I'm going into second year ENG next year and my program is one of the few where I get to pick general electives. I am considering music 2II3 next year and would like the opinions of a few people that took the course. I took music 1aa3 this year and have mixed feelings on it. I'd love to learn more about the 2II3 program before taking it, what artists do you look at, is it more general theories of music and how it relates to our culture, or is it a lot of factual memory work?

Thanks alot

I just took this course this term and I generally liked it. I took it as a night class so that was the only thing that really bothered me about the course, it got annoying sometimes to sit through 2 hrs 45 mins of lecture. So I don't recommend it as a night class.

It was taught by Susan Fast and she is clearly very knowledgeable about music and knows what she's talking about. She does have her favourite things to focus in on (gender/race in music especially) but overall I thought she did a pretty good job in covering music from 1940s-1980s ish.

If you enjoy music and want to know more about it I would definitely suggest this course as an elective.

Also as an engineer you probably have a heavy work load so you might enjoy the fact that this course has no assignments. Your mark is based on 3 tests, 2 mid-terms composed of 45 multiple choice questions each and 1 exam with 100 multiple choice questions. I found I did very well on the mid-terms, and I think I did well on the exams. I have heard other people complain that they did not do well on these. If you feel you are good at tests and would like to have a break from assignments this would be a good option.

The downside to the tests though was that the two midterms took place on Saturday mornings. This is when Fast decides to schedule mid-terms, don't know why she just does and some people didn't enjoy this. If you don't mind taking out two Saturday mornings it's still a good option.

The classes consist of Fast lecturing with the aid of power points (which she doesn't upload to WebCT so you have to copy the notes down but that's not that bad) as well as videos and audio. She shows a lot of video from Youtube, as well as excerpts from documentaries etc. She also plays song excerpts in the lectures. On the two mid-terms there are listening examples where you will be asked 3 questions about a song that you will have to remember from lecture. For example she may play a Beatles song in lecture and on the mid-term you would be asked to remember certain things about it ie what genre, who is the artist, why is this song important or if there is an important musical feature about it. There were 4 listening questions on each midterm with 3 questions about each example so 12 questions in total that require listening comprehension. The visual aids are a nice break from just listening and taking notes in a plain old lecture.

There is a textbook which is actually pretty interesting. Not dry like usual textbooks. The information from the textbook goes along with the information she lectures on. Some questions on mid-terms and exams are taken from the textbook. She does give text/exam reviews which highlight the most important chapters/sections from the textbooks that will be covered on the exam so that's always good if you haven't read the whole thing or are behind on readings.

Overall I thought I found the course to be enjoyable, I just wish I didn't take it as a night class. I think I would have enjoyed it even more as a day class with 3 seperate lectures per week instead of 1 very long lecture at night.

I would recommend it as an elective if you 1)enjoy music, 2)don't mind doing tests on Saturdays and 3)want something to help with a heavy work load.

I have attached the syllabus for this year which contains all the information about what artists/music she focuses on in the course.

Also to clarify this course is about music history. She doesn't get that much into the technical side of music. For some genres she talks a little bit about technical issues but it's not that complex. In the first lecture she does a little bit of a technical explanation but that's as complex as it gets and it doesn't really come into play that much on the exam/tests.