This link comes from Prof. Lawrence Lessig, and it’s just really quite cool. Berklee College of Music has created Berklee Shares, a free music lesson site with lessons for eight instruments and four topics, such as production and technology, improvisation, and more. Looks like some of the lessons, if not most, are by Berklee professors, and I can imagine that this site could become a widely tapped resource for high schools with decidedly limited music budgets. I’m planning on showing it to Brian Letiecq at Beacon ASAP, as I could imagine him using this with his music program extensively.

Why should Berklee do this? Several reasons, I can imagine… one, it only increases Berklee’s visibility as it recruits students. Two, many of the lessons are then linked to DVDs that Berklee Press sells, so it will, I am sure, drive their publishing division, which is cool, and three, maybe they actually want to see more people become musicians than they know can come to their school, and this is a way to achieve that goal. Is that naive? Maybe… but the other piece is that, with luck, that’s going to happen if they intended it or not. Me, I’m hoping they did.