insights you probably already had

[alexr_rwx]

Back in Atlanta!

So Lindsey and I were walking back from the CS building at IU, talking about the music department. And I realized something that had previously eluded me: there's a whole lot at stake at a music school. Winning means being able to support yourself by doing what you love -- but a whole lot of people are not going to be able to make a living performing. How many people are out there with music degrees? What sorts of jobs do they have now? [0] [1]

People who want to be engineers are super-lucky. You can, for instance, be a pretty mediocre programmer and still make a living writing code.

There are so many interesting things to think about. One of Lindsey's friends from the choir (which is almost all music students) is looking into humor in Victorian literature; her boyfriend is working on the history of matrices -- they predate Gauss, apparently, but just by a little.

[0] We need a tool where you can ask this kind of question and visualize the answers. Is this stuff in the census? ...

[1] Also, this is not to say that being a performer is the only "success" case for somebody with a music degree.

Comments

[eponis.livejournal.com]

My brother is applying for jobs in orchestras, but in the meantime, he's teaching/tutoring individual students in musical instruments. Another of his friends worked in the band on a cruise ship for a while; another is, uh, here in divinity school with me.

[agonistes]

Mr. Bird is probably not the kind of example you're looking for -- but he does have a degree in violin performance from Northwestern.

(He also goes and repairs hammer dulcimers for plush puppets on children's television.)

(This is a thinly-veiled excuse to encourage you to make Mr. Bird's acquaintance.)

[oniugnip.livejournal.com]

That was adorable, thank you :D

(and it looks like there's good children's television getting produced, cool (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack%27s_Big_Music_Show)!)

[billings.livejournal.com]

It was really nice programming after trying to make music. Nobody asks you to make music, you are rewarded infrequently for it, and rarely if ever monetarily. I'm probably not cut out for it as a profession. The positive feedback at a real job did wonders for me.

[cola-fan.livejournal.com]

Your careers infovis is a great idea. Just find a data source and start hacking. I'm sure there is something with the census.

[rocketgirl13.livejournal.com]

lil brother is a music major. but he (and most of his friends) has a second arts related major (his is arts administration, but many go for education). There's a lot of music teachers out there.

I think the drum and bugle cores pay for their participants so if you make the cut...

[deepdistraction.livejournal.com]

And what of the people trying to make a living at music WITHOUT a degree? It doesn't get much tougher than that. Celebrate these people. Pay to hear them perform; buy their music if you like it and can afford it. It's our collective cultural obligation, IMHO.

[scottique.livejournal.com]

I'd like to see the Venn diagram where "People who make a living as performers" intersects with "People who completed college with a degree in music."

And: I would wonder if, in any of these visual diagrams, you'd want to exclude people with music degrees who never had any goal/intention of being performers. See: Marching band directors, private instructors, musical theorists, et cetera. To include those people as "Did not reach Degree -> Career As Performer goal" would skew the results.

[lindseykuper]

And: I would wonder if, in any of these visual diagrams, you'd want to exclude people with music degrees who never had any goal/intention of being performers.

Yeah. At my undergraduate school, which was a little liberal arts school in the sticks, I don't think most of the music majors really intended performing careers. A B.A. in music just seemed like the most fun major.

The music school at the university where I am now, though, has a lot of students pursuing degrees specifically designed to prepare them for a career in performance. I think the school knows that a lot of those people will end up doing other things to supplement their income (teaching, most likely), and they try to prepare them for that, too, more or less, depending on the program.