Course Evaluation: MUSC 210

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Here’s the first of my reviews of courses I took first term of my second year. First off: MUSC 210, the third and final course in the intensive theory stream.

Course Description: This course moves fast and was quite a bit harder than either MUSC 110 or 111. The majority of our class had done a bit of theory before through the RCM syllabus, but this term covered things you’d never find on an RCM exam: detailed and thoughtful analysis of forms, symmetrical harmony, chromatic and Wagnerian harmony (crazy hard by the way), metrical complexities, and trends in the sonata form in the nineteenth century.

Textbook use:  This course requires the same two textbooks as MUSC 110 and 111, The Complete Musician and the accompanying workbook by Laitz.  Dr. Dodson sometimes used the textbook, and sometimes did not.  A lot of the time he expected you to read the textbook and understand it beforehand so that the lectures could be used for discussion rather than basic explanation.  Most of the assignments came out of the workbook, so you really do have to have it for this class.

Homework: One assignment per week, and a quiz each Monday on the subject of the homework. The homework took on average four hours to complete, sometimes more.  At the beginning of term Dr. Dodson said, “I think it would be unreasonable to expect you to complete more than one assignment per week,” and we all just laughed, because Dr. Benjamin had done this many many times.

Professor: This term we had a new professor, Dr. Dodson. At first I was a bit unsure of him, because like a typical human I’m wary of change, but I really did like having him as a professor. He teaches in a very organized and clear way, marks very fairly, likes to make sure he’s being clear, and is available is you have any issues you want to talk to him about.

Class format: Small class again meeting four times a week, a few people dropped out of the stream because of the pace.  A fair amount of explanation was done in class, as well as a lot of discussion and analyzing scores in small groups or as a class.  There was a quiz every Monday on the subject covered the week before.

Additional comments: This class was definitely a lot harder than the previous two, because it was a lot of information covered very quickly that we’d never really seen before. You have to put in a lot of work, but if you do you should do well enough.  The midterm and exam were easier than expected because he wanted to test our knowledge rather than see how creatively we can think under pressure. (That said they weren’t super easy, either.)  But if you can get through all the extra work, congratulations! You’ve now finished the tonal theory requirement two terms before everyone else. Now onto MUSC 300…

Tyler’s Twitter Digest for 2013-01-07

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Tyler’s Twitter Digest for 2013-01-06

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2012 Summary: Songs

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This is a summary of my top 50 played songs, according to iTunes and lastFM, over the past 12 months. I don’t feel it’s completely accurate (my iTunes and lastFM where unlinked for several months), but I don’t think it’s a bad representation either. Now, my top 50 played songs from least played to most played:

  1. Lady Gaga’s “The Edge of Glory” (176 plays)
  2. Britney Spears’ “Gimme More” (177 plays)
  3. Kelly Clarkson’s “Already Gone” (183 plays)
  4. Christina Aguilera’s “Dirrty” (187 plays)
  5. Flyleaf’s “I’m So Sick” (188 plays)
  6. Within Temptation’s “What Have You Done” (189 plays)
  7. Hanako Oku’s “Garnet” (192 plays)
  8. Lady Gaga’s “Marry the Night” (197 plays)
  9. Christina Aguilera’s “Can’t Hold Us Down” (203 plays)
  10. Daniel Kim’s “Pop Danthology 2012″ (219 plays)
  11. Kelly Clarkson’s “You Found Me” (223 plays)
  12. Kelly Clarkson’s “Because of You” (232 plays)
  13. Christina Aguilera’s “Keep on Singin’ My Song” (238 plays)
  14. Fergie’s “London Bridge” (240 plays)
  15. Aqua’s “Roses Are Red” (242 plays)
  16. Sarah McLachlan’s “Adia” (243 plays)
  17. Nicki Minaj’s “Roman’s Revenge” (244 plays)
  18. SMiLE.dk’s “Butterfly” (259 plays)
  19. Christina Aguilera’s “Oh Mother” (264 plays)
  20. Fergie’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry” (268 plays)
  21. Lady Gaga’s “Judas” (276 plays)
  22. Lunatica’s “Into the Dissonance” (281 plays)
  23. Evanescence’s “What You Want” (285 plays)
  24. Kelly Clarkson’s “I Do Not Hook Up” (285 plays)
  25. Sara Bareilles’ “Love Song” (291 plays)
  26. Rihanna’s “Disturbia” (295 plays)
  27. Christina Aguilera’s “I Turn to You” (306 plays)
  28. Konami’s “Can’t Stop Fallin’ In Love” (321 plays)
  29. G-Dragon’s “Heartbreaker” (323 plays)
  30. Foo Fighter’s “The Pretender” (351 plays)
  31. Michael Wong’s “Tong Hua” (353 plays)
  32. Britney Spears’ “Till the World Ends: The Femme Fatale Remix” (357 plays)
  33. Whitney Houston’s “I Have Nothing” (375 plays)
  34. Nicki Minaj’s “Super Bass” (380 plays)
  35. Britney Spears’ “Toxic” (388 plays)
  36. Evanescence’s “Bring Me to Life” (394 plays)
  37. Evanescence’s “Lacrymosa” (434 plays)
  38. Britney Spears’ “Piece of Me” (471 plays)
  39. The Pussycat Dolls’ “I Hate This Part” (492 plays)
  40. Sixpence None The Richer’s “Kiss Me” (503 plays)
  41. Leona Lewis’ “I Got You” (558 plays)
  42. Nightwish’s “Bye Bye Beautiful” (561 plays)
  43. Britney Spears’ “I Wanna Go” (582 plays)
  44. Britney Spears’ “Till the World Ends” (632 plays)
  45. Jennifer Lopez’s “On the Floor” (632 plays)
  46. Celine Dion’s “That’s the Way It Is” (647 plays)
  47. Maroon 5′s “Moves Like Jagger” (698 plays)
  48. Evanescence’s “Lost in Paradise” (740 plays)
  49. Christina Aguilera’s “Keeps Gettin’ Better” (826 plays)
  50. Adele’s “Someone Like You” (1,200 plays)

