College Counseling

Although I've had as many as 23 private (one-on-one) students since I started teaching in October, surprisingly only one of them is planning on majoring in music in college (or at least, only one that I know of). Granted, a number of them are too young to even begin to think about such matters, but even still, I'm not really getting the feeling that they'll be inclined to take up music as a career.

My one student that IS anticipating being a music major is actually focusing on film scoring, and although he's only 14, he's VERY advanced at his craft and his parents are extremely supportive of his passion, giving him every opportunity they can afford. Because of both his level of interest in taking music seriously and the fact that his parents are so involved, I often find myself giving him and his mother career and college advice before or after lessons. And although I don't get paid for this, I'm more than happy to offer them what help I can, especially considering how rare this type of family and student are.

So right now we're trying to start preparing him for college-level music studies in theory and composition, and starting this coming Fall I'll be teaching him music history out of the NAWM, as well as possibly giving him guitar lessons. Due to the amount of training he'll be receiving prior to college (he's taking film scoring lessons with another teacher), I've advised that he actually get his undergraduate degree in either Music Business or Music Engineering, since this would be both helpful to a career in film scoring as well as totally new material that he wouldn't have learned beforehand.