music104

There is no text for the course. All material: listening, sight-singing, dictation etc will be posted on the web page. On the Assignments page you'll also see the lecture notes. These pages will also contain the songs and pieces we discuss. The music will be password protected. The password will be given out during the first lecture.

If you just need a basic review of the fundamentals of notation just type "learn to read music" in Google and you'll come up with dozens of adequate tutorials. Don't be intimidated by musical notation. It's a lot easier than many other things you routinely do these days.

You'll also need a good supply of music paper. This has become difficult to find sometimes but now you can download it and print it on your own.

While the homework assignments are best done with pencil and paper, for the songwriting assignments you may find it useful to use a computer. In case you are interested in using a computer notation program there are several options here. For students owning a Windows PC the least expensive is NoteWorthy Composer ($49, worth the price but you can use it free in a limited way). More expensive alternatives are Finale (there is a $9.95 limited version available called Notepad) and Sibelius. Sibelius also has a $99 student edition called, appropriately, Sibelius Student. (I use Sibelius and think it's the best, but any of these three options will be more than you need for this course.)

One good reason to do this is that you can have the notation program play the music back for you, so if you can't play the piano or some keyboard instrument, this is a good way to listen to your assignments and projects. They will all play on the internal sound sets as well as external synthesizers. You'have to spend a few hours learning to use these programs but they're well documented and they're not rocket science.

(But, at the end of the day, hundreds of years of great music were made with a pencil and paper. )

You'll need an mp3 player and a web browser to do all of the assignments and review the lecture notes. In case you don't have one, just stick your head out of your dorm room door and shout, "can somebody help me install an mp3 player?". In case you don't have your own computer, the music library has computers you can use for your work in the listening room (as well as keyboards). To test whether you are able to play the files correctly click on this link to test mp3 playing, and this link to test the streaming Real Audio player. If you don't have RealPlayer go to real.com. (Don't let them con you into paying for it, the free player -- on the upper right hand side of the window -- should do fine. ) Again, you may have to configure your browser to fire up the real audio player when it downloads.

To read the sight-singing exercises you'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader, which you can get here.

If you don't have a piano keyboard in your room (I'm sure most of you don't) there are, in addition to the library keyboards, some online keyboards that can help you plunk out tunes. Here are a few I found with a Google search for virtual keyboard

These are all browser-based but there are a bunch that are downloadable applications