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Sound Reasoning

Contributors: Brandt and McClure

Publisher: OpenStax CNX

License: CC BY

“Sound Reasoning” is a web-based, introductory music appreciation course. It offers a new approach to music appreciation for adults, focusing on style-independent concepts. While the course concentrates primarily on Western classical and modern music, the concepts that are introduced apply to music of any style or era. The goal of “Sound Reasoning” is to equip you with questions that you may ask of any piece of music, thereby creating a richer and more comprehensive understanding of music both familiar and unfamiliar. Here are some additional features of the course. 1) ”Sound Reasoning” is completely listening based. No ability to read music is required. 2) The course assumes little or no musical background. A minimum of terminology is invoked. 3) Musical examples are interpolated directly into the text. 4) The course is interactive. A “listening gallery” with exercises follows each module, so that you may practice and refine your listening skills. 5) The modules may be studied in sequence or individually. 6)You may easily print a .pdf of any module.. “Sound Reasoning” is designed as both a stand-alone, self-paced course as well as a supplement to existing university classes.

(7 reviews)

Music Fundamentals 1: Pitch and Major Scales and Keys

Contributors: Ewell and Schmidt-Jones

Publisher: OpenStax CNX

License: CC BY

This collection is the first of five dealing with the rudiments of music.

(11 reviews)

Music Fundamentals 2: Rhythm and Meter

Contributors: Ewell and Schmidt-Jones

Publisher: OpenStax CNX

License: CC BY

This collection is the second of five dealing with the rudiments of music.

(6 reviews)

Exploring Movie Construction & Production: What’s so exciting about movies?

Contributor: Reich

Publisher: Open SUNY

License: CC BY-NC-SA

Exploring Movie Construction & Production contains eight chapters of the major areas of film construction and production. The discussion covers theme, genre, narrative structure, character portrayal, story, plot, directing style, cinematography, and editing. Important terminology is defined and types of analysis are discussed and demonstrated. An extended example of how a movie description reflects the setting, narrative structure, or directing style is used throughout the book to illustrate building blocks of each theme. This approach to film instruction and analysis has proved beneficial to increasing students' learning, while enhancing the creativity and critical thinking of the student.

(16 reviews)

Music: Its Language, History, and Culture

Contributor: Cohen

Publisher: CUNY Academic Works

License: CC BY-NC-SA

Welcome to Music 1300, Music: Its Language History, and Culture. The course has a numberof interrelated objectives:1. To introduce you to works representative of a variety of music traditions.These include the repertoires of Western Europe from the Middle Agesthrough the present; of the United States, including art music, jazz, folk, rock, musical theater; and from at least two non-Western world areas (Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Indian subcontinent).2. To enable you to speak and write about the features of the music you study,employing vocabulary and concepts of melody, rhythm, harmony, texture, timbre,and form used by musicians.3. To explore with you the historic, social, and cultural contexts and the role of class, ethnicity, and gender in the creation and performance of music,including practices of improvisation and the implications of oral andnotated transmission.4. To acquaint you with the sources of musical sounds—instruments and voices fromdifferent cultures, found sounds, electronically generated sounds; basic principlesthat determine pitch and timbre.5. To examine the influence of technology, mass media, globalization, and transnationalcurrents on the music of today.The chapters in this reader contain definitions and explanations of musical terms and concepts,short essays on subjects related to music as a creative performing art, biographical sketchesof major figures in music, and historical and cultural background information on music fromdifferent periods and places.

(17 reviews)

Understanding Music: Past and Present

Contributors: Clark, Heflin, Kluball, and Kramer

Publisher: University of North Georgia Press

License: CC BY-SA

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.

(14 reviews)

Introduction to Art: Design, Context, and Meaning

Contributors: Sachant, Blood, and LeMieux

Publisher: University of North Georgia Press

License: CC BY-SA

Introduction to Art: Design, Context, and Meaning offers a comprehensive introduction to the world of Art. Authored by four USG faculty members with advance degrees in the arts, this textbooks offers up-to-date original scholarship. It includes over 400 high-quality images illustrating the history of art, its technical applications, and its many uses.

(58 reviews)

Graphic Design and Print Production Fundamentals

Contributors: Collins, Haas, Jeffery, Martin, Medeiros, and Tomljanovic

Publisher: BCcampus

License: CC BY

This textbook -- written by a group of select experts with a focus on different aspects of the design process, from creation to production -- addresses the many steps of creating and then producing physical, printed, or other imaged products that people interact with on a daily basis. It covers the concept that, while most modern graphic design is created on computers using design software, the ideas and concepts don't stay on the computer. The ideas need to be completed in the computer software, then progress to an imaging (traditionally referred to as printing) process. Keywords are highlighted throughout and summarized in a Glossary at the end of the book, and each chapter includes exercises and suggested readings.

(19 reviews)

Music and the Child

Contributor: Sarrazin

Publisher: Open SUNY

License: CC BY-NC-SA

Children are inherently musical. They respond to music and learn through music. Music expresses children's identity and heritage, teaches them to belong to a culture, and develops their cognitive well-being and inner self worth. As professional instructors, childcare workers, or students looking forward to a career working with children, we should continuously search for ways to tap into children's natural reservoir of enthusiasm for singing, moving and experimenting with instruments. But how, you might ask? What music is appropriate for the children I'm working with? How can music help inspire a well-rounded child? How do I reach and teach children musically? Most importantly perhaps, how can I incorporate music into a curriculum that marginalizes the arts?

(12 reviews)

Understanding Basic Music Theory

Contributor: Schmidt-Jones

Publisher: OpenStax CNX

License: CC BY

Although it is significantly expanded from "Introduction to Music Theory", this book still covers only the bare essentials of music theory. Music is a very large subject, and the advanced theory that students will want to pursue after mastering the basics will vary greatly. A trumpet player interested in jazz, a vocalist interested in early music, a pianist interested in classical composition, and a guitarist interested in world music, will all want to delve into very different facets of music theory; although, interestingly, if they all become very well-versed in their chosen fields, they will still end up very capable of understanding each other and cooperating in musical endeavors. The final section does include a few challenges that are generally not considered "beginner level" musicianship, but are very useful in just about every field and genre of music.

(25 reviews)