What's a music education worth? Students say they gain a lot -- except free time

By Emma Tippetts

April 30, 2005 | Tyler Whittaker pays rent, but doesn't really get his money's worth. He's almost never there.

Whittaker spends at least eight hours a day in the music building, and will continue to do so for the next four years. Spending that much time at school each day may not sound appealing to very many students, but Whittaker can't get enough of what he loves to do.

Whittaker is one of more than 300 music majors at Utah State, developing his love of music into a profession.

Whittaker first tried out electrical engineering and then business administration before deciding on music education.

"I was trying to be logical," Whittaker said, "I just figured I could always keep music as a hobby on the side. So I pursued other interests to try to start out making $45,000 a year rather than $10,000."

Whittaker hated every class he was enrolled in and soon realized that passion trumps salary, so he headed for the music building.

Whittaker started playing the saxophone in seventh grade, and hasn't stopped making music since. He now plays the flute, clarinet and piano.

"Everything I've known growing up is music," Whittaker said. "My mom is a concert pianist, so I've grown up listening to her play Chopin and Debussy and all this other stuff on the piano, I haven't known anything different. I don't know what it would be like without it."

Just like most kids, Whittaker didn't learn the alphabet by monotone repetition. He sang the ABC's. He learned his multiplication by reciting them in rhythm and up into high school he still used music to memorize monologues or poems in rhythm.

Music education is perhaps one of the most fundamental and beneficial areas of development to a child. But Whittaker said the lack of appreciation and understanding is diminishing the music programs everywhere and music teachers are constantly in the position of having to defend the need for their subject.

Richard Dreyfuss, the star of the film Mr. Holland's Opus, said, "For some strange reason, when it comes to music, the arts, our world view has led us to believe that they are easily expendable. I believe that a nation that allows music to be expendable is in danger of becoming expendable itself."

When the disputes about music education arise, money is almost always the dominant chord. An article by Tom Mulhern states, "Many schools can't afford to replace broken windows, much less buy new clarinets."

But those new clarinets may prove more valuable than schools realize. The National Coalition for Music Education recently released scientific studies proving the benefit music plays in enhancing cognitive thinking. They found that after eight months of keyboard lessons, preschoolers tested showed a 46 percent boost in their spatial IQ. Students with courses or experience with music performance scored 51 points higher on the verbal portion of the SAT and 39 points higher on the math portion than students with no experience in the arts.

They are not trying to prove that music education is more important than other subjects, just that it is equally important.

In 1994 the Gallup Organization of Princeton conducted a national study and found that 63 percent of teenagers first learned their instrument at school. It's not an understatement to say that American culture's musical future rests on the success of our school programs

Even out of the classroom, the value of music is undermined. At the most recent USU jazz concert, featuring both USU Jazz Ensembles and two world famous musicians, Pete Christlieb and Budd Shank, the entire audience couldn't fill half of the seats.

David Sweeney and Brandon Cressall are also music majors and in the Jazz Orchestra with Whittaker, but they say attendance is not the most important thing.

Cressall said the only times they have a full house is when students have to come for a class assignment and most of the time they don't care about the music anyway. Almost every time someone will answer their cell phone or read a book throughout the entire performance. When guest artist, Wycliffe Gordon performed with the Jazz Ensembles last year, almost the entire upper section of the concert hall was filled with students that came because it was as assignment. About half way through the performance, almost all of them stood up and walked out mid-music. When the American Brass Quintet performed at the Kent Concert Hall the same thing happened and the entire audience ran for the door as soon as they played their last note.

"I would rather have five people in the front row who really care rather than 1,000 people who don't give a shit," Cressall said.

Whittaker, Cressall and Sweeney agree that most outsiders think what they do is easy.

But it's not.

Cressall is enrolled for 15 credit hours. To earn those 15 credits, he is taking nine classes and is in class 24 hours a week. Cressall spends an additional five hours a week in other required classes he does not received any credit for, creating a grand total of 29 hours in class for 15 credits.

Emily Willis, a sophomore majoring in business management and marketing is enrolled for 15 credit hours and is in class for 18 hours a week. The school gives her credit for each class she takes.

In addition, Cressall spends over $500 more in tuition for required individual music lessons.

"The best thing [about being a music major] is that I'm in the music department all day, the worst thing is I'm in the music department all day," Whittaker said.

Sweeney said, "If there were beds inside the building, some people would never leave."

Whittaker, Sweeney and Cressall all understand they are going into a profession that most likely will not make them millionaires, but to them that is not the most important thing.

Cressall said his main motivation for pursuing a degree in music is to share with others his love of music, and salary can't compensate for that.

"Whether or not you are a musician, music is around in everything," Cressall said, "If you were to take every memory, recording, instrument and everything to do with music off the planet, there was no recollection of music ever having been something, it would start again, someone would start hitting something in rhythm and it would start again."

"There's a little musician inside of each and every one of us. Some just choose not to suppress it," Sweeney said, laughing, and raising his voice at least one octave.

Sweeney said in order to be a music major it requires "a little bit of insanity."

"The thing you love is so hard," Sweeney said. "It takes so much work to make yourself practice and work your butt off, but not lose sight of why you are doing it.

Part of the work involved to be a music major is a significant sacrifice of personal time.

To some, the schedule of a music major would be unbearable, but Cressall says he doesn't see it as a sacrifice.

"I don't have to sit in the library and that's good enough to me I see it as a benefit," Cressall said. "It's just that we spend our time in rehearsals, concerts and performances rather than sitting in a library staring at a computer screen or in a book."

Whittaker, Cressall and Sweeney spend a combined total of 38 hours a week practicing, 45 hours in a classroom and 48 hours in rehearsals.

Finding these three music majors available at the same time for one full hour is nearly impossible. But every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, from 1:30 to 2:10 p.m., they all assemble for "man-hour."

Man-hour is a precious hour dedicated to hot dogs, chips, sodas and "tasting the rainbow" at the designated man-hour table in the Hub.

Surprisingly, man-hour is not a time designated to music talk.

"If music is all you do you become one of the trolls who sleep upstairs and orders Pita Pit at 3 o'clock in the morning," Cressall said, "You have to have other things to do, you have to hang out outside of the music."

Whittaker said the very nature of being a music major requires a bond between those you play with. This created a friendship that doesn't usually come from an engineering classroom.

Cressall said you must have a natural talent for the ability to interact with others through your music.

"No amount of practicing that will make up for talent," Cressall said.

"You can practice for 12 hours a day and have everything perfect and it will still sound mechanical. You have to have some sort of personal expression and influence," Cressall said.

Music is not something that can be entirely taught from a textbook and in individual lessons. The influence of music is most often created by a group, not an individual.

"You can teach anyone to do math and use a calculator," Cressall said, "but playing music is not an individual thing."

Whittaker said the only way ensembles work is by interaction. The entire major is one group project, meanwhile you gain relationships you don't get anywhere else.

After a long day of Lawson Lund and Charlie Parker, Whittaker pulls into his driveway around 1 a.m., puts on some Santana or Led Zeppelin and does his best to get to sleep before he will be back at the music building in the morning.

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