Ear Training II · Music
2 short tests; light, light homework (like 30 minutes a week MAX)
Almost no homework -- occasionally you need to write a melody or a 4-measure rhythm, but those are very simple. One midterm and one final. Very manageable.
Almost nothing. A midterm and a final you can't really study for.
No unexcused absences allowed. Any learning that you might want to do to move on to ET III, you'll have to do on your own.
Really great instructor. Gives every student individual help throughout class, and makes herself very available outside class for extra help. Really friendly and nice as well, so class isn't awkward, as some small 50 minute classes can be. And she really kicked some major ass getting the 10 of us to sing at 9:00am - i don't know how she did it, but she did!
Bettendorf is a really great guy. He's a pretty solid teacher, but he tends to get very distracted and subsequently wastes a lot of time and ends up holding the class for 5 minutes or so at the end. He is very available to meet outside of class, and he really takes the time to get to know each student. He does a great job of clarifying the material and even of helping to better explain things we learn in Diatonic. I will definitely miss him next year in ET III.
Victor is a great guy--not, however, the best ear training instructor. While he knows the course material himself, he's kind of confused on how to teach it. When the students find standards too difficult, he lowers the standards. A fun class, but not a terribly instructive one.
Don't expect any ear-training class taught by Eric Sewell to be a slack-off class. Also, don't expect to learn anything. Eric's style of "teaching" involves a very short, vague explanation of the material, or no explanation at all. Most of the class was spent doing very difficult rhythmic and harmonic dictations (I don't even know what level those dictations were intended for), which were graded and counted towards a questionable percentage of our final grade. I say questionable because he actually sent out a radically different grading rubric the week before our final exam, saying that it was changed due to "administrative constraints." This caused a lot of frustration in our class, since many people failed these daily in-class tests. Finally, Eric had some issues playing rhythms accurately, including a dictation on our midterm. When students brought this issue up, his only answer was "I'm doing my best." That was as far as his efforts to look into, or correct the problem went. In conclusion, don't take this class unless you are looking for a way to do penance for some horrible crime.
Simple homework, a few tests. Not bad at all.
just go to class, very little homework. a few quizzes, midterm, and final. all easy stuff (but still put in a little effort) :)