It was an interesting course and thought something novel. There was some difficulty in understanding scales.

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.

Good video content, but quizzes need to be revised.

A well presented course introducing good background material regarding the physiology of human sound perception. It loses marks from me because of its seemingly obsessive fixation on the vocalization similarity hypothesis as the basis for aesthetic preference in music without a rigorous presentation of supporting evidence.

It's a really good curse to learn and discover different facts about, music,biology (sense of hearing) and emotions. How is the mood sense affected by music.

This course was fairly interesting. The argument that the notes of our scale are linked to human vocalisation, not just in the West, but the whole world.

Thank you for this course.

Quite an interesting course connecting various fields such as mathematics, physics, brain science, music and music theory. I am giving it 4 stars as I feel that some explanations are weak and need more elaboration.

This is a very fascinating view of the origins of musical intervals and scales and harmonies that I had never considered before. There is a lot I will follow up. Thanks to Dale Purves for making this available.

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.

Para una persona que se dedica a la educación musical, este curso es de suma importancia , muestra las cuestiones biológicas que son el punto de partida para aprender sobre este maravilloso arte, esta completísimo y explicado de forma progresiva.

Musica como biología....Esperaba más biología. Como y porque nos afecta la música y como podemos utilizarla para sonoterapia. En términos generales, musica como biología es un buen inicio para tomar conocimientos del tema. Gracias.

This course works fairly well for those who look forward to quenching their thirst of knowledge. It is not only useful for those who study a program related to the are, but also for inquisitive people

For the hypothesis regarding biological explaination of consonance, it would have been useful to present detailed statistical analysis. Without that, the theory presented was not very convincing. According to the theory presened (slide 17 in defining music...), notes m2, M2 and M7 should not be consonant at all. However, they are wonderfully consonant, at least in Hindustani Classical Music. Secondly, the theory does not explain why notes in the lower octave (less than 256 Hz) sound consonant in vocal music though such frequencies are almost absent in normal speech. As far as I am concerned, the course, while making an honest attempt, does not answer many questions.

Great Professor and content but poorly designed quizzes.

The content of the course itself was engaging and presented well-enough, with some interesting data analysis whether or not you find the ultimate interpretations convincing. From a logistical perspective though, there were serious issues with the coherency of the quizzes and some minor issues with the organization and editing of video content (i.e. segments repeated multiple times).

Superb topic... Very interesting, but insufficient content... Videos are difficult to follow and comprehend. So is true for tests.

Moderately recommended because of these teaching imperfections...

The whole course is beneficial for someone with just rudimentary knowledge of physics of sound. The physics modules and some music theory parts were not useful for me, because I already had enough knowledge. I expected the course to deliver more biological information - as the title indicates - so that I could learn professional methods of interpretation of music from biological viewpoint.

The video lessons weren't very helpful except in the case of where a certain musical concept was explained and demonstrated. The quiz questions weren't always answered very clearly in the lessons so it would come down to my inferences most of the time. The fact that I am a student who studies music in high school helped me, but if you don't have an advanced understanding of music before you start the course you may find it more challenging.

Good course, and a very interesting overview of the human auditory system, the significance of the harmonic series, and a biological perspective on what attracts us to music and how we have developed a musical language. The instructor is very narrative in his lecture style, so I found it helpful to follow along with the transcriptions - he tends to talk on about a point, and it is easy to miss the main point in all of his clarification. I was not a fan of the quizzes; I found them to be confusing in verbiage, often focusing on obscure points within the lectures, or using terminology not addressed in the lectures at all. I also think the course would benefit by the inclusion of a Music Theorist to explain the musical concepts, as the Instructor is a Neuroscientist, and misspoke on music theory a few times; it also would have broken up the uniformity of mostly one speaker throughout a 6-week course. But overall, I thought that this course was very good, and covered some very interesting material, and that the Instructor was very knowledgeable on a variety of topics, and very engaging. He did a great job explaining difficult concepts until you GOT it, even without a scientific background.

This course needs a whole lot of editing. Many confusing mistakes both in lessons and in quizzes. Some fundamental concepts were not explained properly/sufficiently.

A five-week class on biological mechanisms of perception of speech and music by humans. The topics include sound signals and sound stimuli and their perception with the human auditory system, differences and likelihood in the perception of vocalization and vocal tones in speech and of music, biological interpretation of scales, and the impact of cultural differences onto music.

The course is rather a prolonged description of the research field than a proper part of general education. Its real subject is certain topics in biology, not music. Only a number facts discussed may be of interest for most music student, and these are contained in any decent introductory textbook of music anyhow.

Potentially interesting and useful material presented in boring and sometimes unclear manner. Quizzes failed to correlate to the material in the lectures. Got something out of the course but the potential was there for much more.

The instructor is very dry and the mat

The course was alright in the sense that it was descriptive, however, the level of critical thinking suggested for the course was not actually indicative of the material presented.

A lot of the material presented was great, but when the quiz came around, questions regarding the material were unequal. For example, in one quiz, there was a question about Galileo, but there was no mention of Galileo in the lecture for that week, and, a lot of the PDF'S were repetitive and not diverse in the material being taught.