Being a music major can suck, balancing your music classes, music lessons and multiple instruments. The typical music major will have to cram as many classes as the university will allow, and still need to have time for the many ensembles they sing or play in. There are numerous things that make being a music major a special kind of annoying.
Music is hard. Of course, there are also the lessons that usually occur once or twice a week that also require at least two minutes of practice for every minute spent in the lesson. But, in factual fields like math, engineering and nursing, there are sets of rules to strictly follow.
The rules are lengthy and difficult, but they are always the same. In music, everything is subjective. For every style of music, there are different rules, and you just kind of have to know which one to follow instinctively.
Different styles can have vastly different rules, and to be a music major, you have to know pretty much all of them. (It's like being a physicist, except not as many brain-bending formulas)
Then, there are the classes about reading and writing music, which are whole other beasts. If someone gave you sheet music and said, "Sing it," could you? Fortunately, reading the music is not too difficult, but hearing it in your head and reciting it back is something that takes a lot of practice, on top if practicing your instrument.
However, melodic dictations are absolutely amazing. (For non-music majors, that is a fancy term for hearing a melody and writing down what you hear; the more you know!) With the knowledge gained from the music writing classes, you can fill in holes by following the aforementioned rules.
However, by far the most stressful part are the questions people ask. Questions like "What instrument do you play?" and "can you write me a song?" get boring to answer. There are some questions we ask ourselves all the time. "What are you going to do with your degree?" is one of the worst and is never asked genuinely. It always has a sense of pride behind it because they know the answer we will give back: "I don't know."
It isn't all stress, though. When we perform, we do it for the audience. When the audience's faces light up because we play music that moves them, it makes our night. When tears roll down their faces during the climax of the piece, it reminds us why we went into music in the first place.
The stress may be killer, but the end result is always worth it.
