Does Music School Get you Prepared for the Industry?
It was once that music school (especially the college music programs) only trained students classically (and often in jazz), or trained them to teach. That’s thankfully a changing trend, as more schools are selling a more contemporary approach to help music students be versatile. A part of that expansion is definitely an rise in music technology instruction, and the technical elements of the music business. But despite having these changes, can music school truly get you prepared for the industry?
The dilemma with wanting to teach the technical side of music (i.e., recording, audio, technology and stuff like that) in an academic environment is that a lot of that side of music is hands-on instruction. It is learned by doing, not from books. Thus, whether you are an artist at risk of the industry, or an audio engineer attempting to record musicians, there’s only so much you can study about the industry inside a music school. The rest should be gained somehow by yourself, or with the aid of mentors showing you the ropes.
Exactly why the business/industry side of music is difficult to show in class is the fact that academics tend to have a theory-based approach, as the technical side of the music clients are much more about practice. Actually learning to play a musical instrument is much the same thing-you learn by doing, and also you learn through mentoring-but music school had compensated with this by including private instruction with all the curriculum, then there is enough theory associated with music that the blend of the theoretical and practical seems to work. But with regards to recording equipment and amplification, although it could be just as much an art form as music is, it still leans more toward the practical side of things. It helps to know some theory (the science of acoustics, as an example), but at the end during the day you will still learn it best by actually doing it, and even better, by doing it with the help of a mentor. This is a dilemma that music schools haven’t really figured out.
A great venue to learning the technical side from the music industry would be to combine the mentor-apprentice approach using a guided curriculum, ensuring all the bases were covered. There is really a school available that does not teach music by itself, however it does teach the recording side of music in just this manner. The Recording Connection pairs students with working professionals in a mentor-apprentice relationship, thus filling in most of the gaps that traditional a music school leaves wide open.
So, can music school truly prepare you for the industry? Not fully. For the technical side of the business, will still be far better to improve by the mentor-apprentice approach.
