Question on homework for music courses in college?

College Majors Music Major
1

<p>People typically say you have 2 hours of homework/studying outside of class for every hour in class...does that 2 hours per 1 hour of class apply to just lecture class hours typically or does that include lab hours?</p>

<p>Like if a class has 3 hours of lecture a week plus 3 hours of lab (like for a theory course with a lab)...should you allow 6 hours for homework/studying or 12???</p>

<p>Just in general...what have music majors here found as far as a general rule on workload for music courses? I'm trying to figure out how many courses I can handle. I'll be doing a double degree, so I want to take like 1 more course than normal per semester.</p>

2

<p>Ive never been a music major, but when I took lab classes, there was never any outside study required. I never spent 6 hours studying for a 3 hour class - but I never had stellar grades in college either.</p>

<p>A college professor told me that for “applied music” classes you were expected to practice, outside of the lessons and ensembles, a minimum of 15 hours a week for 4 credit hours - which would be more like four hours of homework per hour of class credit.</p>

<p>I found that many classes I could pay attention in class and skip any assigned reading and consistantly make B’s (usually a few questions from the assignments would be on the test so making an A was virtually impossible without doing the reading). When I tried that with math or chemistry it didn’t work out quite that well - I actually had to do the reading and the homework in addition to paying attention in class.</p>

<p>I doubt that you could actually have any type of “rule of thumb” other than for an “average” as it really depends on the professor, the type of class, how much you pay attention in class, how well you retain information from lectures, and what type of grades you are shooting for. </p>

<p>Personally, I usually did OK (pretty much straight B’s) with just paying attention in class and doing the minimum amount of reading and homework required (I probably averaged doing less than 5 hours a week of studying/reading/writing outside of the classroom - total for a 15-16 hour courseload). </p>

<p>Also, I tended to do better if I DIDN’T take notes. Taking lots of notes tends to reduce your ability to actually pay attention in class as you are busy writing and not really paying attention. I’d much rather concentrate on comprehending the lecture on the spot rather than trying to write down the lecture to study later.</p>

3

<p>Generally if a 3-credit class has 3 hours of lecture and 3 hours of lab per week, then the expectation is about 6 hours of extra work (i.e. do not multiply the lab time by 2–just multiply the lecture hours by 2). As you know, this is a very rough rule of thumb.</p>

<p>The amount of time you actually spend will depend on:<br>
a) the rigour of your college (an increasing number of colleges are just high schools for older students, so very few people need to do much work to maintain decent grades); some colleges, however, do attempt to challenge the students; in the part of the world that I live in, certain departments always have failure/dropout rates of around 40% to 50% in first-year classes because many students seem to think that attending lectures and labs, submitting all assignments, and studying for exams will suffice–they don’t realize that they need to be spending about 6 to 8 hours per day on homework in addition to the required attendance.
b) your ability as a student (obviously); and
c) the particular class. Most people find that math and science classes (provided they are not math and science for dummies) are hard to fake without putting in the time. This is why there are so few students majoring in math, science, and engineering despite the fact that the best paying careers are usually in these fields.</p>

<p>Usually taking one more course than normal load per semester is not unduly onerous unless you have a time-consuming job and heavy volunteer/extra-curricular commitments. Of course, this depends on how efficient a learner you are and the nature of your courses.</p>

<p>Even within a single music department, some profs have high expectations which necessitate huge amounts of work and other profs are content to give away A’s for very little work. Some students find theory and aural skills a breeze and zip through their assignments and exams, while others expend considerable time and energy for little payback. The difference between these students often is not raw intelligence, but is based on things like keyboard facility, degree of perfect and relative pitch, processing speed, and theory background.</p>

<p>Every student learns in different ways. While imagep learned better when not taking notes, many students find that the act of taking notes helps them focus and stay awake–it may be too easy to daydream if all one does is listen. In addition, it is a long time from September until final exams in April or May, so having some rudimentary notes to jog one’s memory can be helpful. Of course, if your professor is merely spewing forth what is already in the text, then class notes are less valuable.</p>

