Conservatory Portfolio

Anyone out there have pieces from their admissions portfolio swimming around the site? I'm looking to get into Berklee or Oberlin, but I'm not sure if I suck at composition or not. I live in BFE and the only people I hang out with are construction workers and farmers. You know, people who generally aren't too keen on the fine arts.

As an aside, does anyone have an opinion on those schools?

Well, one of the WIPs I submitted to my composition professor in my portfolio was the piece that turned out to be orchestrated for my first composition recital. Hopes of Snow

That's honestly the only piece I remember for sure that was in that portfolio. Everything else was really old crap, too.

Berklee and Oberlin are very different schools, and they'll be looking for very different things.

When doing a college portfolio, the only real requirement is that you be yourself. Put the music that you think reflects you the most. You don't have to put massive quantities of music in your portfolio either. 3 - 5 short pieces should be more than enough.

Whatever you do, don't try to write music like the music that you've heard get into these schools, because that will only lead you down a bad path. You're misleading the professors because you aren't writing what you want to write, and you're misleading yourself, because you might be getting into a program that you don't enjoy.

But yes, Oberlin and Berklee are quite different, and you need to know what fields you want to pursue after college before accepting an offer from either.

Very good answers indeed. In general, I don't think that either of the colleges will look for perfect contrapunctal, harmonical, orchestrating knowledge, or a fully-formed piece, they will look for an underlying talent and compositional potential that you may have, and which they will help you take use of to as much as you can (which depends on their courses, but mainly on how much you want to learn and develop). Besides, if you were perfect in counterpoint, harmony, music history and theory, orchestration and form, why would you need to go to a college for? :)

Hello!

I agree with those before me in that the two schools you're looking at are very different. I know almost nothing of Oberlin, but I know plenty about Berklee.

Berklee is an amazing school if you're looking to produce popular modern music or write for multi-media applications, (as well as teaching). I picked Berklee as my school because they offer a degree in Film Scoring, (my major). After I complete that I'll pursue my Masters in L.A. at USC in Orchestral Composition.

As you already know, Berklee if failry competitive so you'll need to make sure you can play a principle instrument as well as compose. They will make you play a live audition for them. So be ready for that. And after all is said and done and you've finally been accepted there is the issue of the 40 thousand dollar tuition. Good luck.

Tyler

I would LOVE to hear what you have written already. You should post it. People would be happy to comment.

I know a bit about Oberlin so I can comment on it!

Oberlin is a fantastic liberal arts school. The well-known group Eighth Blackbird eighth blackbird originated from Oberlin then went to CCM and then to Northwestern... I believe. While Berklee is concerned with more multi-media, jazz productions Oberlin I believe is more focused on contemporary, art music. I guess the question can come down to whether you want to be writing concert music or film music? Plus, there are tons of conservatories that harbor to both needs and I wouldn't be surprised if there were film composers from Oberlin.