McLean Macionis

This course is primarily designed to teach students how to use Ableton Live 12 to produce music. As someone who wants to produce my own music but doesn't know anything about music theory, I found this course to be very helpful in introducing me to different aspects of the app and equipping me with basic skills of music production. However, as a beginner, you definitely need to spend more time at the start of the course to navigate the app outside of class in the lab, especially during the first project. Grading is mostly based upon projects, and as long as you satisfy the technical criteria in the rubric (eg, not clipping & following exporting instructions), Mclean is quite a lenient grader. There are around 4 simple quizzes per semester on Live/music concepts covered in class. Overall, it's a light course that teaches you a useful skill. However, I did not find class time to be that effective, as they're mostly demonstrations of him using the app (lab-periods where you can get hands-on experience with the computers only occurs once a week).

This course is primarily designed to teach students how to use Ableton Live 12 to produce music. As someone who wants to produce my own music but doesn't know anything about music theory, I found this course to be very helpful in introducing me to different aspects of the app and equipping me with basic skills of music production. Ho …Read more

McLean is one of my favorite professors because he truly cares about what he is teaching and is also an active artist that releases music. His guidance and experience in music production comes from years of professional experience and I highly recommend this course if you are interested in making any type of music.

One of my most interesting and fun classes so far, very engaging professors that accommodated to everyone's needs, it was also very welcoming to students who were not super knowledgable about music theory and/or knew how to play instruments.