<p>As an instructor, I have found that most students that believe they learn better without taking notes perform poorly; there are exceptions. Some students have not sufficiently developed their basic skills to make the act of writing an automatic one, and consequently they expend too much mental energy on the writing and not enough on the processing of the ideas. These students learn more if they just listen. </p>

<p>As well, in courses that are idea-impoverished, students can also do well without note-taking or studying.</p>

4

<p>At my daughter’s school, the introductory music history class is considered as difficult as premed science, and theory is no picnic either. Your school may be different.</p>

<p>If you are doing a double degree, are you planning on spending 5 years or attempting to do it in 4? That would be quite a heroic undertaking. Can you afford to do the 5?</p>

<p>If this is your first fall in college, why not start with 4 so that you get your feet wet, so to speak, and then you will have a good idea about how many courses to take in January. Many students seem to thrive starting off slow, while they get acclimated to the new environment and the transition away from home.</p>

<p>Alternatively, you could sign up for the extra class, watch things closely the first week or two (you will have the syllabus for each class) and drop the extra one if that seems like a good idea.</p>

<p>The variation from school to school, class to class, student to student is way too wide for you to get much of a useful answer here on CC. </p>

<p>We don’t know what instrument you play, and at what level. Practice time may not even be part of your homework time, depending on how your curriculum is structured (some don’t even give credit for this), and might need to be added into your considerations of time management as well.</p>

<p>Good luck, and hope you can afford to savor your first term if at all possible!</p>

<p>p.s. if you don’t do assigned readings, whether you then “get by” or not, you will be missing out on some of the education you are paying for…better to take fewer classes and try to learn with some depth, and maybe even enjoy some of it…</p>

5

<p>If you remember to turn off your phone and avoid the temptation to check your facebook on your laptop during class, you will find that you save a lot of time later having to relearn whatever is being taught during the class session.</p>

6

<p>I pretty much agree with everything Violindad and Compmom said, but I do want to add one more thing that none of us ever brought up…</p>

<p>Ensembles, usually they take a lot more than two hours practice per credit hour. At my son’s school they get 1 credit hour for marching band, yet they spend 6-7 hours a week at band practice, plus they are expected to memorize the music on their own (which may or may not count as practice for applied music class), plus they will spend another 4+++ hours on Saturdays for home football games and the occasional away game, plus they will do a couple or three non-football game performances. So marching band may easily take 10+ hours a week for just 1 credit hour. </p>

<p>Other ensembles may not be as rigorous, but you can still probably expect to spend more than three hours total per credit hour.</p>

<p>I’m not knocking marching band or other ensembles at all, my son loves it and would do it even without college credit, but it does take a heck of a lot of time. If you have a semester with a really intense ensemble, you may want to take one less class that semester.</p>

<p>Also, when I mentioned that I was able to make B’s in some classes without doing any reading or homework, those classes were typically ones like introductory political science, sociology and psychology. Classes like English you are definately gonna have to do the reading and writing. Math and science you are definately gonna have to do the homework even if you skip the reading. </p>

<p>I had a few professors who only graded you by your writing, some will give you a short writing homework assignment every week or even for every class. Others will just give you a multiple guess (in my case it was really guess) test with no writing at all. I took one class where the test was “write everything you know about XXX”. </p>

<p>On one in class essay test I didn’t do any of the reading and just totally made up stuff. The professor wrote a note that I had “obviously not done the reading”, yet he gave me an A on the test for what he termed “brilliant bulll*<strong><em>”. I guess that “</em></strong>*****” was acceptable because it was a political behavior class.</p>

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<p>iluvpiano, I am going to assume you are a piano perf major, but perhaps I am wrong. Either way, I will say that many music students HAVE to take 18 credits just to make their schedules and sequence work (especially where dual degrees are concerned) but that for some, that is quite an onerous workload. My son’s GPA increased significantly when he decided to take a 15 or 16 credit load, but he needed to really do a LOT of work to keep up with theory and he had some pretty advanced classes (took all junior classes in sophomore year, long story.) The various ensemble commitments together with studio can make for a busy skedder. How rigorous is your second degree?</p>

