Chords for What You Didn't Learn in Music School [ AN's Bass Lessons #10 ]

Every fall, young bass players eagerly enroll in music programs at the collegial level.
Four years of intensive ear training, performance practice, and music theory await them,
and at the end of it, they're awarded with a Bachelor's of Music degree.
Too bad tens of thousands of others also have that same piece of paper,
and they're all going to be competing for the dying remains of a music industry
with none of the skills necessary to [D] compete.
[Dbm] _ [Bb] _ _ [A] _ _ _
_ _ [Bb] _ _ [Bm] _ [Bb] There's _
[D] _ [Bb] _ _ [N] an academic-industrial complex here in America,
and every year it churns out thousands of hyper-qualified musicians
for a market that does not demand them.
It simply isn't good enough to be the best bass player that you can be,
because there are hundreds of other bass players who are way better than you.
You'll all be competing for restaurant gigs that pay $75 for four hours worth of music.
Which is, by the way, the exact same amount of money you would have made in the 70s.
No, not adjusted for inflation.
_ $75.
For these reasons and more, I felt compelled to compile a list of things
that music school does not teach you that's necessary to compete in the real world.
_ Good _ job!
You've learned giant steps and 12 keys,
learned a bunch of augmented scale licks, and maybe studied Slenimsky.
But do you know the bass line to Treasure by Bruno Mars?
Bailando by Enrique Iglesias?
Higher and Higher by Jackie Wilson?
Being Alive from Stephen Sondheim's Company?
Stairway to the Stars as sung by Ella Fitzgerald?
I've played each one of these songs many, many more times than I ever did giant steps on gigs.
There's a weird sort of elitism at play among new graduates of music schools
where they feel it's too easier beneath them to learn songs in, say, the pop-rock-country style.
It's a skill that requires years of practice to do efficiently on a large scale,
and there's very little in music theory curriculums that gives students the practical experience of,
freaking out because you have to learn 50 songs by this Saturday because you just got this sub-gig.
Learning a lot of new music requires several things.
One, the ability to transcribe and have a good ear.
Two, the ability to lay out a chart for yourself so that you can reference it later.
And three, good musical memory.
Even if there's some gaps in the curriculum,
most music schools have good ear training programs.
And also even some will give you the music preparatory skills necessary
in order to lay out good charts.
But very few deal with musical memory.
How do you practice musical memory?
Well, by memorizing things, of course.
Memorizing a lot of different things from a lot of different styles of music.
From jazz to rock to pop to country to salsa to musical theater to anything and everything in between.
Because there's so much emphasis on performance technique and music theory,
there's very little room for music memorization to occur in music school.
There are exceptions.
I wasn't part of this ensemble while I was at Berkeley,
but the Weather Report Ensemble was required to learn a new Weather Report album every week.
That's intense, but the musicians involved definitely improved their musical memory.
_ _ Aesthetic Taste
There's something that my musical colleagues and I derisively call Berkeley Funk.
Now, it would be unprofessional to show examples of this,
but the long and short of it,
there's a lot of musicians that come out of Berkeley playing a very trite,
uninspired, and banal form of music that all sounds the same.
Low on groove, but plentiful in notes,
Berkeley Funk seeks to emulate older styles of music
while retaining absolutely none of the character and none of the charm.
Why would this be?
Aren't young musicians supposed to be the ones creating the new and exciting music of today?
One of the dangers of music school is that you can exist in a bubble while you're there,
especially at a place like Berkeley.
The only musicians with whom you play,
and the only people from whom you learn,
are all in the same place.
Because studying music has been so academicized,
everybody learns music the same way,
and so there's the danger of everybody playing music the same way.
Almost no effort is made for helping young musicians find their own voice,
and so we get Berkeley Funk instead.
Again, there are some exceptions.
I got my master's from the Manhattan School of Music,
and my alma mater right now is killing it with this Brass House thing.
Too many zoos, Lucky Chops, Brass Band, and others are creating really exciting music,
so it's not always going to be the case that music school kills your creativity,
it's just that there's a danger of it.
Business stuff.
Sure, you can take music business classes in school,
but they're not really about the business of playing music,
they're about the music business.
Talking about the music industry is fine,
but rarely are you going to get questions answered like,
How much money should I charge for playing a gig?
What's the deal with 1099s?
Should I join the musicians union?
For a working musician, what to charge is the biggest question,
and unfortunately it's also the trickiest to answer.
It's going to vary on the market.
You're going to charge something very different in NYC and LA versus, say, Omaha.
Musicians and freelancers in general generally don't like to be too forthcoming with this on the internet,
because it will prevent them from being flexible with clients later on.
A good basic resource, however, is musicianswages.com,
and the American Federation for Musicians also posts their union wages online,
although don't expect to be making that much unless you're a member of the union and doing union gigs.
What other resources are available for you for questions like this?
Well, the alumni network.
It's almost a trite saying, but knowing somebody is everything in the music business,
and I mean everything.
Every gig you will ever get is because you know somebody or were referenced by somebody.
There's never been an instance of me getting called for a gig
because somebody saw me playing and was like,
I want that person to play on my gig.
That will happen, but it's extremely rare.
Most people will simply ask around for suggestions if they need a bass player for a gig.
In a weird and slightly insidious way,
the music world is kind of an old boys club where people rely upon alumni networks for contacts.
In a way, it does make sense,
because you generally only want to hire people you know will get the job done,
and then an alumni network is a good way of separating the wheat from the chaff.
It's this fact which makes music school worth going to,
and this fact alone, in my humble opinion.
You will always have a network of musicians to play with. _
Sorry, uh, with whom [E] to play.
_ _ These are the people that will help start your career.
Some schools emphasize their alumni network,
but most don't let on to the fact that this is the primary reason why you go to school.
What schools are good for their alumni network?
Well, I can say that Berkeley, even though there are tons of faults with that school,
has an amazing alumni network here in New York City.
From five years of living and playing here in New York City,
I can also say that the alumni networks of NYU,
Manhattan School of Music,
Queens College,
The New School,
City College,
Purchase,
[N] and Eastman all have robust alumni communities
that are making it as professional musicians in New York City.
Very, very interestingly, however,
Juilliard is not included in that list.
With one exception, and I actually knew him before he went there,
I've never met anybody from Juilliard who is now performing
and making a name for themself on the New York scene.
Now, I could be wrong, but I've had this discussion with a lot of other musicians
who haven't met that many people from Juilliard.
So if the real value of music school is the alumni network
and the people that you play with after school,
Juilliard really isn't that valuable.
Anyway, this has been Adam Neely's Bass Lessons.
I hope I haven't scared you away too much from music school.
It was an incredibly rewarding experience on multiple levels for myself,
both at the undergraduate and graduate level.
However, there are a few things that I wish were covered in music school,
and I was making this video just to cover those things
and why it is still very valuable to go because of the alumni network.
If you like what you've been [E] seeing and you want to hear more of it,
please comment, like, and subscribe for my channel.
[Ab] I have a new video [Dm] coming out every Monday afternoon
is the schedule that I am sticking to for the foreseeable future.
So yeah, with that in mind, _