jacmuse.com / cyber school for music

The cyber school for music is a target="_blank">music theory website by Joe Craig, a musician and teacher of Anchorage, Alaska. Lots of good stuff on modes and modal harmonies in jazz. Craig says:

About the name. It was about ten years ago on a bus to Boston, that I was lucky to get a seat next to a very smart lass from the West Coast named Audrey. And after a bit of introductions we asked each other about our respective work. After a brief description of what I was doing Audrey quipped ... "why your building a cyber school Joe." And when I asked Audrey what a cyber school was, she replied after a pause, "well ... just what you are creating right now." And with a firm look and a smile from Audrey, we left it at that. I never really got an answer from Audrey as to whether the West Coast already had cyber schools ... but I figured they must.

He adds:

Course outline: This introductory music theory course is designed to create a lifelong intellectual framework for gaining and retaining musical knowledge within the learner. We achieve this by creating a combined theoretical and historical overview of our American and European music. Moving through ten sequenced chapters, this course starts with the origins of our present day, tuned musical pitch from natural sound as discovered by the ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras. Upon this Pythagorean system, each succeeding chapter gradually reshapes this pitch resource into the essential musical components of scales, arpeggios, chords and rhythms we have used to create all of the combined American and European music we enjoy. With separate chapters for composing and practice techniques, this combined curriculum provides the fundamental music theory elements with practical performance and creative applications, all within a historical context. Each chapter contains a printable list of ten vocabulary terms and a ten question knowledge measure of chapter concepts. Musical examples include sound playback. A second semester, advanced course to continue this study of music theory is available.