<p>Many regular university freshman take 12 credits their first semester, especially at rigorous schools, just to get “calibrated” to the college experience. </p>

<p>The registrar at my son’s SOM told us at the beginning that “generally, tough academic classes are time eaters for music students” (or something close to that – he was dual degree student) and recommended that he attempt to take at least 1 or 2 of his heavier courses (eg. c++ programming, upper level calc) at our local college over the summer to make his schedule more bearable. After the first semester, we listened ;)</p>

<p>Hope that helps. Your best bet might be to see how a 15-credit load goes first semester, with a plan to take 18 credits second semester, once you have an idea of what is expected in both your programs. I would not personally recommend 18 credits out of the gate.</p>

8

<p>Good points about the ensembles.</p>

<p>If you are a performance major, that is even tougher than what I described (my child is not a performance major, but a music BA candidate).</p>

<p>Isn’t it possible to take 5 years (or more) to do the double degree program? Are you getting a BM/BA or BM/MM? Conservatory or college/university? What is your second major besides piano performance?</p>

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<p>also consider taking classes each summer, even if they are not at your primary university (check first of course about transferring credits)</p>

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<p>I will probably be taking 5 years to do the double degree. My major for music would be piano performance under the BM program. Yes, that would be the idea that I could take 1 extra course and have it be one that could be dropped if I had to. I did that this year- started with 5 AP classes, dropped to 4 (plus 1 AP as independent study, so really dropped from 6 to 5 APs).</p>

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<p>At this point, I don’t even have a facebook, so that won’t be something to distract me in class…my laptop is for notes, don’t worry!!!</p>

<p>I can afford to do the 5 years. My parents and I have talked about it. They would rather have me take the 5 years instead of do too much in 4 years. The college actually extended my scholarship through the 5th year if I need it because of the double degree.</p>

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<p>For ensembles, I don’t think I’ll be in a very rigorous one. I still have to audition for that in fall on clarinet, and I’m not expecting to make the highest one as a freshman.</p>

<p>My second degree, a BA, will be in History, at least that’s what I’m thinking right now. I have taken 2 AP history courses in high school, so that should hopefully help a lot.</p>

<p>I have a lot of my general education classes done. I have AP credit already accepted for AP US Gov and APUSH. I took exams for AP English Lit, Calc AB, Euro, Spanish, & Psych this year, and I think I got a 4 or 5 on everything (maybe a 3 on Spanish though, but I have another chance on that for credit with the general placement test during orientation week). After that, I only have 5 generals to take for credit, plus some physical education class which has no credit but is required…so like 6 generals to take.</p>

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<p>They don’t do summer classes at my college. I may be able to do a couple of those generals at a college at home during the summer and transfer those in. I have to check into that yet.</p>

<p>5 year program- double degree BM/BA. School of Music within a small university- Illinois Wesleyan University. BM in piano performance and BA in History.</p>

<p>I think I answered everyone’s questions…some of it may be repetitive in my last few posts here…sorry if it is! Hope these answers help explain my situation further.</p>

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<p>Wow, you are in great shape. Several “generals” done, and support all around (including financial) for 5 years for BM/BA. So now, I am not sure why you are thinking of adding an extra course. It almost seems as if you could take one less course, instead! </p>

<p>Music and history are a great combination. Looks like you have some great years ahead. Good luck!</p>

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<p>I want to take 1 more than normal because I have gone through all of the requirements and I think I still should do that to get done in 5 years because I can’t really do summer classes very easily as I mentioned. Also, we do have May Term to take 1 more class, but I don’t want to count on taking a required class then because only a few are offered and I might want to just take a fun class that looks interesting in May each year. </p>

