A 17-year-old student of mine is applying to music at three universities. His family has decided that a degree is best at achieving employment in the real world.
I think this is unfortunate, and a possible waste of four years of his life. He has expressed no desire to teach music. He is a performer, a guitar rock musician. He writes and sings rock music.
This young man has now stopped taking SLS instruction to prepare for a Grade 9 vocal exam with another teacher. He is learning to sing classical in German, French, and Italian. He is having no trouble converting, because he is a natural. He gets it. This training, of course, is a prerequisite to university entry.
This young man will soak up everything at university. He is very intelligent.
What I’m concerned about is what he is not going to learn while away at university. He is not going to learn the latest blues and jazz riffs, or improvization on guitar, which he could get from private instruction with a great guitarist. He is not going to learn proper and safe technique to make “rock” sounds with his voice which he could get from private instruction. He is not going to enhance skills that can help him get a job in today’s music industry as a rock musician.
A better choice, I feel, would have been a college that teaches everything needed to succeed in today’s music business, along with private instruction for guitar and voice. These colleges are hard to find, but they do exist. There he could learn song writing, record engineering, music production, law, management….the list goes on. A topnotch college teaches all these things with the latest technology. There I said it……the ever-so-important word to succeed in today’s music business!! Technology! This would be a great addition to his already-natural talent.
This is just my two-cents worth. However, he will make a great school music teacher someday, and receive the pension, health benefits and dental benefits that go along with all that. The lucky ones here are his yet-to-be students!! I just hope he doesn’t regret his career choice.