Dec. 22, 2012
Beatles: Music History 68
Professor Upton has a lot of energy and seems to genuinely enjoy getting to teach this class. This can occasionally get annoying (she points out quite frequently that she finds the Beatles 'cute'). She also had problems with the technology in the lecture hall and class would often take a few minutes to properly get started. The subject itself is interesting, as it isn't merely learning Beatles trivia but also learning how to analyze the components of music and the recording process for a lot of their songs. A lot of what she says comes from the Gould book, so the book isn't necessary if you attend lectures. It gives a lot of background information that isn't required on the tests. For the paper you can just go to the section on the song you choose and you should be fine. She takes a few detours (one lecture about the history of folk music leading up to Bob Dylan, another the creation of experimental art and music with John Cage examples to defend Yoko Ono's work which Gould isn't too impressed with) that ended up not being tested on but were interesting enough to learn about. Other background information like Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters or Motown were also discussed and ended up being on the test, so do pay attention because you never know what she'll decide to focus on.
The paper is 5-7 pages and is supposed to encompass the different experiences of listener, composer, and performer. The prompt is incredibly vague and you should probably run your idea by your TA before turning it in. Ours didn't want us to just list the different aspects, but instead have an argument that was backed up by the music, which wasn't something stated in the prompt and may not have been required by other TAs. You can't choose a song that has analyzed by the professor, which eliminates a lot of the more popular songs.
Discussions are mandatory, and part of your Professionalism grade (10%). Being late with hurt your grade as well. Try to talk every once in a while, which isn't hard to do because discussion is mainly about song analysis and anything goes. Our TA even said he'd be willing to listen to Paul is Dead arguments as long as we backed them up. Literally any part of a song can be analyzed, so coming up with something to say isn't that difficult. He also used the piano to demonstrate chords and their progression, which was often a lot of fun.
Your grade is entirely dependent on your TA. I had Mikush, and on the first day he told us that he was a hard grader and that an A would be difficult to achieve with him. He doesn't put up with people just listing trivia, but instead wants analysis and an explanation for why something is present (why are there strings on this song? what function does the verse/chorus structure give? etc). This isn't easy for everyone, including me, and to prepare for the song listening portions of the tests I made flashcards of all the songs we went over (Upton gives out a study guide the week before the tests) and gave a few bullet points of info, which definitely helped me and didn't leave me stuck on thinking of what to say for a song. The online writings weren't too difficult as they were often things we discussed in lecture or in discussion and were graded on a pass/fail basis so as long as you spend 15-20 minutes on them you're probably good. After seeing my final grade in this class, I don't think he is quite as harsh of a grader as it seems. If you put effort into studying and doing the writings then you'll most likely get an A. His no BS attitude made me appreciate him more because it kept me from slacking off in a class that could easily be put off due to the subject matter.It made me take the class seriously.
As a south campus major taking three science classes as well, this class was a breath of fresh air and was really fun to study for.
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2.6
/ 5
How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
