Professor Tramo is a really smart guy but an awful professor. There is no organization at all to his class and this makes paying attention in a 3 hour lecture extremely difficult. The homework questions are convoluted, vague and don’t seem to relate to anything relevant or talked about in class. The homework is due every week online before class and the final was also done online with about 70% of the questions exactly the same as the homework. I have an extensive music background but the material was presented so poorly that I had a hard time following what he was talking about most of the time. Even though the final was take home, it took me about 5 hours to complete. Overall I dedicated about 4-5 hours per week including the 3 hour lecture. Overall the class was an easy A but I wouldn’t take it again since i didn’t learn anything of value and did not enjoy it.

I'm a huge fan of the topic of music and the brain; however, I felt that this class really wasted my time and was a let down for someone like me who was eager to learn and interact with other students who wanted to learn.

This class is supposed to be a seminar - class based solely on discussion that is generated from weekly readings, or, in this case, scientific papers. We never had engaging student discussions due to Professor Tramo letting in 20+ more students than a typical seminar group. And so, it ended up being lecture style which was not great because Professor Tramo is a terrible lecturer. He goes off on tangents way too much, interrupts student presentations, (is monotone, for those of you who have trouble with monotone professors,) and is redundant. The class is 3 hours long and I find that the those 3 hours are not used efficiently; he isn't quite wary of time and I know it's not just in class because I've gone to one of his talks at a conference and he went over by 30 minutes. If it was actually a seminar, I think the class could have gone a lot better since students would have control.

Attendance counts. He actually memorizes people's names and keeps track.

Some cool things about him though is that he has connections in both music industry and UCLA Health and he likes to play the Beatles during breaks.

To conclude, if you really want to go in depth and learn about the material for music and brain, this class might not be so great. This class does provide a lot of material for scientific papers and if you are motivated to go out of your way to read all of them without getting the opportunity to discuss in class, then I'd say go for it. But then again, you could literally just go to his website and read all of those instead of sit in class for 3 hours being on Facebook.

NOTE: a background in music theory does help in understanding some concepts for class but isn't completely necessary
Dr. Tramo is a pretty fun professor to have, can go on and on on tangents occasionally but for one seminar a week it isnt bad. Dr. tramo likes to bring in professionals from the industry which make lectures fairly interesting, and the majority of the class involves reviewing studies on the cognition of all aspects of music from rhythm and pitch all the way to creativity.
Exam was not difficult (he usually gives question/answers out during the seminars)