As a newcomer to jazz (classical background), it took me a while to figure out how to apply the concepts and sound good. I particularly would've liked demonstrations/ analysis of these improv techniques by musicians over real music. Also, the quality of peer evaluations was sometimes inconsistent (this may be inherent in peer learning). Other than that, my musicianship improved and I would recommend this course.

I found some mistakes of notations, but in general it was good. As a singer I miss everytime I study improvisation a more careful view to the aspects of vocal expertise but it was good to practice and the course is very well structured.

Excellent mini course on the rudiments of the language of jazz improvisation.

The only reason I didn't give 5 stars is because the website isn't as clear and direct showing how to navigate to find an answer to a question you may have -- other than the forum. If there was a way to have direct contact with a mentor via Live Chat or Phone call or even email?? I'd have given this 5 stars. The one email I sent in with a question I never got a response other than she was going to look into it and "get back to me." Never did.

Gary Burton was of course a great instructor!

It's pretty cool that a jazz musician with such significant experience taught the course - Gary is definitely knowledgeable, to say the least. He explained concepts well and made everything tie in together nicely. The assignments are somewhat difficult for a beginner in jazz. My only real criticism is that there should be more examples, particularly with guide tones and picking the right scale.

The teacher is great at performing but the pace of the class is way too fast for me.

The assignment is hard.

But, hey, that's Berklee.

Very good and simplified instruction. But I think it needs one more week discussion to improve improvisation. Also, grades are usually late.

Keep trying to understand.

Knowledgeable instructor but the material did not come across well.

I was looking forward to this jazz course. The course material is good, great instructor and challenging assignments but bad interface. Un-enrolled because I couldn't find a place to upload assignments.

Bueno el curso para empezar, esta bien, pero los examenes estan en ingles y no estan traducidos, eso dificulta el avanze

The class covered a good variety of subjects to learn. There are some key areas of improvement:

1) You should build more examples in the lectures. The lectures were short to start with, but adding more examples and passages would have helped.

2) Xylophone is perhaps the worst instrument to use to teach this course, especially with the camera facing the front of the xylophone. It was very hard to see what notes were being hit by the mallets (especially when using chords) and therefore it was very difficult to understand (visually) what Gary was doing. I suggest using a keyboard and having the camera shooting from the above of the keyboard (look at how several people have done this on YouTube). This way you can see what notes are being hit, held, and you can see them from a pianist's view.

The material was good, but because of the two areas above the teaching was not as effective.

I did not like this course. It is a course for those who are already involved into the topic not newbies. Very general short and sloppy explanations and a lot of practical assignments for peer evaluation. I had a lot of experience in classical music but I was puzzled with what goes on in this course. After having completed some other jazz courses I realized that i had no chances to learn anything here since the theory is not explained sufficiently. The title of the course is misleading. It rather should be called a master class on jazz improvisation.

While the content is very helpful and Gary does his best to make people confident to improvise in Jazz music, this course has imho two major flaws:

The biggest one: assignments given and results accepted do not fit together. E.g. in week 1 learners are supposed to describe in their own words how a piece of music does sound like. But the accepted answers are totally different from such a description. Instead only a very detailed and specialized answer is accepted. This leads to studends copying these answers into their assignments without them learning anything.

The other flaw is that Gary is very brief in his explanations. Even intermediate musicians seem to struggle with content just because some explanations are not exact or vague.