Start your new year off right with these insightful online music courses.

2018 has come to an end. Have you made it a New Year’s resolution to increase your knowledge and skills about music and production?

Here are 9 free upcoming music MOOC’s (Massive Online Open Course) to help jump-start your mission of lifelong learning going into 2019.

This time out, rather than focusing on audio-specific classes, the entries on this list are about music more generally, with a tilt toward courses that are designed to help keep you inspired and give you new creative insights.

1. How Music Can Change Your Life

Offered by The University of Melbourne, this free course covers how music influences the human body and mind. From using music for strengthening relationships and community to culture, this MOOC covers a wide range of topics and should inspire you to keep going, and give you ideas about how to better connect to audiences.

Enrollment started December 31st and is still open. You can access this course through the Coursera platform.

2. Music as Biology: What We Like to Hear and Why

This course focuses on music and auditory aesthetics within a biological framework. Taught by a Duke University professor, this MOOC explores the human auditory system and our response to a variety of sound stimuli. If you ever wondered why musical tonalities influence humans across different cultures, you should consider taking this course.

This course opened on December 31st but it’s not too late to catch up and it is still open for enrollment now. You can also access this course through the Coursera platform.

3. Art of the MOOC: Experiments with Sound

Offered by Duke University in conjunction with Berlin University of the Arts, this MOOC allows participants to treat the course like a medium for public art. Students can try making their own sound interventions, music compositions, and sonic experimentation and share them with a curious audience of peers.

The course covers major artistic developments that have occurred over recent decades along with ideas about sound in regard to specific social and spatial contexts. Enrollment opened on December 31st and is still active today.

4. Introduction to Classical Music

If you struggled with conventional music appreciation courses in the past, this is the course for you. Yale University is offering a course that introduces students to the world of classical music.

Covering everything from Bach fugues and Mozart symphonies to Puccini operas, this course provides participants with a better understanding of music history. The course recently opened on December 31st.

5. Making Music with Others

Offered by Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, this course teaches participants to make music more effectively with others. That’s a skill any of us could always improve. 

Covering topics ranging from the social contexts of music making to music consumption in society, this MOOC is for musicians wanting to develop their skills in group music-making.

January 21, 2019 is the start date for this course. You can access it through the FutureLearn platform by clicking here.

6. Music Moves: Why Does Music Make You Move?

This course focuses more on our psychology and responses to music than on music itself. Offered by the University of Oslo, this course covers music cognition and body movement, with an emphasis on studying music through our patterns of movements.

This MOOC starts on January 21, 2019 through the FutureLearn platform.

7. Music For Wellness

Offered by BerkleeX, this course is all about unlocking your creativity and well-being through music. Students will learn how and why music can lead them to live healthier, happier, and longer lives.

This MOOC covers the regulation of emotions and stress by using music, and explores ancient musical practices that are still effective today. This course starts January 27, 2019 through the edX platform.

8. Artistic Research in Music – an Introduction

For the academically-inclined, this course focuses on current topics, issues, and approaches to artistic research in music. Participants in this MOOC will learn the key concepts of artistic research in music, and even how to produce a complete research proposal.

January 28, 2019 is the start date for this course. You can access this course through the edX platform by clicking here.

9. The Importance and Power of Music in our Society

Offered by Universiteit Leiden and the University of the Arts the Hague, this course covers the role that music plays within daily life, and explores how it is inextricably woven into the fabric of society.

From how music shapes identity to political ideas and more, this course will give you insight into the profound influence music has on our cultural norms and values. February 4, 2019 is the start date for this MOOC, available through the Coursera platform.

Ryan Merriweather is an audio engineer, tech enthusiast, and writer.

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