Take this class. It's super fun, and an easy A, as long as you submit the assignments and put some effort in. This quarter she started an Iclicker thingy so a portion of your grade was attendance (you got to miss 2 lectures b4 it started to affect your grade but they had excused absences). My TA introduced me to a ton of cool music, and we kind of learn about the different ways of listening so it's kind of cool. The lectures are two hours so they can get kind of long (oh and they close the doors after 10 minutes so you can't come in if you are late), but other than that, this class was great. The professor was really nice.

Most of your grade was attendance but 20% was from the concert reports (10% each) you go to (you can join the live and not go in person too). Another 20% was for the weekly response papers you wrote (8 total). and 20% for the final paper. One thing I didn't like was I felt like I didn't really understand how they were grading. In my first concert report I got a 95% but I felt like I had put in a ton of effort and my second concert report was written in haste the night before and i got a 100% (I'm aware I'm complaining about nothing, but I just felt like the grading was randomly assigned sometimes). I never got below a 90 on anything though so idk i guess it is what it is. The lectures also put me onto some great songs and songwriters. We had some phenomenal guest lecturers too.

Overall this class was an easy A if you’re a good writer and turn in your assignments on time. As an econ major who very much dislikes writing and has no background in music, this GE wasn’t the best for me. The class is 1 hour and 50 minutes long and attendance is required (most ppl did the iclicker and left). Lecture attendance is 15%, section attendance 10%, section participation 15%, weekly responses 20%, two concert reports 20%, and final paper 20%. The weekly responses were 1 page reflections on the music from that week that were supposed to gradually get better as the class progressed, but you could basically write anything about them. The 2 concert reports are more formal and are around 2-3 pages, and you just go to a concert and write about your experience. There were 3 different prompts for the final paper and it was 1000 words. I didn’t love this class because I don’t enjoy writing and don’t know much about music but I think the teacher cares more about you trying to learn than mastering the subjects.

This has 100% gotta be the easiest class at UCLA. Professor started requiring attendance this quarter, but that just meant many people signed in on iClicker and dipped. Weekly 200 word assignments where you listen to songs and write literally anything about them, 2 600 word concert reports where you attend any concert (there are free ones on campus all the time) and write about it, and 1000 word final where I talked about 3 songs tempo's. Average grade on every assignment was like a 98 and took little time. A couple lectures had guest speakers/performances, including a Jazz institute that was soooo awesome. Brilliant class and GE, doesn't get better than this.

I like the class, but I feel like one quarter is not enough to show a student how to truly listen to music. Being able to notice that the tempo gets faster and slower is easy, but I feel like I came out of this class with the similar understanding of how to listen to music. I wish there were more examples of the different musical terms as I am not able to easily hear it with my standard knowledge of music. I also wish the lectures were more engaging and had more class participation. Dr. Richman is very caring and does a good job covering all aspects, and I really enjoyed that lectures were not just presentations but also performances.