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# Introduction

This free course explores form, or how music is organised in time. You will look at form in popular music and jazz from the United States, dance music from the Democratic Republic of Congo, North American Indigenous song, and Hindustani classical music. You will explore how form is represented through the use of specialist terms (such as ‘verse’ and ‘chorus’) and alphabetic designations (for example, AABA). You will also learn to hear and represent form yourself.

This is the first in a planned sequence of courses that draws on material created by Byron Dueck, Alex Kolassa, and Helen Coffey for the Open University module A234 Understanding Music. You do not need to play an instrument or read music to start these courses, but you will gradually learn to read staff notation and to play notes on a piano keyboard as you move through them. Each course builds on previous ones, so it is best to study them in order, unless you are already comfortable reading music.

The courses introduce you to Western staff notation and the building blocks of what is sometimes called Western common practice music, including scales and chords in major and minor keys. At the same time – since these elements account for only a small part of the music in the world – each unit also introduces structures and concepts from beyond Western common practice. The division is around 50/50 across the courses. The goal is to teach you the basics of one musical language while introducing you to aspects of many others.

As you progress through each course, you will be asked to clap and sing musical patterns and play these on an instrument if you have one. You will listen to various styles of music. If possible, try to listen using headphones or good quality speakers, rather than (for example) the speakers on a laptop or portable phone, since some sounds may otherwise be inaudible.

You will also listen to the lyrics of songs. In many cases, only short extracts are reproduced from these lyrics for reasons of copyright. If you find it difficult to follow the teaching without the complete set of lyrics, you may wish to try to find the words online.

This OpenLearn course is the first in a planned sequence of music theory courses. It is an adapted extract from the Open University course A234 Understanding Music.

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OpenLearn - Introduction to music theory 1: form
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