Diatonic Harmony & Counterpoint

If you want to skate through with an A, this is not your guy. If you want to learn music theory really well and have fun doing it, DeBellis is terrific. As a theorist, he takes the material very seriously and expects that you will, too. He grades assignments very carefully, which (if you have a soul) will make you want to write them more carefully.
Even without considering the material itself, on the sole basis of this increased discipline, I'm a better musician for having taken his class.

He's also hilarious, in a very dryly intellectual way. Usually they're his own words (one of his catchphrases is "I commend this example to your attention"), but I wasn't surprised when a Monty Python reference slipped out of his mouth midway through the term.

I'm writing this review before the final. My grade probably won't be as high as I'd have liked. It doesn't matter. I loved DeBellis's class and I'd gladly take another with him.

It's a shame that Columbia doesn't appreciate Susser, because he's fantastic!! I've heard mixed things about how he teaches chromatic, but he's the best for diatonic. Right now, he's only teaching Fundamentals, which is a shame, because he's the only reason I don't hate theory and everyone should get to benefit from him. He sometimes makes the work really easy and sometimes he unnecessarily complicates it, but in the end, you find yourself amply prepared to do advanced theory and compose on your own. We need to send around a petition to get him more classes. He's always ready to meet with people outside of class and he'll check over the drafts of your compositions if you ask him. I give him an A.