Matan Rubinstein

Great teacher for students who are motivated. Gets impatient with bull@$#% from lazy students. If you take the class seriously he is definitely worth your time!

If you have to take music 111, he is your only choice. Apparently his first semester he was REALLY hard. He has learned since then and has attempted to make the class easier. His notes are ridiculously hard. Even for people with a background in music. His tests consist of a performance and a paper test. The performances aren't too bad if you really practice, but his paper tests are horrible. He begins the class with a ridiculous curve because he expects everyone to do bad. He doesn't understand how to teach music to people who dont know the basics. He is very difficult and not very flexible. He rushes the material because there is so much to cover and leaves students behind if they dont understand. I suggest taking him pass/fail because it is very hard to get an A.

Call me crazy, but Matan Rubinstein turned out to be one of my favorite professors. Rubinstein has a great deal of knowledge about music and interesting opinions and ideas. He has a lot of enthusiasm for what he teaches and I think he really wanted us to understand and appreciate what he knew about music - however, for education majors with no music background, Rubinstein's teaching came across as too complex and deep at times. Despite the confusion, I really enjoyed listening to his lectures and learning from him. We covered a lot of info in one semester, but if you truly tried hard to learn it and actually did the work and practiced, you'd know quite a bit of music theory in the end! Even though the 2 performance exams made many of us nearly pass out in anxiety, the requirements really weren't that difficult now that I think about it - sing a song in solfege (do,re,mi), play a scale on the piano...we never had to actually play a complete song for him on the piano. As others posted below, his grading method might be questionable. Fortunately for me, if he had a bias, it went in my favor - he was rather generous with the points when I messed up, but I just assumed that he could tell that I knew the stuff but made mistakes because I was nervous. He can be difficult to get a hold of outside of class sometimes, but he is willing to help and tries to help. A couple times he cancelled labs to set aside time to meet with students individually for help - so either you got the day off or you got extra help (good situation either way, I think). He has a goofy sense of humor and amusing randomness about him, and he often sang songs to pass time while waiting for lab to start. He was not afraid to sing to us, that's for sure, and really encouraged us to let go of our fears of singing in class. He kind of has an eccentric music taste, but that made class even more entertaining. Definitely an interesting guy - I think the kind of professor you either grow to love or love to hate.

Does not answer students questions fully or well. We had to write a song but he never gave us a rubric he only explained verbally what he wanted and kept changing his expectations. Test questions are worded difficultly.