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Understanding musical scores
Understanding musical scores

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Week 1: Understanding the principles of musical scores

Introduction

Welcome to the course! Over the next four weeks, you will begin to understand how music is written down, what a musical score is and what it does. You will also learn how musicians use and interpret musical scores in their work.

By the end of this course you will understand what music notation does and some aspects of how it works. You will be able to understand more about different types of music and how they are written down, and what that notation means.

This course includes some musical terms which you may not be familiar with. We have produced a glossary of terms [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] which you may find useful. When new musical terms appear they are in bold text, and will have a definition in the glossary.

In the following video, Open University lecturers Catherine Tackley and Naomi Barker tell you a little more about what to expect from this course.

Download this video clip.Video player: ou_futurelearn_musical_score_vid_1068.mp4
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We would like to thank the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) for their assistance. RNCM musicians appear by kind permission of the Principal, Professor Linda Merrick.

Before you start, The Open University would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations of the course. Your input will help to further improve the online learning experience. If you’d like to help, and if you haven’t done so already, please fill in this optional survey.