The University of Edinburgh
Fundamentals of Music Theory
This course will introduce students to the theory of music, providing them 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, meter, phrases and cadences, and basic harmony.

Instructors

Dr Michael Edwards
The University of Edinburgh
Dr Zack Moir
The University of Edinburgh
Richard Worth
The University of Edinburgh
Dr Nikki Moran
The University of Edinburgh
Dr John Philip Kitchen, MA BMus PhD FRCO LRAM
The University of Edinburgh

About the Course

This course, from the University of Edinburgh's Reid School of Music (recently ranked first in the UK), is suitable for those who have never studied music academically. It will introduce you to the theory of Western 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 provide the basis for the further study of music both from a theoretical and practical point of view: musicology, pastiche and free composition, analysis, performance, and aural skills.
It will also be useful to experienced musicians without music notation skills who wish to extend their practice through a grounding in the tools of Western music theory and notation.

Course Syllabus

Week-by-Week breakdown
Pitches, scales, modes, and chords
Keys and intervals
Rhythm and form
Harmony 1: functional harmony
Harmony 2: inversions, cadences, and sequences

Recommended Background

No background required.
Suggested Readings
Although not required to participate in the course, an excellent text/reference book for the course would be:
S. M. Kostka, D. Payne. Tonal Harmony. McGraw-Hill Education, 2008.
We understand that this might be hard to find or prohibitively expensive where you're living, so it really is just a suggestion. A good and cheaper substitution would be:
E. Taylor. The AB Guide to Music Theory Vol 1. Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, 1989.

home page:
https://www.coursera.org/course/musictheory