<p>In HS I took more than the required amount of classes, and if I can handle it, I will probably just take more (like I’m hoping to do this fall…) in college too, and then if I want, I could even add a minor for something that’s just interesting. If that doesn’t work out, then I’ll be fine and still get done in 5 years with the BA/BM, but if I have time, I do have a minor in mind that I would like to do if possible. Again, though, not the end of the world if I can’t add that too; primary thing is the double degree, and extra classes are just extra if I have time.</p>

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<p>Another thing I just forgot to mention about why I want to take more right away if I can: I want to study abroad for a semester too, and there I probably won’t be able to take as many, or even if I do, what if they all don’t transfer back? What if there’s some really interesting course I could take while I’m gone that I’d love but wouldn’t transfer back? I don’t want credits to prevent that…I don’t want credits to prevent me from studying abroad for a semester. I want to go for a semester plus for one of the May Terms too.</p>

<p>Regarding theory courses: I have done a lot of college theory in HS, and I am going to take a placement test. Either I should test out of Theory I or be very close to it. If I don’t quite test out of it and still have to take it, it will be an extremely easy course for me first semester, so that would easily allow some time for another course. I could maybe even test out of Theory II, because I know a lot of the things they have listed on the course description. The thing I don’t know is if there are more topics in the courses than what they list in the theory course descriptions and if I would know those things too.</p>

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<p>The amount of work also depends upon the school and the course. First, vocal performance majors can not practice as much as instrumental majors, but then again, they take languages which instrumentalists don’t, so that is an equalizer right there. At my D’s school, theory is a 5 day/wk class, and she spends at least 10 hours/wk on homework for that. Some courses require research papers and some don’t, and I’ve had students who obviously put in quite a bit of time outside of class while others do the bare minimum; you can usually identify the latter as the ones who finish a final exam in under an hour, while the ones who write the excellent papers will be writing away on the exam at the two and a half hour mark!
At a new school, the first term will be a learning experience all the way around, and you may not be allowed to register for your classes until after you arrive on campus. That’s for a reason, so that you can sit down with your advisor or someone in the Registrar’s office and make a plan that is realistic. Don’t assume that college will be like high school- no one checks up on you or reminds you that something is due soon. Take the advice of those that are there to help, they know their stuff! Good luck and have fun!</p>

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<p>In my sons BM program they are required to take 3 music history classes and one non-music history class. You may want to check on this, but you may be allowed to “double dip” classes and have some or all of the music history classes count towards your history major, and I would expect that one of the history classes that you have to take for your history major would count towards the one non-music history class for the music degree. If your colleges allows it to work that way, that could reduce your total (five year) class load by 4 classes.</p>

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<p>Your advisor and teacher will know the allowed schools for study abroad and will help with course planning there too. As far as music theory, don’t count on testing out or up until it happens, please. In some schools it’s perfectly possible and not permitted in others, and what you’ve taken up to now may seem relevant but when it comes down to it, the college course may be far more intense.
Good advice, imagep, many schools do allow the “double dipping” and it can be a time and money saver.</p>

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<p>This is the list of my requirements: [Illinois</a> Wesleyan: Bachelor of Music](<a href=“http://www.iwu.edu/music/academics/bm.shtml]Illinois”>Bachelor of Music in Instrumental Performance | Illinois Wesleyan) and just look at the piano performance part, for anyone who’s interested. </p>

<p>imagep- good point about the “double dipping” thing; unfortunately, the music history courses I have to take are specific music ones. Although I can’t double dip courses, some of the information may overflow from one course to another. Plus, I have a decent background in regular history and music history (I read music history books, etc. for fun sometimes), so that will help me a lot I think.</p>

<p>^Good point about the theory test. My school did mention that most people end up taking it anyways…so I’ll have to see. They seem to have a strong theory program. But I like theory and I learn it easily. I’ve actually taught myself most of the theory that I have learned, just by reading books and then taking theory exams (like the self-study thing that people do for AP exams).</p>

<p>Mezzo’sMama- I’ve had courses already in high school where the teacher doesn’t remind you that there’s a test the next day or a paper due. Some put the list online for 4-6 weeks at a time and that’s where you get all your homework info from.</p>