We Need To Reconsider Music School

Alright, I want to address the elephant in the room: yes, I am currently in music school. I'm about to graduate with my Bachelor's of Music in Modern Artist Development and Entrepreneurship with two minors in Music Business and Marketing. With the last few weeks of my academic career on the line I'd like to go out on a limb and make my case for why music school as an institution is shaky at best, and why you should probably reconsider attending one of these institutions unless it's for a massive discount, if not free.

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was time for myself and thousands of other young musicians to decide where they wanted to spend their hard-earned $300,000. I was 18 at the time, but the idea of incurring a multiple thousand to a hundred-thousand dollar debt decision was something that I was beyond excited to actually experience, given that I'd be able to make new friends, party, drink, and loads of other degenerate activities over the course of four years. No better place to do all of that than the city of Miami, more specifically Coral Gables, at the University of Miami's Frost School of Music.

I want to be clear on a few things before I absolutely tear into the system of music education. First being the benefits I personally enjoyed in music school, as well as those universally enjoyed by pretty much everyone that makes this decision. When I was applying to school, I was one of the top saxophonists my age in the country/world. So when I sent in my auditions to USC, Eastman School of Music, Manhattan School of Music, and Frost, I received an unhealthy amount of glazing that an 18-year old boy probably shouldn't be getting for something as niche and nerdy as playing jazz. But do you know what else I got? Money. A lot of it.

I accepted my enrollment the Frost School of Music because I was given a full-tuition scholarship for all four years that covered room and board as well as a stipend. I was incredibly fortunate to receive this offer and I owe a massive debt to the school donors that make it possible for people like me to attend college for free. And while I was here I made friends for life, and professors that I'm so fortunate to always fall back on, including one that is now my most important mentor.

I also want to clarify that when I refer to music school as a scam, I'm only referring to music school. I have nothing but great things to say about the quality of my education and my professors in the University of Miami's Communications School and Marketing Department. Y'all are safe.

Alright, so to affectively illustrate my point I'd like to begin by bringing your attention to an insanely common trope that I run into far too often. It's pretty universal in every collegiate setting but it's especially problematic in music school for a few reasons. I'll refer to it as:

The Bachelors-to-Doctorate Pipeline

Imagine this. You're a 16-year old musician that decides they want to pursue music as a full-time profession. You tell your parents and they say in response "that's great kiddo, I hear FSU has a great music program"

Off to a great start here. You turn 18-years old and its time to decide where you're going to spend the next four years. Luckily you don't pick FSU, but another institution, let's call it Music University. You didn't get enough scholarship money to pay for all of tuition, so you take out a loan for financial aid, and in four years you graduate with a B.M. in Cello Performance, or whatever instrument you want to play in this imaginary scenario. You enjoyed your time in school for the most part, but you're excited to get out. However, in the last year when it was time for you to think about what to do with your life, you felt ill-prepared to go out into the real world and kick everyone's ass. So you reluctantly decide to re-enroll at Music University for a Master's in Cello Performance. Two more years pass and you receive another piece of paper. You begin to tolerate Music University a little bit more so you say "ehh screw it I'll do my Doctorate here". You get your DMA in Cello Studies after 9 years total of schooling, with $60,000 dollars in student loans at the age of 30, in a job market that doesn't really need you to be there, you've gone bald, etc.

Anyway you get the picture. I wanted to bring awareness to this because I believe it's an intentional strategy that music education uses to prey on young students fears of not being successful so they can spend more money, collect more useless pieces of paper, and ultimately thrust them into a career path that they never actually wanted in the first place. Rather than taking the leap of faith to hopefully make their dreams a reality, they're falling into this feedback loop of spending more money with no inherent benefits other than who you're qualified/unqualified to teach.

Not every instance of a musician going the full marathon to get a DMA is an example of the Bachelors-to-Doctorate Pipeline. I know plenty of people that legitimately like the idea of being a musical doctor. But enough of my friends and colleagues have suffered through this enough to notice that it's a legitimate problem. And some of my most courageous and self-confident friends were the ones that took the risk of not continuing their education.

Now if you happen to fall into this trap, perhaps it can't be so bad, right? At least you're getting taught everything there is about music in those 9 years of schooling, right? Nope. Not quite.

