Clear concise modules, excellent instructor. Wish there were a sequel. Recommend highly.

May be little bit frustrating for absolute beginners.

Overall an excellent course with a lot of foundational theory. A lot of it can get complicated and tedious, especially towards the end. It also requires a fair amount of memorization. These are all necessary steps and there's no faking your way through it. I enjoyed it a lot and am looking forward to that first a-ha moment that ties the teachings into a real-world use case!

A few pieces of feedback: (a) the videos themselves could be a little better. eg. when discussing things with a keyboard on screen, the keys should light up in sync with the instructor's lecture. Similarly, when spelling the chords out, notes could be highlighted or added to the staff as the lecture progresses, rather than after the entire chord has been broken down. (b) the test questions in the middle of lectures will sometimes ask you about something that was on screen for a split second before cutting over to the question. It would be great to add an image to the question for reference (similar to the ones in the quizzes), otherwise it's very hard to answer the questions.

All in all, small gripes, and I would still highly recommend this course to anyone interested in getting their heads wrapped around the basics of music theory.

Although its called ''Getting Started With Music Theory'', this course is already quite comprehensive and advanced. It covers a lot of material in a relatively short period of time. I've been playing instruments for many years and have had music theory in the past, despite this I found this course to be quite complicated at times. If someone has no previous knowledge of music, this course might be too difficult to start with (especially when non-native English). Some tests I''ve had to redo multiple times and when I got some answers wrong I didn't understand why. It also didn't give any explanation to these anwsers. The in lecture questions often come up too quickly blocking the screen you need to see to know the anwser. This is also something that can be fixed. Overall I feel like I understand more than I did before, however I still don't fully comprehend the material and will have to watch all lectures again.

This was a great course with a great instructor! Only reason I did not give it all four stars was simply because a lot of questions that really needed a visual to answer were not provided with said visual. There were a couple of questions in the quizzes that would not accept the correct answer (after I would specifically study those specific parts if I did not get them right the first time). The only other thing keeping me from giving it a full five would be the fact that the practice questions inside of the videos would not give you nearly enough time to look at whatever musical example you had to answer questions on. Would've been great if you could see them while you answer questions.

Great course for anyone trying to enter the world of music theory and even better for someone with a little bit of a background on music. There are some problems with the in-lesson questions where you have to pause a number of times to actually view the thing that is being asked and then proceed to the question.

Also you will need a lot of complementary material to get most of this course but in general this was great, totally recommended.

Really informative course, great little introduction to music theory - only complaint I would have is that on some of the lectures, the question flashes up really quickly and without any link to a picture in the question, meaning you have to keep clicking back to earlier in the lecture to see what you are actually answering the question on!

I am giving it 2 stars for several reasons. The main reason was the in video questions usually were asked about a pic seen very briefly before the question was asked. Half of these did not have a link to the pic. in question. Making you have to guess. Another reason is the teacher was pouring out tons of info but in such a fast pace and not in a language a beginner understands. Half the course I felt lost. Last, I am marked ad partial completion only because I am auditing the course, I watched everything, read everything, answered the discussion questions and everything else I needed to do. I did not take the tests because they were locked for paid participants, but I should show a completed for an audit like other courses do.

i feel the basic are not really thought but they are expected to be implied in the exams. really tried to make up with the lesson and tests but the basics still being thought to a beginner are incomplete. i found so many other sources who are teaching just out of passion and no experience in a much clear and easy way that i had to go and listen to their classes and then come back to attempting few questions here. i don't think how these MOOC classes are supposed to work. no offence but maybe there are a lot of people finding this class perfect but for a beginner like me its still difficult.

This course is not "getting started" it's more "Halfway to the top and then some".

If I had actual musical experience, then I would be much happier to learn. I do not and am finding this course so difficult. My ears are not trained to hear specific notes and the first week doesn't give you enough to train them. I don't understand the staves and how a f,a,c,e can all of a sudden be an e3. What is that?

