to this course. Thank you very much, for the opportunity.

By Deleted A

Dec 26, 2021

This is called a fundamental theory course, but it is definitely geared for students who already have a music theory background. It's definitely a good review course for musicians, but I believe it would be very difficult for anyone who doesn't have a theory background, and it would be even harder for students who can't read music or play piano.

Again, a good review course but incredibly fast-paced for a fundamentals class.

By Sean M

May 17, 2020

While I learned quite a bit in this course, the quizzes and exams were a bit misaligned with the material covered. There seemed to be little direction in the way of further study other than the occasional Wikipedia link. The jump from beginner material to more advanced theory did not transition very smoothly. it would be a better learning experience to know why a question was missed on a q

By Rebekah L

Sep 9, 2020

The lectures were really nice and easy to follow, but the quizzes were far too complex. Many of what was covered in the quizzes were not explained in the lecture. If you are going to make the quiz more difficult than what was taught in the lecture, please improve the lecture and what is covered in it so that students can know better what to expect and what they should study for.

By Maciej L

Oct 26, 2022

It's good for the most part. However, I feel like some aspects are overlooked or rather expected to be known by the course learners. To give an example of this, one was not taught to distinguish harmonic from non-harmonic notes, an ability which is quite essential when analysing a music piece (as one is expected to do during the final exam part 2).

By Cees O

Nov 21, 2020

For me this was the first of many courses on Coursera where the quizzes and exam were way too difficult compared to the videos and reading materials. I had to find and use a Dutch Music Theory textbook to be able to understand the subject matter and to complete the quizzes and exam. My advice: more video instruction and reading material is required.

By Hannah L

Apr 9, 2018

It would great if explanations could be given alongside incorrect answer choices. I'm auditing the course and got stuck on a few question during weekly tests, and I didn't know what I'd done wrong with them even once I'd passed the test. I'd love if there was a feature that explained why an answer choice is correct or incorrect.

By Tobias S

May 15, 2023

Taught good stuff, but moves very quickly without much review. If you don't know much beforehand, this course is really confusing. It's very dense and doesn't repeat much stuff throughout the weeks, and then expects you to recall everything. Take your time on this course; you'll learn a lot better.

By Sann T

Jul 17, 2021

This course is very intersting at first but after the third week, it is getting harder and the videos and the reading texts could not provide enough information to take the tests. Anyway, I learned some useful things from first weeks as the basic knoeledge of music theory, Thank you very much<

By Brian B

Feb 13, 2020

Level of difficulty is inconsistent. There are better basic topics to cover (learning how different note lengths actually work, completing bars with notes, time signatures) rather than cadances, the extremely technical and impracticle explaination of note length values etc.

By Jose V

Aug 20, 2019

The last part of the recording or video was completely bad. you couldn't understand a word.

Some of the question in the tests were a bit out of the lecture spectrum or at lest they were not take deep enough in order to ask some of the in tests.

By Hercules C

May 20, 2021

The classes have not passed the necessary details and necessary training vis a vis the level of the quizzes and of the final exam. In my opinion, this course should be divided in 4 courses with more basic training included in all sections.

By Gregory C

Mar 4, 2019

The lectures were entertaining and the lecturers are qualified and competent. However, I feel that they left content out which was needed to pass the quizzes and tests. I spent significant time on the internet researching the topics.

By Shlok H

Oct 4, 2023

Slightly complicated. I believe there is a simpler way to teach this. Especially when I go to music theory.net, they have much simple methodology. A lot of important concepts like 7th chord of dominant were just brushed through.