Music Course in the Philippines: Degrees and Auditions

TL;DR: There is no CHED Policies, Standards and Guidelines memorandum for a Bachelor of Music. A search of CHED's published memorandum-order archive from 1997 through 2025 returns music memoranda only about Centers of Excellence and Development, never a programme PSG. That means curricula, majors and audition rules are set by each conservatory, not nationally. Admission is typically a theory exam, a solfege exam and a departmental audition on top of the general entrance test. There is no PRC board exam for musicians — the only licensure route that touches the degree is teaching, where RA 10533 §8(a) names music graduates explicitly and gives them five years after hiring to pass the LET.

Most Philippine degree guides start with a CHED memorandum. This one cannot, and the reason is genuinely useful to know before you apply.

CHED regulates programmes by issuing Policies, Standards and Guidelines — the memorandum orders that set a degree's name, minimum units and required courses. It has issued them for interior design, fine arts, multimedia arts, performing arts, culture and arts education and dozens of other fields. It has never issued one for music.

What CHED Has and Has Not Issued for Music

Reviewing CHED's own memorandum-order index year by year from 1997 through 2025, the music-related issuances are all about institutional designation rather than curriculum:

CHED does recognise excellence in music education, in other words, without prescribing what a music degree must contain.

The nearest policies that touch music are indirect. CMO No. 25, series of 2017 governs the Bachelor of Performing Arts (BPeA) and covers two tracks only — dance and theatre — while making Fundamentals of Music a compulsory 3-unit core course for both, and listing "Bachelor of Music" among its allied fields. CMO No. 82, series of 2017 sets the standards for the Bachelor of Culture and Arts Education (BCAEd), the teacher-education route.

Why This Matters When You Apply

Three practical consequences follow, and they are the reason to read school documents rather than national ones:

• Unit counts and majors differ legitimately between schools. There is no 135- or 158-unit national floor to compare against, as there is for multimedia arts or fine arts.
• Audition and theory-exam requirements are institutional. Nothing obliges two conservatories to test the same things.
• A CHED Center of Excellence designation for Music is a meaningful signal precisely because there is no PSG. It is one of the few national quality markers the field has.

Disclaimer: because there is no national policy for this degree, everything below about curriculum and admissions is school-specific and subject to change. Confirm with the conservatory or college of music directly.

What a Bachelor of Music Programme Contains

Since the national picture is empty, the useful reference is what an established conservatory publishes. The UP College of Music lists two undergraduate routes on its own programme pages:

• Bachelor of Music (BM) — a four-year programme with majors in instruments (bowed instruments — violin, viola, cello, contrabass — classical guitar, and winds and percussion), piano, voice, composition, conducting (band, choral and orchestral), dance, musicology and music education.
• Associate in Arts (Music) — a two-year programme with concentrations in composition, conducting, dance, music education, musicology, and music performance in voice or instruments including Asian instruments, percussion, piano, strings and winds.

Two features of that list are worth noticing. Dance sits inside the music college, not only inside performing arts — a reminder that departmental boundaries differ by institution. And musicology and music education are majors in their own right, not add-ons, which matters if performance is not your endgame.

The college organises teaching across nine departments, including composition, conducting, keyboard, music education, musicology, strings, voice/music theatre/dance, and winds and percussion, each publishing its own audition requirements.

For a shorter, production-oriented alternative, De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde lists Music Production among the undergraduate programmes in its School of Arts, Culture and Performance — a different discipline from conservatory performance, and worth distinguishing before you apply.

How Music Auditions Actually Work

This is the part that surprises applicants who assume passing the university entrance exam is the hurdle. At a conservatory it is only the first of three.

The UP College of Music describes undergraduate admission as a three-tiered process: screening on UP College Admission status, then the Music Theory Exam and Solfege Exam, then departmental auditions. Applicants who passed the UPCAT are still required to take and pass the Music Theory Exam, the Solfege Exam and the Audition and Interview. Only those who clear the theory and solfege exams proceed to the talent audition. Foreign applicants whose first language is not English, and who did not study in an English-medium school, are additionally required to present a passing TOEFL score.

Audition requirements are published per department and differ by whether you are applying for a primary or secondary concentration, so there is no single national repertoire list to prepare.

On dates: application windows, theory-exam dates and audition schedules move every cycle, and colleges of music publish them on their own admission pages. Do not build a preparation calendar around a date you read in an article. Check the college's official admission page for the current cycle.

