On the PBS Newshour (US TV show) today they had a segment on MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) that are being offered by major universities. As expected most of the content is on the tech/math/business side, I did find some stuff of interest to us more artistically inclined on Coursera. https://www.coursera.org/category/music
Berklee College of Music is offering an Introduction to Music Production course, that looked like it could be particularly useful to the beginning, to mid DAW user. While the Cubase docs and videos do a good job of explaining how to use the various tools, this looks like it would be useful to folks explaining the “why” and “when” of using these tools.
There are also courses on Sound Design, Songwriting, Guitar and Improvisation.
The point of all MOOCs is to offer free worldwide education via the internet. Right now you typically get a certificate of completion. But there is talk of offering actual collage credit in the future which would cost, but folks would still be able to take it for free without getting the credit, just the knowledge. It’s a pretty exciting development to enable a kid in, say, rural Africa to take a Stanford programming class at no cost. A more educated population is a good thing. Just hope the arts get more attention than they are now.
Just my opinion, but these courses are expensive. Utube is fantasitc these days and I have learnt over the years that hands on wirth Cubase is the only way to learn. t\ake something like expression maps, they are quirky, whatever you can leanr ’ in principle’ in class about these maps, is no substitute for actually working with them until you have htem sussed. Its bums on seats for me…
I’m bumping this since they are repeating the Introduction to Music Production starting July 19 - a good resource for folks who’d like a better foundation in audio engineering.
Since I originally posted this, I’ve taken both the Songwriting (really lyrics) and Improvisation classes. Both were excellent quality, providing lots of great info and best of all free.
BTW, when they say massive, they mean it. The Songwriting class had over 65,000 signed up - not sure how many completed it. They are repeating it soon too. Coursera really rocks, I’ve got a dozen or so classes I’m thinking of taking.
its an absolutely brilliant scheme/idea, and as a teacher (digital media not music) I think the idea of free education courses for the masses is a wonderful thing considering how many people have access to the internet these days - awesome discovery and I’ll be sure to check em out!
A really terrific opportunity …however the " terms of service" disturbs me a bit. It is very lengthy and is very strong on its language about non personal identifiable information. Bad enough I have people listening to my phone calls …now they wanna know what porn sites I visit?
I had to bow out despite the benefits. Maybe it’s time for VPN network
Thanks for posting about this; will check out more later…
Though, quick glance at Music Production course info reveals:-
Recommended Background
You should be able to perform the following tasks in a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), such as GarageBand, Pro Tools, Logic, Live, Reason, SONAR, or Digital Performer:
•Create audio tracks
•Add audio effects (EQ, Noise Gate, Compressor, Delay, and Reverb)
•Create MIDI tracks
•Add a software synthesizer to a MIDI track
•Export an audio file
•Create an MP3 file
Where are you Steinberg…? Not on Berklee’s radar it seems… (or, this reflects the course tutors own prejudices, who one can only imagine, deliberately omitted Cubase from that list for some reason or other…)
Bizarre isn’t it really, considering Germany is seemingly host to some of the most amazing innovative software developers on the planet (i.e. Steinberg, Native Instruments, Celemony, Ableton, Fraunhofer IIS etc) the list goes on…
