Instructor: Jim Fielder. Mr. Fielder has been an influential figure in modern popular music. He was the founding bassist with the legendary band Blood, Sweat, and Tears in the late 60s and early 70s, and has been Neil Sedaka's bassist for 32 years, also playing bass on the first two albums for the supergroup Buffalo Springfield, on jazz guitarist George Benson's "Tell It Like It Is," and other recordings by Danny O'Keefe, Al Kooper, Chris Hillman, Mary McCaslin, and Gene Clark, the founder of the Byrds. Read more about him here.

Description: This is a primary technical course in music which focuses on the tools you will need to assume a leadership position in whatever musical situation you are cast. You will have the knowledge and skills to create an original musical idea or borrow one from an outside source and mold that idea to fit the singers and musicians with whom you work to make a sound which fits your musical style. Whether your ultimate goal is in classical performance or composition, music education, or commercial music, or whether you simply wish to pursue amateur musical activities, you will have the foundation for the further musical studies needed to achieve your aim.

Most of your musical training so far has been focused on one thing: playing your instrument or using your voice as well as possible. Now you must concentrate on a more important instrument - yourself. You must improve the skills within your mind: your sense of pitch, your sense of time, your sense of melody and harmony. You must arrive at the point where you can take the music you hear in your head and instantaneously sing it, play it, and write it down. You ARE the music.

Suggested Age: Grades 8 and up
Prerequisites: A basic familiarity with music. Some facility with a musical instrument is preferable.
Required Course Materials: Access to a piano or keyboard (required); tuning fork A440 (recommended)
Content Goals: Find the tonic note of a piece of music and identify that
note by reference to a given tone (ex: a tuning fork). Sing and play all intervals from a given note. Transcribe a melody from hearing (dictation). Sight-sing a written melody.
Compose an original melody and harmonize and transcribe it without the use of an instrument. Sing the major and minor scales up and down and play them on your
instrument in any key. Transcribe rhythm from dictation. Identify the primary chord types by ear. Identify a chord's root note by ear. Construct all chords from any given root on paper and on your instrument. Transcribe a chord progression by ear. Name all possible chords to harmonize a single melody note. Transpose a melody and its harmony to any different key. Improvise a melody from a given chord progression.
Class Chat Time: Tuesday 11:00 am EST
High School Course Credit: One 1/2 year high school credit

Click here to enroll in Understanding Music, Fall, 2010 ($224.95)

Click here to enroll in Understanding Music, Spring, 2011($224.95)