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In each of the lessons, you can click on this top logo to go to the index of lessons

Introduction

Welcome to the online version of my Improvisation / Playing by Ear course. In this introduction, we'll make sure that you are able to play the audio clip in the course, and I'll introduce a few things you'll need to know to get through the class.

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This course is an online version of a "cassettes and workbook" class I developed many years ago when I found myself as a college music major who didn't know how to "read music." I learned, on my own, enough to get through school, and over the years, I have found this material has helped a lot of other students learn music. I can't guarantee you'll be ready to go to Julliard when you finish this course - but you should know enough to begin to play music on your own!

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Throughout this course, you will see "Play Audio Clip" buttons. There should be a "player" with rewind, play and fast forward buttons, and a volume slider. If you don't see a player in the following section, you probably need to install FLASH / Shockwave on your computer.

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If you're trying to take this course on an iPhone or other mobile computing device, that may be a problem - we're looking at a solution for that, but for now, a flash-based player seemed to be the only way to set up the course so that it would work on different computers without a lot of warning messgaes every time you tried to play an audio clip.

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If you did not see the "player" above, or if you click on the "play" button and cannot hear the audio clip, you will need to sort this out before you can go on with the lessons.

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By the way - when you click on that link, it's going to open on your computer in a new window (or a new tab if you're set up for tabbed web browsing). So you may need to look around to figure out where the download window appeared. In the course, any time you click a link to view and print a worksheet, it is going to open in a new window or tab - so you might as well figure that out now, as well.

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At the end of each lesson, you will see an "Ask Rhonda" button. Clicking this button will allow you to send email to me if you have questions or comments on the lesson - if you find a mistake, please DO let me know, so we can fix it for the next person taking the course! I try to check my email several times a week, and I will try to respond to your questions as quickly as I can, but if I'm travelling, it may take a few days to get back to you.

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Hooray, You Made It Through The Introduction !!!

We didn't cover a whole lot of material - but it's important to be sure that you can listen to the audio clips before starting the course. As a reminder - this advanced audio feature may not work with Microsoft Internet Explorer, so if it doesn't seem to be working, make sure to try Firefox, Chrome, or some other browser. If it still doesn't work (if you can't see the "player"), please let me know, and I'll have my tech person look at it. It helps if you tell me what kind of machine you're using (Mac, PC, etc.), what Operating System you're using (Windows XP, Windows 7, etc.) and what web browser you're using (Firefox, Chrome, etc.). The tech person may have some other questions for you, but that much basic information should be enough to get started.

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