Back in 2010, my son started attending a private high school which was 45 minutes away. This meant that frequently I was in the car about 3 hrs a day, 5 days a week. I found a great way of taking advantage of the driving time: listening to lectures from The Teaching Company. My favorite instructor was Dr. Robert Greenberg and over the span of 4 years I acquired and listened to many of his courses.

Since I’ll be taking classes at Howard Community College this fall, I thought it might be good to return to my Robert Greenberg lectures; I can listen to them while doing the dishes, cooking, etc.

Today I started with Understanding the Fundamentals of Music. This is a relatively short course, with just 16 lectures (unlike his very long music history course, How to Listen to and Understand Great Music).  The main things I remember from this course were: him telling a funny story about his wife (a piccolo player), making fun of oboeists (the high pressure affects their brains?); examples of solos that each instrument might dream of (ex. bassoon in the beginning of Stravinsksy’s Rite of Spring?), songs with strange meters like “Take Five”, and a very thorough discussion of tonic and dominant chords. I think he actually goes into the Greek experiment with the string and the proportions (Pythagorus?). Good stuff. Lecture 1 today!