@othermusicdad:
OMG, I spit coffee all over my monitor, people at work were looking at me strangely, I was laughing at it so hard. @5 is hysterical, parallel 5ths was one of Bach’s rules I believe, and it is used all over the place in rock and pop music.
“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.”
This is true of classical music students too, at least those who are going to make it as musicians, those that think they are going to graduate and become a hot shot soloist or get that gig in a major orchestra that pays 6 figures with benefits are in for a rude awakening… classical musicians do all kinds of gig work, they create their own opportunities by forming their own ensembles/unique niches, they have to problem solve like how to find the time to practice while doing gigs all over the place and teaching and such. The 4 year old Korean girl on piano @othermusicdad when she grows up might have problems, because her whole time in music her parents and teachers decide what she does, how she does it, and then gets out in the world and doesn’t have a clue…
“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.” I think every music parent or arts parent worries about this, as do parents who have kids majoring in history or english or foreign language literature or linguistics et al.
The other side of that view is that a lot of college degrees don’t endow their graduates with great skills. An English Lit major may be able to read a ‘great work’ of English lit, and analyze it, break down the language, tell you the period, what it means, but does that translate into a career in marketing or comp sci or accounting or technical management particularly? Even with business administration, which some see as a valid degree, there isn’t all that much direct transfer into the ‘real world’. When you go into an entry level job, I don’t care what it is, it is likely that a graduate doesn’t know that much that is directly relevant to the job, even with tech jobs unless a kid has done a lot of programming outside the core curricula for cs, it is likely they have a lot to learn (in terms of cs), the practical versus school is a fairly big gap to fill, both technically and also in other knowledge.
Okay, so then what marketable skills do music students have? This has been talked about ad infinitum on here, but it is a lot, that other disciplines don’t have. Music students learn to work with other musicians, in ensembles, and learn to deal with difficult people (like how do you deliver criticism to a member of your performing group without getting them upset?). They learn time scheduling, how to fit things into a busy day, they learn multi tasking, they learn to make things happen when resources are limited (for example, in school, where practice rooms are limited, finding times and places to practice). They learn to be self driven and self scheduled, there is no formula for how to much to practice, what to practice, there is no syllabus for music students for the music side of things, they have to figure it out. They learn to analyze difficult things (music theory and music analysis IMO is a lot more difficult than for example the kinds of analysis you learn in finance courses and the like, which are mostly plug in the blank numbers). Music kids learn to deal with ambiguity, when you are in academic studies it is mostly “get this paper done on time, do this to get a good grade, study for the test, regurgitate what the teacher wants, get a good grade” do this and you get into a good college, get good grades there, get the internships or whatever, you likely will get a good job if you hustle on the interviews, music is a world full of nebulous auditions and not really knowing what ‘it takes’ to achieve your goals, or even knowing what the goals are:).
I can tell you that employers don’t look at music majors as being dumb or unskilled (put it this way, you will be better off going in for an entry level job with a music performance degree than a degree in business administration, which these days is seen as what frat boys major in to get through college with a ‘marketable’ degree, without having to work), a lot of hiring managers know how hard music is, even Goldman Sachs, which are notorious for their hiring policies when it comes to bankers (basically, you don’t come out of a Wharton or the like, forget it), recently were looking for non traditional applicants and they specifically mentioned music performance majors as one of the type of thing they were looking for, as opposed to what the article quoted the Goldman Sachs rep as saying, ‘the cookie cutter follow the crowd students’. Among other things, music kids tend to be pretty bright, and are seen as such, that much I can tell you.