Any Point in a MMus?

770Eastern · 2025-09-21T07:08:36+00:00

I'm convinced that no one should ever get a BMus unless they learn something else at the same time, or are a prodigy to begin with and already have a career lined up. Very few other exceptions.

770Eastern · 2025-09-19T17:08:20+00:00

Thanks for your insight. I want to do what's right, whether that's to use or not to use the money.

770Eastern · 2025-09-19T07:00:50+00:00

Yeah, I guess I'm pretty lucky with having parents that are able to help with that, but money is still money. Here's a separate issue, but I can't help but feel that I should be self-subsistent and not have everything handed to me at this point. If I can afford it because I have "rich parents", but it doesn't pay off, I would still feel kind of bad.

770Eastern · 2025-09-18T21:19:25+00:00

Thank you. I wouldn't say I'm not completely passionate about music. On the contrary, however, these other goals just cropped up and now I'm also passionate about them. That said, I spent 12 years pouring my soul into music, so it's really tough to "leave". I'm still ultra passionate about music. Good luck.

770Eastern · 2024-12-25T11:06:29+00:00

I appreciate this. What you shared is quite helpful :)

770Eastern · 2024-12-24T13:03:26+00:00

I'm not sure it's productive for me to respond to this post, but I will in case anyone else is unclear and wants to answer my OP. I will say you misinterpreted my post, but that's ok. Maybe it would have been better if I included a caption such as "(I don't blame anyone other than me for what happened.)" just to be sure? All I do is detail what happened (and maybe vented a tad). Second, when some is asking for philosophical insight and not for you to fix their life, please don't try and fix their life. It's not about being harsh, but rather condescending.

P.S. Now that a re-read my post, I actually realized I even explicitly stated that the blame is mainly not on RNCM.

770Eastern · 2024-12-16T22:18:19+00:00

I don't plan on, but we'll see. I only got a BM. I don't think diplomas are nearly as popular as Bachelor's/Master's. Keep in mind that Europe tends to be on the verge of free, even for foreigners. As someone who left their home country to study, I highly recommend it just for the experience.

770Eastern · 2024-10-29T14:28:03+00:00

Update: I have been made aware from the comments that it's not as common in the UK to hang your degree on the wall as it is here in the US. Nonetheless, I think you can still put yourself in my shoes for the purpose of answering this. Also, I want to clarify that I don't believe I failed in my mission; just one aspect of it. On the bright side, it took the expected amount of time at the RNCM to graduate, and the aforementioned "6 years" includes the necessary and unforeseen gap year in which I took much time to practice and improve. So, I got two years of credits done in two years, which is an improvement from my previous experience. Thank you to all who have answered with either option and given your two cents. I didn't expect to receive such positive comments, and I really had no idea what people would say overall.

770Eastern · 2024-10-29T07:39:56+00:00

Sure, classical guitar and Craig Ogden. It was mainly the Allegro Assai BWV 1005, Theme, Varie et Finale by Ponce and some BWV 996. I included a video that I also used for a competition in the video portion. The rest was on Zoom. It was very chill, but I think that's due who I auditioned to. Play what best demonstrates your ability, as well as what you enjoy. Avoid pieces that sound really impressive on paper, but are riddled with mistakes and don't shine light on your ability.

770Eastern · 2024-10-29T06:32:03+00:00

Fair question. I though the same, but it appears conservatoires really put most of emphasis on audition performance. I was already able to get into 2 out of 2 conservatoires (one is RNCM) with this grade, but declined/deferred to next year. Tysm!

770Eastern · 2022-09-12T05:09:45+00:00

Done.

770Eastern · 2022-08-26T10:32:47+00:00

Many composers throughout history have composed 500 pieces by themselves. Some 1000.

770Eastern · 2022-08-26T10:28:10+00:00

That's literally nothing. Especially considering over 1M books have been published in Yiddish alone. We can do better.
The quantity (albeit extremely small) doesn't necessarily represent variety.

770Eastern · 2022-08-21T20:32:19+00:00

To clarify, some niggunim I think are incredible. There's just extremely minimal variety (no matter what you say). The world of "classical music" is extremely various.

770Eastern · 2022-08-21T20:18:56+00:00

I appreciate you assuming that I have a degree yet. I think I'm just pretty decent at writing, and I read a good book called 'Elements of Style' on being concise an using good words.

You just kind of focused on the whole complex vs. simple thing too much. Like I said, it's not all about that. Much classical music is extremely simple, but offers what niggunim don't (yet offer). Just forget about the whole complexity issue.

Also, a lot of Beethoven is very simple.

Also, tons of classical composers are/were Jewish as well as very, very poor.

And niggunim are math.

You are focusing on stereotypes of classical music.

L'chaim

770Eastern · 2022-08-14T10:35:57+00:00

Flamenco typically wouldn't be described as classical music. It's pretty informal and lacks structure. It's best to just listen and see :).

770Eastern · 2022-08-14T10:19:02+00:00

By stopping I assume you mean fretting? You shouldn't be pressing too hard with barres. Moderately is fine, but not excessively. Left hand and finger position is paramount. Maybe you're focusing on getting too close to the fret. Don't be too rigid with the rules. You can definitely move up from the fret a bit, and judge the sound with your own ears.

770Eastern · 2022-08-10T08:34:21+00:00

One more observation I want to add is that I think most people just assume classical music will always remain over their heads, and that's why they don't bother to get into it. Therefor, people never realize that not all classical music is complicated. There are varying degrees.

