My son’s a HS junior, looking at the following (alpha order):
Belmont
Berklee
Frost/Miami
MTSU
University of the Arts, Phila
USC
Opinions re above? Others we should consider?
He really is skilled and interested in all those areas and has already has performing and writing credits/awards in them. Money is somewhat of an issue but we’re also hoping for some help/scholarships. Our thought is he’d be better off near a music center (eg, Nashville, LA) in order to make connections, hear great music, and perhaps work.
My daughter is also a HS junior and we are looking at most of the same schools for Commercial voice, songwriting, and music business. Last summer we visited the Univ of CO Denver and toured the MEIS dept and met the Commercial voice coordinator. D liked the dept and Denver a lot. I think it would be worth a look for your son. I believe it is a little less expensive than Belmont --a lot less if you are from CO. I grew up near Nashville and the city is certainly a great place for music. I know a Belmont (commercial music) graduate that talks highly of the school but D is not interested in going there. My D is going to attend the Vocal Summit summer program at Berklee so that should give her a good idea about the school. I would love to hear from other parents and students about their experience at any of the schools you mentioned, including CU Denver. Money is an issue for us too and D needs to find scholarships!
Nice to see other parents with kids the same year and similar interests. My daughter is a HS Junior, Contemporary Vocalist and looking at many of the same schools. Berklee is her top choice and she did the Vocal Summit workshop last year as well as the Stage Performance workshop the year before and loved it! Berklee is her top choice but we’re exploring other options. Like everyone, scholarship money is important.
@kx2Mom - I’m very interested in your daughter’s opinion of CU Denver, my D just applied for their summer workshop and I liked what I’ve heard / read about the program. We’re headed to New Orleans and Tennessee next month for a college tour during Spring Break and will be checking out Loyola, Univ of New Orleans, Tulane, Memphis, Tennessee State and Middle Tennessee State.
We’re from Connecticut and looking at Northeast schools too. Headed to Philly’s University of the Arts Open House in a couple weeks and hope to check out New Jersey City University, The New School, and Drexel.
There was a great article published in Billboard Magazine on the Top 11 Music Business Schools and we’re trying to check out most of them.
You have a wide variety of possible majors there listed in your subject line! Scoring is a completely different thing than writing and arranging songs. Producing is different from both of them. So is music business. Some of those schools are much better in some of those areas than others.
My S is a senior at Belmont. He wants to do scoring. He switched from the commercial music program to composition in his sophomore year. PM me if you want some info about it. Commercial voice is the most competitive program there to get into. You don’t choose a concentration until the junior year, everyone starts as a performance major. A friend of my S transferred there last year for commercial voice and absolutely loves it. She formed a duo with another student and they have already done many shows around Nashville. Belmont’s music business program is in a different school than its music programs. You do not have to be a musician to do it.
Nashville really is “music city.” Great college town too, and inexpensive for off campus housing.
Drexel has an awesome production/music business program. It owns its own label and studios. Also has a co-op program. Very expensive though.
My son applied to Belmont and Berklee and was accepted to both. These schools are very different in their approach and academics. He has decided to study at Berklee beginning this fall. One of the differences in the programs are that at Berklee you can study Music Business along with Performance where at Belmont, if you are a Music Business Major, it is a completely different school and not associated with Music Department. You can major in Commerical Music with/Music Bus emphasis at Belmont but My son found at Berklee that he could major in Music Business while still having a strong background on the Music side or whatever he decides to focus on whether that be MP&E, Film Scoring, etc. My son has a friend in the Music Business Program at Belmont and has NO Music classes as they operate independently of each other which is very frustrating. His friend says the best thing about Belmont is being in Nashville and the performance opportunities he has there with his band, not necessarily the Curb School. Good luck to those who will be starting the application process this summer. It’s a fun ride!
@ruthenium All of the schools you listed are very different and suggest you visit them as they are all very different in culture and the types of programs they offer. Since my son will be attending Berklee this fall, I would suggest that you send your son to Berklee for one of the summer camps/workshops. This would really give him a sense of whether he would like going to school in a city/urban setting. He will really get a taste of the culture.
