Career Indecision

[Rockford]

If you're into engineering I say do it. Good money and you can have a band room in your house, invite your music friends over and play your tail off evenings and weekends. You can also laugh when the club owners offer you next to nothing for a nights work. A good job allows you to play on your own terms. Good luck!

[Stilettoprefer]

I am in kind of the same boat. I just got hired full time as a machinist at the shop work at and am progressing in that field very quickly. I love music and will always do stuff like building and repairing guitars/basses, but machining is a good source of income if you get really good at it and are okay with living cheap for a few years. My dad is an inspector at the same shop and makes enough to support a 4 member family in a big house and a few large animals for a year while my mom was unable to work.

Go to community college and take some random classes to see what you like. I'm taking recording classes and am loving it,but am starting to see how difficult it would be to make a steady income. Word is starting to get around that I know how to wire guitars, so I'm starting to get friends of friends taking their guitars to me for wiring work and am making some money that way.

My advice, get some education and start learning about everything that you think might possibly interest you. And always be a good employee. I went from mopping floors at the shop to running 3 machines at the same time, in under a year. That takes most people 2-3 years minimum.

Btw, I absolutely hate math classes, but doing math in the real world really isn't that bad. I have to take a ton of measurements and junk and it really isn't as hard as school made it out to be, especially with modern measuring tools and creative problem solving. And I never made it past algebra 2 in school (lowest level math at most colleges,minimal for graduation in high school)

[graver555]

First thank you for all of your responses.
I think this is what I needed to get back on track instead of from my parents all the time. Im pretty sure Im going to go into chem or material engineering.

Anyone from either of those fields have an idea on the math? I can do basic math easy breasy but some of this higher level stuff is too much theory and not enough "realness?" for me to grasp well.

[UncleFluffy]

Originally Posted by graver555

Anyone from either of those fields have an idea on the math? I can do basic math easy breasy but some of this higher level stuff is too much theory and not enough "realness?" for me to grasp well.

Learning math is really just about beating your head against a brick wall until it falls down. Do the exercises, do some more, eventually the concept clicks. Repeat. You don't need to be a genius, you just need to be stubborn.

[fdeck]

Originally Posted by UncleFluffy

Learning math is really just about beating your head against a brick wall until it falls down. Do the exercises, do some more, eventually the concept clicks. Repeat. You don't need to be a genius, you just need to be stubborn.

The same can be said of learning any subject that you hate.

[UncleFluffy]

Originally Posted by fdeck

The same can be said of learning any subject that you hate.

Yes and no. Math - or at least using it - is mainly pattern matching. My experience was that progress was far less smooth than for other subjects ... nothing for a while, then a big discontinuity when a new pattern clicks inside your head. The stubbornness is necessary for any subject, but the "beating your head against a wall that eventually falls down" part is pretty math-specific and if you don't expect it can be very dispiriting. (For me at least. YMMV. Standard disclaimers apply.)

[fdeck]

Originally Posted by UncleFluffy

Yes and no. Math - or at least using it - is mainly pattern matching. My experience was that progress was far less smooth than for other subjects ... nothing for a while, then a big discontinuity when a new pattern clicks inside your head. The stubbornness is necessary for any subject, but the "beating your head against a wall that eventually falls down" part is pretty math-specific and if you don't expect it can be very dispiriting. (For me at least. YMMV. Standard disclaimers apply.)

There's also a negative side to it.

Actually, pattern matching does a pretty good job of describing school math, but not how math is used in real life. That's a shortcoming of how math is taught, in my view. I use math regularly in my day job, for instance to develop algorithms.

At the same time, a lot of creative fields have a pattern matching aspect. How about music? Consider the time we spend internalizing scales, chords, etc., so we can recognize them while we are playing.

Algebraic manipulation pervades almost all of math, even when we let computers do it nowadays. It's something that has to become instinctive, like knowing your way around the fretboard. Otherwise it will be a perpetual struggle. And nobody really knows how to teach algebraic manipulation except by letting you practice it a lot.

[solarflare]

I feel like I have no choice but to comment on this! I just finished my freshman year of engineering at Purdue.. same boat: massive love for music, but a desire to lean towards a "real," "solid" career. I know you've probably already made a decision, but I'm here if you still have questions!

[Indiana Mike]

Go to school while your young .

You have a good 70+ years left.

