Gonna Get Schooled

I have been looking into some educational opportunities to further my career, and have figured out what to do to get the skills I need to move forward with my music. UCLA offers a music production certificate program now, and while I don’t think I need the entire set of classes in order to accomplish what I want to do, I need most of them. I did a run-down of all of them, and picked eight classes I think are essential and two more that are optional but would be good if I am so inclined to take them after I finish the others. I just invested in my Mac Book Pro, and I plan to invest more in a MIDI set-up this summer, and then after that’s bought and paid for, I plan for to enroll in the first of the UCLA classes, a comprehensive introductory course in LogicPro. Except for that one, which is condensed into several long sessions over the course of a month, each class is spread out over twelve weeks. They are also held at night on the UCLA campus, which works out really well for me.

I tried two years ago to enroll in music technology classes, but when I looked into Musician’s Institute and the Los Angeles School of Recording, they were, respectively, $24,000 and $27,000, each for a two-year program. I don’t need an entire course of study in recording technology, because I don’t plan to become a commercial producer. I just want to record my own music. I can’t invest that much money into a program most of which I don’t need, and those schools don’t offer individual classes – it’s all or nothing. And they only have day classes, which doesn’t work so well for grownups who are also concurrently responsible for earning their own living. As I said above, I don’t even think I need all of the UCLA program, which is much cheaper (a total of about $7,000 if you do go for the whole certificate course). I’ve taken some classes at Sunburst Recording Studio through a local community college, but it’s more of an analog set-up and they only teach studio recording and mike technique, not computer-based applications. There is also a local independent Apple certified Logic Pro school, but, honestly, I’d rather learn through UCLA. They have some of the best people in the media business as instructors and the classes are good networking opportunities. I got some freelance music writing assignments through a class I took there last year and met a lot of people whose paths I never would have crossed otherwise.

Part of the reason I don’t want to go for the whole certificate program is simply to save money. There are several classes in it that I feel are either above my head technologically or that I will never use and by not taking them, I can bring the total cost down by more than two thousand dollars, which more than covers the MIDI equipment. Another reason is that I want to be able to learn with no outside pressure. To earn a certificate, you must achieve a certain grade in each class, and I would rather just audit the classes. That is what I did with the industry class last year, and it worked really well for me. I’ll have a record of completion of every class I take, which is good enough for my purposes. I might be able to parlay the knowledge into music industry employment at some point in the future outside of my own personal goals, but I feel I can do that by demonstrating mastery of it. It should also help with my music writing – the more you learn the better your articles become. The Sunburst classes came in handy for an interview I did with a producer.

I also found out you can take free one hour tutorials at the Apple store, and I booked the Mac general intro class in case it can teach me something I don’t know, and also an intro to iWork and one to LogicPro. They’ve got more, for iWeb, Final Cut Pro, Aperture, etc., and I’m going to take them all. After that, if I still feel I need more help, I also may book some one-on-one time there with an instructor.