Ah, the "going to college for music" concept. One of my favorite, and least favorite things to talk about, depending on who's got the opinions. Sometimes the conversations are oddly reverent, other times they are pointless pissing contests, and often they can become overly prejudiced and harsh against whichever side you're not on. Where do these feelings come from? I'll see if I can answer that later...
Let's just jump ahead to the end and say that going to college for music is something to consider. There's no ultimate argument that trumps all arguments, unfortunately.
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I think 95% of musicians would agree that being a musician is a trade. Even as a hobby, it's a trade, like knowing how to fix cars or how to network computers. It takes some understanding to get started, some rules to follow, and it has a vocabulary and vernacular that comes with it. With practice you get better, and maybe one day you'll be so good that you can charge people...as a musician, that likely means getting paid by a listening audience or by a session producer.
So it follows that there are schools that teach music, in a similar way that you'd teach another trade, with:
Hands-on training
Group sessions
Instructors from the field
One-on-one lessons
Books on procedure, practice manuals, etc.
But music is not JUST a trade, it's also an art-form, and that's where it can diverge drastically and muddy up the whole idea of why exactly music colleges should exist.
The skeptic will ask: "How can you teach something that is designed to impact culture, emotions?"
"What is there to learn from a teacher that you can't learn by listening to records?"
"How can you teach someone to improvise?"
I think the answer to those questions is simple:
Not all music serves the purpose of being meaningful to us emotionally. A lot of music exists for commercial, educational, supplemental purposes. And those types of music have to be written and recorded by someone...someone who can do it fast, well and cheaply. The breadth of music knowledge that it takes to be able to do these things is something that is taught in music school. Music also needs to be taught to others, and so training music teachers in the nuts and bolts of music theory is also a necessity. And believe me, there's enough music theory in existence to keep you in a classroom for a long time.
I mean, those above two purposes seem like fine reasons to attend music college...at least they do to me. But that's not where it gets contentious -- these are not the reason that the whole idea of a music college is a turn-off to so many people, and a giant turn-on for so many people.
There's an allure to a music college that I think can be very intoxicating to young adults, who are fresh out of high school or in their 20's. It's like, training to be an astronaut. The job itself is so fucking awesome that even just the idea of being THAT when you grow up is enough to drive people into a frenzy. The perks of being a musician are:
Fame
Sex
Cash
Power
Jewelry
Cars
Bitches
Owning a Professional Sports Team
Planes
Boats
Entourage
yep. All of that can and will be yours if you go to music school. Because then you'll be a trained and ready, lean-mean professional musician. *the crowd cheers just on the mention of your name*
Yeah, something like that.
Keep in mind that when I went to Berklee College of Music as recently as 2004, they didn't really even require an audition to get into the school. I did because I tried out for a couple scholarships (got one) and they saw me play during that. But not everyone had to. Their checks cleared.
So if you're not dumb enough to think that untrained, untested 18 year olds are likely to be future rockstars or rap moguls, we have kind of a problem. Maybe because I live in L.A., but there are just massive amounts of untrained, untested kids out of high school (or likely, fresh off the heels of their first job, that taught them that working for The Man is a sucker's game) that pursue creative arts in college. Music being one of the most popular, despite it's ever-declining revenues.
I can flash to scene after scene of conversations at parties where people pursuing music-related career fields had any particular knowledge of the industry, their instrument, or even more than just a passing enjoyment of music. The mere enjoyment of music has somehow morphed itself as a reason to be working in the music industry. I honestly thought that everybody liked music. Like 100% of people, worldwide.
And I dont want to sound too harsh or down on people who are following their dreams, I just think there's a massive disconnect from the industry itself and the army of colleges and trade schools that claim to be it's gatekeepers.
It truly is a fault of the music schools of the world to assume the role of a gateway to the INDUSTRY of music. It is a gateway to KNOWLEDGE of music. That's a gigantic distinction for me personally. I think that if that fact were more apparent, we'd have a lot less failed music career-carcasses floating around the streets of LA and NY.
Over the years, there has been a steadily increasing branding of colleges that promise careers in the music biz.
Berklee
Full Sail
MI (Musicians Institute)
Academy of Art
USC (here in L.A.)
Berklee went from a "boutique" jazz haven in 1945 to it's 2010 image as a dominating name in music education. Offering the most expansive book and online presence around. Berklee Online classes are now very popular, and very ubiquitious.
M.I. is plastered around Los Angeles like Coca Cola ads. They're much more blatant in the idea that going there is a "must" for relatively unskilled aspiring musicians. Despite the fact that private lessons through amazing local teachers are no more than a phone call away, and at a fraction of the cost of M.I. tuition.