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Tyler’s Twitter Digest for 2013-01-04

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2012 Summary: Reading

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This is a summary of my reading from this past year. I set a goal on Good Reads to read 25 books this year, and I just managed to meet my goal. So here’s a summary of my reading from the past year, in descending order of my assigned rating.

    1/5 Stars

  1. Caitlin Kiernan’s Threshold
    Read: June 16, 2012
    A friend lent me this book, but I didn’t enjoy it very much. As I recall, it is a fiction book which blurs the line between reality and delusion, but I found the blur to be too great to be sensible.
  2. Vladimir Nabokov’s Pnin
    Read: September 7, 2012
    As a fan of Nabokov’s Pale Fire and Lolita, I had hoped that this book would be just as enjoyable. On the contrary, the book followed the unfortunate mishaps of Professor Pnin. As unfortunate as the mishaps were, however, I didn’t find any of them particularly interesting.

    3. 2/5 Stars

  3. Harry Lorayne & Jerry Lucas’ The Memory Book
    Read: August 22, 2012
    This book seemed to be okay… …as a textbook. The book was too practice-based for me when I read it (I was taking no courses, and thus had nothing extensive to try memorizing). It was also to repetitive. I found the book to be mostly examples, all of which were extensions of only a couple of key ideas presented by the book.
  4. Simon Sinek’s Start with Why
    Read: October 16, 2012

    After seeing his interesting TED talk, I decided to check out Sinek’s book. Unfortunately, it was less than impressive. I found the presented argument to be less than impressive, although in the end I think I personally agree with the underlying idea that people should start projects with understanding the purpose, or the WHY.

  5. Shane Mac’s Stop With The BS
    Read: December 4, 2012
    I admit that I did find some of the ideas in this book interesting. However, on the whole, I found most of the experiences of Mac (this book was a compilation of short thoughts he had on random topics, all written while on a long train ride) to be all-in-all un-enlightening.
  6. David Allen’s Ready for Anything
    Read: December 30, 2012
    After finding his Getting Things Done to be quite useful, I thought I’d also check out Allen’s Ready for Anything. In this book are 52 short essays, each covering some aspect of productivity. Unfortunately, more than new ideas, I found this book to be mostly essays on “How to fix your GTD… …when you’re doing it wrong.” But I did get quite a few good quotes from the book…

    7. 3/5 Stars

  7. David Allen’s Getting Things Done
    Read: January 3, 2012
    This is Allen’s Getting Things Done–one of the best known self-help books. It wasn’t my first time reading it, but it was my first time implementing the system. I’ve been using the system since (tweaking it here and there), but I’ve found it to be working pretty well. I’ll be revisiting this book again this week to touch up my GTD system before I go back to work next week.
  8. John Marsden’s Tomorrow, When the War Began
    Read: January 8, 2012

    I decided to check out the Tomorrow series after watching the movie (trailer above) with some friends. Unfortunately, the movie never made it to North America; my friend only had it because she brought it back from Australia. Anyhow, I quite enjoyed the movie, and likewise, I found that I also enjoyed the series. It follows a group of teenagers who, upon returning from a camping trip in the surrounding Australian outback, find their country invaded by another, and everyone in their home town taken into some work-camp like environment. It follows their attempts to both survive and fight back.

