Songwriting: Writing the Music vs iPhone Photography: How to Take Pro Photos On Your iPhone

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.

Twenty-two lessons in 55 minutes cover composition, camera settings, depth of field, natural lighting and free Lightroom Mobile editing. Reviewers consistently praise the density of actionable tips and the clarity of on-screen graphics used throughout. The ceiling is the runtime — iOS camera features evolve with each iPhone generation and some interface demonstrations look dated on newer devices.

McManus is a professional photographer and award-winning YouTuber with a Film degree and nearly a decade of client experience. Reviewers across multiple blog sources converge on the same descriptors: polished presenter, straight-to-the-point delivery and a fun, approachable style that makes even technical concepts digestible. His over-the-shoulder teaching style is repeatedly cited as a major strength.

Included in the Skillshare subscription at roughly $13.99/month or $167.88/year, the class alone justifies a short free trial — and the subscription unlocks McManus's companion classes (Lightroom Mobile, selfie portrait photography) plus thousands of other creative courses. Multiple review aggregators note that over 60% of surveyed learners report the class exceeded their expectations relative to cost.

The class project asks students to capture and share 3–5 iPhone photos applying the techniques, producing tangible portfolio work. Hundreds of submissions are visible in the Skillshare project gallery. However, peer feedback is minimal — most projects receive no detailed critique — and the brief is open-ended rather than structured, which limits the learning value for students seeking mentored feedback on their output.

Composition rules, exposure control, depth-of-field through lens positioning, natural light direction and Lightroom Mobile post-processing all transfer directly to everyday social media, travel and personal photography. Multiple reviewers note immediate improvement in photo quality. The limit is scope: the class does not address advanced manual controls, RAW shooting or professional client work.