Why music notation is important for music students

One of the most controversial issues in music higher education today is the shift away from music notation amongst students in HE. This means that when students arrive at university or college we cannot assume that they can all read music, and have to to help them to learn. This wasn't the case 10 years ago so why now? The obvious answer is that you can pass and do well at BTec national diploma and A level music courses without having good music notational skills - so if you get the required grade you will get a place in HE. Once in HE students may well struggle with the notational demands. The reasons why notation is often not taught in school/college is because if takes time and patience, and you don't necessarily need it in popular music. There are also a lot of students who come to music through music technology ( not so many learn instruments because of the on-going impact of cuts to music education in the 1980s) and music notation is seen as irrelevant to these students.
    So why is it important to learn to read music? The reason is that if you don't, you are at a disadvantage compared to others who can, when you are in the workplace. For example, in film composition you are likely to need to write parts for live players at some stage (very few composers can afford to employ others to do this); in studio production you may be expected to create a string arrangement, or change one 'on the fly'. If all you want to do is play in a band, then fine you don't need to read, but if you want to analyse the detail of works and songs then it is essential that you can read. There is a problem that everyone thinks they can be a musician with next-to-no expertise or knowledge ( I sometimes see such students at interview - they seem shocked that they might need to read music to study it). This is because of the ease that you can create popular music tracks with software, pre-existing loops and samples. The reality is that it takes hard work and real expertise to be a successful musician. There are now some excellent web sources to help students learn notation and music theory such as Teoria and dolmetsch which are good places to start learning about the theory. Just as you should be able to read words to take an English degree, I think you should be able to read music to take a music degree - or at least be prepared learn how to. 

A Black Day for Higher Education

The parliamentary vote for the tripling of student fees on Thursday, and parallel savage cutting of university funding was a black day for Higher Education and for the country as a whole. It means that many prospective students (especially from poorer backgrounds) will probably not go to university because of the huge debt created (only a small number will be given scholarships). The cut to the teaching budget in the Arts and Humanities from 2012 is effectively 100%, so these areas will only be funded by student fees, and the STEM subjects will also have large cuts. This will affect academic subject departments throughout HE because if they cannot recruit students at the higher fee (because prospective students have been frightened off), they are likely to close down or be reduced in size.
    Clearly some of the right wing commentators would say that a reduction in the size of higher education would be a good thing because they think there are too many students studying given the number of graduate jobs. This is a rather facile argument as all the evidence suggests that UK plc needs more graduates in the future not fewer, therefore putting students off studying seems to be a perverse action. The Coalition's argument that HE has to take it's fair share of the required cuts (because of banker greed) doesn't make much sense given the size of the cuts mentioned above. Another oddity is that of course the loans will still cost the country about the same as the present funding scheme for many years to come (until graduates start to pay back). It is not really about cuts, it is about conservative ideology. A much fairer approach would be to raise income tax to fund what the country needs in HE, school education and NHS. This was the preferred model (until Thatcherism took hold ) in the past, and is much more 'progressive' than the scheme that has been voted in.
    So what can be done in HE about this situation? It is unlikely that HE funding will change until the next election, and even then if Labour get back in, Miliband refused to say that he will scrap the new scheme. I think that the New Universities are at the most risk because more of their students will be put off studying (see research by Leicester University   Fee research and More on this), so this is likely to be where the pressure is greatest. New Universities could ruthlessly reduce costs so that the fee can be set at the lower end of the £6000-£9000 range, but this would be likely to impact on the quality of the student experience which is crucial. The other problem is that having a lower fee will suggest that you have an inferior course (see how this impacted on Leeds Met). So it is likely that New Universities will probably set relatively high fees (to avoid degrading their courses), but will attempt to improve the quality of what is offered and increase their marketing to their poorer students. The positive aspect of all this is that there will be a renewed interest in high quality teaching, something that seems to have been lost in the rush to promote research in New Universities. Of course the main worry is that no one actually knows what new students will do in 2012, so it is very difficult to plan.