What is a score?

Welcome to the course! Over the next four weeks, you will begin to understand how music is written down, what a musical score is and what it does. You will also learn how musicians use and interpret musical scores in their work.

By the end of this course you will understand what music notation does and some aspects of how it works. You will be able to understand more about different types of music and how they are written down, and what that notation means.

This course includes some musical terms which you may not be familiar with. We have produced a glossary of terms which is attached to the bottom of this step. When new musical terms appear they are in bold text, and will have a definition in the glossary.

In the video, course educators and Open University lecturers Catherine Tackley and Naomi Barker tell you a little more about what to expect from this course.

We would like to thank the Royal Northern College of Music for their assistance. RNCM musicians appear by kind permission of the Principal, Professor Linda Merrick.

We are sure you will enjoy the video material on this course, but we do ask you not to attempt to download or circulate material that has copyright restrictions. Much of the video material can be accessed on YouTube so you should have no need to download anything. Compliance with these restrictions is part of the terms and conditions of doing this course, and we thank you for your co-operation in this.

Get extra benefits, upgrade your course

You can now get extra benefits by upgrading this course, including:

Unlimited access to the course: Go at your own pace with unlimited access to the course for as long as it exists on FutureLearn.

A Certificate of Achievement: To help you demonstrate your learning we’ll send you a Certificate of Achievement when you become eligible.

Find out more

When you’re ready to move on, mark this step as complete before selecting ‘next’.