Keakealani

I guess it's a little late, but for me I try to think of solfege as all in relation to other solfege, especially the tonic triad (i.e., do mi sol). Every pitch has a relationship/pull to the one of those notes - ti obviously moves up to do, fa generally moves down to me. La moves down to sol, and re can move either up or down depending on context, but nonetheless fits right between do and mi. This can work for minor modes and non-diatonic pitches, too. In tonal music, most of the chromatic alterations you encounter in a sightsinging example are secondary leading tones, so you can just treat them as "ti do" in whatever temporary key the secondary implies. The other possibility is an upper chromatic neighbor, which usually to me equates to "le sol" or "fa mi" in terms of sound. Also, it helps to figure out what the relationship sounds like between do and every other pitch. That will help you keep tied to a tonal center and not get "off" - if you miss one pitch and only do everything intervallically from the last pitch, the entire rest of the example would be incorrect. Everyone is different, but I have found that for me I really try to associate a color/sound to each solfege syllable, regardless of key (well, I was trained in a moveable do system, and don't have perfect pitch). It can be the tension of dissonance vs. consonance, or just simply the way it tunes to the other notes in the chord. Anyway, hope this helps! ^^;

The best thing to do, whatever your chosen major might look like, is to browse through the requirements for various different schools. I'm not familiar with the UK at all, but it looks like it's a LOT different than what is asked of undergraduates in the US (although admittedly the program I'm in is not really a top-notch one). Piano is not going to make or break you, but knowing piano is definitely going to help you and it will make you a lot more competitive in the music world. My piano skills are not great, but they're better than nothing, and it is important to at least be roughly able to plunk a few things out, both compositionally in terms of conceiving chords and stuff, but also in terms of general musicality, depending on what your eventual goals are as a career. Also, it sounds like you have a good theory background, but just keep it up - theory is also very useful to composing, in my opinion, and you will never regret knowing too much about music, nor can you really ever get to that point, I think.

I honestly can't remember if I was ever taught the concept of meter specifically - I know we addressed it in my college theory class, but that really assumed we already understood the concept of meter and were just reviewing more complex ways to deal with it. I would say, though, that I do think listening to examples is probably the best way, at least for me. Have students listen to a piece and find the beat or pulse, just on a single scale. Then ask them to determine if there is any beat or pulse that is consistently stronger, and work with that. Something along those lines. Obviously the important part is to find strong examples that clearly illustrate differences in meter (like compound vs. simple meter, etc.) And then beyond that, yeah, it probably does depend more on where the student is in his or her musical background and cognitive development.

Haha, funny. I didn't read all the responses, but I guess I did it the wrong way for my last piece (a woodwind quintet) - I gave myself (the conductor) a concert score, and my performers transposed parts, and then just transposed in my head when I needed to reference certain notes. But, there are a lot of reasons for that. When I took my score into lessons every week, generally my teacher would be playing piano, so it's just easier for him to play five voices when they're all the same transposition, and the point of my lesson isn't to test my comp teacher's transposing skills (which were fine - I accidentally brought in a transposed score once and he played it just as well xD) but to deal with problems in my composition, so that's the bigger issue. He did make it a point to remind me to note whether it was a concert or transposed score, though. Then also, for myself personally, I was rehearsing my piece with people missing every so often, and it's a lot easier for me to sing the missing parts (voice is my primary instrument, so that's all I could really do) when it was in concert pitch, so that's just a random consideration. It depends on what kind of singer you are, I guess - some singers have no problem transposing while singing, but I'm not really one of them, because I tune based on the sonorities and it's hard for me to sing a pitch that doesn't appear to be in the chord from first glance.... and my transposing is terrible as it is, being a singer and never having to deal with that before like, this year. I definitely don't have problems reading transposing scores when called for, but I am not a conductor, and as a composer I find it a lot easier to work with a concert score unless I am just trying to give myself practice. It's good to look at the transposing version for range checks and the like, but typically it doesn't seem necessary to me until nearing the end of the compositional practice, especially if you just keep in mind the range limitations in terms of sounding pitch. But that's just me... not really based on any facts, just personal experience, limited as it may be.

I was always taught that a perfect interval moving into a tritone is okay if it isn't in the bass - was that incorrect, or just a stylistic disagreement?