Contemporary/Commercial Songwriting?

jazzvocals
Mon, 08 Jul 2013 19:19:56 +0000

One distinction between music students and other students applying to college is that so many music students have identified a particular faculty member they want to study with. It makes sense since the music student is typically joining a particular faculty member’s studio for private lessons. I think your typical student in other fields isn’t approaching the process this way until applying to grad school.

So…

Do you have faculty members that you want to study with at each of the schools you mentioned?

Have you studied these faculty members’ work? Their other students?

Have you had any contact with these faculty members?

Another issue…

One piece of advice given my D applying to music schools for jazz is “Don’t pay $50k/year for jazz jam. Go to a college to get a good education where there is a local music scene. The music will find you and you will find it.”

Now you can say to that person, who happened to be living in NYC teaching music in private school full time and part time in college, and working on PhD in music, “Wow that is easy for you to say. I think I need to go to music school.”

Aside from the issue of merit scholarships…

I think the issue of “Is there a music scene that I can be a part of” is an important one. Gigs on campus, Gigs in the town. Some sense of community fostered by somebody - a local venue or songwriters circle or the school? To that end, I would say USC, Berklee, William Patterson, Miami and Belmont stand out from the others to me on your list as providing access to a local music scene. Denver I am not sure about. I would suppose a metropolitan area like that would offer some opportunities. What is LIPA? Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts? The others may be great college towns and work fine for you. Can’t really say.

Interested to hear your assessment of individual faculty members and the local music scene at the schools on your list.