LibGuides: OER &amp; ZTC: Open Educational Resources &amp; Zero-Textbook Cost Classes: Music

Textbooks

Open Music Theory by Kris Shaffer et al. (2014): Hybrid Pedagogy Publishing.

This textbook is meant to support active student engagement with music in the theory classroom. That means that this text is meant to take a back seat to student music making (and breaking). It is not the center of the course. As a result, most of the pages in this textbook do not read like a typical twentieth-century textbook. They are somewhere in between prosy lecture notes and reference material, with minimal graphical or audio examples. Also, unlike many resources for “flipped” classes, there are few resources in this textbook where the core information is presented in video. We made these decisions consciously, so that this would not simply be a multimedia, web-based version of an industrial-era textbook. Rather, we wanted to create a textbook that could serve as a quick reference in the context of active musical engagement.

Understanding Music: Past and Present by N. Alan Clark et al. (2015): University Press of North Georgia

Understanding Music: Past and Present is an open Music Appreciation textbook co-authored by music faculty across Georgia. The text covers the fundamentals of music and the physics of sound, an exploration of music from the Middle Ages to the present day, and a final chapter on popular music in the United States.

Music: Its Language, History and Culture by Ray Allen, Douglas Cohen et al (2014): Brooklyn College.

This text contains introductions to works representative of a variety of music traditions. These include the repertoires of Western Europe from the Middle Ages through the present; of the United States, including art music, jazz, folk, rock, musical theater; and from at least two non-Western world areas.

OER Commons

Introduction to Music Appreciation by Bethanie Hansen et al (2014): American Public University ePress.

Introduction to Music Appreciation is about listening, appreciating, understanding, and discussing music. It explores the history, aesthetics, and criticism of Western music for an enhanced understanding of the topic. Chapters include: Musical Elements, Critical Listening, and Course Overview: Early Western Art Music, The Baroque Era, The Classical Era, The Romantic Period, Twentieth-Century Music, Jazz & Music of the World.

Online PDF

Guitar (2020): WikiBooks.

The aim of this book is to introduce beginners to the basic concepts of the guitar. Important techniques are given their own sections with exercises and examples provided. It includes an extensive section on amplifiers and numerous tips and advice on all aspects of the guitar. Music theory concepts are clearly presented and explained.

WikiBooks

Choral Techniques by Gordon Lamb (2010): CNX.

Choral Techniques is written for conductors of high school, college, church and community choirs, and for students preparing for such positions. The material contained in this book is the result of this author’s research and personal experience with high school, university, civic and church choirs. I want to thank my colleagues in the profession including my former students, who have made suggestions for the several editions.

CNX Online Textbook

Courses

From Notation to Performance: Understanding Musical Scores (The Open University/Future Learn)

Would you like to know more about what musicians do in rehearsal and performance? Are you keen to learn different techniques for listening to and understanding music? This online course will help you understand a musical score, what musicians do with the notation they contain, and how the notation you see is connected with the music you hear – from a short melody to a full orchestral score. Focussing on Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven and Mahler, we’ll introduce you to a pianist, small chamber group and conductor who will explain how they create memorable performances from the notes on the page.

Introduction to Musical Composition (MIT OpenCourseWare)

Through a progressive series of composition projects, students investigate the sonic organization of musical works and performances, focusing on fundamental questions of unity and variety. Aesthetic issues are considered in the pragmatic context of the instructions that composers provide to achieve a desired musical result, whether these instructions are notated in prose, as graphic images, or in symbolic notation. No formal training is required. Weekly listening, reading, and composition assignments draw on a broad range of musical styles and intellectual traditions, from various cultures and historical periods.

Introduction to Western Music (MIT OpenCourseWare)

This course gives a broad overview of Western music from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, with emphasis on late baroque, classical, romantic, and modernist styles (1700-1910). It is also meant to enhance students' musical experience by developing listening skills and an understanding of diverse forms and genres. Major composers and their works will be placed in social and cultural contexts. Weekly lectures feature demonstrations by professional performers, and introduce topics to be discussed in sections. The focus of the course is on the weekly listening and reading assignments.

Modern Music: 1900-1960 (MIT OpenCourseWare)

This subject covers a specific branch of music history: Western concert music of first sixty years of the twentieth century. Although we will be listening to and studying many pieces (most of the highest caliber) the goal of the course is not solely to build up a repertory of works in our memory (though that is indeed a goal). We will be most concerned with larger questions of continuity and change in music. We will also consider questions of reception, or historiography - that is, the creation of history and our perception of it. Why do we perceive much of this music, so much closer in time to us than Mozart or Beethoven, to be so foreign? Is this music aloof and separate from popular music of the twentieth century or is there a real connection (perhaps hidden)? The subject will continue to follow some topics of central interest to music before 1960, such as serialism and aleatory, beyond the 1960 cutoff.

Music 101 (Lumen/OER Services)

Welcome to Music 101. I think you’ve made a smart choice to spend some weeks studying some of the greatest music ever written. Consider for a moment how quickly a hit pop song passes from fashionable to forgotten. Those of us that have been out of high school or college more years than we care to remember have certainly had the experience of hearing a favorite anthem of our youth and thinking, “Oh yeah, that song! I’d forgotten that one.” Think about that: the song was totally loved, then completely forgotten within a matter of just a few years. Then consider that many of the composers that we will study have been dead for over two hundred years, and yet their music has never been forgotten and never stopped being performed and loved.

Music Appreciation (Lumen)

This course is an exposition of the philosophy, principles, and materials of music from the Baroque Period to contemporary period with illustrative examples from the Baroque Period, Classical Period, Romantic Period, Contemporary Classical Music and Popular Music. The course is designed to give the student an appreciation of music by exposing them to many musical styles, composers, historical trends, as well as increasing their aural, verbal and writing skills in describing music.

Music Appreciation (Open Course Library)

The purpose of this course is to help students further enhance their appreciation for music as a creative tool of the imagination, as entertainment, and as a window into who we are as social beings. Part of the course also helps students to advance their listening skills, which leads to a better understand of what music actually contains. For this purpose, the course explores western classical music; American folk, popular and religious music; along with a sampling of music from non-western cultures.

Music Appreciation: A Thematic Approach (OER Commons)

This course is designed to teach not only historical facts about music but also to encourage deeper listening to music from a variety of sources. The course is a guided journey of listening, reading, and discussion (oral and written) of music, with corresponding recommended listening and assignments for deeper understanding. An emphasis of this design is to place music within the framework of how music is experienced instead of in a chronological sequence. To that end, the modules include a unit on the music of the Civil Rights movement, with optional material on music for social justice in contemporary America, and the musical contributions of musicians from Alabama. Instructors are encouraged to modify the materials to serve the needs of the students or audience they are serving.

This course focuses on popular music, i.e. music created for and transmitted by mass media. Various popular music genres from around the world will be studied through listening, reading and written assignments, with an emphasis on class discussion. In particular, we will consider issues of musical change, syncretism, Westernization, globalization, the impact of recording industries, and the post-colonial era. Case studies will include Afro-pop, reggae, bhangra, rave, and global hip-hop.

Universe of Music (UMass Boston)

An introduction to the infinite universe of music from its origins to the present, this course investigates the role of instruments, culture, myth and science in the evolution of music. Illustrations through the medium of the World Wide Web present the concept of music as both communication of ideas and expression of feelings in diverse musical traditions of the world.