Author: EEBaum
Date: 2010-11-04 06:34
On the other hand, I partially blame the graduates. While they're not as readily employable as, say, an engineering or business major, music graduates have an array of skills that could be adapted in many ways, giving a creative graduate an order of magnitude more options than, say, a philosophy major, whose only real options are philosophy teacher or random job that they can now bring a bit of extra perspective to.
With aptitudes ranging from basic to advanced in instrumental performance, rhythm, improvisation, singing, piano, theory, composition, history, etc., a musician is equipped for a variety of opportunities, much more than someone who's done nothing but a bunch of research papers. But does the musician apply himself? Does he form a rock band, does he go out into the world and share music, does he play at parties, does he try to find out all the cool ways he can put his skills to use in ways others may appreciate and maybe pay him for? Does he go out of his way to enrich the musical community and make music a relevant and necessary part of everyday life?
No. He spends countless hours practicing pointless little snippets in hope of a job he'll probably never get. He clings so ass-clenchingly tightly to the classical world and to the notion that someone will create a job and hire him for it. He only performs at "performances," won't touch popular music with a ten-foot pole, and looks at improvisation as something only jazzers do. Even the jazzers look at improvisation as something that can only be done in the jazz idiom. He pores away at treatises for hours trying to figure out whether Brahms meant to write an F or F sharp, when in all likelihood Brahms may not have given a sh*t which you played and just wrote down a note so he could go to bed for the night.
People love music. Almost everyone out there listens to the radio or an iPod or CDs. And they're extremely appreciative of live music, especially GOOD live music, the kind that music graduates are well-equipped to make, if they'd get off their Mozart-concerto-drilling butts and try to do something engaging. Classical, contemporary, metal, folk, rock, reggae, whatever. If you do it well, and you do it in a manner of "I'm here to share some awesome music" rather than "come listen to me because this has been declared important by some consortium you could give a f*ck about," people will probably listen to you. And with listeners comes ticket sales, CD sales, merchandise, etc.
In the past year, I've founded a dance party band, co-founded a metal band, joined a folk/bluegrass band, delved into neglected corners of clarinet extended techniques, and started a guerilla urban music collective, and have more projects in the works. They're all in their early stages, but they're also all marketable, with some paying gigs already. And they're all things I got into by just trying them, finding no good reason why I couldn't.
People need to look at a music degree as something that gives you skills to be a musician/performer/entertainer, allowing you to create opportunities for yourself. Instead, most people look at it as a degree that will get you a job, like those in engineering or business, which is what a music degree is NOT.
But no, I see countless graduates who think they'll get an orchestral or university gig, have a fleeting, unfulfilling studio of students that's getting them by (barely), and think that forming a wind quintet is a way of being proactive in expanding their musical presence. They may even make a record, and it may sell in the dozens, or even hundreds, of copies, possibly enough to cover the expenses of recording and pressing the discs! Perhaps they go out on tour, to perform clarinet for audiences made up almost entirely of other clarinetists. Suggest to them the possibility of doing something outside of the mainstream classical institution, and they look at you with a blank stare of confusion, as if playing doom metal was as unrelated to their skillset as parkour or scuba diving or brain surgery. I've found many quite capable musicians almost violently averse to trying something they weren't exactly trained to do.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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The Clarinet BBoard
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