Music History Courses.
Six weeks, two hour sessions.

This course starts with the early psychedelic countercultural scene in San Francisco in the late 1960s. Groups like Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and Janis Joplin were innovators in this experimental style, where musicians pushed the boundaries of rock music. A psychedelic scene in London developed around the same time, where the Beatles and others were adding South Asian music, collage recording techniques, and tape loops to the sound of rock music.

Continuing with the rock scene in London, this week starts with the Rolling Stones, Cream, Pink Floyd and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Moving to the rock scene in Los Angeles, we'll examine the musical and technological advances of the Beach Boys, as well as pioneering work by Frank Zappa, The Byrds, The Doors, and others.

After a look at the various sonic innovations of the late 60s comes a look at some other 60s styles including roots rock (Creedence Clearwater Revival), blues rock (Jeff Beck), and more pop-oriented rock (Nancy Sinatra, The Mamas and the Papas). We'll finish up our 60s section with outdoor music festivals, including Monterey, and Woodstock, which was one of the major cultural moments of the 20th century. Moving into the 1970s, we'll examine some of the early country rock and roots rock by The Band, The Eagles, Neil Young, and others.

A major new style in the early 70s, which built upon the popularity of folk in the previous decade, was singer-songwriter. Joni Mitchell was a pioneer in this emotionally driven, folk-influenced style, as were Carly Simon, Carole King, and James Taylor. The 1970s saw the rise and/or continuation of many new rock subgenres, from folk and folk rock (John Prine, CSNY) to southern rock (The Allman Brothers Band), and the blues-influenced rock of the Guess Who and ZZ Top, to the Latin-tinged blues of Santana. Finally a look at some early hard rock including Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith.

Continuing with the 1970s, this week starts with a more challenging and virtuosic music: the classical-influenced progressive rock (Yes, Pink Floyd, Rush, and others). Queen and the Who give us art rock, while David Bowie and Alice Cooper pioneer a glam rock style, both with strong visual elements. Elton John and KISS both built on these developments with a strong emphasis on costumes, and stage effects.

Jazz is a foundational style of music, and in the early 70s, a new style called jazz rock emerged. The jazz influence can be heard in the instrumentation used by Van Morrison, jazz-rock bands including Chicago and Steely Dan, and the jazz fusion work of Jeff Beck. The final topic in this course is heavy metal, a style with roots in late 1960s blues rock groups like Cream, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple. Heavy blues rock leads us to Black Sabbath, the band widely considered as the first heavy metal band.

To begin our journey in better understanding music, we'll start with the concept of active listening vs. passive hearing. Several basic music terms will be discussed, with plenty of examples, including rhythm, metre, pitch, harmony, melody, and musical texture.

This week is an exploration of various musical forms, or structures. Identifying various parts of a song or musical work (the formal structure) is important in understanding music, and it's also really fun! We'll look at and listen to simpler musical forms like verse-chorus, 12-bar blues, 32-bar chorus form, and more complex structures that include a bridge, pre-chorus, outro, and more.

Tone colour, or timbre, is a term used to describe how an instrument sounds. We'll look at the five categories of instrument classification, with plenty of examples. The selection of instruments is eclectic and includes some lesser-known ones, and a few from outside the Western musical tradition. First, a variety of wind instruments (classified as aerophones), including saxophones, trumpet, trombone, harmonica, siku panpipes, and the pipe organ.

Continuing with categories of musical instruments, next up is stringed instruments (classified as chordophones). We'll look at more familiar instruments (violin/fiddle, electric bass, and pedal steel guitar), and some that may be less familiar (santur, pipa, balalaika, hurdy gurdy, and kora). Our third category is membranophones (instruments with a drum head), including the drum kit, darbuka, djembe, conga, and da-daiko.

This week we'll learn about percussion instruments (ideophones), and we'll discuss the vibraphone, cowbell, and mbira. The final category of the instrument section is electrophones, including theremin, electric organ, electric piano, synthesizers, samplers, drum machines, and turntables.

In the final week of this course, we will explore some commonly used effects, such as reverb, delay, distortion, wah-wah, tremolo and more. Finally, a look at a few other unusual instruments and effects including the talk box and vocoder.