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The Open University

Discovering music through listening

The Open University via OpenLearn

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Overview

This free course, Discovering music through listening, will introduce you to the musical elements used by musicians to create a piece of music: pulse, tempo, metre, rhythm, melody, harmony, structure, texture, timbre, and dynamics. You’ll learn how to identify the different musical elements by taking a particular approach to listening to the music, known as close listening. Alongside developing your listening skills, you will learn how to explain what you hear using technical language.You do not need to be able to read music notation, play an instrument, or have any prior musical knowledge to be able to complete this course.

Syllabus

  • Introduction
  • Introduction
  • What is close listening?
  • Achieving close listening
  • Acknowledgements
  • Week1Week 1: The element of rhythm
  • Introduction
  • 1 Pulse: the heartbeat of music
  • 2 From pulse to tempo
  • 3 Metre: organising the beats
  • 3.1 Organising beats into two, three, four
  • 4 Rhythm
  • 4.1 Rhythmic patterns in Stayin’ Alive
  • 4.2 Rhythmic patterns and metre
  • 5 Summary of Week 1
  • Glossary
  • Acknowledgements
  • Week2Week 2: The elements of melody and timbre
  • Introduction
  • 1 What makes a melody?
  • 1.1 Distinguishing sounds: pitch
  • 1.2 Melodic movement
  • 1.3 Skips and steps
  • 1.4 Melodic contour
  • 1.5 Melodic boundaries: range
  • 2 Timbre
  • 2.1 Timbre: the effects of register
  • 2.2 Melodic colour in the orchestra
  • 3 Summary of Week 2
  • Glossary
  • Acknowledgements
  • Week3Week 3: Harmony
  • Introduction
  • 1 Harmony
  • 1.1 Consonant and dissonant harmonies
  • 1.2 Major and minor
  • 1.3 Coming home
  • 1.4 Harmonic progressions: the 12-bar blues structure
  • 2 Summary of Week 3
  • Glossary
  • Acknowledgements
  • Week4Week 4: Texture, dynamics and structure
  • Introduction
  • 1 Combining elements
  • 1.1 Texture
  • 1.2 Monophonic, polyphonic and homophonic textures
  • 1.3 Creating dynamic change in music
  • 1.4 Musical structure
  • 1.4.1 Reflecting on small-scale musical structure
  • 1.4.2 Reflecting on large-scale musical structure
  • 2 End-of-course summary
  • Where next?
  • Glossary
  • Acknowledgements

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