Thanks - I went to Berkleefor a few years, have a good friend who headed a department, and my son has attended the Vocal Summit workshop, so we’ve got a handle on Berklee. (I love its intensity but wonder about its competitiveness re vocal prog and whether he can get as much real-world experience outside the school and paying gigs and make industry connections as well as he could in Nashville and LA. As an urban environment, Boston’s now tame compared to my experience in the 70s where mugging and arson fires by absentee landlords were the norm. MTSU is a half hour out of Nashville and I’d assume he’s be in town often. So all schools are urban. ) My son is focusing more and more on arranging, esp. vocal arranging, so the music biz interest is more about becoming a savvy self-marketer than in working for a label. Prob not a major. That said, a challenge will be to see how much traditional music curriculum would be helpful and what he needs from the college to pick up technical chops (using ProTools, studio and live audio, etc.). Re which city…contacts are important, rap for an arranger, and theres a lot of well-paying work in LA for vocal arrangers–plus film and TV–and he has great role models/mentors there already. Nashville has a lot of work too and I’d share my contacts there as needed but the non-union pay scale is very low. Still, he can get the performance chops and do a lot of work in various genres in Nville. I am, LOL, biased in favor each of the schools and each of the cities for varying reasons–and Frost sounds fine too–so I am trying to stifle my prejudices while using what’s helpful of my being having been a working musician/ songwriter. We’re off to TN tomorrow.
Re music biz: just talked to a friend in PA whose daughter loves the music biz program at University of Memphis…
Yes, my son was very interested in being in Nashville for the same reasons you are talking about but in the end he decided that he would probably regret not going to Berklee for the rest of his life and hence a decision was made!!!
Is he a vocalist? BTW, I was a jazz player at Berklee so I felt like I was in the center of the universe. I did have Music Business 101 with Gary Burton and learned a lot but there was slim focus on entrepreneurship at the time. However, it was about $1000 a semester… I don’t know how a songwriting major can justify a 250K education when Spotify pays .0000something of a penny per spin. (I just got royalty statements from BMG and Sony for .04 and 1.25…)
Guitarist…Music Business Program at Berklee is a lot different now. There is a definite focus on Entrepreneurship. I don’t really think you can “Justify” attending most of the “Top” private schools/music programs if you are looking at it from an expense/cost perspective as they are all quite pricey!!!
One nice thing about Berklee is that he CAN go for the rest of his life…if accepted there and you leave you can come back without reapplying. Have thought about it
If they offer you a scholarship, you must use it within one year or you do have to reapply. Good to know in case my son gets offered to go “ON TOUR” with someone
I went to UM and graduated from their music engineering program way back in '82 (before it was “Frost”). I also played in a lot of jazz ensembles (bass) and it was great. In fact, Roy Vogt is the bass chair at Belmont and was my teacher for a few semesters, and Steve Bailey, the bass chair at Berklee, was also a student. Obviously, Berklee (we called it “the evil empire”) has a well-deserved reputation of excellence, so you really need to decide which of the fields are of the most interest. For example, if you are interested in Music Business, a school with a solid school of Business (like UM) may be a better choice. Business is business, whether it’s music or petrochemicals.
In hindsight, much of what I studied in Music Engineering quickly became obsolete as the industry changed from analog to digital. I graduated with a minor in EE which helped when I went back to school for computer science, but if I were to do it over I would probably have done it as a jazz major.
My son is a junior singer/songwriter/producer We’ve been to Berklee, NYU, Thornton, Belmont I’d love to hear some updates from folks in this thread about how their search is progressing
I think that at the undergrad level, focus on developing as a student and artist, rather than professional, can be helpful for the longer term. In that sense, geographic location may not matter as much.
High schoolers with a record of accomplishment may want to continue on that fast track, but slowing it down can be of benefit, getting a foundation, figuring out a focus, may be more important than connections at this stage.
I don’t know a lot about these “commercial” areas so my comments apply to the area of music I do know, and just offering up the perspective from a parent of a kid who is several years past the undergrad years.
