Berklee College of Music, the world’s largest independent music college and the premier institution for the study of contemporary music, today launched Berklee Shares, a groundbreaking new program that offers music lessons — free under Creative Commons licenses — and encourages musicians to share and distribute the lessons online. Berklee Shares consist of a growing catalog of MP3s, QuickTime movies, and PDF files derived from curriculum developed at the college by its world-renowned faculty. The lessons are available for download right now at the Berklee site, affiliate partner sites, and peer-to-peer networks, including Limewire.

Just a few highlights:

–For students of songwriting, a close song analysis of John Lennon’s “Tomorrow Never Knows.”

–For perscussionists, a Quicktime film on Afro-Cuban Conga rhythms and techniques.

–For guitarists, a short instructional film on jazz voicings.

–For producers and engineers, a crash course in setting up a recording studio with ProTools.

The site has so much great information that we CC staffers are already getting distracted from work . . . .