My fault for assuming this would be entry level with no previous experience needed to learn the basics of music theory, but this course is 100% for someone who is seasoned in the music arts.

I've learned a lot from this course. I've started out not knowing much about music theory and now I can even read sheet music. I'm a self taught guitarist and I've been playing for more than 12 years now, and I must say that it this course would have been impossible, had I not already known the basics through my over 10 years of practice. I certainly wasn't able to name triads or intervals, but I knew some basic chords and could tell what kind of notes I was playing. All in all, I'd definitely recommend this course to whoever is trying to get started with music theory, though keep in mind, that it requires a lot of work and memorisation.

This course has helped me understand many things about music I always thought were difficult. The way the syllabus is structured is really good to build on previous knowledge. The videos were easy to follow and the amount of information in each of them, as well as the extra material were enough to understand without being overwhelming. I liked the quizzes because they helped me reinforce what I was learning. Many thanks for this course, it was a very enjoyanle experience.

Hello, first of all thank you for preparing such a quality course. I have been trying to play harmonica as an amateur for many years, I have learned and tried to improve it myself, but I have never developed as much as I wanted because my knowledge of music started to be insufficient after a while. But thanks to this course, I improved my knowledge of music and the notes have now become more meaningful to me. Thank you very much for this nice lesson.

This course has provided me with an excellent background to study music more in-depth. I am grateful to the faculty and Coursera for this opportunity. I will use this knowledge and will try to learn more about music. The exams will test your knowledge and you will need to listen to the class with rapt attention to pass the exams. The last quiz has some problems with its answers, other than that it is a well-structured course.

This course was very challenging and uplifting. I had to seriously work hard to complete it. It took me several hours and a lot of studying and reading to grasp the many concepts.

I play professionally in a band as a percussionist and had a serious learning curve to complete this class. I do not play the piano.

Thank you to Coursera, Michigan State University, instructor and help desk team.

Chitran S Pavan

It was challenging but the course covered quite a bit and provided some resources to help you practice what you've learned. I would recommend having a piano or a keyboard nearby to help you work out some of the problems. Memorizing the chords helps but, given the time constraints with this course, it's better to just write that information down on post-its for a reference. Thank you, Prof. Taggart.

The course is very well-structured. Each week, the knowledge builds on top of the previous week's learnt information, forcing learners to revise and make use of what was previously taught. This helps reinforce concepts and hastens memorisation. At the same time, there are many quizzes, which aids practice and puts our new knowledge to the test.

Amazing course, but very difficult to follow at times! I learned a lot and now have a better understanding on how triads, chords, and lead sheets work. However, if you are a true beginner like me, you definitely need to watch the videos several times to understand certain concepts. Music theory is not easy at all.

A very good and challenging course to get started with music theory. It might get a little tough for someone who doesn't have a musical background. However, both the course contents and the instructor are great for anyone who wants to understand the basics of musical notation and theory.

I loved every bit of this course, it's very challenging and puts one to really learn about music theory. I never thought I'd cover that much info in such little time! It's a great start, and I'll definitely keep on going.

Thank you so much for that!

It's really a fascinating course on music and I appreciate the way the lecturer taught the lessons so simply, and the assignments were so helpful and I learned so much and enjoyed a lot, thanks to the mentor and to the Coursera online platform!

This is one of the most enjoyable course I had undertaken so far. The content and method of imparting knowledge in this course have been chosen with great care and love for the learner.

Regards to the faculty and the organization.

Da muy buenas bases acerca de la teoría musical, perfecto para quienes van iniciando, ciertamente a veces es un poco difícil entender algunos temas, pero es muy buen curso, aprenderás lo básico y como aplicarlo con ejemplos.

This course offered exactly what I was looking for in a beginner's level music theory class. I think it could benefit from some more intuitive graphic illustrations, but it was well executed and delivered what was promised.

I liked having learned in this course, before I couldn't make major, minor or seventh chords and thanks to this I can now build those chords, identify intervals, notation, thanks to the good teacher Bruce Taggart.