What you can prepare for regardless of school:

• Solfege and sight-singing. It is screened separately from your instrument at UP, and a strong instrumental audition does not compensate for failing it.
• Written theory. Intervals, key signatures, chord construction, basic harmony.
• Prepared repertoire on your primary instrument or voice, matched to the department's published list.
• An interview. Expect to explain why this major and what you have been studying.
• Evidence of formal study, if you have it. Conservatories vary in how much prior training they assume, and some publish preparatory or extension programmes for applicants who need a year of groundwork first.

Our college admission requirements checklist covers the paperwork that applies to every applicant regardless of course.

Does Music Have a Board Exam?

No. The Professional Regulation Commission administers 46 Professional Regulatory Boards. Music is not one of them. There is no licensure examination for performers, composers, conductors, arrangers or music producers, and no licence is required to work.

One regulated profession does intersect with the degree, and it is the one many music graduates end up in: Professional Teachers. Teaching in basic education normally requires passing the Licensure Examination for Teachers.

Here Philippine law makes a specific accommodation that music graduates should know verbatim. Section 8(a) of Republic Act No. 10533, the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013, provides that notwithstanding the relevant sections of the Philippine Teachers Professionalization Act, DepEd and private education institutions shall hire "graduates of science, mathematics, statistics, engineering, music and other degree courses with shortages in qualified Licensure Examination for Teachers (LET) applicants to teach in their specialized subjects in the elementary and secondary education," provided "that they pass the LET within five (5) years after their date of hiring," and further providing that if such graduates are willing to teach part-time, "the provisions of LET shall no longer be required."

Music is named in the statute itself. That is a real and unusually concrete pathway. If teaching is the plan, our guides on how to become a teacher in the Philippines and the LET cover the examination side.

For fields that do end in a licensure exam, see our list of courses with board exams.

Realistic Careers for Music Graduates

Without a licence to organise the profession, careers are built on repertoire, recordings, teaching credentials and networks. The realistic categories:

• Performance. Orchestras, choirs, chamber ensembles, session and studio work, theatre pits, hotel and events work, church music.
• Teaching. Studio and private teaching; basic-education classroom teaching via the LET route above; tertiary teaching, which normally requires postgraduate study.
• Composition and arranging. Concert works, scoring for film, television and games, choral and band arranging, jingles.
• Conducting. Band, choral and orchestral, in schools, churches and community ensembles.
• Music production and audio. Recording, mixing, live sound, post-production. This is where a production-oriented degree, rather than a conservatory one, may fit better.
• Musicology, criticism, archiving and arts administration. Programming, curation, cultural agencies, publishing.

Two statutory frameworks now sit behind these. Republic Act No. 11904, the Philippine Creative Industries Development Act, covers "recorded music, music scores, compositions ready for recording" under its Audiovisual Media Domain, and "live music, theatre, musical theatre, dance, opera" under its Performing Arts Domain, which is defined to include "the training of performers." The Act establishes a creative industries development council mandated to run a long-term development plan with employment, skills and financing programmes.

Choosing a Music Programme

Because there is no national standard, the comparison questions have to be specific:

• Is the school a CHED-designated Center of Excellence or Development for Music? With no PSG in the field, this is one of the few external quality signals.
• What exactly is tested at admission, and when? Theory, solfege, audition, interview — ask which, and ask for the department's repertoire list.
• Is your instrument actually taught there? Departmental structures differ; a school may have a strong keyboard department and no winds faculty.
• What is the performance calendar? Recitals, ensembles and juries are the real curriculum in a performance major.
• Who teaches your principal study, and is it one-to-one? In a conservatory, the studio teacher matters more than the institution's name.
• What are the instrument, accompanist and recital costs? These are real and outside tuition. No CHED policy regulates them.

If you are still deciding between fields, our guide on what course to take in college works through the broader choice, and our Arts and Design strand guide covers the senior high side for creative courses.

Ready to find the right school? Browse schools and compare programmes across the Philippines on SchoolFinderPH.

Sources

• Commission on Higher Education — Memorandum Orders archive by year
• Commission on Higher Education — CMO No. 25, series of 2017, PSG for the Bachelor of Performing Arts (BPeA)
• Commission on Higher Education — 2015 CHED Memorandum Orders index (COE/COD for Music)
• Commission on Higher Education — 2012 CHED Memorandum Orders index (CMO No. 24, s. 2012)
• UP College of Music — Undergraduate Programs
• UP College of Music — Undergraduate admission requirements
• UP College of Music — Audition requirements by department
• Professional Regulation Commission — Professional Regulatory Boards
• Republic Act No. 10533 — Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013
• Republic Act No. 11904 — Philippine Creative Industries Development Act
• De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde — Undergraduate Programmes