LCM diplomas in general, by thesis in particular Options

[jm-hamilton]

Is it a requirement that the subject of the thesis is to be submitted for prior approval?

[jonathanquinn]

I replied to this but my reply seems to have been eaten.

My reason for not just doing a biography is that there is nobody on whom I really want to do one. My motivation for thinking about doing the FLCM (or LLCM as a stepping stone to it) is that I have something that I want to write about, not because I need to have the qualification. If it were the case that I knew that I needed to have the qualification or something then yes, I might just go to the library, borrow a dozen books on Bach, and churn something out, but the point is that I have a subject that I want the opportunity to explore, and this seemed to be a way to do it.I have made the mistake before, with my PhD thesis, of deciding that I wanted to have the qualification then thinking about what topic I could write on for the thesis, which has led to a thesis that I'm not very interested in and that isn't very good, whereas in this other case I just have a topic I want to do and that led to the idea of doing the diploma, not the other way round.

I think that the title of the thesis would be something to be determined before submission, yes, but the thing is that one of course has to have done a certain amount of research before one will have the prospective title, so I think it's a question of contacting the chief examiner somewhere in the middle of the research to check that the topic is ok.

[mel2]

Why not just write your piece and offer it for submission to a respected music journal?

I don't know if they accept articles from laypeople but there is only one way to find out.

[jonathanquinn]

That had occurred to me, but I don't know whether it would be up to that standard. After all, published articles tend to be of post-PhD standard.