What kind of Music Education do you have?

Hi everyone! :D

So I was curious as to what sort of musical studies everyone here on YC has had. I'm sure this question has popped up on here over the years, but I wanna take a poll of the people who are currently active on the site.

I've slapped a poll up at the top of the thread (as you can see). I hope everyone can answer honestly. If you'd like to be more specific with your answer, feel free to post a reply. So for example, maybe you have half a bachelor's degree, or maybe you've taken a year off or whatever. Also, feel free to show school spirit and tell which school(s) you've attended or are attending (or plan to attend.)

I just wanna get a feel for the musicality of the fora overall.

What styles do you like to compose in? What voices or instruments do you prefer to compose for? Do you like to compose for the trombone? Why? Are you a band teacher/director? If so, do you have a comp degree or a music ed degree?

These are a few things you can mention just so that we can all get a better idea of who everyone is as a composer.

There are a ton of great composers on YC who have great music to share, and contribute greatly to the fora, but it be nice to know more about them as Composers and as people.

I'll start us off in the following post. I hope everyone can at least vote in the poll even if they decide not to go into the details with a full post.

:D :D :D

--Miggy Torres

(P.S. This is also a good place for you is you just feel like bragging about your accomplishments or any awards or commissions you may have gotten.)

Hi, I'm Miggy Torres. Most of you YCers know me as the guy with the frightening profile pic or the guy who always literally shouts in the "Shoutbox."

I'm straight out high school where I was in a choir and I did musical theatre a bit. I've taught myself theory and composition using books, the internet, and my high school teachers/voice coaches. Unfortunately, my school didn't have a theory program, so, as I said earlier, taught myself theory. Still, last year, I took the AP Music Theory Test and got a 5 on both the aural and non-aural sections, so i think I'm in a pretty good place for where I am. In the fall (2011) I plan to attend the Ithaca College School of Music where I will be majoring in Music Composition (Can't wait!!! :D). I'll also be studying voice there. After that, I plan on getting a Master's in composition as well.

I enjoy writing for choir most of the time. This is mostly due to the fact that I sing and, as I said earlier, I was in my school's chamber choir. A lot of my influences have been choral composers like Eric Whitacre and Z. Randall Stroope, but I also love composers like John Mackey, Steven Bryant, and Jim Dooley who write works mostly for Winds or Soundtracks. I also occasionally listen to the really old classics like Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Debussy, Vaughn Williams, etc., but not really as much as the guys I listed above.

As far as learning the art of composition goes (as opposed to just music theory), I have yet to have a lot of formal training. Still, I read all the books I can get my hands on, and I try to learn as much as I can from my heroes, whether that means reading John Mackey's Blog posts, or furiously analyzing the scores of Eric Whitacre's choral music.

Anyway, I hope this helps everyone here at the YC fora get to know a little more about me as a person and as a composer.

I wonder... are there any other Ithaca College students out there? Alumni? Prospective students?

--Miggy Torres

I've been playing instruments since I was a little kid. I'm 15 now. I grew up with a piano in my house and have always known how to read music. Played viola since 4th grade. Guitar since 6th. Picked up drums and bass along the way. Taking Ap theory sparked my interest in composition this past year, I don't even know what I got on the exam yet though. Next year I'm going to interlochen as a guitar major, but I hope to change to a composition major asap. Regardless, I'm going to get so much out of that. I plan to major in theory or composition in college eventually.

-will e johnson

BFA in Comp from Tulane. gfy. Got into rock music, realized there was more, got into that, rinse and repeat. I still don't think I know a damn thing about music, fwiw.

What styles do you like to compose in? I do noisy, meaningless stuff. I try to be punk about it, but that's hard when you're a white-collar academic with a 9-5er.

What voices or instruments do you prefer to compose for? Strings and electronic mostly. Air columns give me the heebie-jeebies. Also they're significantly less intuitive to me for some reason, even though I used to play it WAY back in the day.

