I signed up for this a couple months ago and it just came online this week. I "believe" this is the first run of this course, but already in week 1 they touched upon modes, which I did not see in a previous course. This course is offered by Coursera.org and can be found here if anyone is interested.

Thanks. I could use a brush up course

I remember learning about the 'Circle of Fifths', but it was centered around the different alcohols that went into a Long Island Iced Tea.
 
It was much later that I got the 'corrected' information on that from theory classes as a local college and private lessons.
 
Who knew?  :)
 
Thanks for the tip - I LOVE the Coursera offerings - there are a bunch of other free classes at a whole bunch of other online universities and such.
 
Bob Bone
 

My theory on theory if you'll excuse the play on words is that it is important to have a background, but take care to not let the rules restrain your creativity. Some of the best, most daring music has been done by people who ignore the hardcore rules especially of classical theory. Robert Fripp of King Crimson fame said once you learn it, unlearn it to be creative.
 
 

This class caught me off guard in that I did a quick pass on the forums before starting and there were several threads about people dropping the class (never seen this before). When I reviewed the videos it starts incredibly basic then takes off like a rocket and only briefly touches on how to get from here to there. Intervals got glossed over and suddenly chords got thrown out by name. I can see where novices would hit a brick walk with this course.... But this is the only course I have seen where the instructors are reading the forums (they actually added another video to week one because of comments about modes).

When I have understood I completely forgot what I have learned in the (music) school looong time ago, I took old college grade russian books "Elementary theory of music" (1963) and "Garmony" (1965). Getting throw ~600 pages in total was not easy, and you can imagine which kind of music is in examples, but what was covered was covered slowly and complete. I guess something like that exists in english as well.

I have to laugh every time I hear music theory called, "rules". They are not rules at all. It is only a way of understanding what the music is doing. There are no rules.
 
As far as modes go. I think music educators make this more complicated than it should be. Yes, all modes are a series of half and whole steps but so is anything else. It's good to think that way but they should present this first:
 
cdefgabc Ionian
defgabcd dorian
efgabcde phrygian
fgabcdef lydian
gabcdefg mixolydian
abcdefga aeolian
bcdefgab lochrian (my personal favorite)
 
Every music educator should use that first. Everyone understands major and minor but for some reason, they just don't get modes. That was my experience, anyway, when I was in college.

The way modes are taught in most theory books is by rote which is silly. Modes are a simple mathematical concept that apply to any series of intervals and yet they are normally only referenced with respect to a few scales. They are best learned as interval series but most people don't teach them that way.
 
When I was initially studying music the lack of information in this area frustrated me, so when I started programming in the 80's, I wrote some code using simple cyclic permutation math, to iteratively generate all possibilities of scales and modes in 12 tone music - 7, 8 tone scales, pentatonics and hexatonics...
The code was written in COBOL btw, and it ran overnight to compute that stuff on a Z80 microprocessor and print out pages of scales! That was my first music software project :) The stuff I learned from that exercise changed the way I thought about scales forever. 
 
Pop trivia questions - I'll be impressed if anyone knows answer to these :)
- How many possibilities of 7 tone scales exist in 12 tone music. 
- How many possibilities of pentatonic scales exist in 12 tone music. 
 
Exclude modes, transpositions of the scales, and scales that have 2 or more consecutive semitones.

Noel, if I can answer either of those 2 questions, could I win as a prize either: A Sonar coffee mug, or the ability to use an 1/8th note as the meter base in Step Sequencer?
 
I would put in the time and effort to figure those out, if I could win one of the above prizes.  :)
(and I am sorry if this opens a can of worms)
 
Bob Bone

Oh - I also just saw a nice comment about music theory from Allan Holdsworth: "Music theory is just observation turned into rules".
 
Bob Bone