Songwriting: Writing the Lyrics vs Photography Masterclass: Your Complete Guide to Photography

Four focused modules move from point of view and song form through prosody (matching lyric to music), rhyme types — perfect, family, assonance and consonance — and rhythm. The object-writing exercise is the standout that Berklee graduates like Gillian Welch credit as the single most valuable thing they took away. Reviewers repeatedly say it taught them more than books or workshops; capped only because it is lyric-focused and assumes you already make music elsewhere.

Pat Pattison is a Berklee professor of 40-plus years, author of Writing Better Lyrics and Songwriting Without Boundaries, and former teacher of John Mayer and Gillian Welch. His Coursera instructor rating is 4.8 from 184 ratings. Learners describe him as a gifted, passionate teacher whose examples make abstract ideas click — the most consistently praised element of the whole course.

Free to audit the full video curriculum; a certificate, graded assignments and peer review require paid enrollment or a Coursera Plus subscription. Reddit's consensus is that the free audit alone delivers most of the value, since you can do the exercises yourself and skip the certificate gate. Hard to beat for a Berklee-grade course.

Assignments are real lyric-writing tasks graded by peer review, which is pedagogically sound but operationally the weakest part. Multiple learners hit an upgrade wall at the first assessment, and the quality of peer feedback swings from genuinely useful to abusive or absent. The exercises themselves are excellent; the grading machinery around them is not.

The tools transfer directly to any genre — songwriters from hip-hop to country report applying object writing, rhyme families and structure to their own work. It will not teach you melody, production or an instrument, so it is one strong piece of a larger toolkit rather than a complete songwriting education.

Sixty-six hours of video covering aperture, shutter speed, ISO, manual mode, composition, lighting, multiple genres (landscape, portrait, wildlife, product, aerial), Lightroom and Photoshop make this one of the most comprehensive single beginner photography resources on Udemy. One student described it as "good and straight to the point and covers a lot of basic aspects you might need in photography and photo editing." The ceiling is that depth can feel thin for anyone beyond beginner level — breadth is prioritised over depth in every topic.

Phil Ebiner, a Loyola Marymount film school graduate teaching online since 2012, is praised across Reddit discussions for explaining complex concepts clearly and without ego, and for being responsive to student questions. The three-instructor format adds variety but a minority finds transitions between Ebiner, Shimizu-Jones and Carnahan slightly inconsistent in pacing.

At the near-constant Udemy sale price of $10–$20 the course is almost universally praised as exceptional value. Reddit users consistently recommend it specifically at that price — "worth the $20 I paid." The bundle includes a 276-page guidebook, over $100 of Lightroom presets and a student community. At the $119–$199 list price, however, the value case collapses and one reviewer explicitly tied their complaint to having paid full rather than sale price.

The course includes weekly photo challenges, shooting assignments and an exclusive peer-critique community — practical elements that beginners appreciate for structured practice. The ceiling is that there is no synchronous or live feedback mechanism, the community critique is self-organised, and experienced learners note the assignments do not push into advanced territory.

A business-of-photography section covering branding, portfolios, freelancing and wedding photography makes this course more practically oriented than most beginner courses. Real-world demonstrations across outdoor and indoor scenarios are a highlight. The business section is considered surface-level by more experienced learners, and advanced post-production is not covered in depth.