Music gcse

[onegiantleap]

My ds wants to choose this option, can anybody tell me what it entails ? And what can one use it towards later on?

I did the whole shebang from GCSE then ALevel then Degree in Music.

I found it light relief from my other subjects but also found it hard at A Level. Composition cannot be learned I believe.

Was my degree a waste? My only hope is my children enjoy music and I can teach them.

Best if luck to you. I think it is a great subject, not easy and holds a cool respect from your peers as you've either 'got it' or not.

In terms of workload (homework etc) ds is finding it soft.

I find cat64's point interesting. I possibly would have done another academic subject if I had had the option. But at my school we had to do one artsy crafty non-academic subject, and the only one available that I wouldn't have been dismal at was Music. Me doing Art or Drama or Home Ec or something would have been a non-starter tbh.

Mind you, we did do 10 GSCEs so it's probably good that we had to do one less academic one really.

dd is doing A level music and it is def not a soft option.SHe's hoping to do it at university as well.

Composition can be learnt..... but its often not taught.

FWIW I did alrightish at GCSE music (I got a B, it was my only one) but I was apparently too 'academic' for it. My teachers requested my papers back and honestly couldn't work out what went wrong until they looked at the mark scheme. I went on to get an A at music A-level (and a very high one) and did a BMus.

I enjoyed messing around with music, not really learning composition like I did at university but experimenting with different styles eg. serialism, minimalism, and doing all the world music stuff. I definitely agree with mumblecrumble that composition is rarely taught in schools. The best you can hope for really is being introduced to a range of styles, given homework to do on them and a bit of feedback. Harmony is covered in VERY basic terms (I was studying for Grade 8 theory at the time so I'll admit to dossing around a bit but even my non-theoretical friends admitted it was basic) so if your choices are Grade 5 or music GCSE I'd do the theory exam. The performance I found horrendous because I'm not a natural performer and the listening exam I over-answered (thus not meeting the mark schemes).

I would still recommend it though - it covers a lot of interesting things that you wouldn't touch on if you skipped straight to A-level.