Musical Careers

[smavridis]

It really all depends on your motivation and what you’re willing to accept as a career.

I'm a Berklee grad, yet now I work in accounting.  Out of my two best friends from Berklee.  One quit music after a few years and will be getting his doctorate next month in medicine.  The other works in LA doing post audio for video games.  As for the rest of my friends.  Some teach music, some work AV, some completely gave up and are working day jobs, some are still living like they're 19 touring and trying to scrape by living out of the back of van.  Sadly no one is really making a solid living in it (thank you facebook for keeping me updated)  The most famous person I knew from college dropped out after two semesters and didn't graduate.  He's won a bunch of grammy's and dated Jennifer Anniston last year, so... 

Music school's are sort of like a kick ass guitar, or boutique effects pedal.  It's great to have, and I highly recommend it, but it all depends how you use it.

im going to go with.... john mayer?

 

[smavridis]

ok i just read the other posts. That last thing i posted is now moot.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

If you're good at teaching then you can make a decent living teaching guitar, especially if you teach in small groups rather than individually.  My former guitar teacher charged $20 per 1/2 hour lesson.  Now if he was teaching in a group of 3, that's $60 for 1/2 of work, and if you have enough students that you're teaching back to back lessons every afternoon, you could make pretty good money...but you'll only get a lot of enrollment if you're good at teaching.  The big problem I notice with a lot of music teachers is that they are great at the music part, but they have no clue about teaching. 

Most all of the good teachers I've either had or known have a specific curriculum for their students and each stage of their development.

Some teachers will just show you how to play songs, and that is good if that is all you want to learn, but if you want to learn the fundamentals and then apply them to songwriting, then you're on to something.