Full Sail and the dozens of other recording schools are relying more on the hip hop community to keep enrollment up. Many hip hop lovers-turned-creators have no real instrument/voice training that would qualify them for an M.I. or Berklee...so "recording schools" pick up the slack.
Recording schools offer training to DJ's, beat-makers, sound-scapers, and other non-instrumental audiophiles to pay $25,000 per year to learn their craft better.
And I'd say these schools do a hell of a job, at times. I could go on for ages about my mixed-bag Berklee experience, but that's for another time. Point being, they're not duping people in the education they provide, the instructors are qualified and they're accredited. What I find to be a problem is that they play off people's loves and passions for music.
What they offer is so incredibly expensive, implying that it's the cost of an education that will take you far...but every musician knows that how far you go has nothing to do with which school you attended, or if you attended a school at all. It just doesn't. There's a laundry list of things to be good at to be a successful musician, and those are things that you can't learn in a class: dedication, raw talent, persistence, etc.
And we musicians have a cross to bear with this as well. A pretty huge one. There's too much weight given to schools in the musicians' world. I think they serve a purpose and can teach a great thing or 2. But to use your schooling to justify your talent is erroneous, as in thinking that you're a good musician because you went to a music school. And it is equally erroneous to use your lack of schooling to indicate your innate raw talent, as in thinking that your knowledge was gained completely by yourself. Neither one of these viewpoints is valid, there are too many conflicting examples to make either argument. People are just different, a few months/years at a music school cannot teach them to be the same.
From this point on, I would love to see this topic approached from this point of view:
Music schools are something to be considered as an educational option
One cannot purchase a career in music from a music school...no matter how appealing that sounds.
Thanks for reading and be on the lookout for more blogs on this topic.
For more music and drumming stuff visit:
Steve's Drum-Studio.com | Music Articles | Drum Tracking
Let's just jump ahead to the end and say that going to college for music is something to consider. There's no ultimate argument that trumps all arguments, unfortunately.
--
I think 95% of musicians would agree that being a musician is a trade. Even as a hobby, it's a trade, like knowing how to fix cars or how to network computers. It takes some understanding to get started, some rules to follow, and it has a vocabulary and vernacular that comes with it. With practice you get better, and maybe one day you'll be so good that you can charge people...as a musician, that likely means getting paid by a listening audience or by a session producer.
So it follows that there are schools that teach music, in a similar way that you'd teach another trade, with:
Hands-on training
Group sessions
Instructors from the field
One-on-one lessons
Books on procedure, practice manuals, etc.
But music is not JUST a trade, it's also an art-form, and that's where it can diverge drastically and muddy up the whole idea of why exactly music colleges should exist.
The skeptic will ask: "How can you teach something that is designed to impact culture, emotions?"
"What is there to learn from a teacher that you can't learn by listening to records?"
"How can you teach someone to improvise?"
I think the answer to those questions is simple:
Not all music serves the purpose of being meaningful to us emotionally. A lot of music exists for commercial, educational, supplemental purposes. And those types of music have to be written and recorded by someone...someone who can do it fast, well and cheaply. The breadth of music knowledge that it takes to be able to do these things is something that is taught in music school. Music also needs to be taught to others, and so training music teachers in the nuts and bolts of music theory is also a necessity. And believe me, there's enough music theory in existence to keep you in a classroom for a long time.
I mean, those above two purposes seem like fine reasons to attend music college...at least they do to me. But that's not where it gets contentious -- these are not the reason that the whole idea of a music college is a turn-off to so many people, and a giant turn-on for so many people.
There's an allure to a music college that I think can be very intoxicating to young adults, who are fresh out of high school or in their 20's. It's like, training to be an astronaut. The job itself is so fucking awesome that even just the idea of being THAT when you grow up is enough to drive people into a frenzy. The perks of being a musician are:
Fame
Sex
Cash
Power
Jewelry
Cars
Bitches
Owning a Professional Sports Team
Planes
Boats
Entourage
yep. All of that can and will be yours if you go to music school. Because then you'll be a trained and ready, lean-mean professional musician. *the crowd cheers just on the mention of your name*
Yeah, something like that.
Keep in mind that when I went to Berklee College of Music as recently as 2004, they didn't really even require an audition to get into the school. I did because I tried out for a couple scholarships (got one) and they saw me play during that. But not everyone had to. Their checks cleared.
