Learnin music for college

Rampart

i want to go to college to study music , but , i dont do music in Secondary school. i play guitar , and am startin to learn keyboard & drums, and tryin to read sheet music , wherever i can find it. can anybody give me a small list of things i should learn before trying to get into college? and anyone who studies music in college, or even better , teaches music , could you plaese help me out with what to learn , and what i should know. any help is much appreciated.

leninbenjamin

i havn't studied music at third level, only 2nd, but seeing as no one here has answered i'll give a stab at it.

First thing would be definitly to learn to read music as best you can, get to know the key signatures and all that.

Second would be to learn the theory behind the scales and chords. The tonic, dominant, the chords of the key, that sort of thing. If you have a good knowledge of the basic scales (major scale and its modes i mean) then there isn't much that will wrong foot you when you go in from my experience, although i'm not really sure how advanced you'd need to go with this, i'm sure that most colleges will have courses in their first year to bring everyone's knowledge up to the same level.

Another thing would be to learn how to keep a rhythm. A few people i know (myself included) can play to a pretty good level, but are buggered when they play in a group situation. They just can't keep a rhythm and this can be incredibly frustrating to play with. Just work with a metronome, that kind of thing.

Having said that, i've no idea really what it's like to study at third level. If i were you i'd try to find out what exactly your college will expect from you. try to contact someone in the dept. I'm sure there would be someone there willing to fill you in.

swingking

I study music in college in TCD and if you haven't got the musical knowledge of a 6th grade student theory, you won't get in.

Generally, you need to go for a 2hour examination in order to get into the higher degrees such as TCD or UCD.

The other courses such as Ballyfermot ot DIT, I'm not too sure about.

The higher degree courses only deal with classical music (nothing else)
The course is very intense

LundiMardi

I've thought about applying for music... But to be honest, like the trinity course, most of them are classicly based. I reckon i would be bored to tears.

John

Does the TCD course not focus on modern composition too? Like Cage, Stockhausen, Lucier, etc. I thought it did jazz too?

swingking

The jazz option is only available as a 8 week module in the 3rd year. The modern music is the same. The music is broken down into as follows

1st year: early baroque and 17th century music
2nd year: 18th and 19th century music
3rd year: 20th century music eg. schoenberg, berb and webern; as well as stravinsky
4th year: pre 16th century music

LundiMardi

swingking wrote:

1st year: early baroque and 17th century music
2nd year: 18th and 19th century music
3rd year: 20th century music eg. schoenberg, berb and webern; as well as stravinsky
4th year: pre 16th century music

Boooooooring.

ball ox

Rampart wrote:

i want to go to college to study music , but , i dont do music in Secondary school. i play guitar , and am startin to learn keyboard & drums, and tryin to read sheet music , wherever i can find it. can anybody give me a small list of things i should learn before trying to get into college? and anyone who studies music in college, or even better , teaches music , could you plaese help me out with what to learn , and what i should know. any help is much appreciated.

if you go for arts in ucd you can pick music without doing an exam and a second subject, then in 2nd year you can continue studying pure music if you are doing well enough. I coldnt even read music when I went into first year as I was completely self taught. They split the music theory (tonal harmoney) course into a fast paced class and an easy class. After 6 months in the easy class I'd say I was well past leaving cert level at music theory although I did genuinely enjoy the subject and studied it in my own time. If you are serious about music this is a foolproof route. Not everyone agrees that the BMus course in UCD is brilliant though........ Personally I think it's great. Hope this helps, I was in the same situation a few years ago and no one seemed to be able to help.

Alter-Ego

Ballyfermot offer some music courses. You might be interested in the Rock School.

www.bcfe.ie

LundiMardi

Alter-Ego wrote:

Ballyfermot offer some music courses. You might be interested in the Rock School.

www.bcfe.ie

The rock school is a waste of two years imo.

Léan

LundiMardi wrote:

I've thought about applying for music... But to be honest, like the trinity course, most of them are classicly based. I reckon i would be bored to tears.

I'm not too into the classical stuff either, I've been looking into studying music in UCC and it's based around Wolrd Music and Trad rather then classical and composition like other places. UCC seems to be a very different place to study music Interesting stuff

Key ofG

I've done the research on the different courses out of interest myself,can play guitar, drums and a bit of piano. It's true though anyone intending on studying music at that level needs to know their theory pretty well!
Research as many cousres that interest you.May I advise taking up piano/Keyboard as it helps ,your both learning to read music an taking up a new instrument!Alot of cousres are Classical orientated, nothing wrong with it . Sometimes its nice to open your ears to another music genre.
Try something new you might like it.:rolleyes:

fonpokno

im only in 6th year still but if ya wanna do music in college but ya havent done it for the leaving then there's a foundation music course in DIT rathmines! its a year long course and its basically designed to catch you up on all the basics before you go for one of the music degrees! (thats only what i've read - http://conservatory.dit.ie/foundation-certificate-in-music.php) also i wanna do music in college but im into the performance side and the only decent course i could find with more performance than anythin practical classicy stuff is the DIT B.Mus one, the good thing too is that the audition/interview thingy is first (march or april) and then there's a written exam after that if you pass the audition, you can get the sample papers off the DIT website too!
kinda lost track of what i was sayin so i dont know if that as any help!

also you can get this little book in music shops or whatever and its all the associated board theory from grades 1 - 5 and its got everythin you ned to know as well as some stuff not even necessary for the entrance exams. its only a little thing but its reeeaaally helpful!