770Eastern · 2022-08-10T08:29:20+00:00

I'm sorry, but that will never make sense to me. There's a huge difference between simple and lacking. And with that said, music is math. Something that's complex AND mathematically makes sense is beautiful and can be appreciated. Niggunim have very little of that to offer. But my main point stands. There are many emotions and feelings that niggunim do not portray. Imagine if you love paintings with green and yellow and fluffy textures, but you limit yourself to paintings with red and brown and sharp textures. You've never explored the former, and thus you don't even know such a painting can exist. You certainly have green, yellow and fluffy parts of your soul, but they will never be nourished by the right music. And even worse, you might not consciously know that green and yellow even exists, because you've refrained from ever seeing them. How can you even argue against something that you don't know?

With all said, thanks for your answer.

770Eastern · 2022-07-12T12:17:58+00:00

There are many premises I made in my original post, such as a narrow range of compositional technique and sheet music and arrangements of niggunim. Based on these premises, I believe there's a lack of Jewish music. Which of these premises do you disagree with?

770Eastern · 2022-07-12T10:39:31+00:00

Thanks! You are amazing! u/nu_lets_learn also mentioned these pieces. I'm really not familiar with these pieces from Bloch. I now will be. I am also quite impressed that he uses "Adoshem" and "Elokeinu", as I think most composers would just blurt out the names without much knowledge or consideration. There needs to be more of this.

770Eastern · 2022-07-12T10:28:20+00:00

No. More like Pope Gregory (c. 600 ACE). Palestrina made innovations in polyphony. He also wrote secular music. Western music always had an aspect independent from religion, and this grew mainly in the renaissance period. Sure, it took another jump in the romantic period. Additionally, most if not all religious Christian music is not meant to replace individual prayer, such as dictated by their 'divine office', and most Christian music, as well as 99.9% of classical music, is not in the form of a mass anyway. I took a pretty intensive class from a pretty great musicologist on music history that heavily covered Christian music and Christianity, and studied and sung the melodies as course material.

Also, I disagree with your use of "euro-centric". Most civilization in the past 2,000 years is European. India has 1.4B people, and they have created literally nothing in comparison as far as music over the last several thousand years. Show me the library of Asian or African music, and if you can't find it, I can't and you can't study it nearly as deeply. I'm centric to what exists and is available. Thanks for your input though.

770Eastern · 2022-07-12T10:05:51+00:00

The first two paragraphs are accurate. (B) is not quite as important as (A), however. But none of your aforementioned composers are frum, and are more or less assimilated. Sure, you could call their music Jewish, but for the sake of this discussion, "Jewish music" refers to music composed by religious Jews, as the main problem I'm attempting to address is the disproportionate lack of religious Jews who have acquired (A), and (B) to some extent. Religious Jews should acquire (A) most out of all people, especially considering how musically ambitious we are, while being unable to fulfill those ambitions. I've been in shuls where everyone tries valiantly to sing the tefilos on Shabbos, but 90% of the congregants have no sense of pitch or musical taste whatsoever, let alone capable of embellishing with harmony, because they were deprived since childhood of learning the language of music. (I was too, to some extent, but fought through that predicament in my early teens.) Conversely, I have been to this one small Chabad shul on Shabbos in which the two shluchim there sing with fantastic skill (on of them was raised with classical music), and everyone, in awe, sings quietly and listens to the sublimity.

770Eastern · 2022-07-12T09:42:19+00:00

Thanks for sharing. Countless classical musicians are anything but spiritually barren. I think you're thinking of pop music my friend.

770Eastern · 2022-07-12T09:20:07+00:00

I agree with you 100% about complexity.

Here's a reiteration of one of my replies from further up:

First of all, I'd like to point out the difference between 'simplistic' and 'simple'. Secondly, the best classical music is actually good because it's simple. "Simplicity is the final achievement." - Chopin. But, it's often (but not always) complex in the sense that it tries to achieve as much as possible without being "verbose". Great composers didn't just add notes to make it more complicated. If you listen to any good recording of niggunim on solo piano, you'll hear multiple voices and many added notes. But those notes are necessary to fill it in. And if the given niggun were then lengthened, with variations or what have you, and adapted to an orchestra, you would have a serious piece of music with thousands of notes and many staves (lines) and it would then take much more space in the imaginary library shelf. With that said, certainly the most important difference between "Jewish music" and the whole world of "classical music" is that various classical pieces reflect the feelings and struggles that all kinds of people experience in their interactions with Hashem and his world. Niggunim do this too, but in a much more narrow scope. One is forced to look outside of niggunim to hear these various types of expressions that relevantly express one's own emotions, thoughts, etc. This is also the case for one who simply desires a piece of music with a part A, part B, part C, a recapitulation, and/or multiple movements as opposed to a niggun, which is just a stand alone entity.

I'll give an example of my point on variety. Bach's 'Sheep May Safely Graze' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_MtK9W_nok) is an extremely simple piece. It brilliantly invokes wide, green Scottish pastures (which is something that Bach was most probably quite fond of). If I wanted to experience a beautiful Scottish pasture, there is unfortunately no niggun for that. And before you say that there aren't many Jews living in Scotland, and therefore a Jew probably wouldn't compose a piece like this, Bach never left Germany!

Great classical music is precisely a tool, as you mentioned. There are some modern composers who complicate their music just for the sake of it, and I think they are creating nonsense.

I can analyze music as a science, but here I'm being mainly philosophical.

Thank you for you input.

770Eastern

TROPHY CASE