"Have a Plan B"

College Majors Music Major
21

The degree will make a difference even after a long hiatus. I essentially started over as a 40 year-old but an entry level engineering position still pays more than many experienced positions in other industries. I wouldn’t have gotten interviews with a BM, much less a job.

Potential employers are wary if there’s a 15 year gap in employment but working in an a different industry is explainable in a resume. Might look “weird” to some but, in my case, I think it actually piqued interest.

I’m not saying that dual degrees is necessarily the solution (that advice was given by Mr Liebman as an option, not me.) But I also don’t think it’s as simple as saying we all experience pivotal points in our careers. At least in jazz, it’s rare to find musicians who can afford to retire based solely on their performance careers.

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@screenname48105:

When you started over at 40, did you get a degree in let’s say engineering at 22, then apply for an entry level position at 40, or did you get a degree finishing at 40 then get a job? The reason I ask is 18 years is an eternity in engineering or in IT, a lot of things change, and I would wonder about a kid who let’s say gets a dual degree with engineering, kicks around for years trying to be a musician, then at let’s say 35 or 40 tries to get back into engineering will likely have a hard time. I have known people who got engineering or tech degrees when they were young, who tried things like acting or music, eventually decided it wasn’t for them, and while they did get jobs based on having that degree, they didn’t get it in the direct field, they ended up doing other things with it.

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I wondered if those were BM programs. If this family is looking at BM programs then lots of conservatories to consider . I actually think I got this thread mixed up with the LAC one last night :slight_smile:

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@musicprnt, qualifying or disqualifying my story has no bearing on the topic but I did not go back to school. You may not believe it but changing a career after 15 years, it still makes a difference if you happen to have an engineering degree in your back pocket. For entry level jobs, most companies are looking for a mindset and potential, not so much a technical skillset. I work for an audio engineering company. Quite a few people with music in their background and different paths getting to where they are now but they all have engineering degrees, whether that’s where they started or it’s an advanced degree they got by going back to school.

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So I looked up Liebman’s bio and it appears that he had a very successful performing career and is currently having a successful performing, teaching and recording career. His life doesn’t seem to work as a cautionary tale. Had he done some plan B he wouldn’t have done what he did.

It is true that not every kid who thinks they will make it as a performer can. You not only have to love it and have the chops and work ethic but have whatever that “It” ingredient is that makes people want to watch and listen to you play. On top of that there is personality and entrepreneurial drive and whatnot. I was at an early music guild concert a couple weeks ago and their new director, in addition to being a talented harpsichordist and director, also has that charismatic “It” factor that made him engrossing to watch. He lent energy and vitality to the proceedings. I don’t know if he is making enough to retire with all his various gigs but the world would be a dimmer place without him in music.

I would guess that anyone advising kids would need to inject some amount of perspective. It’s one thing to love band and want to continue to play the trombone and quite another to think that people would pay consistently to hear you do it. To borrow a phrase, If you are going to make a go of it I would think that you need to “lean in” to your career quite early to find out.

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Simple answer to op question. No, d does not have a specified plan b. That being said when d first determined she wanted to be a performer, her dad wanted a plan b. It wasn’t until she had a paying w-2 style contract that he determined…maybe this could really work out for her.

I don’t know why this topic is so unique to music degrees. My degree is in political science. I planned on going to law school, never getting married and pursuing a career in politics. I even had the acceptance letter to the university of Michigan. Instead I got married, had two kids, joined the military and became an air battle manager. After I separated I went into logistics and now am a manager for one of the largest companies in the world while at the same time own my own costume business and am still married to the same man 24 years later. None of this apparently had anything to do with my bs in political science. But I refer back to my advisor/mentor/favorite professor who once told his class he that he was not teaching us a specific trade or skill set…he was teaching us how to learn and regardless of what we did, we would be able to analyze, synthesize and ultimately figure it out.

That was always my plan b and I didn’t even know or plan it.

