Rubin is a pretty cool guy, but the class itself is not what i expected. BORING lecture, but sadly, it was an interesting topic. The class explores the history of music from 1900's to the 1980's and it introduces many new genres. I slept through several lectures and still got an A-, but I credit that to the TA. Not neccesarily an easy A.
Rubin is honestly the most frustrating lecturer at the university. His classes are very disjointed, unorganized, and uninteresting. The requirements for the course were fairly simple, and didn't take much effort to do well on them. However, the exams were not a fair assessment of the class itself. Don't take this class if you're looking for an easy A. The only good thing about it was a fairly forgiving TA.
The content is interesting and - as a musician - stuff I haven't seen before, so it is coo to expand my knowledge in that sense. The lecture's are boring as is the discussion. You get to listen to a lot of good, unique music, however and you don't really need to do the readings. Music bkgd would help but is by NO means required. Plus, part of your HW is to go to concerts.
I was really excited about this class at the beginning of the semester, and the course material was fairly interesting, but I would not recommend this class to anyone. Professor Rubin is obviously interested in music, but he is so scatterbrained and assumes that all students have an extensive background in music too. The one time I went to see him for help, he was completely dismissive. The TA however was far, far worse. Jean Maroun is an incompetent grader, and the grammar in his emails was barely correct English! He seemed totally biased and refused to reconsider any papers. I was scoring 100% on 3000 level essays and getting D's on my concert reports in this class. Bad bad bad.
BEST CLASS EVER. Joel is the man.
