Have you ever thought about how great it would be to spend a few years getting your chops together at Berklee College of Music, only to realize that for logistical, time, or financial reasons it wasn’t likely to happen?

Well, while getting a full-on education at the school’s Boston campus may be out of your reach for whatever reason, you might be able to at least partially satisfy your education cravings by taking advantage of Berklee’s extensive offering of online courses, which may be taken individually or as part of a degree program.

I had the good fortune to audit Rick Peckham’s Chords 101 class online via Berkleemusic, and while I wasn't able to interact with the instructor or other students—two huge advantages of actually taking the class—I was able to learn a great deal and get a real sense of what taking the course would be like.

The multi-media class includes videos in which Peckham explains key concepts, downloadable PDFs of music and lesson materials, “play along” Practice Exercises and Practice Workshops with sound and visuals (charts, tabs, notation, etc.), tests of various types, and final assignments. The material is presented in a concise, logical, and easy to grasp form, and I learned an extraordinary amount by simply auditing the 12-week course. Had I fully participated in the class, and received feedback and personal instruction from Peckham, I’m sure I would have benefited all the more.

To provide you with a really good sense of what the online courses are like, Berkleemusic lets you sample entire lessons from 23 of them, spanning Performance, Music Production, Songwriting & Arranging, Music Business, and Music Theory. In fact, you can actually learn an awful lot just by perusing all of the samples (think of them as 23 free lessons).

Click HERE to check them out.

Have fun!

Barry
barrycleveland.com

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