For those who went to music school, was it worth it?

[voxo]

[Stevebol]

May I use this as a song line? "We're just guides in a forbidden zone. We give people hope."

Who am I , Prince? Sure.

[Stevebol]

I actually took Krav Maga classes when I was at university to stay in shape and a girl I liked went to the same gym. I never had to use my training during university. During a jam session post-college, a horn player didn’t take it kindly when I used chord solos when trading eights with him on Oleo. He said he was going to kill me for making him look bad. I told him I was leaving and to leave me alone and he and two of his drunk friends began to follow me out of the bar to my car. I had a heavy Peavey T60 guitar and used it to, let’s say convince them to leave me alone when they kept following me to my car. That night, it lost some value and needed cleaning.

On the topic of music schools, some points have been made about getting connections is just as important as improving as a musician. This is such a key component in what you get out of music school. It’s better to graduate with friends who have connections, whose friends have connections, than graduate with nobody in our corner. If you can forge fraternity and brotherhood/sisterhood while at university, those connections can pay off. I learned the hard way of power in numbers when us guitarists and singers were vastly outnumbered by the others. It’s better to graduate with more allies and people in your corner than graduate with a target on your back. If it wasn’t for my family coming town for the graduation ceremony, I would’ve just slept through it and gone to the beach.

Scout out universities if you’re looking to go to music school. Contact alumni and current students to determine what kind of culture the school has. If it’s open season on guitarists like where I went to, don’t even bother applying there or visiting there no matter how good the campus, facilities, and faculty may be. I just don’t want young musicians who might not have a plan for life after music to go to a university with a toxic culture, study music, pay full tuition, and end up with nothing at the end of it all. Things could’ve ended up really bad if I hadn’t gotten the hell out of the country by the end of my career.

My situation was a little different but it's why I bailed on music 40 years ago. Rap was on the horizon and that meant downsizing. Home studios, drum machines, new gear, etc..
I didn't stop playing in bands but I worked full time jobs doing unskilled labor. I actually practiced a lot in the 90's. Stuff I would never try to play live. I haven't gigged since 1999.

These are scandalous times and sort of predictable. I think your story is too outlandish not to be true.

What happens in music undergrounds stays underground. That's what we were. Let sleeping dogs lie.
Reality is overrated.

[Stevebol]

Chicago Bears fans love the player that they drafted from this school, a lot and have sky high expectations for him this season because of how early he was drafted this year and how he won the nations top award for a college football player during his time at this school.

The faculty in the music department were great at teaching and playing music, predominantly the adjunct professors. The ones in more tenured positions were good as well, but they were terrible at managing the students’ personal conduct. The professor who instilled and indoctrinated hate for guitarists had tenure and couldn’t be fired. My professor was like a father to me and was the only professor to stand up for us guitarists. I can only hope things have changed since I was a student studying there.

This program can be an attractive option for jazz guitarists because of its unique program for them and great location in a very large city, but I’d avoid studying here unless you are offered a scholarship.

Beethoven called the guitar- the little orchestra. I've played in 3 piece rock and blues bands. My last gigs were with a 3 piece blues band 25 years ago.
The most success I've had was playing funk/R&B in the mid 80's.

I'm done chasing scenes but the easiest thing for me to get into would probably be west coast swing. Hollywood Fats, etc..

Sounds like universities are bat shit crazy and everyone is up in everyone else's business.

[Marty Grass]

I have a different story. I wanted to go to jazz school at either North Texas State Univ or Berklee. I didn't have the money. I joined the Air Force to get the GI Bill and was trained as a medic. The Air Force paid 3/4ths of my tuition while I worked as a medic provided that school didn't interfere with my job. After four years I had a bachelor's degree and had been accepted into a medical school.

Many years later I study music appreciation as best I can while working full time.

[2bornot2bop]

Good on the OP for creating a secondary profession in a European country! Personally I envy you having the ability to travel to a different country in a matter of a few hours. I always desired to live in Europe, partly because of its actual history. Personally, after spending a year abroad in Eastern Europe I don’t find life in the USA all that rewarding. So yes, you’re living a rewarding life in my eyes.

[Stevebol]

Good on the OP for creating a secondary profession in a European country! Personally I envy you having the ability to travel to a different country in a matter of a few hours. I always desired to live in Europe, partly because of its actual history. Personally, after spending a year abroad in Eastern Europe I don’t find life in the USA all that rewarding. So yes, you’re living a rewarding life in my eyes.

After working in Japan in the 80's for 6 months I'm bored out of my mind in the US.
That's OK, I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to die in the USA.

[Jimmy blue note]

If you want to become a great player/performer, I think it's essential to be a part of a like-minded and challenging community because the state of the art is advancing constantly. I think this is more important if you want to use a more modern language.
Philly was a great town for me to learn bebop in because there was an active club and jam scene I could learn from masters who were the real deal. But while Jimmy Bruno was a central figure in the teaching scene there, he also looked down on more "progressive" concepts he had not use for-and the theory behind them. So for that scene, music school was not such a pre-requisite.

