i recently read about a new program at the university of central oklahoma, the academy of contemporary music (or ACM@UCO), on the oklahomarock.com blog. the post sparked a few comments about the value of formally studying music and the business or just going it alone. it got me thinking about it so here’s my two cents on “rock universities” and music business majors, etc.
i feel like going to college to study music, (or any other artistic avenue) has two purposes, neither of which are to create a musician. you are a musician, or you aren’t. you either have the talent or you don’t. anyone can learn to play the guitar, but not everyone can be a guitarist.
the first reason to study music in college is internal. formal training on your instrument, voice, music theory…it makes you a better and more well-rounded musician. you are pushed by your professors and your peers to go deeper into your creativity and to not be content. you hear things you may never have heard otherwise. you have experiences you may never have had. all of these things give you more to draw upon when you’re creating your own music. more inspiration.
listen to a band like oso closo and you can hear that they’ve had formal training. a thought bubble may not pop up above your head that says “they must’ve studied music in college” but you notice something. and it doesn’t matter if people can’t put their finger on the something, you just need to have it. if you don’t stand out and catch people off guard, you’ll never be more than just another band.
oso closo is as rock n roll as the next band, but they write music in a way that other untrained (for lack of a better word) bands probably wouldn’t think about. they take rock and throw in jazz time signatures and notes and chords that should be wrong, but theoretically aren’t. i’m not saying you can’t be original and off-kilter if you didn’t study music in college. i’m just saying that it’s an advantage when your goal should be to find a way to differentiate your sound.
the second reason to go to “rock school” is external. you make SO MANY contacts.
arguably more important than having the talent, is networking. you could be better than zeppelin, but if you can’t find the right people to support your music, no one will ever hear you. studying music in college or going to a school like berklee or this ACM@UCO…it’s all about making contacts. bands form in college. your instructors know people who also know people. and any one of these people you meet are potentially the person who will hear your music, fall in love, and invest their time, their talent, and their money (if you’re lucky) in your band. if you’re even luckier, they’ll tell everyone they know about you and those people will tell their friends, and so on. it’s like pay-it-forward. the music business is all about who you know, and unless you can sell water to a fish, going to college and taking a program like this is a really easy way to network.
do i think the only great bands are the ones who studied music in college? no. a rectangle is sometimes a square and sometimes it’s not. there are just as many great bands that have no formal training as there are great bands that do. i don’t think college is a prerequisite to being great, but i think it helps on both internal creativity and the external networking (especially the networking). if i had the talent, i’d study music in college. but i’m not a guitarist, i’m just someone who sometimes plays guitar.
