The Berklee Correspondence Course (book/Online Answer)

Publisher: Berklee Press
Format: Softcover Media Online
Learn essential jazz theory, arranging, and composition techniques

This historic material reflects Berklee’s DNA—the founding precepts of understanding contemporary music that are core to much of Berklee’s current teaching to this day. The Berklee Correspondence Course was a distance-learning program in use from the 1950s through 1970s—the predecessor of today’s Berklee Online.

Through these lessons, Berklee’s core curriculum was made available to learners all around the world.From basic concepts of jazz theory and harmony all the way through big-band composing and arranging techniques.
Though given a fresh look and feel, the content is otherwise unchanged, and it is an educational time capsule for the post-bop jazz period, when so much great music was created. Each lesson ends with hands-on exercises. While Berklee Online has replaced The Berklee Correspondence Course as Berklee’s mechanism for distance learning, you can still check your work on these historical lessons, now via an online answer key.

You will learn:

• • Elements of jazz harmony, including scale and chord construction, voice leading, and tension usage
• • How to compose and improvise melodies, considering chord tones and non-chord tones, chord scale theory, and various rhythm development devices
• • How to develop chord patterns and progressions, such as II V’s, I VI II V, cadences, modulations, forms, and other standard jazz progressions such as blues and rhythm changes
• • Arranging techniques for winds, brass, and rhythm section, in small combos to large ensembles, such as how to develop background lines, melodic harmonization, the use of different voicing types, and jazz scoring/notation techniques

“During my senior year in high school, I decided I would go to Berklee after I graduated. Berklee offered The Berklee Correspondence Course, in which I immediately enrolled, knowing it would give me a head start on my studies. I looked forward to each of the lessons as they arrived in the mail, and I really saw the benefits when I began my classes at Berklee.” —Gary Burton