<p>i am going to be a college freshman this fall and i am currently majoring in music (BA) and plan on adding a double major. I would really just like to do music (a BM degree) but do not know which one to do. i would like to get my masters and doctorate in conducting and teach college, so i'm not sure if i should do music performance or music ed. any suggestions?</p>
<p>Music ed degrees are normally pursued by those who want to teach younger students at the K-12 level or in a community music school setting. College teachers, particularly at the well-known programs, generally have a performance background.</p>
<p>You may be able to include a class or two on pedagogy in a performance major. In a music ed program, you will spend a fair amount of time on non-music classes to meet licensure requirements, your electives will be few or non-existent and you will do some student teaching, very likely at the elementary school level. If that does not sound like what you want, then you should probably stay away from music ed.</p>
<p>BassDad, are you serious about the elementary school thing? I’ve never heard of that in the two programs of which I’ve been a part, nor reports of it elsewhere. Instrumental music education majors do student teaching at school band or orchestra programs, generally either at the high school level or high school plus lower programs (and vocalists in choral programs). You make it sound as if students are forced into doing their whole internship in an elementary school classroom. Have you ever heard of this happening? I have not.</p>
<p>OP, I think for most college teaching situations you’d be okay either way. If you wanted to conduct bands or wind ensembles, music ed would probably be helpful, though that degree does seem to be something of a scarlet “A” at conservatories. Otherwise, you’d get a lot more conducting experience in an education degree, but as a performance major you could still augment your conducting study outside of your curriculum.</p>
<p>What kind of conducting are you looking to do? Orchestral, band, choral?</p>
<p>i would really like to do orchestral. if not that, then wind.</p>
<p>Generally you will be placed in a music ed program specific to your instrument. Orchestra track would include those whose instruments are in the string family. Percussion and wind players are generally band track and vocalists in choral track.</p>
<p>I know several music ed majors, some vocal and some instrumental, who did all of their student teaching at the pre-high school level. I also know some who did a mix of high school and pre-high school student teaching. It may well vary from college to college, depending on what arrangements they have made with local schools and how the local school music programs are structured. The music ed students may have some choice in the matter as well. Some teachers prefer working with younger students and may want to concentrate on that in their student teaching days.</p>
<p>The OP specifically mentioned wanting to teach at the college level. I may have misunderstood their intention by assuming that by teaching they meant giving applied music lessons. If the intent is to teach performance majors in a college setting then most of the people I know who do that have at least a BM in performance of their own. If the OP wants to teach music education at the college level or wants to direct bands at the high school level or below, then a music education degree would be the way to go. If the OP does not want to teach at all at the K-12 level, then I don’t see a lot of reason to try to get into a music ed program. I am not saying one degree is better than another, just that they usually result in different career paths.</p>
<p>“i would like to get my masters and doctorate in conducting and teach college”</p>
<p>That sounds like you want a job conducting, yes? You could really go either way for undergrad. A lot of my conductors in college had education undergrads, but I think for orchestral conducting it’s not nearly as important. The graduate degree(s) in conducting will be the most important. However, the availability of jobs at colleges and universities for someone to conduct ensembles may not be as great as for those who can help with methods classes and things like that. I think, bottom line, your best bet would be to find someone who’s doing what you want to do and ask what they’d recommend.</p>
<p>Sorry to sound standoffish, BassDad, it’s just that I’ve never heard of someone who didn’t want to do their internship in elementary music be forced to do so, and it really caught me off guard. Certainly, there are a very large number of programs that do not force ed majors to do that, and that might be something to investigate during the application process.</p>
<p>I have never heard of someone being forced to do that either. I know people who did a fair amount of student teaching in pre-high school situations but do not know whether it was by choice or if that was the only option. It seems that a lot of music ed majors wind up doing at least some of their student teaching in the elementary grades. I did not mean to imply that anyone would be forced to do all of their student teaching at that level but wanted the OP to be aware that at least some of it frequently is done at that level. Since the OP did not mention wanting to teach at the K-12 level at all, I think they should know that the emphasis of a music ed degree is exactly that.</p>
<p>Both my son and daughter are double majoring in music ed. According to them they are required to observe at all levels, elementary,middle and high schools and are limited to the amount of observation hours they can take in any particular school, level or in fact school district. As to the 6 month “student teaching” requirement, that can be done at any level but it is subject to placement availability.</p>
<p>Music8260, why don’t you make a chart of the performance curriculum and the music ed curriculum of one or more of the colleges that you are considering. Then simply see which of the curriculums that you would be more interested in.</p>
<p>I’m suggesting this because you make it quite clear that you want both your grad degrees in conducting, so if it is your goal to conduct and/or to teach conducting, the two grad degrees would likely be enough on their own to qualify you to do what you want to do and the undergrad degree might thus be somewhat unimportant to your ultimate career goal, other than as a stepping stone to grad school.</p>
<p>Once you layout the curriculums side by side, you will most likely discover that they are very similar. Most colleges will have a core music curriculum that is pretty much the same between all music specialties. Only about 30 credit hours will vary, and there may even be some overlap in that 30 credit hours.</p>
