best schools for vocal major

musicprnt
Wed, 09 Dec 2015 23:50:42 +0000

@rockinmomab:
Well said (and I realized my own post was a bit garbled, I had a music school inside a conservatory, should be music school in a university …). I don’t know how many people I have hear dismiss the academics in conservatories and music programs in general, that they aren’t rigorous, etc and often people will say if you go to a music school inside a university, you have to take general ed classes, and those provide academic rigor, etc. It is true that at most conservatories, the liberal arts classes are pretty limited, and aren 't always so high level. However, to be honest, most kids taking general ed classes tend to take the easiest ones they can, unless universities suddenly are different, when I went to school most of the general ed classes were taught by grad students, and weren’t exactly rigorous, I learned more about economics at my first job talking to a guard who was a professional student then I learned in two semesters of economics at school, and many of the general ed requirement classes, even the math and science ones, were pretty lame (I was a science major originally, so the majors track courses covered those requirements).

The music theory and ear training classes are not easy, and the advanced classes in these areas are as challenging as anything I can remember taking, outside some theory of computation classes, and things like music history and the like are easily as challenging as a typical general ed class (to tell you how kids thought about them in my day, used to call them “crap courses”…not fair, some of them were really good, but most were okay).