Reviews of Discovering Music

Here’s what people are saying about Professor Carol’s Discovering Music curriculum:

300 years is amazing! It’s easy to use, challenging in all the right ways, and teaches things that most schools avoid. It’s everything a course should be! Professor Reynolds does an outstanding job of explaining everything and her enthusiasm brightens up everyone’s day! Honestly, she could talk about the history of the question mark and I’d still be smiling once she was finished. And the little booklet, oh don’t get me STARTED about the booklet! The booklet covers anything you might have missed in the video. It serves as an amazing review and a tangible source for dates (not the fruit) or anything else you might be searching for. I could read that booklet all day! But the best part is the wagon. Oh, Professor Carol and her wagon. That wagon, for me, represents learning for all, and the power of fun in education. But the course isn’t just about learning, it’s about recognizing the connection between music and culture, wagons and freedom, and education and fun. Noel, age 12
My daughter did get accepted by UCLA and the NCAA and received a full ride soccer scholarship. Thanks again for sending your syllabus to the NCAA. Will your syllabus be accepted by all colleges and the NCAA from now on? It should be! It’s a great program. All high schools and colleges should make it mandatory for all students to take. It’s fun, exciting, interesting, world involving, interactive, and turns boring history into that WOW factor that all the students are looking for these days. It keeps students desiring to learn more. California Homeschooling Parent
We LOVE our 300 Years of Interaction in Western Music, Arts, History, and Culture program. It is so thorough and exciting. We actually do it at night when everyone (Dad!) is home and can learn from it. My 12 year old daughter just loves how it always touches upon something we are studying in a different subject during the day, like science. This is a program that we will be using every year because there is so much there we can always learn new things each time. It is very easily absorbed. Carol Reynolds is entertaining and fun and brings a wealth of information to each study unit. It is actually hard for us to stop after each unit since we all want to continue on! It gets the students interested in looking up many of the subjects and time periods she points out in the video for a more in depth study. I have told many about this program and encourage every family to use it because it is filled with so much valuable information. C. Higgins, Homeschool Mom.
Carol Reynolds is one of those professors who has too much energy and passion to approach music history like everyone else. She made it the class I looked forward to each day, the class I didn’t want to end. Luckily, she showed me how the course never really did have to end, and it continues on to this day. When she teaches, the only options are learning and enjoyment. Lt. Col. Jim Keene, Commander, West Point Band.
Professor Carol is not a stuffy, academic hermit, with a cloud of chalk dust swirling about her, but an intelligent, vital, humorous and witty woman who relates to music from Bach to the Beatles without missing a beat. Homeschool Magazines
I am absolutely enthralled by it! . . . It’s perfect! Dr. Carol Reynolds is so cute and quirky, intelligent and enthusiastic. I’ve studied lots of history in my day, but I’m learning a lot from this course. Strewing Blog
I can’t begin to express how much I love your course. Providing a cultural understanding of music provides the full picture that adds the meaning.
I truly appreciate being the recipient of your breadth of knowledge regarding music history. You are a wonderful guide towards the connections that lead to a greater depth of understanding about music and our world. The understanding of the subject is what allows me to internalize the material and make it a part of my own fabric. Thank you. I’m watching the lectures before my boys in order to guide them through the material. Now I realize, I don’t need to do this. They can fully appreciate it for themselves, right out of the box. Kathy Cordeiro, Math and Science Coach, Eudaimonia Academy.
This was my first day studying your course. I finished Unit 1 and did half of my homework. I will finish it tomorrow. I have never enjoyed doing homework so much! I already finished listening to all fifty seven songs on all three of your CDs. I just couldn’t stop listening to them! I just feel so lucky getting your course!” William L, a 10-year-old student.
I received a package in the mail yesterday! Of course, I tore it open and threw the first DVD into the player immediately. My daughter and I LOVE the videos! LOVE THEM! I had to watch two because I just couldn’t help myself. You have a gift. This isn’t just music history – this is making music accessible to young people and illustrating the importance of music in the human experience.

I also think you have a connection to these gifted children. When you pulled out that battered poetry book and talked about poems being your friends, my daughter and I had tears in our eyes. The children I work with are often so gifted that they have little in common with their age mates. Poems and books are sometimes better friends than children for these kids, at least until they find kindred spirits in college. I felt like you were really speaking to them – kids who sleep with their favorite books – and that you understand them and can make music relevant to them. What a beautiful thing!
So now I am going to go gush on all my homeschool e-lists about how wonderful your materials are! I should tell you that I rarely do this. I am quite picky, and I usually tweak any program I buy. It’s quite unusual for me to find a perfect program that I want to use as is! Jaime Smith, Founder and Director of Online 3G Academy.

Your “Discovering Music” videos are wonderful. I have four to go. Terrific successor to Bernstein’s pioneering TV show “Young People’s Concerts.” You have fab graphs technology to help tell your story. Bernstein had the entire NY Phil. Too bad you two will not be able to get together for some shows. Awesome concept. An adult concert-goer.
Both my boys love them. We have been watching them in the morning. My oldest keeps begging to watch more. I have actually started using them as a motivator. I tell the boys if they do their other school work well and in a timely manner we will sit and watch another unit. And then when we do, I have to pay attention to my oldest because he wants to watch more than one unit at a time! A homeschool mom.