Berklee and other music colleges

[Balkan]

I'm with JMJ on this one, and I just want to add that--despite differences in genres etc.--the most important qualities over all are taste and feel, for which a musical education won't necessarily help. That said, I listen to (and sometime play with) friends in the NYC music scene who have way more formal education and technical ability than I do - and they are amazing and some of them are pretty successful, playing with people like Sufjan Stevens or Steely Dan etc. -, but what makes them really great is not their training but that they "get it." They know how to make their training work for them, all in the service of taste, feel etc.

I'm always trying to improve my knowledge, ability etc., and it's fun to do. In one sense, I'll never be as good as the great virtuoso bass players that get praised here, or even any decent jazz player. I'm sure most of the Berklee crowd would find me lame. On the other hand, I do get praised for my feel and groove by musical friends I really respect, and I already have more ability and theoretical knowledge than I need to play the music that I actually like to listen to (a kind of wide range of the original "alternative rock,"indie rock, folk, funk, classic stuff, and basically any piece of music recorded in 1972.)

So my advice would be to do what's necessary to play the kind of music you want to play. I guess in my case I was never too concerned by this problem since I never wanted to be a professional musician - I dig my life as a writer and scholar in a completely different field. I just like playing music. I think that's good advice for anyone, though, because if your only goal is to "make it," the chances are always pretty slim. I mean, the way the industry is going, many of the people who have "made it" can't leave their day jobs as quickly as they used to!

[JimmyM]

Originally Posted by Balkan

if your only goal is to "make it," the chances are always pretty slim. I mean, the way the industry is going, many of the people who have "made it" can't leave their day jobs as quickly as they used to!

Right. Don't know if you're familiar with the bands Death and Iced Earth, but Richard Christy of the Howard Stern Show used to play with them, and he said they'd play festivals in front of thousands, and they had a pretty big name in their circles, but when he was off tour, he was an electrician living in a storage unit in Orlando. Granted, neither of those bands ever set the world on fire as far as album sales, but they were certainly doing big enough gigs and had a big enough name where they should have been able to make a living at it, and they couldn't.

And now that accountants and lawyers have ruined the music business by putting their heads in the sand when the technology advances didn't jibe with their business model, expect that to multiply by tenfold over the next few years.

[Bryndog]

I reckon a healthy mix of the two would hold you in pretty good stead.

I been playing for the best part of 17 years in bands, and writing and recording my own stuff at home. I used to work on technique for hours, listening to and trying to emulate my favourite bass licks and lines. The more you practise at this, the better you will get - it just stands to reason.

So I'd go out and play with bands, whip out these sweet licks that I had bastardised from other really cool lines and changed around a bit. It was pretty sweet to be able to play that stuff and have people comment on it, but when another musician would ask what it was I was playing, I wouldn't be able to tell them, and that pretty much sucked.

Thats how it was for a long time until recently, I went to a tutor and spent a half hour or an hour every week for about 5 months studying with him, and its helped me no end.

Its given me the tools I need to unravel everything I play and to be able to look at it in a different way and know how it has been made up and why it works.

Its also helped iron out any bad habits I had with regards to technique, and its opened up a world of new pathways when improvising or writing.

Mind you, it took 15 years for me to want to know why these licks work and what makes them work, and I think thats the key. Its about what you want to do.

If you wanna go and play with your mates and have a laugh - do exactly that, you'll learn all you need to know to by just trying.

If you want to do session work, whilst its no longer a particular pre-requisite to be able to sight-read music in a session, you gotta know how to play a chord chart, and if you're gonna do that well, you need to know your scales and apreggios at the bare minimum, and you wont get to know them without some study.

On the flip side, you could be the most educated musician in the world, but if you haven't done the road stints in bands playing up and down the country, or you don't jam with anyone, then you have no live, or studio experience at all, and no one knows who you are.

I reckon you gotta want to do both to give yourself a fighting chance in this industry, 'coz when your lucky break reveals itself to you, you're gonna want to have as much knowledge and experience behind you as possible to be the best player you can be, 'coz you can bet your life savings that there will be a better player right behind you if it turns out you fall short of the mark.

B