I’ve taught my daughter the same, if it doesn’t work out in vocal performance, if she finds the right man and decides to provide me with a gaggle of grandchildren, if she decides to be a stay at home wife/mother, I’m not worried…she will figure it out.

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Yup. He was Miles Davis’ sideman in the early 70’s. He’s still at the top of Downbeat polls. Very much what most would call “successful” in the jazz world. It’s why his advice made an impression. It’s hard to know how that has translated financially for him. I do know that the band is doing their current tour by car, and our little HS jazz program could afford to have him come for a masterclass.

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My son has no Plan B. He’s been told that he shouldn’t try to make a career in music unless he can’t imagine doing anything else. His response is that he can’t imagine doing anything else.

I’m reminded of the story (apocryphal or not) of Cortes burning his ships after landing in Mexico in order to erase any thought his men might otherwise have had of retreat. One’s chances of success are enhanced if there’s no other choice but to succeed.

Of course, I don’t think any parent (including me) wants to put one’s child in a position of “succeed or die”. But I have no problem with my son pursuing his passion with no thought of what he will do if it doesn’t work out. He’s smart and resourceful, and I trust that he will either find a way to make it work or find a path to Plan B when and if he has to.

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I am just home from Charles Lloyd quartet. Mr. Lloyd says that if you’ve been “bitten by the cobra” you have no choice but to follow your passion. There’s nothing else you can do. He is 77 and didn’t seem at all sad to be doing what he’s doing. He said that you’ve got to support your kid in pursuing their calling if they are truly called. He looked me in the eye and said it and I am inclined to believe him.

30

My daughter never had a plan B; her teacher advised her to aim for her dreams and not choose any safety schools. If she were not admitted anywhere, the plan was to take a gap year. She is in her second year of grad school now, so undergrad audition year (a very l-o-n-g and stressful year) was six years ago. But time goes quickly-as you will see- and the future is hard to predict. Who knows what opportunities, what changes or heart and fate may await her and her cohort in the future? A few of them (who also had no plan B at the time) have changed careers, most often, it seems, for business or medicine. One young woman she graduated with did well in conservatory, but now has a career on Wall Street. Another has decided she wants to be a doctor, is deferring grad school and taking pre-med courses. Actually, several older friends with undergrad conservatory degrees have gone to or graduated from medical school. I don’t think you need to enter conservatory with a plan B in place, but should you need to change directions, there are many places life can take you. I would even argue that if you are going into a field as demanding as music, a plan B is more than a distraction; it’s an impediment to full commitment.

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I tend to agree with @glassharmonica, that a plan B in the form of a dual degree or such might be an impediment. There are no absolute rules, and some kids could do an engineering degree and a BM and do well in both, and it also depends on the kind of music as well. Classical music is a different beast than the others, and it takes an incredible amount of focus and dedication, even among the best, to get to the level where you can hope to be successful (and that isn’t not necessarily a positive reflection on classical music, I think that obsession with technical perfection and purity has hurt it as an art form), and it might (keyword might) make studying contemporary music or jazz easier to do a dual degree in.

I think there is a need to go into music with your eyes wide open and realize you may not ‘make it’, either in the way you think you want to or in any way,and to think about what you may want to do if music isn’t what you want to do, but developing a plan B like a dual degree may end up being self fulfilling prophesy IMO. I also think that the idea of a ’ plan b’ also assumes that many college degrees are job training that you take with you and go, I firmly believe that as time goes on that that UG degree will mean less and less in terms of future jobs, that CS degree or engineering degree might give an edge in getting hired 10 years down the road in something if you switch, engineering degrees are respected as are degrees like CS, but if trying to go into those fields I don’t think, as someone in tech who is a hiring manager and who has engineers as friends and family, including hiring managers, that it would be easy to get a CS or Engineering degree at 22, then at 32 or later getting a job in the field directly.

