We want you to be happy with your Discovering Music curriculum. It is very rich in content and academically serious, but delivered in an engaging and entertaining style. It is not primarily for musicians, but rather for anyone who wants to understand and enjoy the arts. People who have not previously engaged in a serious study of the arts may be unsure what to expect. And since we offer both tangible and online editions, we want to help you choose the edition that’s right for you.

What to expect:

Most people take the course over an academic year, but it can be streamlined to fit into one semester.

The materials are delivered primarily in the form of video presentations, which include location footage and interviews with performers and experts in various fields. The total video time is 13 hours 22 minutes.

The written materials are intended to support the video, and these include overviews, chronologies, vocabulary, lists, quizzes, viewing guides, projects, and annotated web links. If you were to do all of the work included in the written materials, it would take you a long time to finish the course. We expect that you will pick and choose and focus on the parts that interest you most and that are most appropriate based on age and background.

The third component of the course involves listening to music. And after all, what’s the point in studying music unless you get to know it and enjoy it. Your listening should not be passive. Learning to hear music in a focused and more analytical way will pay dividends in enjoyment. A disciplined approach can make all the difference, and we will offer you some suggestions.

What you will need:

If you have the tangible edition (DVDs, CDs, and book), and the electronic equipment to play it on, then you have everything required for the course. You will benefit, however, from doing additional suggested research on the Internet or in the library.

If you take the course online, the same video presentations will be streamed to your computer. (These cannot be downloaded.) You will also find essentially the same textual materials tailored slightly for the online medium. These are all organized in sequential fashion. You will have access to all online materials immediately and for the duration of your subscription.

Online users will have access to the music through several sources. We link to third-party subscription services, Naxos and Classical Archives, which stream professional recordings at economical rates for virtually all listening selections along with an almost endless supply of additional music. Naxos provides streaming of virtually everything for $20 per year, and both services offer low-cost plans with some added benefits. We also link to sites offering free access to the music where the quality ranges from outstanding to pretty good. In most cases we also link to sites where the printed music can be downloaded for free.

Extras

If you need an additional book or CD set, these can be purchased at our online store. You can also purchase a Teacher’s Manual with syllabus, scope and sequence, and more extensive testing.

The online edition includes a subscription to all of the materials on the Professor Carol site, including webinars and other courses on music, arts, and culture. The Teacher’s Manual is incorporated into the structure of the online edition.

Can’t decide?

Here it is in a nutshell: The tangible edition gives you something you can put on the shelf, and it will always be there (unless you lose it). The online edition gives us the opportunity to take you more places and link to more things, because it doesn’t have to fit in a box.

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