I'm now taking this course a second time because it is so absolutely helpful and has really given me a free and friendly place to learn how to use Ableton and get started on music production!

Some of the quizzes aren't very helpful early on, but it's a beginner class, so I think it's pretty good! I've been using Ableton for a while and still learned some new stuff.

Offers a nice introduction to Ableton and its Usage. However it would have been lovely if this was a longer course.. Loved the way of instructions and the topics covered.

It's amazing that we live in an age where you can take online classes like this for free.

I went from not knowing my way around Ableton to being able to make simple tracks in a few weeks.

The course load is pretty light, but it makes it easy to stay motivated and keep up from week to week.

The instructor has her quirks, but don't we all. I feel like this course is great for introducing someone who has prior experience with writing music and using DAWs to Ableton Live. However, for someone who already knows the basics of Live, this probably won't be of too much use.

I did not understand the submitting process till the fourth week. I feel that you could have offered a more detailed description . Doing the review in the fourth week did not do justice for my peers.

I personally think that I've learnt more from Google and YouTube then in this course. You can join the course for certification. Other then the certificate, I find this course not much of value.

This is a great intro class, designed to be completed within the Ableton trial period. Ableton should pay Erin a commission on sales that come out of this course, because I imagine it's bringing them 100s of new sales!

The materials (mostly videos) are excellent and easy to follow. I learned a lot in this short class and would love to see an "intermediate" Ableton class in the future.

My only complaints are related to the collaboration software that you need to use for this course, blend.io. Site navigation in blend.io can be painfully slow, and the site is buggy. I would have preferred to simply share information via dropbox or some other file sharing method.

The peer review process is a great idea, although I think it's really tricky to do this in a music/art, because there is so much subjectivity and not much of a rubric. (There are some quantitative questions just to verify that the student follows instructions, but the open feedback is totally open). But, overall, the peer review works pretty well and gives students an additional incentive to turn in a quality product.

As the syllabus indicates, this is an introduction to "how to use Ableton Live", focused on the steps for handling tracks, arrangements, clips, effects, mixing, panning, and exporting. It doesn't cover much about synthesis or instrument design/usage, but that would have made the course twice as long or more.

What I thought was really well done is that each lesson also had a section on troubleshooting for the concepts described in that lesson. As an experienced user, taking the course as a refresher, I didn't personally find that too useful, but what it shows is that the instructor really wants to help students learn and succeed. I believe this course will get them started on the right path for a complex subject.

I am absolutely blown away with this short course! I have been fumbling away at Ableton Live for years and this course pulled me through the very little I already knew and brought me to a place where I can really make the music I want. In the end, isn't that exactly why you use Ableton Live? Erin Barra is an exceptional instructor and her style was fantastic! Happiness!

This is already very, very helpful with mastering the use of Ableton, understanding how the I/O functions work, and polishing a track to the mastering level. Great program and very intuitive!

An excellent introduction to an extremely powerful Digital Audio Workstation - one which I had used for a few months but still learned a great deal from the course.

Highly recommended. :)

While I did not have time to complete the final assignment I did find this course useful for creating a firmer understanding of Ableton Live. The peer review process is a great idea and something which I found to be both engaging and useful for networking with fellow artists.

The content of the course I feel is probably useful to someone with no prior knowledge of DAWs, but this is not my first DAW. As such the course felt a little slow and the assignments a little unchallenging. Personally my peer review experience ranged from listening to fully fleshed out ideas to listening to uninspired loops of nonsense. I still feel as though I benefited from the process, however, and I gained an invaluable resource in Blend.

I would love a next level - fleshing out some of the ideas touched on throughout the course, as well as exploring other ideas such as sidechaining.

Gives a soft view and precise information about what to do and how to do in Live.

If you are looking for some input to start recording yourself or to start creating any kind of music, i strongly recommend this!

I thought it was well structured and well planned, in terms of the walkthrough how Ableton works and the progression of skills, but I thought it was badly communicated. With good courses, the communication is concise and focused. These lessons seemed too familiar. The transcribed text reveals the poor delivery.

Sorry, don't want to be mean.

Thanks, though, I've learned a lot.

Great introduction to a tool I knew already.. however that being said.. some of the quiz questions were just not very well written / clear. Compared to what I'm used to in Coursera, I'd request Berkelee to go back and polish this course a bit more. Also, the use of 3rd party services is a bit off putting.. especially ones as invasive as the ones used by this course.

