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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

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

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..:-)

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501 - 525 of 549 Reviews for Fundamentals of Music Theory

By Vicky V

Jan 27, 2019

It's an upper intermediate course reviewing everything you must know already. I have basics of music theory and had to retry this course twice. I haven't finished yet. I will when I gather more knowledge elsewhere...

By Fanny J

Aug 31, 2020

There is a lot of content, the course goes very quickly. It could have been structured in a better way to make it easier to approach. Some notions are discovered in the exercises, which is a bit surprising.

By Saran T

Mar 30, 2022

It was easy enough for an absolute beginner like me at first. But by week 4 the difficulty had gone up drastically. Challenges are good for learning but I feel it may be a bit too challenging at my level.

By Alan J D

Aug 3, 2021

I enjoyed this course. However, some fundamentals could be tackled in greater detail namely chords of the the augmented sixth, these were lacking in explanation.

By Yi-An L

Jul 2, 2017

A little bit not well organized. If the music and the staff can be demonstrated at the the same time to show the progression of the triad would be better.

By K. L

Jul 9, 2020

Hard to come in without a music background. I still had some trouble, even though I've been playing music since I was a child.

By Sunita S

Feb 6, 2018

The assignment at the end was pretty tough to attempt with the content of the course

By Natanielle F

Jan 17, 2021

The first three weeks were great, but I found it advanced too quickly in weeks 4-6.

By Jonah A

Mar 20, 2018

It was difficult for me. This course would be challenging for beginners.

By Abby G

Aug 5, 2021

I thought this course was great but a little hard to follow

By Fay L

Apr 27, 2021

Not for American musical terminology, pretty confusing.

By Michael S

Nov 9, 2016

YOU TURN ME ON

By David H

Jul 12, 2020

If one completed the course the person definitely has learnt a lot. But I haven't completed it. I was looking for a course that really only covers basic terminology and concepts, however, the course covers also intermediate and advanced topics, and the learning curve is steep. It's really challenging and requires at least a simple keyboard for practice and lots of time for self-study by using external materials and sources. This is definitely more effort than I planned to invest.

I managed to pass the first three weeks but really struggled with week 4 and onward. The presentation feels dull and the material taught in the videos and notes often does not cover the exam questions. Many, many details were missing. It would have been better if the pace was slower, the material more in-depth and spread out over time, and the syllabus should be reworked to be really closer to a "fundamentals" course.

By Daniel E

Nov 24, 2023

Lectures barely cover the curriculum, which is reasonable in a free course. Of course students should be studying independently outside the lectures, but there are few to references given, just the odd link to external websites. There is no detailed written curriculum or reading list. Coming to the course without any prior knowledge, taking and failing the quizzes seems to be the only way to get guidance on what to study. This is discouraging, to say the least. At week 4, after the quiz covered concepts that weren't introduced until the week 5 lectures, I discontinued.

By Tom E

Nov 9, 2020

First, I did enjoy much of the course and learned a great deal. My intention was to complete the course. Overall, I found it disorganized and too dependant on the use of a keyboard (I am a beginning cello player). I found the final exam very unfair. There was the use of language and notation that was not discussed in the course which confused and unnecessarily complicated the question. I would recommend that you re-evaluate this course and the delivery model (one or two instructors).

By Deleted A

May 1, 2017

The information in the videos was very interesting and well presented. I feel like I learned a lot. However, the quizzes and tests seemed to be of a very different level, and often covered material that was hardly discussed in the lectures. I understand that students are expected to do independent learning of material, but the gulf between lectures and test difficulty was extreme. If others were interested in learning about the basics of music theory, I would not recommend this course.

By Julie B

Feb 10, 2020

This course is really unbalanced in terms of difficulty. The first week is aimed at complete beginners, but by the fourth week or so things get much, much harder. I didn't feel like there was adequate explanation or materials for many of the questions on the quizzes at that point. I did manage to finish and pass the course, but the last couple of weeks were really frustrating. I think this material would be better spread out over a longer course, or multiple courses.

By Cameron G

Feb 23, 2023

Incredibly rushed content with little time for clear explanation of basic concepts, I've played music for 28 years and thought I'd engage with this for a bit of brain stimulation outside of my career. Unfortunately, I found it very, very rushed, and from my personal perspective not very thoughtfully explained especially if you have no previous foundation of reading music or any previous familiarity with terminology or technical theory.

By Robert B

Nov 18, 2016

The lack of teacher or teaching assistant participation in the forum discussions is deafening. For an institution like the host institution, this is odd. I liked the course, but it was not very well organized. Seems like it was for experienced musicians, eve though the goals of the course hinted at it being for beginners as well. Good Course, badly organized.

By Malory C

Sep 22, 2021

Empecé con mucho animo, pero en el transcurso del curso vi que las notas, explicaciones y preguntas están en ingles, entiendo un poco ingles, pero esto hace que no pueda comprender las cosas como quisiera. Lo unico que está en español son los subtitulos de los videos, y eso... porque el de introduccíon está mal y a los 30 seg ya no hay más.

By Gregory C

Nov 1, 2016

This course does not do a good job at teaching the material. The lecture videos gloss over the topics briefly, but do not give a thorough explanation of the core topics of the course. The quizzes will repeatedly test on terms not even remotely mentioned in any of the course materials.

By Deleted A

Jan 31, 2020

Its great for those who had a music background to review about music theory , but its definitely not for absolute beginners. This lacks coherent guidance and could cause misunderstanding to those who didnt get a big picture of music theory in advance.

By Tom F

Nov 19, 2016

This was fun as a refresher course. If you're brand new to music theory, this course won't help much unless you spend a lot of extra time learning the concepts using secondary materials, google, youtube, and your own keyboard.

By Mostafa A

Aug 16, 2020

Very difficult to be a "fundamentals" course. You certainly will need to be acquainted with some of the concepts introduced even in week 1 and 2. Not recommended as a first course.

By iasonas t

Oct 30, 2016

could offer and cover much more subjects.

spend too much time on basics, less on advanced.

could have chosen better music examples.