What Music School Teaches You (And What It Should Teach Instead)

Learning Your Instrument

A lot of instrumental pedagogy operates on fear-based practicing and playing. If you're an instrumental performance major, you're schedule looks a lot like this: Two ensembles (one small group and one large, like an orchestra or big band), a theory class, a skills class (I still don't even know what this means), some kind of music history class, one or two electives, and weekly private lessons from a teacher that has 15 other students to babysit. As a result, everyone in your instrumental studio gets swamped with dozens of hours of practicing and pen-and-paper homework, and nobody has time to collaborate off of fear of failing a class or failing your jury (a solo performance-based exam at the end of every semester). In a long-term view, there's this fear of not playing your instrument on a professional level, not advancing to the next ensemble, and not impressing that cute girl in the back of the room with your saxophone solo (she doesn't care about your saxophone solo).

Ideally music school should scale back it's curriculum so students can breathe. As opposed to weekly lessons for everyone, perhaps a monthly or bi-monthly lesson, call it a checkup. Students can take their time practicing the material over a longer stretch of a few weeks, and private instructors can stay a bit more organized juggling the needs and wants of all students. As opposed to individual assignments and exams in theory and skills classes, classes put an emphasis on collaboration between groups of students so everyone can learn together. And with more breathing room comes the option for students to branch out and prioritize their mental health, perhaps finding a new hobby or second academic interest.

After all, we're human beings first and musicians second.

The Music Business

Most music business courses are extremely fluffy, saturated with unnecessary information, and just plain boring to pay attention to. Music business professors are catering to the minority of students in their classroom that want/need to get a job in the industry as an office worker, so they need to know what the specific royalty rates are, how every licensing agreement actually functions, accounting, split sheets, and a bunch of other information that's largely useless knowledge for most people. And because the information is taught in such a dry manner AND the exams are open-note, you don't actually need to pay attention ever. Not for any class. You can simply show up on exam day with the slides out and get an A without actually knowing anything, and the professors will recommend you for a position at a record label when all is said and done despite having zero qualifications whatsoever.

In my marketing classes, I've had to come up with ideas on the fly, write up a business plan and a marketing plan from scratch, and I've learned a lot more about how to be a successful entrepreneur because of it. Similar to instrumental performance, music business should be taught this way to aspiring artists.

Another suggestion: it would be great if the curriculum was split into two main routes. One for making money as a musician, and one for the music industry education. As far as I know, this academic structure does not exist. And in my personal case, I know way too many non-industry students that are currently required to take a "Music Entrepreneurship" class at the end of their undergraduate studies, that would massively benefit from an alternative.

Here's an idea for my fellow non-industry students: three project-based classes total. The first would be split into two main options. For the instrumentalist that is looking to get booked by artists for tours and studio sessions, they would take a music finances class on budgeting, taxes, the creation of an LLC, et cetera. For the aspiring artist, they would learn about setting up an LLC as well as assembling a team (attorney, manager, agent, publicist, accountant), aspects of a good team member, as well as resources for finding prospects. The second class would be the loose mechanics of the record label and music publishing industries, as well as copyright law, and a final group-based project on the development of a startup enterprise in one of these spaces. The third class on the production and rollout of an original song and the sales/marketing of said rollout. And an extra, non-required class about the live entertainment side and the elements of financing a tour. Luckily the latter exists at the Frost School, but I can't speak on whether or not this is standard practice in music education. Lastly, this goes without saying, all classes would be taught through the gaze of a recording and touring artist or sideman, which makes the curriculum much less exhaustive and much more catered to the students sitting in front of them.

And to any music business professor that is reading this, please, DO NOT FORCE FEED EXAMS TO STUDENTS! Artists, instrumentalists, producers, and industry executives do not take exams when they're working. A student's grades should not revolve around test performance, rather around project creativity, a timely execution of said project, and being able to work in a team effectively.

Producing A Record

This'll be a quick one. I'm a believer that most musicians should be taught the meat and potatoes techniques for producing a record front to back. Here's the problem, absolutely no music school on the planet is even remotely good at teaching music production. In my experience the main principle of most projects I worked on in production classes I took centered around making something that sounded bad sound good. Whether it was through editing, processing, mixing and mastering, your job would be to take a bad performance and salvage it into something listenable. This is blatantly against every philosophy I've learned on my own as a professional musician and as someone that produces my own records. You need to start off with a solid foundation of a great performance before ever even thinking about producing the record and making it radio-ready.

So yeah, that's my rant. I had a good time in music school, but I'm also glad it was free for me, considering that most of what I learned came from professional experience rather than a classroom.