So if you're not dumb enough to think that untrained, untested 18 year olds are likely to be future rockstars or rap moguls, we have kind of a problem. Maybe because I live in L.A., but there are just massive amounts of untrained, untested kids out of high school (or likely, fresh off the heels of their first job, that taught them that working for The Man is a sucker's game) that pursue creative arts in college. Music being one of the most popular, despite it's ever-declining revenues.
I can flash to scene after scene of conversations at parties where people pursuing music-related career fields had any particular knowledge of the industry, their instrument, or even more than just a passing enjoyment of music. The mere enjoyment of music has somehow morphed itself as a reason to be working in the music industry. I honestly thought that everybody liked music. Like 100% of people, worldwide.
And I dont want to sound too harsh or down on people who are following their dreams, I just think there's a massive disconnect from the industry itself and the army of colleges and trade schools that claim to be it's gatekeepers.
It truly is a fault of the music schools of the world to assume the role of a gateway to the INDUSTRY of music. It is a gateway to KNOWLEDGE of music. That's a gigantic distinction for me personally. I think that if that fact were more apparent, we'd have a lot less failed music career-carcasses floating around the streets of LA and NY.
Over the years, there has been a steadily increasing branding of colleges that promise careers in the music biz.
Berklee
Full Sail
MI (Musicians Institute)
Academy of Art
USC (here in L.A.)
Berklee went from a "boutique" jazz haven in 1945 to it's 2010 image as a dominating name in music education. Offering the most expansive book and online presence around. Berklee Online classes are now very popular, and very ubiquitious.
M.I. is plastered around Los Angeles like Coca Cola ads. They're much more blatant in the idea that going there is a "must" for relatively unskilled aspiring musicians. Despite the fact that private lessons through amazing local teachers are no more than a phone call away, and at a fraction of the cost of M.I. tuition.
Full Sail and the dozens of other recording schools are relying more on the hip hop community to keep enrollment up. Many hip hop lovers-turned-creators have no real instrument/voice training that would qualify them for an M.I. or Berklee...so "recording schools" pick up the slack.
Recording schools offer training to DJ's, beat-makers, sound-scapers, and other non-instrumental audiophiles to pay $25,000 per year to learn their craft better.
And I'd say these schools do a hell of a job, at times. I could go on for ages about my mixed-bag Berklee experience, but that's for another time. Point being, they're not duping people in the education they provide, the instructors are qualified and they're accredited. What I find to be a problem is that they play off people's loves and passions for music.
What they offer is so incredibly expensive, implying that it's the cost of an education that will take you far...but every musician knows that how far you go has nothing to do with which school you attended, or if you attended a school at all. It just doesn't. There's a laundry list of things to be good at to be a successful musician, and those are things that you can't learn in a class: dedication, raw talent, persistence, etc.
And we musicians have a cross to bear with this as well. A pretty huge one. There's too much weight given to schools in the musicians' world. I think they serve a purpose and can teach a great thing or 2. But to use your schooling to justify your talent is erroneous, as in thinking that you're a good musician because you went to a music school. And it is equally erroneous to use your lack of schooling to indicate your innate raw talent, as in thinking that your knowledge was gained completely by yourself. Neither one of these viewpoints is valid, there are too many conflicting examples to make either argument. People are just different, a few months/years at a music school cannot teach them to be the same.
From this point on, I would love to see this topic approached from this point of view:
Music schools are something to be considered as an educational option
One cannot purchase a career in music from a music school...no matter how appealing that sounds.
Thanks for reading and be on the lookout for more blogs on this topic.
For more music and drumming stuff visit:
Steve's Drum-Studio.com | Music Articles | Drum Tracking
Your blog touches on a good subject for debate. However, you let your lack of knowledge in the subject as well as your lack of diversity as a musician become very obvious. I have a Bachelor's of Music degree, so you know where I stand.
ReplyDeleteYou left out a few music colleges. Hundreds of accredited 4-year universities in this nation offer music Bachelor's degrees, if not Masters and Doctorates in music as well. The top three music colleges in the U.S. for 2012 are Juilliard, Manhattan School of Music, and Yale. Kids don't go to these schools for the babes, beer, or false hopes of stardom. These schools house mostly students who have already dedicated years of their lives to music. People attend these music colleges with the goal of becoming better and more versatile musicians/people. Students don't get in to these schools simply because their check cleared, like Berklee and M.I. so often do. Why did you not mention these or any other top schools in your blog about "going to college for music?" Because you are a rock drummer with a skill and diversity level lower than most 4-year music institutions would accept. That's why you went to Breklee and probably did not earn a degree there. Good for you if you did!!!