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And, now to contradict myself, I will also mention that my daughter has a number of friends her age who went to non-conservatory programs for college-- but I mean top schools like Harvard, Yale, Penn, etc. --and then went on to MM programs at top conservatories. So it can be done. All of the above are (obviously) very intelligent and disciplined young people. I honestly don’t think that approach would have worked for my daughter even though, at times during her undergraduate conservatory years, she yearned for more academic courses. But her own training was so intense, there was not even a way to fit in the so-called exchange courses at the local Ivy League school. I guess it’s a matter of intensity. My youngest daughter is now a senior at a BA theater program that is very conservatory-like but has a large academic core requirement, unlike theater BFA programs. She is the busiest person I have ever met. She felt, at 17, unready to go to a pure conservatory, and I am sure that was the right choice for her, but her theater training, while excellent, is necessarily shallower than those who took only theater courses in college. For example, she has never been able to schedule a class in stage combat, even though it’s offered at her program. So she will need to take that a la carte from one of the many great programs in her city when she graduates. Because there are only 24 hours in a day, one has to make choices. The good news is that there are many viable options.

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Back to the OP’s original scenario. In a high school class full of jazz musicians, even in a serious program, how many kids will truly have the talent, temperament and real calling to pursue pure music to the point where they are making an impact on the world let alone being more than just sustaining themselves financially? In that setting the plan B talk makes a lot of sense. Most of those HS kids will need a plan B because most of them are probably high level hobbyists (which is fine).

Saturday I was listening to Wait, Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me while doing dishes and they had a compilation of past shows. Itzhak Perlman was on and they were chatting about this and that. In the course of talking about his musical beginnings he was asked how you tell a prodigy. He said that the level of playing is so high now across the board that pure technical skill is not the real measure. He said that in their studio he notices not the pure technical aspects but those who have an innate musicality and “feel”. That is the first time I’ve heard the term "feel "used outside of jazz to describe that ineffable quality of connection and oneness with the music. He said that you can’t teach feel.

Of course there are many musical paths and many ways to weave pure performance with other sidelights in the industry. I feel like if your child had a true calling to the priesthood you wouldn’t fret ahead about their retirement plan or the prospect for grandkids? You would maybe accept that listening to that call would mean a jump off the conventional track and ceasing to use that as a life measure. If you open your life to be a conduit for the for that deep, divine place in the human soul you are giving yourself over to it come what may. You would also understand that it is not the life for everyone. When I experience the art that is out there in the world and being created in real time around me during a performance like the one that I experienced on Saturday, I am so thankful to those who do listen to that call and and throw caution to the wind for the sake of us all.

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@saintfan:
A well thought out post. One of the problems with music is that it is very, very hard to quantify what makes for ‘success’ or even what it is, and also it is very hard to explain to people how high the bar is with music, how high the level of playing is. You see it on here all the time, some kid loves music, they are highly placed in their school orchestra, have a private teacher, maybe do all state or a youth symphony, and they are being told by people how good they are, and are really excited about doing music…and how do you tell them the reality without destroying their enthusiasm? It is very hard to do that, but it is also the reality out there. The conventional wisdom is if you can see yourself doing anything but music do that, and while I have problems with that for some reasons, but what that also is saying is you can’t go into this with your eyes shut, and that if you don’t fully believe in your ability in music, that you are thinking of hedges, that it may be better not to focus on music as a career.

If someone asked me what gave someone the possibility of making it in music, what it takes, I would probably answer like this:

-It is someone who already had a lot of emotional callous, a thick skin, in dealing with the disappointments that come with music. This can be from having bad lessons with a teacher not known to pull punches, auditioning and being disappointed with the results, or facing the hurdles of challenging music and sticking with it even though week after week it doesn’t feel like they are getting anyway

-learning to listen to what people say with more than a pound of salt, I have seen plenty of kids who have been the stars of their school music program, whose private teacher thinks they are the best, where everyone says you are a prodigy or whatnot, and internalizing that, and it ends up hurting them, because they don’t adopt the Avis mentality (“We’re number 2 and trying harder”). My son was struck with that when he got to know musicians in his own area he looked up to, and heard them talking about the things they needed to do, how uncertain they were, and realized it was part of the process.Kids that believe they are prodigies, or the best thing since sliced bread, are going to face a hard reality at some point.

