MUSI 2120

I enjoyed this class, but this may just be because I am interested in the subject. Professor DeVeaux is crazy smart, and he's one of the most knowledgeable people I know in jazz music. He speaks very monotone, but the lectures themselves are decently interesting. The content is easy to digest, and there is no homework for the course itself. You will likely have work depending on who your TA is (I had to write chapter summaries for the textbook as well as three questions per chapter). I can not recommend the textbook outlines enough. Professor DeVeaux posts chapter outlines that cover pretty much all the material you need. I studied these outlines religiously and did very well on the midterm and final.

Really enjoyed this class! Came in with little music theory coursework, but some background from playing in band/jazz band. He teaches from the assumption that we are "novices". It didn't feel like a class sometimes, but like listening to good music and having it explained to me. From my semester: Typical week consists of 2 lectures, 1 discussion section. An ebook accompanies this class, $50 and no online copies that I'm aware of. Homework consists of readings, reading responses, reading online quizzes, and listening online quizzes. Reading responses are j 1 paragraph summaries of each chapter and a few questions you have abt the content. Everything in the class has soft deadline; he will keep reminding you to stay on track, but you could technically turn in the whole semester's work the day before grades close and get the 100 if u did everything correctly. That being said, don't do that! Is too much work for a human being to do in 24 hours. No need to sacrifice time for your other classes in finals weeks, either. Discussion sections are j discussions on the reading (~3 chapters, but not quizzed or anything so you just need the gist) and review of what was covered in lecture. The grade is based on reading responses and participation/attendance i believe. Concert reports: you go to 2 in person concerts in cville and write a reflection on what your experience was. Overall, the breakdown is 30% midterm, 40% final, 20% discussion, 5% concert report, 5% quizzes. If interested, also made playlists on spotify of required listening for the class if you search MUSI 2120. My TA, Corey Harris was also very kind, knowledgeable, and talented!

This class is a lot of work and not worth it, at least not online. Professor DeVeaux has been teaching this class for a long time, and he has you use his textbook. The lectures were asynchronous and hard to find the motivation to watch them. They weren't necessarily boring, but they weren't captivating either. You will also have to read the textbook and do the listening exercises on Norton. There's only a midterm and a final exam that determines your grade for the lecture. No homework grades or anything. I recommend reading the textbook if you want to do well on the exams.
If you do choose to take the course, pick Hannah Young as your TA. She is extremely chill. Try to have your camera on and participate. She just talks for most of it so it's very low pressure.
Jazz is definitely interesting and broad, but this class has somehow lessened my appreciation for it and disincentivized me from exploring it more. The class in general is too much work. #tCF2020

I took this class since I needed to fulfil a humanities credit, and while the class ended up ok, it was way more stressful than it should have been.

The grading was:
30% discussion section
30% midterm
40% final

But for the first month or two it was really unclear to me at least how the grading worked. I was reading the textbook and showing up to discussion and watching the lectures and everything, but there were no assignments. It was confusing because Professor DeVeaux copied and pasted his Collab page from a previous semester that had a page for discussion assignments and required jazz concerts and other things, but really you didn't have to do any of those. Anyways, besides being confused about grading, I was also disappointed that this class was more of a MUSI class than a HIST class - but I should have known better. Yes you will learn about how jazz evolved and prominent figures and race and interesting information, but I was not prepared for the amount of music theory involved. Maybe if I knew anything about music it would be easier, but I had a lot of trouble understanding what was happening within songs and how you could tell if there was improvisation or what instruments were being played and everything of that sort. Just know that on the midterm and final, there will be about 60% history questions asking about who was involved with what and questions of that nature, but you will also be asked to listen to songs and identify who composed/performed them with what instruments and expected to understand all of the definitions seen here: http://people.virginia.edu/~skd9r/MUSI212_new/materials/definitions1.html
He gave us 24-48 hours for the exams and I definitely spent more than 3 hours on each one and would have done worse had I had less time. I ended with a good grade, but at what cost? Also the discussion section with Tim Boothe was fine, but I don't know what he was expected to teach us and I'm not sure how much I got out of it. From people I talked to, multiple students were given an arbitrary 98% in the discussion - which I'm not complaining about, but why did they get high scores and what happened to that 2%? We may never know.

I would rate this class as ok overall especially if you have a fondness for jazz or music in general, but if you're not interested in music you may not be doing yourself any favors by signing up for it.