I happen to like players who are redefining the language and because so many of those people (in the NY scene) had solid fundamentals that a good music school can provide, being in a serious music school, with other serious players, and a peripheral scene where you can find others to hone your skills OUTSIDE of class...that's important.

Boston was a good city for me to find that. Amazing people who were driven (Bryan Baker, Wolfgang Musthspiel, Kurt Rosenwinkel and Julian Lage were more valuable people to learn from as peers than most teachers, to be honest). A good school is a magnet for the top artists in the world, and they all want to play.
Berklee and NEC can give you a great academic springboard for foundational ideas-although Berklee has a fair percentage of poseurs who drag down the level of teaching in the classrooms.
I learned more from going to the clubs and attending the gigs where faculty regularly played. That's the real classroom. Jerry Bergonzi and George Garzone on a weekly basis. When I first came to town, Mick Goodrick played weekly for free at a tiny club, and decades later he played weekly unannounced if you knew where to go. Tim Miller was a regular name in small clubs. In NY, it's ridiculous, Ben Monder, Adam Rogers, Mike Moreno and everybody for the cost of a drink. Master classes nightly.
In a good jazz town, I could have gotten the highest education by tapping the talents of the students and teachers outside of the classrooms and arranging private lessons with the teachers on my own. But that takes a lot of connecting.

At a school with a diverse programming, one can get a deep immersion in classical music by attending the near nightly recitals of Western classical music performances, most of them for free. Believe me, knowledge of the tradition and history of classical music deeply informs concepts of composition, improvisational language, the arc of idea development, possibilities of harmony, voice leading by ear, and a string quartet is a how-to in player interaction.

Music schools are competitive in scholarship allotments but if you're good enough (study and work hard enough before you walk in your first day) you can get all the benefits of connecting, forming bonds, hanging with teachers and getting discovered, and it's paid for. THEN a music school is worth it.

Know more when you audition than most students who are graduating, have a solid musical identity and music school is a rich mixture that can fuel a solid career in the fast lane.

If you don't know where to begin and you want to know what it's all about, you can also go to music school to find out, but it'll cost you, and if you don't have the mix of playing with really good peers, it's an extremely expensive way to learn to play.

However if your school provides diverse programs in Business, engineering, teaching, or even tech skills, there could be a course to a viable future.
If you want to learn in a school, I think you need to know which teachers to study with AHEAD OF TIME, and which ones to avoid, especially if you're female. It's a mine field and some schools have an incestious revolving door graduate/teach policy that promotes less than insightful faculty. Some schools will hire big names with known sexual predatory propensities because they're famous. 'gotta do your homework.
To be a player, it takes full time devotion, before, during and after school. Most people are not able to embrace that sensibility so they fail. And music schools are more than happy to feed themselves on your delusions on your road to failure and debt.

That's my experience.

[ccroft]

Solid post Jimmy. As a youngster in '71 I really wanted to attend Berklee, but Boston is a long way from Vancouver Island. I couldn't pay for the plane ticket, let alone the rest of it. I took a correspondence course. Paper in the mail. How quaint!

I was allowed to audit a few semesters of the jazz course at Portland State through the good graces of a sax player I knew who studied there. He convinced the school they needed a different guitar player for the band. (I still kinda feel bad for the guy that got bumped). I got a lot of real world rehearsal and performance experience. And I got to meet and play with a bunch of people I wouldn't have otherwise. I spent a ton of time jamming and learning in the practice rooms with fellow students, some of which I went on to gig with down the road.

There were workshops with Stan Kenton and a few others I can't think of just now. I got to hear various types of music that were totally new to me. Phillip Glass for EG when he was touring with an 'orchestra' of a half dozen or so Farfisas.

I sometimes look back and think if Portland State was that good for me, how much better would Berklee have been considering the level of talent and the stronger music scene in a bigger city like Boston.

The community might be the best reason to go to the right music school. Too bad it went so weird for the OP.

[Stevebol]

There's a genuine problem with the guitar vs the piano as an accompanying instrument. That's not just political/social - but a matter of how the guitar works and sounds and how the piano works and sounds. I'm trying very hard to make the guitar work as a poly-phonic instrument after focusing for thirty years on making it work as a single-note instrument. It's some project. I like the way Pete Bernstein accompanies a singer - but I'm not even very keen on Joe Pass....

do you think there were other reasons the culture at your school was anti-guitar? did it have anything to do with the role of electric guitar in our rock 'n roll culture? (not that it's a rock 'n roll culture anymore really) - or how influenced guitarists tend to be by music that doesn't have a jazz-feel?

hard luck mate - I feel for you! I bet you can get yourself some nice quiet jazz gigs in Spain given that you know as many tunes as you do etc. - does that appeal?

Seems like competition for gigs and club owners have no problem pitting musicians against each other. It costs less to pay a guitar-vocal duo.
It's not my world but universities might have an arrangement with some clubs.

There's no sense in getting worked up about it but gigs go to the lower bidder.