Plenty of time to figure it out

[Nephilymbass]

My advice is at your age there's no way to know what you want to do with your life. I got a scholarship out of high school to go to school for music education. But being the school was 3 hours from home I would've had to quit my job and my parents weren't in the best financial situation at the time. A lot of "ifs" for a low paying career. So I didn't go. I ended up taking classes at my local community college and became a EMT (basically a paramedic) . I loved it for like 6 months then Hated it for a long time. Just way to many bs calls. Diabetics that don't want to check their blood sugar so you check it for them, they drink some juice and feel better and refuse to ride to the hospital. Crack heads that use ambulances as a free (to them anyway) taxi service. Just got old. Ended up going back to community college and graduated the surgical technology program. Im now a certified surgical tech and certified first assist. I honestly choose my career path because I wanted to stay in the medical field where I could have decent benefits and not have to work til im 70, but also to not have to deal with people wasting my time and taxpayers money. Everyone who comes into the operating room either needs to be there or are spending a load of thie own money for an elective procedure. All this time I've played music and made money doing so. I would recommend to anyone who's young to view music as a supplemental income. Running sound is a complicated job. You have to be able to deal with all kinds of crazy egos in a good way. If good bands think your a total jerk they won't want to play there and the club owner will catch on after a while. On the other side if you tend to go to shows on a regular basis running sound can be like getting paid to go see shows. As with any job it'll seem like a lot of work at first but after a while you'll fall into a routine and hardly even think about what your doing. The thing is there's just not a lot of money in music these days. People just don't like paying a high door fees if they can get in somewhere else for free. Club owners usually don't like dipping into alcohol sales to pay soundguys and bands. Even from the bands perspective as far as getting paid from The door we really just want enough to pay for strings, batteries, drum heads here and there and hopefully gas. We make the majority of our money selling merch. The day our second album came out we played a show and I made 10 times as much off cd sales than I did from what we got paid by the club. Running live sound could be good if you want to open a studio one day. You'll have a better understanding of what different gear does. You'll get to network and talk to bands that could pay you to record them some day. Everyone we've ever recorded with i met within the nc rock/metal scene

[ArtGuy9516]

Have you considered Music Therapy? I'm an art therapist and have worked with music therapists before. The pay likely won't be at the same level as an what an engineer would earn. However based on my experience over the years working with others and seeing the benefit the receive from communicating and expressing themselves through any form of art is very rewarding.

[placedesjardins]

Originally Posted by graver555

Hello everyone, I am a 18 yo senior. I love music. I always loved music. I never really considered a job in the music industry because I was scared I would never make any money. Now Im not a money is all that matters kinda guy but I want to make a good liveing.

Ive always loved working with my hands and science and stuff like that so I figured I would be an engineer. Problem is I hate math. Im ok with regular math and algebra but calculus and advanced trig make me want to go be a lumberjack or a ditch digger so I wont have to think anymore. Although a lumberjack dosnt sound that bad, big bushy bear, big muscles from swinging an axe all day, and if I get hungry and dont feel like buying meat I could just go eat a squirrel. But I digress.....

The other week I was at our schools showchoir competition and hung out with the soundguys all day. I realized that I wanted to do what they were doing. I did some research though and it seems like if you have a steady job then your ok but Im not sure if it would be worth the effort and low pay.

I would love to be in a working band or mayby a session player (Im great at sight reading not so much memorizing so this may be better then being in a band) but I dont think I can handle that little of job security. A music teacher I wouldnt mind but not with the state of education these days every teacher Ive talked to says not to. I have also thought about being a repairman for instruments or gear but it dosnt seem to pay very well.

So does anyone have any suggestions or comments? Any info from actual sound engineers whether recording or live would be appreciated. I really want to do something active like play or mix music or make things. Also I would like a career where 40-50,000 a year isnt unrealistic in the future.

Ps I live in Indiana and have 21 centuary scholars which gives me 4 years tuition at any public school in the state or the equivalent if I go private. Not sure if it would cover vocational though.

If you have a scholarship, I would suggest that you take advantage of it. I can't advise you what major to choose, that's on you.

[wrench45us]

I had a bad math teacher my first math class in college. Lacking any sort of context I assumed I was bad at math and ended up changing majors.
Eventually I ended up working with mechanical. electrical and optical engineer as a software engineer.
A very great deal depends on who's teaching and how they teach. A lot of students have issues with calculus because their more basic math skills are weak. So a lot of schools offer Pre-calculus classes to hone those skills.
That said most of chemistry is algebra. A lot of mechanical and optical engineering is trig. The great part of software engineering is you code any sort of math calculation and test and it keeps working -- you just have to figure it out once. Otherwise it's a lot of pure logic.
The problem with college these days is the cost is so high one can't afford to find out what one really wants to do. Student debt requires some sort of immediate good paying employment.
I suspectthiongs will change in teh next 4 years -- try to enjoy what you can.