Are you a band teacher/director? I used to be in a band. Don't think that's what you meant.

I graduated this past May with a B. A. in Music with a certificate in music composition, so I fall between categories as well. (I also double majored with Mechanical Engineering, so that way I can pay the bills. :toothygrin: )

I'm still deciding what styles of composition I'm going to focus on. Now that I'm out of school, getting performers is going to be a bit tougher. I'll still try to use my connections to the university to get my stuff performed. Since I play French horn, it will probably be easiest for me to get in with the horn and other brass professors. I'll probably try writing some (more) horn choir or brass ensemble stuff. I've also had a good idea for a percussion ensemble piece for a while, but finding percussionists can be a huge pain, at least at my school. I don't know if that piece will ever happen or not. Since I got Cubase 6 a few weeks ago, I'll probably use that for composing things using sample libraries and such just for posting them on the internet; maybe some webseries maker or something will find it and use it, we'll see. It will also be handy for when I want to make better sounding MIDI mockups of whatever concert music I've composed.

uhhh 1 year so far in Juilliard pre-college as a composition major? No pre-college options on there. ;)

What about: "I've taken college-level Composition, Theory, and Orchestration classes as part of my college's Performance program."

For perofmance majors, composition is often a required and important componant....

I hate to say, but this is an US survey only.

I did not do music- major or minor in something that would be a non-US equivalent, but I would not describe my education as 'minimal'. I had some private lessons from age 11 until 18-ish and after that started with selfstudy. Both private education and slefstudy is not in the list. But I am sure " I know the basics, like intervals and diatonic chords, but nothing fancy." does not apply to me, I can do more :D

I don't have a bachelor's degree! lol :P

Well, I've read enough books on music theory to sit through a music theory 4 class (for a bachelors program at a college for a weekend thing) without learning anything I didn't already know. I had to restrain myself from correcting the professor as well; he was talking about tuning theory, and he not only claimed that Bach used equal temperament, but got his terminology mixed up as far as commas go.

I know less about orchestration, but I'm learning; inter-library loan is an awesome thing.

“If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.” - Frank Zappa

I have Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees from Royal Holloway, University of London (note: U. of London is a bit like OxBridge in that the 'university' is a collective of several colleges, each with different combinations of courses available. RoHo is more of an arts and humanities college, hence a strong music department. It's also not, geographically speaking, in London). Both degrees are not specifically in composition: the BMus is a general course in which I elected to do composition, performance and a dissertation as my Honours modules, and the Mmus was half composition and half performance (unusually for a postgrad degree, the course had elective modules with a small compulsory course). However, the level of tuition I received is equivalent to an art music composition degree, something which I am unsure is actually offered in any UK institution. The rest of my studies are also indispensable to a composer. I intend to do a doctorate in composition in the future.

I also have a Diploma of the Royal Schools of Music in cello performance. As my performance experience is the better part of my compositional training, I regard this as a qualification in this field.

We neglect in this poll to acknowledge the benefits of countless hours spent rehearsing, performing, messing about, practising and listening to music. These are also an invaluable part of my compositional education. I maintain that being able to perform is a large part of being able to compose, as nothing else can teach you about the capabilities of real musicians as being one yourself. In addition, it is a very good way to find out the mechanics of writing and how composers do things to create a certain effect.

What styles do I like to compose in? - my own. Not a flippant response, I hope, but I don't like to divide the world into 'schools' or position myself as belonging to a particular direction. I take ideas from Janacek, Sibelius, Thomas Ades, James MacMillan, Elgar, Nielsen, Bach, Bartok and Lutoslawski (those are the ones I am aware of ) but I try to avoid sounding like a pot-pourri of existing music. That said, I actively seek out music that is unfamiliar to me to get new ideas. Things that interest me in my own and others' music are concealed subtleties - symbolism, clever games, tricks -; interesting and individual orchestration; novel harmonies; and ensuring every aspect of the composition is used to a worthwhile effect. It is important to me that music actually means something.

