Music's Big Bang: The Genesis of Rock 'n' Roll (Coursera)

Offered by University of Florida,
Music's Big Bang: The Genesis of Rock 'n' Roll (Coursera)

Explores the factors — musical and cultural — that led to the birth of American rock 'n' roll music in the early 1950s. Covers in detail the genres, styles and people that converged to create this new music.

Class Deals by MOOC List - Click here and see Coursera's Active Discounts, Deals, and Promo Codes.

Syllabus:

WEEK 1
Four basic themes of our course
Some basic tenets of rock 'n' roll

WEEK 2
In the beginning: American popular music
There were many, many genres, styles and sub styles of American pop

WEEK 3
The blues: Mississippi Ghosts 1
The Mississippi Delta, an area surrounding the Mississippi River, becomes the cradle of the blues

WEEK 4
The blues: Mississippi Ghosts 2
The legend of Robert Johnson and his visit to "the crossroads"

WEEK 5
A tale of three cities: New Orleans
New Orleans is the city of jazz

WEEK 6
A tale of three cities: Chicago
Chicago is where the blues went electric

WEEK 7
A tale of three cities: Memphis
The delivery room of rock 'n' roll

Go to Class
MOOC List is learner-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Related Courses

Teaching the Violin and Viola: Creating a Healthy Foundation (Coursera) Coursera
Northwestern University

Teaching the Violin and Viola: Creating a Healthy Foundation (Coursera)

Join us as we explore the fundamental principles and early stages of teaching violin and viola through a series of engaging video lectures and lesson demonstrations, including: 1) Master classes with some of the world’s top string pedagogues, 2) Individual lesson demos of teaching violin/viola set up, left and right hand technique and pieces from the early violin/viola repertoire, 3) Group lesson demos of teaching music theory, ear training and fun activities that encourage good playing habits, and 4) A “field trip” to the violin shop, where we will outfit a new beginning student with a proper instrument and bow.

Oct 26th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Teaching Popular Music in the Classroom (Coursera) Coursera
Berklee College of Music

Teaching Popular Music in the Classroom (Coursera)

Teaching Popular Music in the Classroom explores approaches to teaching popular music from culturally rich communities in the United States. Students in the course will learn teaching methods that engage youth with the basics of improvisation, technology, songwriting, arranging film score, and writing to the strengths of small bands. The course models how to integrate principles of authentic cultural relevance and positive youth development with contemporary music instruction, while providing tools for assessing and documenting learning and program progress.

Oct 19th 2026
4 Weeks
Piano Scales for Modern Music (Coursera) Coursera
Berklee College of Music

Piano Scales for Modern Music (Coursera)

Scales are an essential part of musical study and are a vital part of an effective practice routine. But as you develop your musicianship, scales can also lead to better improvisation and understanding of melodic structure. This course will provide you with a new look at practicing and using scales to guide your musical creativity. You will start by learning standard and non-standard fingering for scales commonly used in popular music, before using these scales to create new melodies. In addition to the examples covered in the course, you will also be given extra exercises and backing tracks to help you improve your playing and improvising.

Oct 19th 2026
4 Weeks
Piano Techniques for Modern Music (Coursera) Coursera
Berklee College of Music

Piano Techniques for Modern Music (Coursera)

If you have always dreamed of playing the piano or keyboard but did not know where to start, this is the course for you. This course will take you through the fundamental skills necessary to build your playing capability quickly and healthily. In addition to the fundamentals, you will learn from exercises and examples from popular music so that you can start playing in multiple styles. You will start by focusing on posture, breathing, movement, and sound production that will help you strengthen your finger independence and control over dynamics, phrasing, articulation, tempo, and pulse.

Oct 19th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Music as Biology: What We Like to Hear and Why (Coursera) Coursera
Duke University

Music as Biology: What We Like to Hear and Why (Coursera)

The course will explore the tone combinations that humans consider consonant or dissonant, the scales we use, and the emotions music elicits, all of which provide a rich set of data for exploring music and auditory aesthetics in a biological framework. Analyses of speech and musical databases are consistent with the idea that the chromatic scale (the set of tones used by humans to create music), consonance and dissonance, worldwide preferences for a few dozen scales from the billions that are possible, and the emotions elicited by music in different cultures all stem from the relative similarity of musical tonalities and the characteristics of voiced (tonal) speech.

Oct 19th 2026
5-12 Weeks
History of Rock, Part One (Coursera) Coursera
University of Rochester

History of Rock, Part One (Coursera)

This course, part 1 of a 2-course sequence, examines the history of rock, primarily as it unfolded in the United States, from the days before rock (pre-1955) to the end of the 1960s. This course covers the music of Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Phil Spector, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, and many more artists, with an emphasis both on cultural context and on the music itself. We will also explore how developments in the music business and in technology helped shape the ways in which styles developed.

Oct 26th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Sharpened Visions: A Poetry Workshop (Coursera) Coursera
California Institute of the Arts

Sharpened Visions: A Poetry Workshop (Coursera)

Why just write poems when you can write better ones? This course is built on the notion that the most exciting writing begins after the first draft. It is specifically for folks who believe that writing poems just to express oneself is like using the Internet just for email. After all, poetry can change the way you and your readers think of the world and its inhabitants; it can break new ground for language; turn a blank sheet of paper into a teeming concert of voices and music.

Oct 26th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Richard Schechner's Introduction to Performance Studies (Coursera) Coursera
New York University

Richard Schechner's Introduction to Performance Studies (Coursera)

Performance Studies: An Introduction explores the wide world of performance--from theatre, dance, and music to ritual, play, political campaigns, social media, and the performances of everyday life. Performance studies also ranges across cultures--Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, the Americas. And it spans historical periods from the art of the paleolithic caves to YouTube and the avantgarde. This course is devised by Richard Schechner, one of the pioneers of performance studies, in dialogue with more than a dozen expert scholars and artists.

Oct 26th 2026
13-24 Weeks
Introducción a la guitarra (Coursera) Coursera
Berklee College of Music

Introducción a la guitarra (Coursera)

Aprende los elementos esenciales necesarios para empezar a tocar la guitarra acústica o eléctrica. Aprenderás un enfoque fácil que te hará tocar rápidamente a través de una combinación de la exploración del instrumento, la técnica de ejecución y la teoría básica de la música.

Oct 19th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Electronic Music Performance Techniques (Coursera) Coursera
Berklee College of Music

Electronic Music Performance Techniques (Coursera)

From the Moog analog synthesizers in the 1960s to the contemporary usage of computers, performance controllers, and mobile devices, Electronic Digital Instruments (EDIs) have long been capable of offering artists a new range of musical expression. In this one-of-a-kind course, you'll learn the essential skills you need to perform on an EDI.

Oct 26th 2026
4 Weeks
Exploring Beethoven's Piano Sonatas (Coursera) Coursera
Curtis Institute of Music

Exploring Beethoven's Piano Sonatas (Coursera)

Our relationship to Beethoven is a deep and paradoxical one. For many musicians, he represents a kind of holy grail: His music has an intensity, rigor, and profundity which keep us in its thrall, and it is perhaps unequalled in the interpretive, technical, and even spiritual challenges it poses to performers. At the same time, Beethoven’s music is casually familiar to millions of people who do not attend concerts or consider themselves musically inclined. Two hundred years after his death, he is everywhere in the culture, yet still represents its summit. This course takes an inside-out look at the 32 piano sonatas from the point of view of a performer.

Oct 26th 2026
5-12 Weeks