Instrumental Music

Instrumental Focus

For students concentrating on instrumental music, the first two years of study reflect the basic foundations for all music disciplines while working toward an Associate of Arts degree. Students must complete a minimum of 60 semester hours of college-level credit with 36 hours of general education.

Each main semester (fall and spring) a music major should be enrolled in a minimum of 8 or 9 credits of music classes. For the string, wind and percussion major, the credits will be 9. These will constitute the elective credits towards an A.A. For the piano and guitar major, the credits will be 8 or 9, depending on the major ensemble taken. Therefore, students who are planning to transfer to a university with a music emphasis will need to take a minimum of 68-72 semester hours. Six of the general education credits must be in the Humanities.

EFSC offers a tool known as the Transfer Graduation Pathway for Success that can help with your course planning as you pursue an A.A. degree with the intention of transferring to a bachelor's level music program. View the Music Transfer GPS options.

All music majors are strongly encouraged to take MUL 2010 - Survey of Music Literature as an option for three of the six humanities credits. Since there are additional ensemble offerings in music, the majority of students pursuing a parallel program in music will quite often take two-and-a-half or three full years to complete their A.A.