The Berklee College of Music

Date: Nov 25 2006
Major: Unknown (This Major's Salary over time)
Berklee is half and half of good and terrible musicians. Some musicians are brilliant. some people there really shouldn't be. Berklee will accept anyone. If you do not read a lick of music, you can still go. This is a major hinderence. They do not help with financial aid, so unless you are loaded, you won't be able to pay, even with the fafsa, they are very unhelpful. The major things about berklee are the following.

1) Berklee has a very specific "sound" about them, so specific that if I was sitting at a gig by someone from Berklee, I would likely be able to tell that they are from berklee. It is a sign of weakness to me that they have such a specific sound. It causes it to be somewhat of a pop factory. If all of the graduates leave with a specific sound, then how are they to be marketable? it causes musicians to not really have a strong individual sound, they just resemble everyone else who has left berklee. such a thing can be very damaging on a musicians career. If you have no experience and want berklee to teach you, they will, but because you are new to music and are very impressionable to style quality, you WILL end up with the specific berklee sound; and if you are new to music, reallly and truthfully you can teach yourself everything that they would teach you, just go to the bookstore and buy their books. Start practicing a lot, you do not need to pay someone 30 grand a year to teach you what you could teach yourself, they only thing that you would lack is the immediate and easy access to connections with other musicians, which you can find anywhere with a little more effort than if you were at berklee. If you already have a lot of experience, it is also a waste of your energy time and money. because if you are coming in with experience then you already are nurturing your own style, berklee will not be happy about that because they want you to sound their way, they will make it hell for you in your labs and lessons about your style if it is't akin to theirs. and if this happens, you spend a lot of your time taking what they teach with a grain of salt because you know that if you listen, you will began to sound like them and not yourself, also if you are coming in with experience, you likely already know most of what they teach, and if you dont, again, buy the books, the only situation that this does not apply fully is with the techy majors, in which case by the books and the software because really you can teach yourself, all that they do in the tech classes is explain to you how to use the software, and you can learn that on your own by reading the directions to the software programs. Socially, many people go because they want to be at rock and roll university and play guitar all day; many students fail or drop out, because they are too lazy to do the work. people who are good tend to transfer because its bullshit. students are not very bright, they sit around and smoke weed all night and strum guitar all day, but there is more to being a musician than that. again, i stress that you can teach yourself. also, they advertise that many famous musicians went there, but what they dont tell you is that most of those musicians didn't stay even a year, (because its bullshit). i have great memories with the people that i met there, and great memories of boston, but not of berklee. i say this not as a revenge on berklee, i got good grades there and some of the faculty were nice, but the truth is the truth and i tell you all of this in utmost honesty. you are better going to musicians institute.