Tag Archives: course evaluation

Course Evaluation: MUSC 119

MUSC 119: Music Technology.

Course Description: This course covers a lot of ground; you go from learning about the physics of sound and parts of the ear to how microphones work and making a website.

Textbook use: This course uses a course packet written by the prof, costing $40 (the $40 also covers headshots, a software liscence, and probably other things that I can’t remember). You have to get it. It contains all of the lecture notes and assignments, and if you miss a lecture it has all of the material covered in it as well.

Homework: Typically, there are two assignments per week which must be handed in at the music office, not in class. There is also usually a quiz every two weeks or so. Honestly, they are not hard! There isn’t very much material on them and the questions are very predictable, so if you so much as read over your notes beforehand you’ll be fine. I overheard a lot of people beforehand being nervous and after quizzes sounding really upset, but really, there’s no need to! Just actually study a little bit!

Professor: This course is taught by Dr. Bob Pritchard, known to his students as Dr. Bob. He is very friendly and marks fairly, and likes to tease his students. He makes a good prof for this first year course as he really walks you through everything, gives reminders, etc. (Not to mention is “dad speeches.”)

Class format: Two lectures per week, and one tutorial.  He provides lecture notes and you fill them in as you follow along.

Additional comments: Material in this course can range from interesting to pretty boring, but it’s really not very hard. Just do some studying. Seriously, you’ll be fine. And you might even have fun.

1 Comment

Filed under Academics, School of Music

Course Evaluation: MUSC 220

MUSC 220: The third installment of core music history courses.

Course Description: In this history course you will learn about Romantic music, spanning from Beethoven to Wagner and a bit of Strauss. You’ll be required to know about various concepts as well as be able to recognize from listening excerpts covered in class. This course contains quite a lot of opera.

Textbook use:  Textbooks for this class are the Burkholder History of Western Music and the Norton Anthology of Music vol. 2. Honestly, I got by without either one. The textbook can be useful if you miss a lecture, or if rereading what you heard in class is helpful to you, or if you want to preread. But everything you needed to know was in the lectures. (This could change if the professor changes.) As for the anthology, I didn’t even buy the second volume and got by fine without it. And although the CDs probably aren’t a bad idea, you can also listen to them in the library or find recordings on Youtube.

Homework: Not much homework in this class, although there is an in-class writing component once per week. You get the readings beforehand, but not the writing prompt. You’d come into the tutorial, have a few minutes of discussion, then have about 30 minutes to write something on the prompt. Oh, and you’re being graded on your writing skill as well as content. Other than that, there were one midterm and a paper.

Professor: To the best of my knowledge, MUSC 220 is usually taught by Vera Micznik, but I guess she was on sabbatical or something because once again we had Professor Fullerton. I like him as a prof; he’s very clear about what you need to know and explains it clearly.

Class format:Two lectures per week, and one tutorial on Wednesday or Friday with a TA. Tutorial class sizes are smaller than the lecture.

Additional comments: While not really very hard, there was a lot of material covered in this class, so if you want to do well on exams, start studying EARLY. Seriously.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Academics, School of Music

Course Evaluation: MUSC 210

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…

Leave a Comment

Filed under Academics, School of Music

Course Evaluation: MUSC 121

Yet another very late course review, this time for History II. Please note that for this class, my professor was a sessional instructor, filling in until they hired someone to permanently teach this class. So some this about this course may vary somewhat from what I experienced.

Course Description: This class covers the history of music starting around 1600 in the Baroque period and moving into the Classical period, ending with Haydn and Mozart.

Textbook use: This course requires three textbooks, Norton Anthology of Western Music Vol. 1 and 2 (and the accompanying CDs) and A History of Western Music (Burkholder). The Anthology had excerpts that were studied in class; I found it much more important than in MUSC 120 because while I didn’t really find I needed it in class, there were actually listening questions on tests.  The Burkholder textbook was again mostly to reinforce what was said in class. In fact, a lot of the time what was on the slides in class was almost exactly what was in the text.

Homework: This class didn’t have a whole lot of homework, but more than MUSC 120. There was one large research paper as well as two “library assignments” in which you had to make sample bibliographies.  This term, rather than a quiz every week, we had four “midterms” which were non-cumulative and the final was the same size as the rest of the tests. They were a fair bit harder than the quizzes of term 1 (though not super hard), so more studying would be necessary.

Professor: I had Graeme Fullerton, who like I said was a sessional instructor while the school was deciding who to hire for the position.  I doubt you’ll have him for this course, but if you do get him for something, I find him to be pretty good: he makes his expectations clear and keeps the lectures interesting.

Class format: Two lectures per week in the recital hall, class size of about 80ish? Something like that.  There was a greater emphasis on general concepts than on specific characteristics of a given piece, ie. you don’t need to know “in measure 40 of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony the transition from main theme area to transition was strange…” etc.

