I'm Going to Music School
More exciting news! I've been accepted to SDSU's Master of Music program in jazz studies.
I've been thinking about music school for almost eight years. It was two years ago when I started seriously looking into applying to LA Music Academy, not long after I started my year in the woodshed. I was accepted, but wasn't offered a scholarship. It was expensive, and I had knee surgery bills, so I declined.
I moved to San Diego, started looking into SDSU's jazz program and running their required recital scales during last year's Olympics. I applied for fall 2009 admission and took lessons with Steve Nichols, local pro guitarist, in preparation for my audition in February. I didn't pass that audition, so I thought I'd try again this fall for spring 2010 enrollment. I arranged to take more lessons with Travis Daudert, current student in the program, and started attending weekly jazz jams.
I discovered a few months ago that the school made budget cuts and would not be admitting anyone for spring 2010. (The correlation between reducing a budget and excluding half of your annual potential paying customers is an entirely different topic and inappropriate for this blog. I write about such things here.) They were nice enough to make an exception for me and gave me another shot at an audition for this fall.
That audition was yesterday morning. They had me sight read chords from three tunes and melody from one. I did far better on the melody sight reading this time around. That was my downfall in the first audition, and that's the area in which I busted my ass for the last six months. Then I performed and improvised on Hancock's Dolphin Dance and Shorter's E.S.P. I was far from perfect, and had more clunkers than I ever do in practice (I'm used to that), but I left the audition completely thrilled with how well I played. So I celebrated last night, even without my results.
I got a phone call today telling me I passed and I've been admitted to the school. WAHOO! I start immediately. This will give me a litany of additional material to write about. Stay tuned.
Dan (1 Sep 2009 at 11:46pm)
Hey now! Nice work. You still gonna be rockin' in the Zep band?
RichardN (2 Sep 2009 at 1:07am)
Fantastic effort! You totaly, utterly derserve this gig. Longtime reader first time poster. Awsome!
MT-Oz (2 Sep 2009 at 2:11am)
Hey, congratulations! I've been subscribed to your blog for a year now and I must say I find it very useful, being myself an aspiring jazz guitar player.
Regards from Spain.
Joe (2 Sep 2009 at 5:08am)
I'll definitely still play in the Zep band. Worked too hard for both of these to pass on either.
Welcome and thank you RickardN and MT-Oz.
Matt Sandford (2 Sep 2009 at 7:16am)
Congrats again dude. These are exciting times! Someone else pointed this out, but I feel this is well deserved. Best of luck during the acclimation process.
Cheers
Josh (2 Sep 2009 at 7:56am)
Great, Joe! Sounds like things are coming together for you in San Diego.