Your young musician may have loved his high school music program, but the transition to a college or conservatory music program carries huge differences for music majors. Between the insane music course loads and intensity levels, well, let's just say it's not your high school band. Here's what to expect:
- Course load: Everyone graduates with the same number of units, but requirements for music majors are so rigid - there are so many classes and some must be taken every semester for all four years - the decision to become a music major must be made very early. It also means playing a numbers games. While your child's roommate may take four courses a semester, music majors take eight to ten. Some of those courses may be worth only a unit or two, but that's not a reflection of the intensity of the class; it allows students to fit all their requirements into their credit limits. Finals week and music juries can be brutal. Spring semester becomes a haze of recitals, as your child plays for his own and friends' concerts. Some musicians will revel in that. Others will be horrified. The horror-struck should probably consider a music minor instead.
- Course content: In high school, your musician probably took an ensemble course, private lessons and, perhaps, a music theory class. At the conservatory level, students take all those, plus aural perception and ear training, piano (even if they're not pianists), voice (even if they're not vocal majors), music history, computer music and various music electives. They also have general education requirements to complete, which vary according to college/conservatory differences. At some universities, the science requirement, for example, can be satisfied by a course in the physics of music. In addition, music education majors must learn to play every instrument, and take teacher education courses too.
- Listening or recital course: This course goes by different names on different campuses - and it can be a welcome or rude surprise, depending on your child's ability to plan ahead. It's essentially a class that requires students to attend 10-20 concerts per semester every single semester. That may sound like fun - and for many students, it is - but procrastinators will be in deep trouble if they don't stay on top of the requirement. A case of mono can derail it. And it's a graduation requirement. Music majors soon learn to attend as many concerts as possible in the first three or four weeks of school.
- Repertoire: How different your musician finds college-level repertoire depends entirely on the rigor of his high school music program. Some find the leap to college repertoire extremely challenging; some find it a continuation of what they're used to. Either way, your musician will find himself exposed to a lot of different styles of music through his ensembles, his private lessons, and music electives.
- Rehearsals: In high school, band or orchestra met every day for 45 minutes and most musicians, unfortunately, practiced on their own only occasionally. In college, ensembles meet only a couple of times a week, but it's for two or more hours, typically in the evening, and most, if not all, the musicians practice many, many hours on their own. So, students need to build daily practice room hours into their already-full schedule. They also participate in multiple informal ensembles, whose practice times vary according to student schedules - so an 11 p.m. rehearsal is not unheard of when recitals roll around. (Don't gripe about that to your child - he's the one who set the time.)
- Other differences: The music department becomes like a family, students say. Your child will be playing not only for himself and his major ensemble, but for friends' trios, quartets and octets. Music is the topic of choice at meals and in the dorms, and rehearsals go late into the night. And, says one sophomore at Northwestern University, "It's an opportunity to not only interact with sophomores, juniors, and seniors, but graduate/post grad players who are really at the top of their game."
- Rethinking the major? Course requirements for music minors are substantially less than for music majors. Minors still take private lessons and play in ensembles, but the course load for music theory, aural perception and piano, for example, are significantly less, and the listening requirement may be only a couple of semesters, not eight. And if he decides to go the non-major or minor route, he may be able to still participate in a performance ensemble.
