Learner Reviews & Feedback for Music as Biology: What We Like to Hear and Why by Duke University

The content of the course is absolute gold. The course provides some answers (or at least partial answers) to very intriguing questions in music: Why these notes and not others? Why is a minor scale "sad" ? and other related questions. The only real issue is the that the quiz questions are just garbage, so be prepared to be frustrated that after learning some new material and having some real "aha!" moments you will fail the quiz because the questions don't really seem to reflect the important points.

This course is an amazing interdisciplinary approach of the phenomenology of music including mathematical, physical, historical and biological explanations abour why we humans develop and enjoy music, it gives refreshing views about the role of music in human society, aesthetics and variations of musical traditions among cultures. It introduces the student to the very basics of music theory in a way that gives solid foundations for further studies related to music theory and its relationships with neurosciences. Taking this course was an amazing experience which I highly recommend to everyone interested in the subject. Dale Purves and Ruby Froom are excellent teachers.

Highly recommended especially to musicians. Very interesting indeed. Before I enrolled, I read the one star reviews and read how 'bad' this course is. I might be wrong but I think if you are not a musician, you might not find this course as interesting/useful as musicians. I found that Duke University/Professor Purves/coursera are very generous in giving out such a high quality teaching for free. They could have charged some money and they deserve it. I feel so thankful to them. The second week test was the most difficult, I had to do it 6 times to get the pass rate! Anyway, I enjoyed this course a great deal. Thank you again!

Note: I am coming in from the perspective of a dude wanting to create and compose music. I especially love module Week 6. It gave me a new insight on how to create newer types of sounds (I can't get enough). SPOILER ALERT: I would have never thought there would be a correlation between speech and music. I think Dr. Purves makes an excellent case for this connection. I'm sold! Very well organized course; and if you are a music junky like me, I'm sure you'll find tremendous value in it.

It was just what I have been trying to lear about the relationship on music, speech and human evolution. I learned a lot from those topics and that I am already applying to my music compositions, and music phylosophy. Looking forward for more courses and books on this.

This course has helped me to understand biological psychology of humans towards music. Based on this knowledge i am confident to create music which will seem good to the ears of humans.

Natural scientific approach to music; this is definitely a new perspective on music and acoustics in general.

Great course. I enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed his previous course "Visual Perception and the Brain".

This is an exceptional course, with very intriguing information about why we like the music we like.

The course was quite difficult for me. The questions in quizes are sometimes hard to answer. Very often there is no simple solution. Or maybe my command of English was not sufficient to complete the course without several mistakes. Otherwise, topics were covered deeply and were thought-provoking.

Great topic, but the course was less interesting and profound than I expected. The professor could be a little more motivating. Worth the time though!

I'm very grateful of this course because it's help me a lot. I'm an adult beginner and I've tried understanding music theory with poor results. It wasn't enough for me just repeating memorizing techniques or 'cooking recipes' in order to dominate some topics of Music Theory. Even I got frustrated. This course hit the nail and open my mind to new questions and dimensions about the music. And the most important is that it let me see that not everything is said in music. After the third module I could come back to music Theory and get easier concepts. Even I could found some of them by myself. I mean, I was not memorizing anymore but figuring out by myself how it works.

I highly recommend this course. I like the way Professor Dale explains, keeping it easy and organized. Additional material is super useful for music students and Ruby's participation was suitable. I'd like that last module would've been longer.

The takes a biological approach to understand what we like to hear and why along with mathematical and physical approaches. The illustrations give by Professor Purves were in accordance with the topic going on. I want thank Ruby Froom for her excellent playing throughout the course and making me aware of different types of music among which the nursery rhyme 'Twinkle Twink;e lil' Star' by Mozart was very striking.

Lastly I want to thank Professor Purves, Duke University and Coursera!

Dear Prof Dale Purves,

Thank you for taking your time to compile this course. I loved it from the time I read the Subject line, I knew I had to do it. Amongst other things, I am a dancer, choreographer, and dance teacher, and as such "Musicality" is a subject liner on my teachings. This course has tremendously enhanced my skills in this regard.

Thank you once more!!

The material was very thought out and out together with much effort. It was made simple to understand with ample examples. It was extremely interesting and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought that I would loathe the discussion prompts but soon, I found myself liking them a lot. The questions drove the point home and helped me understand/remember better. Thank you.

Absolutely loved this course! Would recommend to anyone with a musical background wanting to know a bit more about the origins of music. Dale Purves is a fantastic teacher. I had not studied biology prior to this course (only music), but found his lessons informative and easy to follow. Give it a go, it will fascinate you!

I used to believe that the concept of music is purely mathematical and physical.

But this course has made me realize the biological aspect of music perception, and how it has been effected by emotional evolution of humans.

Thanks a lot.

A window into why music has the appeal that it does, and also into how neuroscientists work. Professor Dale Purves' own interest in music is obviously very genuine as is his respect for the constraints of the scientific process.

As a medical student and a musician this course was a huge interest and gave me a great information in a simple and beautiful way.. I finally can answer people's questions about how music is explained simply

This course helped me to see music from a different angle i.e through history and biology. Prof. Dales is a wonderful human being and has a beautiful gift of explaining things in a much simpler way.

This course really helped me to understand how music works. In my opinion this course is an excellent tool if you want to start into sound effects and soundtracks, etc.

I enjoyed this course. It made me appreciate music more as it relates to our emotions etc. Thank you to all the lecturers who were instrumental in putting this course.

Muy completo e interesante, didáctico y muy intuitivo, aprendí demasiado... definitivamente lo recomiendo para aquellos que apenas inician en el mundo de la música!

I really enjoyed this course. I am really passionate about music and evolution, so this gave me a lot of really useful information for my future research.

Enlightening & complete & progressive. A bit dense at times (for me at least, as a non-scientist) so don't be afraid to watch some videos twice :)