I do not understand why people think this professor is boring. This guy is a rockstar. He dresses well, he really knows his stuff, he is interesting and explains things extremely well and thoroughly, and he doesn't waste time. The lectures are highly engaging and interesting. If you raise your hand during the lecture, he will stop to thoroughly answer your question. By the way, if you're absent, the slides don't really make sense if you don't request for a recording from your TA. Also, the class doesn't use the textbook at all, but I would personally recommend skimming through an online copy of it (The Sounds of Capitalism), as it covers a lot of what he talks about in class. The papers are almost completely conceptual, and it's unclear how the TA's grade them. There is no rubric given to the students, and we are given somewhat vague directions. My TA marked me down because he didn't personally like my word choice in one of the sentences of my five page paper, and I got an 89 for all of the papers. However, the final was weirdly memorization based. He said in a lecture that he would be making the final specifically to reward those who came to class and paid attention, and that the final would likely take 60-90 minutes of our provided 3 hours. I paid close attention in every class, and I was honestly surprised by the final's specificity. The final was ten short answer questions and one essay question which we knew the prompt of beforehand. It took me two and a half hours total. The class average for the final was a 77, and I got a 90. He curved the grade, I don't know if it was standardized, but I ended up with a 99 for the final. Also, there is a very very high volume of reading. You don't need to extensively read all of them, just skimming them for their ideas should be fine, but I would highly highly recommend taking notes of the main ideas for each of them, as they are helpful to cite in your papers and the questions refer to them by name in the final exam. Also, you only really need main ideas for the pre-discussion questions and the discussion sections. The only homework given is the papers and the readings. You get a week for each of them, which is more than enough time, if you use it well. Very enjoyable and intellectually stimulating class, great professor.

I took this class as a GE without reading the reviews and... I learned my lesson. The lectures were astronomically boring, the content was interesting but Taylor sadly wasn't. You can tell he's very passionate about this, but he doesn't make a good professor. His slides are hard to read since it literally only includes pictures and quotes so attendance is mandatory. The midterm was alright, but the essays? Horrible. The prompts were understandable and not bad to write, but it was impossible to get higher than a 95%. I'm not even sure what the TA's were looking for since I never got any actual feedback and the only comment I got was that I should've talked more about a specific thing. The final was a short essay which I need to get a 96% on to pass with a low A, so that's gonna be impossible. There were weekly readings which some had up to 50 pages double sided. I DO NOT recommend this class unless you like going to lectures to space out and type out every thing a professor says since you don't even know what will help you write your essays.

Taylor sucked. He combined useless information with extremely important information and was never good at engaging his class. He had a chokehold on his TAs and was completely unapproachable. The tests were too hard, the essays as well, he doesn't care if you write a good essay only if you check off all his boxes that he doesn't tell you what are. One of the worst classes of my college experience thus far.

Do not take this class. If you like to write 4 papers about literally nothing then I would recommend this class. He just lectures for 2 hours about seemingly nothing important. He has a midterm that is a paper, two prompts, and a final that has only essay questions. The slides in his lectures aren't helpful and I do not think I've met a single person who cares about the material in this class. He does not offer any rubrics for the papers/exams but gives them to the TAs when they are grading (basically you have to just take your best guess on everything you need to include in the paper). He seems like a sweet man outside of this class but he is sitting on a bit of a high horse in this class. He says every class that we will not have any MC or T/F on the exams because we are not in "high school." Do not take this class it is the most boring GE with way too much writing.

Oh no, this class was boring. Professor Taylor uploads two weekly videos about the history of musical devices and consumerism. Your papers and participation are graded by the TA. There are three to four papers that must be turned in. All the TA's follow a grading rubric (some grade harshly). The lecture videos are one hour, so good luck on that. You can pass the class if you are invested in it or love the history of music.

whack

I love music and have taken many classes in the music department but this was by far the worst one. Do not take this if you are looking for a fun GE

This class was alright in terms of difficulty, but extremely boring. Lectures are almost two hours long, and about half of the enrolled students attend lecture. And of the students that do attend lecture, a lot of them are on their phones or simply browsing the web instead of paying attention to the professor. Professor Taylor is super passionate about the subject, but his clarity is lacking. His lecture slides have no words, only a picture and a title. So if you miss class, you're screwed and cannot make up that missing info. It's also hard most of the time to digest what is important and what isn't, since he tends to ramble on for ages. Nevertheless, the midterm and final was pretty fair and not too difficult, and yet still given a tiny generous curve. The two papers were also graded pretty fairly, with most people getting As and Bs. But honestly, I would not recommend this class with this professor because of his lack of clarity and the dullness of the lecture.

Professor was supposed to teach this and for whatever reason didn't at the last minute. Substitute professor was okay. Selling the required book Music, Sound, and Technology in America with no writing in it. If the review is still up, it's still for sale.

K*************

Selling the required textbook for this class! "Music, Sound, and Technology in America: A Documentary History of Early Phonograph, Cinema, and Radio" ISBN: **********464. Brand new condition, $15 text me if you want to buy **********.

If you're reading this and its Fall Quarter of 2017, don't hesitate to still text me cause I know he wont be teaching this class Spring 2017, but he will be teaching it again in the fall.