Middle Tennessee State University

Date: Jan 04 2005
Major: Other (This Major's Salary over time)
The Recording Industry program at the MTSU College of Mass. Comm. is regarded as one of the top three in the nation, and it is without a doubt the biggest. They are constantly upgrading equipment in the digital domain, but they put plenty of emphasis on the analog side. At the same time, I've learned about the history, legal, and business sides through intense book study, as well as personalities of the industry in Nashville, NY & LA through personal contacts and guest lectures.

I can't speak for other departments' majors, but on the whole, RIM department faculty really are CONNECTED, successful professionals as well as committed teachers and great communicators. Truthfully, there's been such a mass of people trying to get in, they've had to raise the requirements to continue in the program - when I came in, we were told that 10% would be graduating with the degree - and even less on the Production & Tech. side. Now, even fewer are able to stick it out in P&T, but it's worth it - we end up having great advantages over the glut of wannabes graduating from SAE, Full Sail, etc.

Other comments on MTSU are whiny, but then I was a whiny freshman too - Anyone who expects college life, or anything else, to be like it is in the movies, is very deluded. So you come here for RIM, but you don't get a lot of action in the studio your first year, or even second year - you learn history and theory first. Yes, I've taken some dud classes, some were a waste of time - but a few surprised me by really broadening my horizons. I WOULD have liked to have been challenged more in some low-level core curriculum classes (e.g. Eng., Hist., etc.) - I was able to ace some of them without trying very hard. Well, what do you want, it's a state school - I came here to learn studio recording, and for that, it's absolutely first rate. Also, there are a lot of good people in the computer science department. Between them and RIM faculty, you have to understand: these are professors, PhDs, who WRITE the textbooks in their fields. For Recording Industry Biz & Prod.Tech there are only a few schools with such prestigious programs - Belmont Univ. in Nashville, Berklee in Boston, McGill in Canada are maybe the most well known. You can be sure those private universities cost more per year than my entire college career.

It also helps that Murfreesboro has a low cost of living. It's a college town, for sure, but also a southern "real nice place to raise your kids up", so anyone who expects it to be a hotbed of bohemian-artist liberal lifestyles will despair at first because they expect, I dunno, funky vintage clothing store vegan coffehouse discos are the only signs of life. There's a lot of parties in the Boro, trust me. And honest to God, you have NEVER lived ANYWHERE that had more musicians per capita - I mean, EVERYONE plays and writes, or is in a band, or several bands, it's almost a given - and I'll bet not even 2% of them are doing country music. In fact, ppl in the Boro kind of take musicians for granted. There's a good racial mix here, a lot of cross-cultural exchange. MTSU campus isn't the best landscaped - but a good library, computer labs, an awesome gym/rec. center, and oh yeah, 5 full-sized recording studios, MIDI and Post-Production labs, THX certified theaters and listening labs… full-time studio maintenance shop, cutting-edge as well as rare and vintage equipment, chapters of AES, SMPTE, NARM, and other industry assoc. … If I have one caveat, it is that you just have to stick it out, don't be in a hurry to graduate, because you can easily get the B.S. without having gotten the GOOD classes, the high-level material - the ones where everything is really one-on-one, learning the philosophy and well-guarded secrets of recording. It hasn't been easy, I've had to work my ass off, and most people can't make it through the late-night hours and crises so they switch to the RIM:Business side or another major altogether. But I'm going on to do movie post-prod. and scoring, and I have the RIM department to thank for it.