Unlike to the other Berklee courses (I normally find them really good), this course was not useful. Week 1 and 2 do scratch the surface of some Ableton topics, too fast and forgetting all the necessary details. All instructions were just done random clicking, nothing musical. Often she did not even let us hear what she did. Nothing is properly explained.

The quizzes were too easy and the peer review assignments were all three weeks the same.

Week 3 is totally useless and suddenly only explains advanced stuff not available in Ableton Intro, or explains how to google.

Finally, this course requires (only for the assignments) to install Blend, create a user account there, and submit all your assignments to the Blend open online collaboration platform. Available for the whole world. This is totally irrelevant for this course and many students have technical problems with this. This can for example be seen the forum (BTW: the discussion forum questions are unanswered by Technical Assistents - normally, for Berklee courses, also that is much better)

So, in my opinion, this course should be redone completely.

This course is almost useless on the Coursera platform. Fully 90% of the time, videos only play "black screen" i.e. you can hear voice but no video. The rest of the time, the videos play, but with no audio!!! It is beyond frustrating when you have limited time to study and the website contunues to fail.

This has nothing to do with my connection... I have superfast broadband here. It also has nothing to do with my ability to use a Macbook. I have been an audio industry professional, using Logic (and Emagic, as logic used to be called) for 23 years.

I keep seeing that projects are "overdue" which is extremely unhelpful when the problems are entirely due to website failures. I would be happy to pay for this course and access wider course material as I think the teaching is first class (when the platform is working), however, it would clearly be a frustrating waste of money while the Coursera platform is patently not working properly.

Please advise if there is a different way to access this course material that is properly robust. In addition, this course is for Live 10 and I am a new user, so I have only got access to Live 11. Please advise if a Live 11 course is upcoming with Berklee and Erin Barra, because there are evidently significant differences that are not addressed in this course.

Thank you.

This is a course for total beginners in Ableton (or for the ones that want to review its fundamentals). In 3 weeks you get a pretty complete overview of how the program works and the possibilities that include. To develop further such posibilities you need other courses/tutorials, or in some cases just more hours of experimentation. The videos and teacher are good, everything well and clear explained. Also they show you how to do the things in several ways: in the two displays of the program (arrangement and session view) and how to compose in a more technical or more creative way. I'll recommend this course to any of my friends that want to start with Ableton.

Real a great course if you are looking to learn the basics of Ableton Live 9 or just need a refresher after the break. Erin does a wonderful job of explaining the basics with out overloading you with to much information. Each assignment is to make a song. It starts with basic stuff and works toward more advanced stuff near the end. It's helped motivate me to put more time into making music and use the tools and software that I have at my disposal.

A personal thanks to Erin, this class is just what I needed!

This course covers a lot of ground in a short period of time, and does it in a way that makes it easy to quickly leverage the power of Ableton in production and live performance. I appreciated the simplicity and thoroughness of the videos, and the assignments kept me motivated. It's a great class for complete beginners, as well as intermediate users in need of a brush up. Erin has a good approach to teaching: she's efficient and clear, and her basic examples don't overwhelm the student.

Great course! For very short time you'll learn so many amazing things. You will know in depth one professional software for music composition. You'll create 3 compositions which will be placed in musical website and hundreds or thousand of other musicians will hear it and vote for it. You will be part of wonderful group of other musicians like you taking part in the same course. You will be able to discuss with them important subject's... Great course. Thank you, Erin, David!

For anyone getting started this is a great course to do it with. I'm retaking this course as a refresher since I took the same class in the beginning of the year. I've been very busy so I forgot some functions. The videos & explanations make it very easy to get reacquainted. Plus what's more fun than getting some more production in, hearing your own creations & everyone else's for that matter. =)

A very nice experience. I expected an entry level course, but Erin organised a well rounded path. I got a new effective approach to the Ableton Live 9 software.

I recommend to develop carefully your assignments: you will improve your own skills by comparing your solutions with those of the classmates. In addiction you'll find some "veteran" student willing to help.

Good luck!

This was an excellent primer on Ableton Live. The course is well laid out and each week builds upon the previous to help engrain and learn the concepts presented. Erin does an excellent job of presenting the material. Personally, for me the course helped in expanding my sound not only as an artist but a producer and audio engineer. I cannot recommend this course enough.

Great course! Loved it. As someone who already knew a good amount about music production, but nothing about Ableton (before taking the course), it was perfect for me. Having some basic knowledge of music production beforehand might be recommended, but even if not, this course allows you to just have fun with the music making process, so it can still be very beneficial.