  9. John Marsden’s The Dead of Night
    Read: January 22, 2012
    The second book in the Tomorrow series.
  10. John Marsden’s A Killing Frost
    Read: February 4, 2012
    The third book in the Tomorrow series.
  11. John Marsden’s Darkness, Be My Friend
    Read: February 23, 2012
    The fourth book in the Tomorrow series.
  12. John Marsden’s Burning For Revenge
    Read: March 24, 2012
    The fifth book in the Tomorrow series.
  13. John Marsden’s The Night is for Hunting
    Read: April 6, 2012
    The sixth book in the Tomorrow series.
  14. John Marsden’s The Other Side of Dawn
    Read: April 8, 2012
    The seventh (final) book in the Tomorrow series.
  15. Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games
    Read: April 15, 2012
    I don’t have to say much about this book because it was so big this past year anyways… My brother had the box set, so I decided to borrow it and check out the series. As it turned out, the books turned out to be a very light read. I did like the series, as I found the plot and characters to both be interesting.
  16. Suzanne Collins’ Mocking Jay
    Read: May 13, 2012
    The third (final) book in the Hunger Games trilogy.
  17. Kenneth Blanchard & Spencer Johnson’s The One Minute Manager
    Read: September 19, 2012
    A super short read, this book talks about managing people effectively by developing goals with them, praising them for what they do right, and letting them know where they went wrong. I liked the idea of the book, but I didn’t like how it was presented.
  18. Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex
    Read: September 27, 2012
    Middlesex is an autobiography by intersex individual Cal. I liked how the style in which the book was written, and I liked reading about all the challenges experienced by the narrator. What I didn’t like was the autobiography being more about Cal’s ancestry as opposed to Cal himself.
  19. Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You
    Read: October 27, 2012
    As a regular reader of Newport’s blog, I decided to check out his new book when he announced it on his blog. I thought it would be interesting to get a perspective countering the Passion Hypothesis. However, what I found instead was a common-sense argument against a weaker version of the Passion Hypothesis (ie. if you want to get a good job, do what you love). His points I feel are an important reminder to some, but all-in-all I didn’t feel they brought many new ideas to the table for most.

    20. 4/5 Stars

  20. Philip Dick’s Ubik
    Read: January 2, 2012
    A science fiction read, Ubik was the best book I’d read in a long time. I especially liked the style it was written in. However, it may be too bizarre for some to enjoy.
  21. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World
    Read: April 29, 2012
    I think many people are familiar with the dystopia that is Brave New World. I liked the ideas that were presented in this novel, but I do recall preferring the style of 1984 over that of this one. Still, a good read for an interesting thought experiment about various aspects of society.
  22. Suzanne Collins’ Catching Fire
    Read: May 8, 2012
    The second book in the Hunger Games trilogy.
  23. Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
    Read: October 6, 2012
    I feel that the ideas on personal development in this book are both practical and important. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People looks at how you operate alone (eg. with your emotions and decision making), and then with other people. In looking at these aspects of life, it helps the reader explore whether or not they’re living life as they want to, and if not, it pushes them to change.
  24. Daniel Pink’s Drive
    Read: November 14, 2012
    I feel that Drive offers an important perspective on motivation that explains much behaviour in the world today. For instance, why are students not motivated to do their homework when we tell them they will get an A for getting it done? This book explains why carrot-and-stick methods of motivation do not always work, and why it is often important to consider autonomy, mastery, and purpose when considering motivation. I feel that this book provides a good overview of why this may be a better explanation for motivation than simply the carrot-and-stick motivation that was commonly referred to previously.
  25. Matthew Inman’s How to tell if your cat is plotting to kill you
    Read: December 31, 2012
    This is the first laugh-out-loud book I recall reading since Azumanga Daioh (see below; all the sub versions were cut horribly, so I decided to go with a dub). I thought it was a funny look at cats for cat-lovers.

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