Matthew Quayle

I absolutely loved this course during J-term! Professor Quayle was very accommodating to students of many different musical backgrounds. We all made 5 different songs over the course of the class and presented them to our peers. Quayle also taught about various song forms and structures, which was very helpful, as well as giving us some necessary basic music theory info. Honestly, this course is as time-consuming as you want to make it! It really is up to how much time and effort you want to spend on your songs.

I absolutely loved this course during J-term! Professor Quayle was very accommodating to students of many different musical backgrounds. We all made 5 different songs over the course of the class and presented them to our peers. Quayle also taught about various song forms and structures, which was very helpful, as well as giving us s …Read more

Professor Quayle was amazing in teaching this course. Almost every class consisted of us listening to performances or him playing piano and emphasizing the things we were learning in class. His passion was for the subject matter was clear and evident in his teaching. The course consisted of some assignments outside of class, a couple of short writing assignments, two concert reports, and one creative final project. Overall, this course was very mind opening and shows you that there is complexity to music and composers do things intentionally (or not) to get certain points across.

Professor Quayle was amazing in teaching this course. Almost every class consisted of us listening to performances or him playing piano and emphasizing the things we were learning in class. His passion was for the subject matter was clear and evident in his teaching. The course consisted of some assignments outside of class, a couple …Read more

This course wasn't exactly what I expected it would be... Instead of analyzing music before hitting the notation software, the assignments were pretty vague and basically left you to do anything you wanted as long as you complied to one or two parameters. I spent more time on assignments than other people, but if you *really* didn't want to put in that much work, you wouldn't have to. Quayle's feedback isn't all that helpful either; since most of the class is discussion based, he let the class share their thoughts first and then he'd give some sort of praise and maybe a single comment/critique. The main pressure (in a good way) were the guest musicians; great way to debut our pieces and learn what to tweak and why.

This course wasn't exactly what I expected it would be... Instead of analyzing music before hitting the notation software, the assignments were pretty vague and basically left you to do anything you wanted as long as you complied to one or two parameters. I spent more time on assignments than other people, but if you *really* didn't …Read more