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Berklee College of Music (tuition)

So this being a nine year old thread if you look now it’s just shy of 80k/yr. WTF?
 
IFM said:
So this being a nine year old thread if you look now it’s just shy of 80k/yr. WTF?
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Lol, wow 9 years since I started this thread. So much has happened. Only thing I have to say now is, I think things will look infinitely worse with the advent of A.I. in music.
 
Arcane Master said:
Absolutely insane lol. One is better off learning on their own with courses online imo 😂🤦🏽
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Again, this is what private college costs now. It's not just Berklee.

My opinion - and not just mine - is that student debt is immoral. An educated population is a public good. It doesn't exist in many countries for that reason.

And online courses are not the same thing as a college education.
 
Seeing the crazy tuition prices makes me feel fortunate I was born in Canada. I was able to get an undergrad, masters and doctorate in music composition here without going into debt at all, due to the substantially lower tuition costs.
 
mducharme said:
Seeing the crazy tuition prices makes me feel fortunate I was born in Canada. I was able to get an undergrad, masters and doctorate in music composition here without going into debt at all, due to the substantially lower tuition costs.
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It should be around $7 to $8k CAD per year +materials e.t.c. for a BA in composition where I am.
 
nitrateaudio said:
It should be around $7 to $8k CAD per year +materials e.t.c. for a BA in composition where I am.
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For me it was around $3k CAD per year, so entire undergrad cost $12k for 4 years (and with scholarships, that was decreased even further). That was for a Bachelor of Music in Composition (not a BA).
 
I've been considering doing a second Master's at Berklee, online. I have a BA in composition, and an MA and PhD in an unrelated field, so this would be something I do for myself, pre-retirement.

But I have issues beyond tuition, which is issue enough. Composition is tied to film scoring, which I'm not terribly interested in (it's a younger person's game).

Options being weighed...
 
mducharme said:
Yeah I graduated about 10 years ago with my Bachelor of Music (not from Toronto though) and then went on to do a masters and doctorate. So probably it has gone up a bit since then. Still a lot less than the US.
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yeah, its gone up a bit. i don't know which province you were in.
 
$80K and they aren't even paying for a football program???? That kind of sucks.

But as a comparison, my sister's kids went to Notre Dame and last I heard it was $65K per year and you had to live in South Bend, Indiana.

Retiring soon and looking at the music learning options. It will probably have to be online for me where I live now. The problem with online is there isn't the motivation for me that having to attend a class in person has. And I don't need a bachelor's degree.
 
I'm not sure whether Berklee is worth it or not -- who knows? For sure, though, the yawning shortcoming for many journeyman composers is not "do you know how to voice that chord" but all the other stuff.

Put another way, it's not "what's the cheapest and fastest means of learning what you need to know to be a composer?" You can watch 100,000 hours of Youtube but still get absolutely nowhere.

It's All That Other Stuff

Here are some things we all need to learn or we will fail:
  • Can you get along with people generally?
  • Can you navigate the treacherous feedback sessions with producers / directors / senior composers who may not agree with you and may tell you after the weeks of work you just put in -- "it's time to start all over"?
  • Can you give directions to players speedily and accurately, without getting irritated or insulting them (on purpose or accidentally)?
  • Do you know enough musical terminology and theory so that, when the French Horn section at a major studio -- seriously amazing players -- asks you, "do you really want that chord like that?" you can give them an accurate, polite, and efficient answer?
  • Can you "booth" a session so it moves fast, but without letting uncorrectable problems slip by you?
  • What, during the intense pressure of scoring, is a good joke that helps everyone relax and keep going, and what is -- not? The players are under pressure too, don't forget.
  • Do you know how to talk to the engineer / conductor / Pro Tools operator in such a way that you communicate you're on the same team, and not as though you think you're the Second Coming of Richard Strauss so that they say to themselves "ah -- one of those guys?"
I don't know how people learn this list ^^ without either being lucky enough to be able to work at professional sessions or going to a school that helps you reduce the symptoms of insecurity, vanity, and touchiness that frequently accompany wanting to be a composer.

If you want to make it in any freelance field like this, it's not usually an inability to write a melody that trips up a career or stops it before it gets going. It's all this other stuff.

For most, it's either school or hope you have a cousin who can invite you to scoring sessions for a year or so, and hire you to do something there.
 
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