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Can still be a pianist in the future without music gcse?

Maxi2009

Hey, how is it going, I am a year 9 who picked geo, french, computer science and art for my gcses and we've been doing them for half of the year now. But, my passion is music, I didn't know why I didn't pick music for my gcses, but can I still get a musical career without picking music for my GCSEs? I got a merit on my grade 5 ABRSM theory and am doing grade 8 piano, although I forgot most of the stuff on my theory, so I was thinking of changing computer science to music, but my dad was against the idea and did not let me change, what are you guys' opinion in this? (the thought process of me not choosing music was that I already do music outside of school, so I should take this chance to gain a new skill)

Reply 1

MindMax2000

Universities Forum Helper

Original post by Maxi2009

You can still be a musician without any qualifications. If you want to do a degree in music, then that's a bit different.

See the following job profiles on being a musician - and indirectly a pianist:
https://www.prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/musician#qualifications
https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/job-profiles/classical-musician
https://www.careerpilot.org.uk/job-sectors/performing-arts/job-profile/classical-musician
https://www.life-pilot.co.uk/job-sectors/performing-arts/job-profile/classical-musician

If you're at grade 8 on piano (the scale in the UK only goes up to 8. Some countries do it up to 10 but it's the same equivalent to the UK's grade 8), then you're practically as good as a paino teacher. In fact, this alone should allow you to become a piano teacher, but you should check to be sure.

For music degrees, some will require you to have done A Level Music, but they generally look at your overall music skills as opposed to whether you have the A Level or not.
In turn, to do A Level Music, some colleges expect you to have it at GCSE, but this is individual to the college. If you have a grade 8 in piano, I would doubt it would be that much of a concern, but you would still need to check with the individual college to be sure.

In terms of GCSEs, they tend not to matter that much for job applications. They tend to be more relevant for college, and to some extent uni. The key ones tend to be in English Language (for literacy), Maths (for numeracy), Science (for the science degrees and apprenticeships). Whether you did computer science or music would be of little consequence as far as I know.
Colleges can be picky about which subjects you did at GCSE for their individual A Levels, even though you don't need prior qualifications or grades to officially do them according to all of the exam boards. So if the individual college is being a pain, it's because of the college is being a pain (no other reasons as far as I know).

If you intend to be a pianist, I fail to see how computer science would be particularly relevant or useful. If you want to use It alongside your music for mixing, music production, etc. the specification for computer science generally doesn't cover the content you need. If you want to be techy with music, you do a course in music production or digital music.