What do I like to compose for? - ideally the orchestra, be that that a chamber ensemble or a full symphony orchestra. I love orchestration and with the large ensemble many more things become possible. What I regard as my best work to date is an orchestral piece. But I also like to try out chamber groupings, often with more unusual combinations of players. I sometimes write for a single-line instrument, unaccompanied, which requires a very disciplined and inspired approach to write well with such a small resource. I seem to compose for choral groups quite a bit, although I find certain aspects of the vocal ensemble frustrating; the more limited range and technical abilities compared to instruments; the need to find pitches; the process of fitting the music to a text. I don't think I enjoy the sound of a choir as much either. Solo vocal music is a little different as one can combine voice and instruments, which produces more interesting effects.

You'd be surprised at how many holes some students have in their understanding: even in more "advanced" courses. When taking a Chromaticism course a couple semesters back, I distinctly remembering nearly half of the class being unaware of when it was and was not appropriate to modulate

Mind you, I wasn't at the best of institutions, but we had extremely capable instructors.

I was at a good institution, and we had first-years who couldn't read the bass clef. This is as a result of traditionally important things like thoroughbass and harmony being increasingly optional in sixth-form courses in favour of pop and jazz modules, because it's so, like, elitist, to expect aspiring bachelor of music undergraduates to understand common-practice harmony, isn't it?

... traditionally important things like thoroughbass and harmony being increasingly optional... in favour of pop and jazz modules...

I'm just curious, what do you mean by this?

I'm just curious, what do you mean by this?

You'd hope that, as pop music does contain tonal harmony (somewhat less complicated than Bach for the most part, but still), stuff like harmony and writing cadences would still be part of the curriculum, but no. Apart from the fact that far too many students base their worldview on guitar chords, meaning stuff like four-part voice-leading isn't even on their radar (OMG im like the first person ever to discover power chords! Wooo! rock n' ROLL!!!!), pop and jazz gets taught via a 'social' perspective: i.e. the fact that a song influenced/was influenced by the Velvet Underground (everything leads to the Velvet Underground eventually) and influenced a stoner in a North London squat who then invented pscho-trance-punk for a few months in 1979 before dying aged 19 from an overdose, is all waaaaaaay more important than how the chords move into one another, or the interval between bass and melody. Anything even vaguely connected to social rights or politics, or Nirvana, is untouchable and heretics are burned by a mob for uttering a word of dissent against it. It's often rather laughable how some derivitave pop landfill is elevated to the status of some seminal and massively-important-to-your-education monument, yet no proper analysis can be done on it because there's nigh-on nothing to analyse. Three chords, over and over again. Pop and rock is fun to dance to. But it doesn't offer much to study academically. Yet students are increasingly taking these 'soft' options and missing out on dull-but-important things like chorale harmony.

This does apply more to the sixth-form, but as first-year undergrads have only just finished the upper sixth, the problem lingers into university. Lecturers are aghast at how much they overestimate what first-years can understand and simply can't teach at a higher level. Some students do work, though, and as you say a lot of the 'chaff' gets weeded out pretty early on. But universities are businesses now, and they don't care too much who comes as long as they pay.

The rot seems to be spreading though. I am being utterly truthful when I say that a lecture on 'Gender sterotypes in Missy Elliot's 'Work It' video' was held at Senate House in Bloomsbury last year. This from a serious and prestigous academic institution.

While I don't disagree with a lot of what you're saying, I have to take issue with:

... jazz gets taught via a 'social' perspective... the fact that a song influenced [another] is waaaaaaay more important than how the chords move

...

We go through the same theory/harmony/counterpoint/history courses as everyone else.... :whistling:

As my comp prof says occasionally: "Jazz is not pop." He couldn't be more right.

Obviously if your instructors are taking that tack then you do not go to a good institution.

Wait, why?

Interesting topic.