Additional comments: I really liked that the tests for this course were not cumulative; it made exam time more relaxing! Also, since there ARE going to be listening portions of the midterms, make sure you actually listen to the pieces you need to know at least a week before the test. Trying to cram them into your brain the night before is not going to work and you are not going to remember them the next day.  And actually listen! Remember different motives or characteristics of each piece, such as instrumentation, tempo, melodies, rhythms, etc, and don’t just have the music playing while doing homework and vacuuming your room: it’s not gonna stick that way.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Academics, School of Music

Couse Evaluation: MUSC 106

Another course evaluation of a course I took in the second term of my first year: MUSC 106.

Course Description: The continuation of MUSC 105, so basically, the same thing except harder. MUSC 105 was really about figuring out how to use solfège, basic dictation skills, easy sight singing, interval identification. It seemed really hard at first because it was something totally new, but it’s important to really get a handle on these skills, because MUSC 106 kind of assumes you’re good at all that stuff now. New course material included identifying more types of chords, trickier rhythms (and having to clap out two at the same time), more difficult leaps to sing, some simple harmonic dictation.

Textbook use:  This course requires the same two textbooks as MUSC 105,  Manual for Ear Training and Sight Singingand Anthology for Sight Singing by Gary S. Karpinski, and the accompanying CD.  The Anthology is more important (I think) than the Manual, because all your prepared melodies for exams come from there, but the manual is also important for when you want to practice dictations at home or read up on a concept you’re not totally comfortable with. The Anthology is used in class nearly every time.

Homework: Again, the homework in this class is not for marks; it’s practicing on your own time.  Since no one’s going to check if you did it or not, it’s tempting to just not do it, but the only marks you have for this class are the midterm(s) and the final. If you don’t practice as you go along, you’re going to be shaky for the tests.

Professor: I had Gordon Paslawski, the coordinator, and I found him to be a really really good teacher, even if he did move fairly quickly. (It meant we actually had time to go through everything.) Generally though, the class is taught by a TA and they vary from term to term.

Class format: Small class size, instructed by a TA, generally practicing things you’ll need to know for your tests. You may be asked to sight sing in front of people, but usually it’s on a volunteer basis.  Attendance is also taken into consideration if you need to take a re-test later (ie. you should show up for class).

Additional comments: First term, I didn’t practice musicianship nearly as much as I should have, and when I did the final exam I came out of it half-convinced that I’d failed. I didn’t, but I resolved the next term to practice consistently throughout the term, and when it came time for the final, I walked out of there feeling like I did pretty much everything right! No nervousness whatsoever. Imagine that!

Leave a Comment

Filed under Academics, School of Music

Belated Course Evaluation: MUSC 111

So it occurred to me recently that I never actually did any reviews of the courses I took last term… I figure I should continue what I started. It might actually end up being useful to someone. So, MUSC 111!

Course Description: This was also brand new course when I took it, and things generally went the same as MUSC 110; some kinks to work out, but generally we knew what to expect by this time. More music theory, but more advanced this time, and it moved more quickly. This term, rather than covering basic concepts of music theory and harmony, we looked at chromaticism, sequences, more chromaticism, and small forms.

Textbook use:  This course requires the same two textbooks as MUSC 110, The Complete Musician and the accompanying workbook by Laitz.  I found that Dr. Benjamin often disagreed with the text, but when he did he would usually make his own hand out to explain the difference.  The Workbook again is crucial; a lot of the assignments come from that book, although Benjie as we liked to call him (behind his back obviously) would just as often make up his own rather difficult assignments. Such as writing minuets. So many minuets.

Homework: A lot of homework, two very large assignments per week. I found that the weekend one would on average take about four hours. This said, that’s mostly just Prof. Benjamin’s style, so if you have someone else, expect still a lot of homework (it is the intensive stream after all), but maybe not quite so intense.

Professor: We had Professor Benjamin again for the second term, which was nice because we didn’t have to adjust to a different teaching style or expectations. He was such a funny guy, I kinda miss having him as my prof… One thing about him was he always said he would not take late assignments, but always did, without fail. Probably because it took him several weeks to grade them.

Class format: Same small class of about fifteen people. Nearly everyone in it was the same as last term, which was really nice to create a sense of community. Assignments made up 40% of the final grade, I can’t remember the other figures though.  There was plenty of opportunity to ask questions; it was mainly a lecture-and-note-taking setup.

Additional comments: The exam was… not as brutal as I had expected, but still fried my brain.  One nice thing was that typically Dr. B. scaled the marks, so we looked better than we maybe actually did… Basically this class is just the same as 110, but if you didn’t come into 110 with a strong or at least some kind of background in basic harmony and voice leading, 110 might be a bit of a challenge because the basics are gone over quite quickly in 110 because it’s assumed pretty much everyone knows it. So if you don’t, you’ll either have to study up on your own time or go in for help.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Academics, School of Music