Coursera
Songwriting: Writing the Music Review — What 23 Learner Opinions Reveal
Songwriting: Writing the Music is the melody-and-harmony counterpart to Berklee's better-known lyrics MOOC, and across the 23 opinions analysed it earns solid, practical praise — Scarlet Keys walks songwriters through chords, borrowed harmony, tensions, harmonic rhythm and melodic hooks in a way Reddit users repeatedly call genuinely helpful for getting unstuck on the music. The content is concrete and emotion-focused rather than vague. The two recurring reservations are structural, not pedagogical: it openly assumes you can read music and bring some theory, which frustrates true beginners, and the graded assignments sit behind Coursera's paywalled peer review. For most learners the smart move is to audit it free, do the exercises, and treat the certificate as optional.
Final score
from 23 analysed opinions
Published AI-researched, editor-audited
Distribution of opinions
Per-criterion scores
The course works through the musical half of songwriting in a focused, practical sequence: diatonic chords in a key, borrowed non-diatonic chords, common progressions and their emotional colour, 7th chords and added tensions, then harmonic and melodic rhythm and melodic hooks. Reviewers and Reddit users describe it as a genuinely useful, concrete walk through how harmony and melody carry emotion — "what the main chords are, simple substitutions, how to add colour, and how those decisions impact the emotion and focus of your song." Capped because it is the music-only companion piece: it assumes you bring lyrics and some theory of your own.
Scarlet Keys is a Professor of Songwriting at Berklee, a former Warner Chappell staff writer with a gold record in Sweden and a UK top-ten hit, and the author of The Craft of Songwriting. On the MOOC, learners find her clear and well-organised. The deduction comes from her wider teaching record: her Rate My Professors profile sits around 3.5/5 across 44 ratings and is polarised — many praise her as knowledgeable, accessible and supportive, while a minority feel she "teaches what she knows best" and is less strong outside her own genres. Strong on the MOOC, more divisive live.
Free to audit the full video curriculum; a certificate, graded assignments and peer review require paid enrollment or a Coursera Plus subscription. The Reddit consensus is to do exactly that — audit it free, work the exercises, and skip the certificate gate. For a Berklee-grade course in melody and harmony aimed squarely at songwriters, the free-audit route is very hard to beat on price.
Assignments ask you to apply chords, progressions and harmonic rhythm to your own song ideas and are assessed by peer review behind the upgrade paywall — pedagogically reasonable but operationally the weakest part, the same machinery that draws complaints across Berklee's Coursera catalogue. The bigger applied limitation is the prerequisite: the most-repeated criticism is that the course "will be frustrating for anyone who does not read music," so the hands-on work assumes notation fluency the marketing underplays.
The harmony and melody tools transfer directly to real writing across genres — Reddit users specifically recommend it to people who can write lyrics but freeze up on chords, and report applying progressions, substitutions and harmonic rhythm to their own songs straight away. It will not teach you production, arrangement or an instrument, and it pairs best with a lyrics course, so it is one strong pillar of a songwriting education rather than the whole building.
What learners said
What people loved
5- A concrete, practical tour of harmony for songwriters — diatonic and borrowed chords, common progressions, 7th chords and tensions — taught around the emotion each choice creates, not abstract theory for its own sake.×10
- Reddit users specifically recommend it to people who can write lyrics but get stuck on chords; several report finishing it and finding it immediately useful on their own songs.×7
- Harmonic rhythm and melodic-hook lessons give repeatable techniques for generating and shaping melodies, an area most free songwriting content skips entirely.×6
- The full video curriculum is free to audit, and the community consensus is that the free audit alone delivers most of the value.×6
- Taught by a working professional — Berklee professor, former Warner Chappell staff writer with a gold record and a UK top-ten hit — so the craft advice comes from real commercial experience.×5
What frustrated learners
4- The most-repeated criticism is that the course "will be frustrating for anyone who does not read music"; it assumes notation fluency and basic theory that the marketing underplays.×6
- Graded assignments and feedback sit behind Coursera's peer-review and upgrade paywall, the same clunky machinery learners criticise across Berklee's MOOCs.×4
- It is the music half only — no lyrics, production, arrangement or instrument instruction — so it is incomplete as a standalone songwriting course.×5
- The instructor's wider teaching record is polarised (around 3.5/5 on Rate My Professors); a minority find her strongest inside her own genres and less so outside them.×4
Real quotes from real users
“"I just finished most of it, and really found it helpful. It walks you through the chords to use, what the main chords are, simple progressions, simple substitutions, how to add colour to the chords, and how those decisions impact the emotion and focus of your song."”
“"If you have trouble with chords... I'd strongly recommend you work through the Coursera course from Berklee called 'Songwriting: Writing the Music.'"”
“"Follow the instructions to do a free audit of this Berklee music-writing course — it covers exactly the melody-writing topics you're asking about."”
“"Led by award-winning songwriter and Berklee professor Scarlet Keys, you'll learn to construct strong, expressive melodies your audience will remember, and experiment with new chords to break out of any harmonic rut."”
“"This class will teach you to make deliberate choices with your harmonies and melodies to best emulate the emotions you want your audience to feel."”
“"This course will be frustrating for anyone who does not read music."”
“"She's an amazing songwriter and really nice and respectful — gives constructive feedback and is accessible outside class. Just do the homework and you're chilling."”
“"She only teaches you what she knows best and doesn't engage seriously with unfamiliar genres."”
Frequently asked questions
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How we evaluated this
This review synthesizes 23 opinions collected across the public web. Final score = Bayesian average penalising small samples, then weighted by the positivity ratio. No paid placements, no hidden agenda.
- 7 from Forums
- 3 from Blogs
- 13 from Official course platform