-The obverse to this is taking what teacher’s say with some detachment, emotionally and logically. My S realized this, he at one point worked with his old teacher, the one he worked with before conservatory, and the teacher ripped them apart…and it wasn’t until two other people he worked with, who knew his old teacher, told him that she was ripping him because of a difference in artistic interpretation, the old teacher was of the school of ‘play it the way I would, or you are wrong’, and it was only then that he realized that not everything the old teacher had told him he was deficient in really was.

-Have the belief in yourself that despite how difficult it is, knowing how hard it is, knowing the level of competition, that you think you can do it, despite the doubts, and commit to that. This point is one of the reasons I don’t necessarily like the idea of dual degrees and the ‘plan B’ approach to things, I think it runs contra to this, it is like admitting that you likely aren’t good enough, so why bother (and this is simply my opinion, I am not saying doing a dual degree is wrong or people shouldn’t do it, or have a plan B, I am saying why I think it may in part be self defeating; music is like a lot of things in life, there is no one answer, one path, and in the end it comes down to the person).

@Saintfan’s post was a bit different, because they were talking about kids who as they said rightfully, are high level hobbyists, and given the nature of music, it may be that no matter how much they love it, they really don’t have that chance of catching lightening in a bottle, so maybe they would be better going to college and getting a degree in something while continuing music, or maybe they would be good for a dual degree. The line here is being realistic about their chances in music early, versus if it looks like they have a chance, doing a hedge, and it is a bit different IMO.

-You have to be willing to work your tail off, and it isn’t quite the same as doing so with other fields, with music it is a constant world of putting the effort out. I have seen plenty of talented musical kids, who worked hard in music school, who won competitions, but expected the world to come to them, some agent was going to knock on their door and want to represent them, you name it. It isn’t just about working hard, it is about taking all opportunities, whether it is unexpected time to practice, finding gigs, getting to know fellow musicians, learning about the music. A lot of the times this isn’t necessarily the most talented kids,the hyper players, stars, it is the ones who are talented but also know that lightening in a bottle is just that.

A plan B kind of thing, like a dual major, can distract from this, the work for that dual degree, or thinking about plan B, might prevent a kid from focusing like this (and as always, YMMV).

The Perlman quote was interesting, because it is something I think that music teachers and the music establishment is figuring out. In the violin world, there have been some pretty spirited debates about competitions and what they were looking for, traditionally they would have mostly teachers as judges, and what the teachers seemed to be rewarding was hyper technical ability, there have been plenty of the big competitions where someone who won was technically out there, but lacked the musicality and feel and quite frankly was boring to me. In recent years competitions have had a lot more performers as judges, and it has changed in some cases who is winning I suspect). Things like feel and musicality and stage presence make for a great performer, but because they can’t really be taught (among more than a few students, it is imitated, the teacher in effect tells the student how to fake it), teachers often focused almost solely on technique IMO…it is another factor I think with music, if you are going into music, I think a kid has to love the whole package, the music, rather than being an instrumentalist. If you look at the great musicians, and read interviews with them, you see that they love the music, many of them also conduct, others do serious research on the music, understand the theory behind it, the history.On the other hand, a lot of very talented kids, who are playing at a very high level, have almost no understanding of the music, they resent the theory and ear training and such, and only care about being a hot shot instrumentalist, and sadly, there are still more than a few teachers out there who are like that, too (one caveat, I am talking primarily the violin world, but I have heard/seen this with piano and the other solo instruments, I suspect it is a lot more common there). And I think that passion for the music, rather than the instrument, is another part of all this, too.

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As far as “making it in music”, S and I talk about it, but we don’t know the classical world too well. We were talking about the White Stripes with Jack and Meg White. Jack talks about how Meg’s drumming is primitive and should stay that way. We suspect that being able to play, sing, and write would be a powerful foundation to develop to help create “success”. Also, having something personal to offer and feel strong about.

