Electronic music minor at UCSC

kmcmom13
Fri, 14 Jun 2013 06:00:18 +0000

If uc irvine is giving you a lot of money, would you consider taking classes on the side to develop your musicianship and then maybe looking at going for the second major in music tech, or self studying to eventually apply by portfolio to something like this masters program? – this is fairly well known among electronic musicians and a student from my son’s program has attended it. It’s one of a mere handful of intergrated MFAs in its disciplines of high calibre in the country. While one normally has a music degree as a foundation, you may find other ways to access it
[About icit](ICIT | Integrated Composition Improvisation and Technology – A Doctoral Degree in Music at the University of California, Irvine)

I don’t know anything about the other school you’re looking at, but uci seems like a good fit for someone interested in computers and electronic music. I don’t think it matters whether you minor or not – many music schools do not allow for minors, for a variety of good reasons – but the trick would be to see if they would let you take some of the classes and studio by special permission. This does happen.

Eg. If you study music “academically” you can minor, but whenever there’s a serious “hands on” style program it’s rare to find a minor available because of the sequencing. Eg. not to many self-respecting composition classes will let you in without the prereq theory, etc. But sometimes you can still “get what you need.”

Example: friend of son’s was a great musician but not as experienced in composition and production as my son during high school. He wanted into a specialized music technology/comp/electronic favored program that is highly competitive (which my son attended.) He wasn’t accepted, but was able to take several of the lower level classes and develop his work, and is now situated to play 3 upcoming festivals/shows with my son and another major from the program.

So he was around the right people, instructors and program and although not a major, has enhanced his talent considerably whereby he was chosen over someone else who hadn’t accessed much electronic music/interactive performance training (but who was an excellent musician.)

This is a small example, but to my mind a minor is not particularly valuable on paper as far as the paper itself goes, but the intrinsic learning is what’s valuable, and so are the peers. So to me, it would be better to access the training (and peers) you need at the place with the strongest major program than worrying too much about whether they let you put it on paper or not.

There are always many ways to achieve your goal and in your case if you’re not at a place to access portfolio or auditioned programs that does not lock you out of developing your skill to the level at some future point where you can enjoy or employ your potential :)

So I’d say take the money, and take every opportunity you can to access the resources on and off campus to develop your potential. There are so any ways to put a CS degree to work in the field of electronic music that I’d say keep going that direction and find a way to merge the two eventually.

Life’s a marathon, not a race, and time is on your side :)