trumpet and engineering

[mike ansberry]

My son is looking for a college where he can get an engineering degree and study trumpet with a good instructor. Locally, Tennessee Tech has Charles Decker and Chris McCormick. Do the big engineering schools like Purdue & Georgia Tech have good trumpet instructors? What about scholarship availability?

[X3L]

Purdue does not offer a school of music, however, several other Big Ten schools offer strong programs in both music and engineering.

John MacGregor
Waukesha, WI

[fatsound]

There are many schools with good engineering and music schools. Northwestern University is very, very good in both but also hard to get into. They have an outline engineering and music five year program. The teachers are Barbara Butler and Charles Geyer. U of michigan has William Cambell as a teacher and has very success students. Other schools are u of maryland at college park, u of illinois at urbana-champaign, or u of indiana. All of these schools have very good instructors and are large in school size.

[ This Message was edited by: fatsound on 2003-10-18 11:21 ]

[308WIN]

Check out U of MD. Great sciences/engineering and Chris Gekker and Steve Hendrickson are the Trumet teachers.

Rich

[kalijah]

Check out UAB. And Leonard Candelaria, formerly of North Texas State U. UAB has a first rate engineering school. There are also marching band scholarships available for non-majors.

http://www.music.uab.edu/LCandelaria.html

I have a Bachelors of Engineering earned at the University of Alabama in 1991 but I also did some of the work at UAB.

Lessons with a teacher are fine but do not neglect the fun and experience of playing in a good ensemble. While at the University completing my engineering degree I also played in the top jazz ensemble. Playing in a first rate ensemble is as good as private lessons in my opinion, and you can easily do both while in engineering studies. BUT there are pitfalls as well. Send me a message if you want to discuss further. I can speak from experience.



[ This Message was edited by: kalijah on 2003-11-11 15:54 ]

[Nonsense Eliminator]

If your son is planning to be an engineering major, he should be aware that the likelihood of getting lessons with trumpet faculty as a non-major decreases sharply as the calibre of the music school increases. (Obviously, if he is planning to do a double major, it's another matter entirely.) At the big name schools, it is usually not possible for non-majors to enroll in lessons with the faculty. The only way to get lessons with them would be privately, and obviously this is by no means a slam dunk. At many big-time schools, non-majors are assigned to study with graduate students. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a little bit of a crap shoot and doesn't foster stability or long-term commitments since they're often only around for a couple of years.

On the other hand, some smaller and more education-focussed music schools are more likely to allow non-majors to enroll in regular lessons. Obviously, those schools are generally not going to have trumpet instructors at a level with those at Northwestern, but there are schools where good instructors do teach non-majors. Unfortunately, these are not the kinds of places that have national reputations so it's going to be a little harder to track them down.

I would suggest that you identify attractive engineering schools and work from there, perhaps asking again on TH when you have a list of potential candidates. Then, consider not only the actual trumpet faculty but also the geographic location. It may prove easier to find teachers not affiliated with universities who happen to be in the general vicinity of a school with an engineering program.

[tpetplyr]

I'm currently applying to some of these schools looking for music and engineering too, so maybe I can help.

Northwestern-First Choice, i was up there over the summer with Butler and Geyer for a masterclass, they are awesome. They offer a 5 year double major program (which wont burn you out they say) which i imagine is quite difficult to get into, but would be perfect for me.

GaTech- offers a minor in music and you study with Atlanta Symphony musicians. the minor program is just lessons and theory basically, they also have orchestra symphonic band and marching band. Unlike Northwestern they do not have the varied performance classes s/a excerpts, mock orchestra sections, solo perfromance and the like, and small ensembles at GaTech must be organized by the students and sponsered, they are not officaly organized.

Carnegie Mellon offers a double major similar to Northwestern though not as rigorous and their trumpet faculty is not as well known. I have little information on their program.

Johns Hopkins/Peabody Conservatory have a program in which the student recievfes a Electrical Engineering degree, a performance degree, adn special experience in recording and acoustics. its johns hopkins and peabody conservatory. draw your own conclusions.

Oberlin offers a double mjr in music and a pure science (not engineering, must go off campus to get the engineering degree) but im not sure how solid the science part is (obviously the music is good)

Hope that helps.

Stuart
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