Last July I was accepted to the Music Composition for Film, TV and Games Degree Program at Berklee Online and December 22nd marked the end of my first term of classes. I have one word to describe my experience so far: wow. This was perhaps the most intense three months of my adult life. Pretty much all I did was study, take care of family stuff and sleep. 7 days and nights a week for 3 months. Often I would work through the night not going to sleep until 10:30am or later just to get through the coursework and assignments. 

For this term I went full time and took four classes: “Basic Ear Training 1”, “Berklee Keyboard Method”, “Music Notation and Score Preparation Using Finale” and “Music Theory & Composition 1”.  Each was challenging, interesting and covered a lot of ground in just twelve weeks. I also received prior learning credits for two additional classes (“Music Production 101” and “Producing Music with Logic”) for what I had learned on my own over the years. One key thing that I discovered through all of this is that I won’t be taking four classes in a term ever again. It was just too much. Glad I did it, but once was enough.

All that being said, the teachers were subject matter experts, the learning environment was professionally designed & implemented and the content was extensive and very well thought out. I’m super impressed and happy to be associated with the program.  

I’ll go over the specifics of each class in separate blog entries. 

The one recurring thought I had throughout this term was how I wished that I had been able to do this a whole lot sooner. A number of things that were a bit of a mystery to me for years are much clearer now (e.g. songwriting with modal interchange, transcription via solfege, do’s and don’ts of notation, voice leading keyboard parts, etc.) and I think my musical life would have taken a much different trajectory. I’m really looking forward to the next term and seeing who I become through all this.