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@goforth:
Every form of music has its own rules, ways of doing things, but one of the things I think that makes any form of music work is passion. My S, being a typical classical music student, used to sneer at rock music and such, arguing that these were untalented people who lucked into stardom, that they didn’t have to work at it, weren’t musicians (some of that was age). As he got older,he realized the pop tart model, where the producers and engineers are the geniuses, doesn’t hold, that many of people in all forms of music are just as passionate about the music, that they have a real musical message to deliver, and that they pay the price for that music, playing dive bars and other such gigs, struggling for years, working at their craft. Yeah, there is a lot of schlock out there (re the recent Geico commercial, with the group Europe’s song “Final Countdown”, one of the worst ear worms I have heard…and the original video, c1985, is hair metal at its worst). There are a lot of buffoons out there, who went into rock music to get drunk, score girls (or guys) and make a ton of money, a lot of them are musicians first and foremost;)

There is a scene in the “Almost Famous” Directors cut (one of my favorite movies) where the guitarist is talking to the kid about music, and talked about this one song of Marvin Gaye’s, where he does this “woo” in it. Cameron Crowe, the writer and director of the movie (and the real life inspiration for the kid in the movie) said he did that to dispel notions that rock musicians were a bunch of yokels and such, that they loved the music and knew a lot about what other musicians did and literally would (and did) starve to do it:).

Personally, I think classical could learn a lot of things from other form of music, as those forms have learned from classical, some of the spontaneity, the spirit of improvisation, and especially the stagecraft, would be appreciated (okay, I don’t expect the concertmaster of the NY Phil to play the solo from Scheherezade flying on a fire or pyrotechnics, but would appreciate a lively orchestra connecting with the audience:).

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@ScreenName48105, I have a very strong suspicion that I attended your son’s high school 35 years ago. It had a terrific jazz program, even then. I, and several of my contemporaries, fell into the category of “darned good jazz musician for a high-school kid”. But there were two guys I played with, one high-school buddy and one other kid from the Detroit area that we met and gigged with from time to time, both sax players, that qualified as shockingly, can-you-believe-this-kid good. Those two guys, David Mann and Rick Margitza, out of all the talented folks I knew, are the only two to forge genuinely successful professional careers as jazz musicians. Rick you may have heard of, Dave maybe not, but trust me, he’s ridiculously good, and gets plenty of work in NYC as a session player. No idea how either of them are doing financially, but as far as I can tell, they do seem to be making a living doing what they love.

The plural of anecdote is not data, and I wouldn’t want to be the guy who tells any kid to give up on his dreams, but I personally would encourage my kid (and I have, in fact) to make sure to develop some other marketable skills unless they were at that most-amazing-high-school-player-I’ve-ever-seen kind of level. Just my 2 coppers.

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@rayrick, yes I think you did. There are a half-dozen kids who graduate from that jazz program every year to go on to to high-caliber music schools on hefty scholarships. And whenever my son has played for or with professionals, they have been really encouraging, and not just local pros. They’ve certainly made him feel that he has a good chance of making it as a professional jazz musician. From my perspective, I think his college years will be telling, whether he has what it takes to go from “top HS jazz sax in the state” to “musician”. I agree with the poster above who spoke of a musical passion and understanding that goes beyond technical proficiency. But, even then, I think you have to be extremely lucky. Yes, “lucky”. I don’t think it’s always just about hard work and talent.

My S has no other marketable skills and, as a mom, I worry about that. I know a little about music and I believe in his talent. I worry just the same.

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The ability to think and work on the fly, network, problem solve, improvise, and run yourself as a business are all solid skills. It may be that kids on the classical side aren’t as accustomed to hustling but in any other genre that’s how it goes.

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^^^ and I mean in HS and college. After you graduate is late in the game to figure out that you don’t want to be a musical entrepreneur in today’s industry.