SO! The first review of Phelps. I mean... during COVID, he's struggling quite a bit with the gears and technologies, so oftentimes our pace will be dragged down due to his technical difficulties. HOWEVER, he literally can't explain crap. Thank GOD I knew most of the material before I came into this class, and THANK GOD the textbook is somewhat useful if I need it. The class is at 9 am in the morning, so attention is already a luxury, plus his irrelevant tangents, you will probably get thru nothing during class. So he simply can't get to the point straight, he must include some random bs that is not important, and maybe you realized that and you decide to zone out for a sec, boom, he said something important, and great, you just missed it. Though as music students, instructors were pre-assigned, and you have no choice, so this review is just to whom it may concern, what the heck you're getting into. XD

I took this class in Fall 2020, which means it was entirely online through Zoom. Phelps did struggle a bit with technical difficulties, especially getting his piano sound to play through Zoom, but generally issues were resolved within a few minutes. Professor Phelps does tend to go on tangents in his lectures, which can be distracting and make you lose focus, but with those aside I think his lectures were generally clear. I never once had to open the textbook (which sucks cause it was $200) this quarter, and haven't received a grade below 90 on any portion of the materials. I didn't know much at all going into the course. I honestly fell asleep for an hour or so during multiple lectures (since they were at 9 am and I'm lazy) but generally, things fell into place when working on the homework. We had one weekly homework assignment that usually didn't take more than an hour, though I spent 4 hours on our week 10 assignment. Grading is pretty lenient and late work was accepted through the whole first half of class.

goes on tangents, cocky, condescending, not helpful at all, if you’re in his class i’m sorry for you, calls on students randomly in class for questions which is annoying, not clear at all in terms of teaching or questions, doesn’t know how to teach.…..the TA’s were great and I prefer going to them during office hours as they are ACTUALLY helpful.

This class is a little challenging if you haven't had much experience with music theory before. I took this class and struggled with his teaching style quite a bit. Professor Phelps does his best, but he often goes on tangents during his lectures and does not explain the content very clearly. He moves very quickly, so if you don't ask for help in the moment he wont explain it again. He means well, but struggles to teach with structure and organization. Although I wasn't the biggest fan of Professor Phelps, he was very accommodating of my inexperience with music and technological difficulties on zoom.

I think that Music 20A can be really helpful if you learn to apply it to other areas of your discipline, which helps if Bach wrote good stuff for your instrument. It is really hard to get an understanding of things on the first go around, but I think that Phelps learned that showing us examples, getting us to correct errors, and using our homework as examples (which turned out to be a blessing in disguise; basically getting your homework corrected right in front of you). Sometimes it really doesn't make much sense when he explains it (also he was in a warehouse for the first quarter so... strange setting but also interesting?) The textbook is pretty expensive, but I utilized it a lot, which helped a lot in the end. There were moments that I felt that Phelps was trying to be empathetic, but sometimes it didn't really come off that way (I blame the internet's lack of tone). This is a big class by HASOM standards, so definitely be clear if you understand something or not... if you don't say anything, chances are it won't be explained. If you aren't the quickest in recognizing different relationships between chords or intervals, expect to spend more extra time for this class. The homework assignments took me on average 2-4 hours, but a lot of this was me catching up on music theory lol. Pro tip: reach out to the TAs! They are super busy, but they are also very nice and helpful!