<p>In any curriculum, there may be a few classes that seem useless for your ultimate goal, but I suspect that the music ed curriculum may actually be a little better for your goal. First off in music ed, you don’t spend quite as much time studying your primary instrument and you spend more time studying other instruments. I would think that having at least a basic performance skill in all instruments would be somewhat of an advantage over just being an expert in one instrument - unless of course you wanted to conduct an all cello orchistra or an all trumpet band.</p>
<p>Also, you are more likely to have conducting classes in a music ed curriculum than a performance curriculum. At my sons college he will be taking three or four conducting classes as a music ed major. </p>
<p>And as a college level teacher of conducting, I would assume that a lot of your students would be music ed majors. So wouldn’t it make sense to have the same music background as your students?</p>
<p>Music Ed is aimed at something different then a performance degree or a conducting degree, music ed is aimed at music teachers in the K-12 space, and it is quite different. The way I look at it is music ed degree is more of a generalist position, they learn their own primary instrument plus they have to learn about other instruments and yes, about conducting (since school ensembles have conductors…). </p>
<p>With a performance degree, you are generally aimed at one instrument or if a conducting student, at conducting while learning an instrument.</p>
<p>The real question here is how would a grad program in conducting view an Ed degree? If you are planning to go on to teach at the college level in conducting then a masters is probably the minimum, and it will come down to getting into a grad program. My take would be if that is the ultimate goal, that actually studying conducting might give you more bang for the buck,but to be honest I cannot claim that is totally true. Obviously, I don’t think coming out with an Ed precludes someone from going to grad school in conducting, lot of instrumentalists get a BM in an instrument and then go into conducting in grad school…</p>
<p>If there is any chance you may want to teach in a public school setting then an Ed would be the better path, and then if conducting didn’t work out, you would be eligible to teach K-12.</p>
<p>One thing to be careful about if you take the Music Ed path is that some schools do not give their music ed majors full hour applied lessons each week, but rather half hour lessons that are likely to be with the teachers who are less in demand.</p>
<p>But for someone who isn’t looking to be a performer, having the best applied music teacher might not be that important. </p>
<p>Certainly a more rounded education in music, including experiance with multiple instruments and teaching education and experiance would be more important to the conductor, as well as the music educator, than being the worlds best violin player or a great trombonist. Someone could be an amazing clarinet player, but be absolutley terrible at conducting an ensemble with multiple instruments. Individual performance skills don’t neccesarally translate into the skills that make a sucessfull conductor.</p>
<p>As part of getting a BM degree in performance, students study a wide range of things, they don’t just learn to play violin or piano or whatever. Among other things, students in BM programs study music theory, they have ear training and they spend a lot of time in ensembles of all kinds, working with conductors and learning the dynamics of the orchestra as well as their own instrument, it isn’t a one dimensional track because no performer can be one dimensional (the stereotype, especially on the violin and piano, about a bunch of one dimensional performers all wanting to be hot shot soloists is that; the ones who are like that won’t get very far in music). Does that mean that only a performance degree is suitable for getting into a conducting program at the grad school level? No, of course not, if someone shows a talent for conducting they probably could go on to grad level conducting MM degrees, though they may find that because of the differences with an Ed degree, specifically its focus on primary and secondary music education, that they may not have the depth in certain things a BM student might have, especially in high level ensemble work and extensive theory background and it may be a tougher path. Yes, Ed students learn conducting, but I remember my own music directors in school talking about their education and the emphasis was very much on being able to teach ensemble skills to the kids in the program and teaching them about music, much more so then on being able to conduct high level ensembles in playing something like Mahler 5, it is a different focus. BM students are already focused on performance, ed students are focused on training to be able to take kids who probably have never been around music and be able to play it in an ensemble, and also teach those kids about music and theory as well (and in more then a few ways, based on my own experiences in school music, they often have the harder job:)</p>
<p>As far as great instrumentalists making great conductors, there are examples of those who are both, and there also are examples of ones to make you cringe (I absolutely loved and adored Yehudi Menuhin as a violinist, but as a conductor? Oye)</p>
<p>Sorry, interjecting one last time, and then I’m done, but many schools’ music ed degrees are BM degrees with the full helping of theory, ear training, history, and ensembles (minus the ensemble part in the student teaching semester). Make of that what you will; though I have performance degrees, the music ed curricula I’ve encountered don’t resemble ones described here. It seems they were more weighted toward “music” and less toward “ed,” at least compared to other posters’ impressions.</p>
<p>Yes, at most school that I looked into, the ed students take just as many hours of theory and aural training as performance students. At the BM level there’s only slightly more than one semester of difference between most specialties, the largest difference between a music ed degree and a performance degree is one semester of student teaching although there are some other differences.</p>
<p>
Of greater concern than the nuances among mus ed programs, is the poster aware that at most university “schools of music” he or she needs to audition for a BM or BM Ed degree? The poster is taking a BA in music, which may or may NOT be offered by the school of music in question and may instead be offered by the literature/arts/sci college.</p>
<p>So, OP, you’re clear on the requirement of BM in perf or ed at your school, correct? Given the path you’re electing to pursue, I think most people would encourage you to pursue the straight BM and pick up the additional conducting classes (as opposed to BM Ed, where you’d spend a lot of time addressing educational issues that are not especially germane to university/college music programs, which are selective.)</p>