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Originally Posted by Battist  Hey Adam thanks so much for takin the time to help us out on here. Im a high school senior and am starting at Belmont next year as a commercial music major on bass guitar. Ive heard you had some connections with Belmont and was wondering which emphasis you thought would benefit me the most. I (like everyone else in the world it seems) would love to be a bass player as a living and i figure studying at Belmont might give me an edge I need. I can do performance or music business as my major emphasis although both are music degrees. Im wondering which one would open more doors as Brad Paisley did music business and through those internships that he got his big break but then also I might not get the playing experience as much? Thank you so much for helping!!  |
hey there, battist-
i'm an adjunct faculty member at belmont and teach private applied bass lessons there... my personal opinion is that a music business degree would be more useful to you in the long run... you can still play and study as much as you want outside of that curriculum, and at belmont you'll be around a lot of great players that you can play and interact with on a regular. the skills you will take with you from the business side of things will really help you to understand how much of the industry works and give you a head start in your 'business mindset' which is what you are going to need if you want to play the crazy game of music!
understand i would never say a performance degree is a waste of time. you obviously devote a lot of time to your craft and work on mastering many different aspects of playing; however, a performance degree is not going to get you any gigs directly, per se. experience, networking, and relationship building is more integral to your success as a player. my jazz improv professor at georgia state actually told our class (full of performance majors) one day that a performance degree was a waste of time. he felt the better college investment was a theory or compositional degree if you wanted something that would be more useful if you wanted to teach in universities or colleges... fwiw, i suppose!
hope that helps somewhat-
adam
