The Berklee College of Music

Date: Jul 11 2007
Major: Unknown (This Major's Salary over time)
My major was Professional Music- I would have been a Songwriting Major if that major had existed at the time I attended (early 80's).

I was not a good fit for Berklee. I learned about Berklee while attending a state school (also for music). I probably should not have been a music major- my main reason for studying music was songwriting. I had written songs since age 15- some of them quite good (IMHO). My influences were the songwriters of the day- Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, early Dan Fogelberg, etc.

I was drawn to Berklee because there you supposedly studied "contemporary music" and I thought that would be a better fit than studying classical music

(this was the program at the state school). Berklee is Jazz, though. I was a guitar major and quickly learned to play jazz chords and basic music reading.

By my 2nd year I had put the pop music I "used to play" on a shelf and spent the majority of my time trying to get better at Jazz and writing multi-horn (mostly jazz) arrangements. I likened my studies to a liberal arts major in something like philosophy- I didn't forsee my studies turning into a job but most people (outside of Berklee) said things like "your undergraduate major doesn't really matter" so I thought I would probably go to graduate school in something other than music (I was thinking business at the time). My grades at Berklee were very good (Dean's list) but this was more because I'm fairly smart & good at academics, not because I'm especially musically talented (I do think I have some talent). I generally sucked in my required jazz ensembles (at least when it came to soloing over jazz changes), but still mostly got A's. My favorite ensemble was a pop-rock ensemble with vocalists- it was fun.

In my private lessons, the teachers would assign chord solos (chord-melody arrangements for solo guitar) and I wasn't disciplined enough to learn to play them smoothly. I did work diligently on proficiency requirements- I can still play single lines from Bach inventions from memory, can play major & minor scales up the neck, & use triads & arpeggios (albeit limitedly) when soloing.

I took

Fundamentals of Improv. 1 & 2

and applied myself to those courses.

The biggest thing, however, is that I didn't go to Berklee to become a jazz guitarist (ala Jim Hall, Joe Pass, etc.) If I had, I probably wouldn't have had a sense of failure upon realizing that I had completed 4 yrs of jazz education (classical harmony & counterpoint & conducting were included) and that what I really liked to play (take away course requirements, etc.) was folk music. After leaving Berklee I went back to playing what I had originally enjoyed- very simple music with good lyrics- try finding that in jazz! John Gorka, Nanci Griffith, Gillian Welch… I occaisonally will play an easy jazz standard (Summertime, Autumn Leaves, etc.) but I never really had wanted to be a jazzer. I usually sing when I play the guitar. Most of the teachers at Berklee are jazzers. My main complaint about Berklee is that the school seems to want to attract students interested in pop music- only to weed them out if they do not turn into jazzers through the course of their studies. I put on my application form the artists I emulated (all pop). Somebody should have read my application & determined that I wasn't the best candidate for the program. This is also one reason the matriculation rate is so low at Berklee- there are many students who come there who are primarily interested in pop music & many drop out after a few semsters or years of intense jazz training. I should probably have done that and transferred to another school, but hindsight is 20/20, as the saying goes.