I totally agree @cellomom6 there is no harm in being committed to making a living as a musician, especially as a young person. The mistake could be missing the opportunity to prepare for a plan B should you decide, later, that you want one.
In my mind a good plan B is something like teaching. Musicians are natural communicators and learning how to craft a message to another person, in an understandable manner, may actually help both teacher and student.
Hee. I guess I don’t view teaching music as a plan B. It is one of the many wonderful jobs that is part of being a musician, in my mind.
My son plans on teaching. But that seems like a natural part of the job. Mentoring is a huge part of teaching and I think that tradition is passed on as musicians get more experience and wisdom.
I agree singersdad. My daughter found a perfect way to blend her two loves-music and neuroscience. My son, the MM candidate, is now looking at grad school in physical therapy, college teaching and piano technology as other career routes.
Many parents on this board probably do have super talented, passionate musician children and I respect that.They may not need a plan B. I feel all young adults should have the option to fully explore their talents and make their own decisions about how they will conduct their lives. I also think it is appropriate to help our young adults be financially literate. I have stressed “no debt” with my young adult children. Debt can be crippling; it can cast a shadow over one’s entire adult life and limit choices. Unlike debt for medical school or engineering, predicting the future earnings of a musician and how much debt to assume is difficult (as it is for many fields, particularly the humanities).
I have also taught too many unhappy college students whose parents pushed them into nursing, engineering or another lucrative career. Passion for something comes from within. Like musicians, engineers have passion, too, however. My husband was a “gadgeteer” from childhood-disassembling electrical and mechanical objects and solving calculus problems with other math lovers for fun. He revels in exploring new solutions. I think he would resent the negative assessments of worklife in a cubicle (they actually have a lot of goofy fun in cubicle land).
Each musician needs to discover for themselves if a Plan B is what is right. This awareness of a need for a Plan B comes at different times for different young adults, if it comes at all (many musicians do not need a plan B). My daughter, always a realist and always with an interest in science, made her decision in high school. My son is in a period of painful self-assessment now. He loves his music, he works hard and whatever direction he chooses, music will always be part of his life.
My son’s other passions are french and film. They kinda go together with music. If he could create a hybrid career of the three, he would be in heaven.
Just to add our family discussion and thoughts to this topic, my daughter who is entering grad school has always wanted to dabble in other things. I think this is partially driven by the realities of the music world and her genuine curiosity in other things - yoga instructor, yoga studio owner also selling cute merchandise, blogger, photographer, bartender (in her cocktail phase) and now as she’s getting a bit more mature administrative duties like a personal assistant or maybe a paraplanner (she’s in a budgeting and money phase). These interests come and go but performance is always the constant. I always say I tried to keep her interests broad (but I probably had less to with it than I think). So I think you offer options to your kids, communicate the realities and see what they do with it. They are kind of hard to control.
In grad school, she’ll have opportunities to teach which helped seal the deal. We don’t look at it as black and white - Music or Plan B. I think I read somewhere the expression “portfolio” career - meaning free-lancing I guess. Right now I think she feels that she will “work” and perform. I don’t know how easy that all is. But I think she’ll find a way to keep music in her life it is a primary occupation or more on the side.
Just got back from Europe where D is living the plan A and B and C and D life simultaneously. . Things she is doing to support her life as a professional singer: A) singing–still the main focus B) teaching C) voice over work D) sound editing for online video webinars . (the last has come as a surprise, but is quite lucrative and she can do it on her own time between gigs.) One way or another all of her post grad opportunities were possible thanks to the skill sets learned as a music student. Plenty of plan B jobs thanks to plan A.
BTW she is on year two in the EU and I don’t see her coming home any time soon.
The key thing is not to think of musical training as necessarily leading to a ‘professional track’ and by this, I mean getting into a full time orchestra, getting into a relatively major opera company, etc and that is your career (or even more rare, as a soloist). The problem with the plan B is you get into the mindset of “If music doesn’t pan out, then I’ll do X”, rather than “to make music be in my life, I’ll be aware of other opportunities”. One of the problems with an approach of Plan A and Plan B is for example, kids going into music education because “it is a lot more solid career” when they don’t really want to teach, or it leads, for example, into the student dual degree, which takes time away from practicing and such, so when a parent says “well, you should dual degree in music performance and accounting”, they could be sacrificing the music because doing a dual degree can limit the hours available for practicing and such. It doesn’t mean that a dual degree might not be a good option, just that in the move to try and ‘have something to fall back on’, you kind of create a self fulfilling prophesy.
I think the better approach might be to think of things to be able to stay with music yet make a living, looking at what you can do if you want to stay with music and that dream job with the NY Phil doesn’t happen. One of the misnomers is somehow that most college degrees are direct job training, they aren’t, Engineering to a certain extent is, comp sci is (though to be honest, a lot of what you learn directly in comp sci often has nothing to do with real world programming jobs), but for many liberal arts positions or the generic business admin degrees, you learn most stuff on the job…and as others have said time and again, for many jobs a music major degree (or grad school admissions) will work for a music performance degree as it would for many college degrees. Even with a bachelor’s in a science field (chemistry, physics, biology), people often end up in ‘regular’, non science jobs and those won’t be worth any more than a bachelor’s in music performance (put it this way, if you get into marketing, those fields likely won’t help all that much, as an example, over a music degree). To be honest, the real fallback is to recognize that for many college degrees the value of the diploma is not direct job training, and thus first focus on music in school, and be thinking about creative ways to get into music, use music., once you graduate, and then if you find it doesn’t work, use your college degree as that…and recognize that music majors have unique skills that other majors don’t give, and take it from me, most employers know that.
Reading this thread and what we are discussing made me thing of a thread started by @musicprnt in 2013 in music majors. I don’t know how to link to it but here is the name: Being realistic about music . Good points are made here about honest self-assessment. I got a lot out of your wisdom.
Maybe careful seld-assessment is part of what happens when one looks to a plan “B”? Getting further along in music (competitive festivals, competitive college programs) can help the musician assess where he or she fits in and if working as a musician alone is self-sustaining. My daughter made her decision when she began attending audition-based festivals. My son is looking more carefully at his choices now that he is in grad program surrounded by excellent players. He sees how hard the more successful members work and, as a result of his late start (he did not begin to practice seriously until freshman year in college) and his choice to go to a liberal arts college for undergrad, is evaluating how much work would it take to move to the next level (and even if that is a possibility).
S has other skills/talents and feels he may be someone who needs to have a “blended” life. The music degrees have been well worth the time and, in his case, taught him so much about persistent, being exact, getting along well with others (can’t be a good player if you are not listening to others and working with the group). He is not going to a major festival this summer as a player (did no auditions) but rather as a RA (paid position-yea!) and piano tech intern- he chose work as he needs a new bow and as string players know, great bows cost a lot. He will have lessons with one of the teachers at the festival. He was an RA/participant (unpaid) last year at anoher festival. I can’t begin to say enough about how much he grew in his ability to work with others, solve problems and stay organized with that job. All good stuff for getting on in the work world. I know S will always be a musician but it most likely won’t be the professional orchestra and big studio jazz musician aspirations he had at age 18. He’s 22 now with a lot more real world exposure. I have no idea where he will be in a year. The ride has fun and I love hearing him play.
It was a very good read. I remember that one.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/1531956-being-realistic-about-music-p1.html