Is Berklee Worth the Money?
But then on my first day of orientation I got my brand new Macbook Pro from Berklee, and it already had the music programs Reason, Logic, Finale, and many more installed on it. Soon after that, I was shown the Learning Center which provides tutorials on how to use all the newly received music software, as well as the the expansive collection of albums in the Stan Getz media center, the top-of-the line recording studios, music synthesis labs, and much much more. Most importantly though, I had my first day of class, which really made me realize that in a lot of a ways, Berklee is like the Harvard or Yale of music schools. Just about every single person I know has been constantly working on homework, writing music, or practicing nonstop since they arrived, and it's not necessarily the little jam sessions that entice people into coming to Berklee in the first place; it's much more than that. We are constantly drilled on harmony, ear training, arranging and writing music, we are pushed to explore the most up-to-date music technology, we are shown sides of the music industry we would never see otherwise. We are working our asses off! Personally, I have already expanded my horizons so much in a very short time. I had never even really thought about how music publishing works, or music technology, but now I have the tools to easily create professional-grade media using programs like Reason, and I can easily learn to share my music using writing tools like Finale. My first week up here I was writing a new song so I could have something to play for my audition, and a week later I found out my assignment for one of my classes was to create a lead sheet. Not only did I learn how to make a lead sheet, I actually got to put it in front of a live band, and I got to perform the song for the class too-- which is going to happen every week by the way. I have already done songwriting collaborations with several other people, had many late night jam sessions, and spent hours figuring out how to make some decent computer-created drum beats. Needless to say, I have been inspired in ways I have never been before. It probably sounds right now like I am a Berklee spokesperson or something, but I am not, and I really don't think that Berklee is worth the money for everyone. It's not just about being a good musician here-- actually you don't even need to be the best musician upon entering-- it's about having an intense desire to learn more about every aspect of music, and having the focus to stay on track with your goals. Getting your money's worth: Getting what you deserve out of Berklee means constantly pushing yourself. Your classes will be a lot of work, but if you want to make them count then you have to take the initiative to focus the energy you put into that work. As an example, lets go back to the assignment I was talking about earlier. I was told to bring in a lead sheet of a song, and that I would be putting it in front of a band. More often than not, this type of exercise is directed at jazz musicians, and it would have been incredibly easy for me to find a lead sheet for a jazz standard or any popular tune. But knowing that I want to be a songwriter, and not a great jazz musician, I put in the extra time and effort to analyze the chord changes and style of the song I had written, and I got so much more out of it than I would have otherwise. You can take all the classes here, you can even make straight-A's, but it won't help you at all if you're not applying the things you learn here to your career ambitions. So you first need to be willing and able to put in the work to become great at some aspect of music, and then you need to know who you want to be as a musician, and direct all your efforts towards that end goal. Berklee will put a lot of options in front of you, and people will try to steer you one way or the other, so you really need to know what exactly it is you want out of music. There are 12 majors, and within those majors are hundreds of classes, and the knowledge within these classes goes into a limitless and ever-growing number of different professions in the music industry. If you want to look at the numbers, Berklee is a very expensive school, and the average musician doesn't make that much money. But Berklee isn't a place for people who want to be average, Berklee is a place for dreamers, and Berklee gives people with that kind of drive the tools to succeed in whatever they want to do. To me, that makes Berklee priceless. If I gain what I hope to gain from Berklee, the money won't have mattered one bit, and everyone that I have talked to here about that situation agrees with that. From another perspective, look at the quality of education at Berklee. If you ever get a chance to sit in on a class, please do so, because it is an amazing experience. Berklee is a private school, it has amazing faculty who have all had great careers, and the average class size is 11. Any private school with the same quality of education would unquestionably have a tuition as high as Berklee's, if not higher. And on top of that, Berklee does whatever it can to help talented students seriously in need of money to attend. They are constantly increasing scholarships, (in fact they recently did this past year) and if you have the drive and determination you can pave your way to this school, despite your financial situation. If you keep your motivation to succeed, your experience at Berklee will truly be one-of-a-kind, and there is no way around that. There are other much cheaper ways to learn what you can learn at Berklee, and there are other ways to succeed in the music industry. But there is nothing else like Berklee, and if that's the experience you're after, then go for it.
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