In my MySQL table I would like to use one text field which can contain lots of text. What I want to use it for is for student records, and I want to be able to add to it without destroying what is already there.
I want the field to contain something like:

****03/11/2007****
Chopin prelude No 9: small problem bars 12-15.
Advice given on how to practice.

****10/11/2007****
Problem in Prelude overcome, piece successfully completed.
New piece set: Beethoven Sonata No 1, movement 1.

etc.
This is of course just an example, but that is how I want to set up my student records.

Do I have to use LONGTEXT for this, and how do I set the parameters?

Thanks in advance.

Using the cheat sheet from your other topic, text is good for 65K characters. So is BLOB, but I think Blob is more suited to Binary data, like images. Might have to check on that, so either of them should be good.

Tinychar and Varchar are only good to 255 characters, about 100 words.