Applying to the Music Colleges in London

[dinosaurinmybelly]

DC plays the clarinet and will be visiting the Music colleges for auditions and assessment in December. Has anyone been through this process who can help us prepare him best. We've heard there will be a Harmony and Counterpoint exercise, and this is not covered by his A-level course. Any recommendations on books that we could use to work on this?

Thanks in advance!

PM me and I'll tell you a by about it!

I did grade 8 theory which was excellent prep for harmony and counterpoint, so any of those workbooks. That's the standard they're looking for, they as much as said so when I went for the auditions and said 'you won't have a problem with these'.

The drive, love of music and that elusive mix of musical feeling/technical perfectionism/confidence to perform are what matters. There's nothing you can do about that, you'll know already if your DS has enough personal motivation and the latter mix can't really be taught - it either comes together or it doesn't.

His practical teachers should be advising on auditions. If they aren't then get them on it!

Good luck to him!

Grade 8 theory is great, but you need much, much more than that... Competition is fierce if you're applying for RAM, RCM, GSMD etc. I'd imagine a ratio of 1:100 plus in woodwind faculties.

I should have said I did grade 8 when I did my GCSEs so had been working on it since then, but I still found the exercises quite easy? I have a knack for that kind of thing though.

IME the performance side, and being 100% focused that you want to go to college, is more important. I was rejected from all but RCM - and I probably on got in there because I was in junior college - with then all saying pretty much the same thing. Technically great but not enough soul (and they were totally right and I happily went and spent 3 years doing musicology, harmony and editing!) so they could sense it wasn't what I really, desperately wanted.