To answer the question, aside from a few private lessons in theory, a semester of harmony in high school, and a year as a music major in college (didn't finish my degree), I'm entirely self-taught in composition.

I do, however, have 40 years of experience in composition, so even if I don't always know the proper terminology for some music theory concepts, I pretty much know what I'm doing. ;)

I took a music class in high school and I've studied on a couple of music theory sites. I've got a long way to go.

Interesting topic.

To answer the question, aside from a few private lessons in theory, a semester of harmony in high school, and a year as a music major in college (didn't finish my degree), I'm entirely self-taught in composition.

I do, however, have 40 years of experience in composition, so even if I don't always know the proper terminology for some music theory concepts, I pretty much know what I'm doing. ;)

What kind of music do you make? What kind of organization have you worked for as a composer?

For example I go to a small branch campus of Indiana University that probably has around fifty music students and a nonexistent budget past a modest salary for the single full time instructor and maybe half a dozen adjuncts. Regardless of this, I have learned more in the last two years about music than I have in my entire life. The faculty are extremely dedicated and my professor is a very talented and worth many times what he makes. I would argue that my school, although having basically zero prestige and costing less than three thousand a year is an amazing school because of the quality of the education I am receiving there.

...Then again... it could just be that you don't know what you're missing.

I mean... common sense tells you that more prestigious school will be more selective in the talent it accepts. So you get your stuff performed by better groups, so it ends up sounding better if you wanna show someone. Also, you're more likely to get good connections in the music industry if you go to a more prestigious school. This is for a few reasons. First is the rich alumni network the school might have. The next is connections you make with other students who go on to do stuff after they graduate. And finally you have better teachers with more connections. Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are many passionate music teachers working at universities all over the world, but wouldn't common sense tell you that a more prestigious school is gonna want the most knowledgeable and passionate teachers for their school? And wouldn't common sense also tell you that since those more prestigious institutions pay more, more teachers will be competing for jobs at those places? In the end you get the best of the best. Now, this only works in theory, of course. As I said before, just because I work at a less prestigious school, doesn't mean I can't teach. All I'm saying is that in theory, it makes sense for "better" schools to have better students, better teachers, better groups, better facilities, better connection opportunities, and better funding for better programs.

That said, I'm just saying this for the sake of argument. I don't mean anything against you personally, lol. :toothygrin:

Well...

I hold a piano diploma and have done concerts in Greece and outside of Greece.

I also hold degrees in harmony, counterpoint and very soon (on the weekend) fugue. It's rather mandatory over here.

Still my main degrees are an MMus in composition and a PhD in composition from Rhul (no idea who came up with the ROHO acronyms... It's always been rhul... :D).

I think that you are born a composer and not made into one, but I know plenty composers who do NOT utilize their full potential due to lack of knowledge and/or experience! I guess the older members here might know me, but this probably for the younger generation of young composers! :D

There is no option for me in that poll :( at least add "Other" :toothygrin:

Well...

I hold a piano diploma and have done concerts in Greece and outside of Greece.

I also hold degrees in harmony, counterpoint and very soon (on the weekend) fugue. It's rather mandatory over here.

Still my main degrees are an MMus in composition and a PhD in composition from Rhul (no idea who came up with the ROHO acronyms... It's always been rhul... :D).

I think that you are born a composer and not made into one, but I know plenty composers who do NOT utilize their full potential due to lack of knowledge and/or experience! I guess the older members here might know me, but this probably for the younger generation of young composers! :D

Why would you think composers are born to be?

I see no reason for an instructor to be talking about Bach or equal temperament in the fourth semester of theory. We covered that in Theory 1...

From my understanding, I didn't think that they covered tunings other than equal AT ALL in a bachelor's degree program, stemming from all my music major friends who still think well temperament and equal temperament are the same thing. (although maybe that is because they aren't composition majors)

The college was Liberty by the way; not a very good music school, they didn't even have a composition program. I still have read a crap-load of college books on music theory though.