Anyone here studying music in Uni ?

[BassMan94]

Hey

As the question sates anyone doing music in uni with Bass Guitar as their main instrument ?

What is it like ?
How many others like you are there ?
What do you get taught ?

All other stuff you want to include

thanks

[bassist_lewis]

To answer your questions:

Its however you wnat it to be, if you want it to be 4 years of free money (at the time anyway), getting pissed and watching Jeremy Kyle then thats what you'll get. If you want to learn then you'll learn and be given the time to do it with tutors who can help.
How many? depends on the course, colleges take on more people (creative degrees are a good source of income for institutes, search how many there are in UK), my university had 50 in my year but only 25ish in the subsequent years. they're were never many bass players, perhaps 5 at the most but this gives you lots of experience playing with people (if you want it).
You get taught music! this can include theory and technique, however my tutor said to me soon after I left "you learn all the important stuff after you leave!" Production, recording and computer music, music business (its very dull but it IS important), straight business (I had to do a business plan, pain in the a**e), i did a course on acoustics, teaching method, community music, world music, history of music.

BUT the one thing thats gotten me more work than any of this is the people I met, as a professional musician your most important asset is contacts. The band I'm in met at uni, and we've just started workign with an agent because our guitarists tutor at uni works with him as well.

On the whole, for me it was a great experience, both personally and musically. Find the right course and you can't go wrong! Maybe try college for a year or 2 to see if its a hobby or if you genuinely want to pursue it as a career.

Hope thats of some help!

[throwoff]

Can of worms reopens once more!

This thread pops up every now and then and usually results in 50% of people saying its a waste of time and nobody becomes musicians from courses and 50% saying its a great idea and to follow your dreams.

Personally I did a music degree and now work in the industry (not playing admitedly but where I want to be) I accomplished this by following 2 paths.

Firstly I did my degree and worked hard.

Secondly I worked every other hour god sent in menial jobs, barman at a football ground when at uni then every summer and winter for the time I was a student (literally finishing a term on the friday, driving home and being at work at 8am on the saturday all through the summer and winter, full time, 40 hour weeks) as a phone debt collection specialist, yep cold calling people who missed credit payments from 8am to 9pm!

I got next to nothing in the way of loans because of the crooked system that is means assessment (but thats for another thread!) and needed the money for things like rent and keep (trust me when I say in the 3 years I spent at uni I could count the 'messy nights out' I had on my 20 fingers and toes and have enough left over to do the song about the little piggy who stayed at home) but the fact when I left employers saw that I had a sum total of over 16 months proper full time work behind me as well as 3 years part time!

I pretty much walked into a job because I understood work, had my degree with a good grade and because of that combined was attractive to employers. A student who understands the value of a hard days work. This first job was not in the music industry but for a hifi company and I used my call centre experience to get an ok wage. Did this for a year, my first music job came up and that was that, believe it or not even in the music industry a work ethic is bloody essential (forgetting the 9 months in the middle of the period between then and now when I worked for a hazourdous waste company in their accounts department, such is music you never know!)

Long and short is you can make it if its what you put your heart and soul into, but be prepared to always go the extra mile. I could name a lot of uni friends who spent 3 years getting hammered on the tax payers expense and hadn't done a days work from birth, they left uni with a 2.1 or even first. They are still unemployed because their sights are too high and their experience is too low (one person in particular who ticked all those boxes still doesnt work and wont apply for a job under 30k, after all they have a first.......)

Edited January 24, 2012 by throwoff

[funkypenguin]

Im 5 months away from graduating from Salford having studied bass as my main discipline. Its been an incredible 4 years and would do it again in a heartbeat.

Whats it like? It depends what you put in. I went to uni wanting to play (A LOT), meet folks, make new contacts and obviously learn alot. its been a really intense, busy 4 years. its been hard work but ive gotten alot out of it and ive been able to spend alot of my time playing/composing/performing music. whats not to like about that

Are there others? No. alot of music students drift through their degree then drift out again, its the same for most places (except perhaps LCM, RCM and Guildhall). I got lucky in that theres about 20-30 of us here that wanted to make the most of what we're doing and have really worked/played alot. It becomes obvious fairly quickly (in my experience) which ones really want to make the most of whats on offer. Networking and finding out who is on it and who isnt is really important

As im sure has been said elsewhere on here, you can learn alot of what is on offer at uni (theory for example) elsewhere. However you wont get the contacts, the tutors (i would never have got the oppertunity to study with my composition tutor Robin Dewhurst if i hadnt come to uni), the experience and the oppertunity to put what you're learning into practice ON A DAILY BASIS outide university.

Knowing your theory and being able to read are 2 things that will give you a huge head start from the word go. IMHO they are a must

Hope this helps

[Sub_Drop]

[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Hi

Like most of the above, it can be whatever you want. some of my friends (not bassists) just see it as free money and are pretty much failing so far. We are in our final year of a 3 year course. If you want to learn and work hard, there are countless opportunities for you. I've already had session work (obviously not playing on major tv programs or touring with high profile, famous people) which I'm getting paid for, had the chance to record an album and work with various musicians through uni, played gigs across the U.K. and generally just got better in all areas of music. My course is just a performance course but I've still managed to learn about recording, mixing and engineering. [/font][/color]

Throughout all of the music courses at uni, there are dedicated students and those which don't even turn up to lectures. You will get this regardless of where you go but as long as you make friends with the reliable musicians in the group, you'll be fine and from experience, you'll be in demand by most of them if you're reliable as well.

[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]I've already been taught (bass specific) how to achieve a wider range of tone, how to tweak my timbre to alter the entire band and how the music feels/sounds. I've been taught how to read standard music notation and how to even write it out by ear, amongst other things. (general music) I have learnt how to mix, record and engineer for bands, advanced theory and compositional methods and general history on all styles of music. I've learnt too much to write down in my opinion.

Hope that helps and makes sense. [/font][/color]

[spencer.b]

Hi
I did a 3 year degree at basstech which to be honest wasn't a great course mainly because the standard of the majority of players was pretty poor and the most of the tutors approach was more about technique rather than harmony theory reading etc.There was about 20 bass players in my year and the classes were fretboard skills, sight reading,live performance workshop and aural . Even though I didn't get much from the classes it gave me the opportunity to move to london and more importantly play practice gig and become totally immersed in music.

After graduating I had got into jazz and playing upright so I did the masters course at Guildhall which was fantastic, really high standard ,great tutors. I was relatively new to jazz at that point so to be in at the deep end was exactly what I needed

Since then I've made a living from playing bass doing all sorts of music including jazz , big band, touring with a rock band, weddings, functions,sessions for TV and ads etc. Virtually all my contacts in some way trace back to the courses I did so I would definately recommend it if your serious about it

Based on my experience I'm a bit sceptical of the whole rockschool approach as I found my sound like most people from listening to and transcribing my favourite players and I felt the course was trying to take me down a stylisticaly specific route. I personally got more from the more formal music college approach

hope thats of some help mate