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The story sounded apocryphal to me too, or maybe it evolved through re-telling and re-remembering. Most people are in the dark about what college level music e

The story sounded apocryphal to me too, or maybe it evolved through re-telling and re-remembering. Most people are in the dark about what college level music education consists of. If piano was being taught in a classroom, then it wasn't a music performance major program. Also, there are tiers of colleges, and a school with an easy music program for rich kids is not unthinkable. I have two kids who are both music performance majors in college (yes, we had the conversation about jobs), and I'm a musician myself. I learned the scales in middle school. A remote possibility is that this is a freak occurrence. I think you can't design a training program that absolutely bars creative cheating, without also degrading the program for the majority of students who don't cheat.

jcpst 4y ago
I could just be confused, but I thought I remembered the folks doing performance majors alongside us in Keyboard class to get prepare for the piano proficiency exam. Obviously not the Pianists- but I thought every music major had to pass keyboard proficiency.
- hecanjog 4y ago
  Yes, that was my experience too. Everyone needed to pass a basic keyboard skills class the first year (or test out of it) regardless of their focus in performance, composition, teaching, etc.
  - analog31 4y ago
    It's true, but it tends to be a pretty lightweight class. Neither of my kids learned to play the piano in any useful way.
    - jcpst 4y ago
      Huh, that’s interesting. My fellow scholars and myself found it rather challenging. Basically all students who were not piano players took 4 semesters (keyboard I II III IV), where IV prepared you for the exam. All of us could play in a lot of scenarios at the end of it. But it just so happened the college at the small midwestern town I grew up in had faculty from Eastman, Yale, Stanford, NW… and the music department was unusually rigorous for the level of school it was.

jcpst 4y ago

I could just be confused, but I thought I remembered the folks doing performance majors alongside us in Keyboard class to get prepare for the piano proficiency exam. Obviously not the Pianists- but I thought every music major had to pass keyboard proficiency.

hecanjog 4y ago
Yes, that was my experience too. Everyone needed to pass a basic keyboard skills class the first year (or test out of it) regardless of their focus in performance, composition, teaching, etc.
- analog31 4y ago
  It's true, but it tends to be a pretty lightweight class. Neither of my kids learned to play the piano in any useful way.
  - jcpst 4y ago
    Huh, that’s interesting. My fellow scholars and myself found it rather challenging. Basically all students who were not piano players took 4 semesters (keyboard I II III IV), where IV prepared you for the exam. All of us could play in a lot of scenarios at the end of it. But it just so happened the college at the small midwestern town I grew up in had faculty from Eastman, Yale, Stanford, NW… and the music department was unusually rigorous for the level of school it was.