music or school??

STAY IN SCHOOL!

If you rely on musicmaking for money then you might find yourself too mainstream. For instance, you are in serious finacial debt, need some quick cash, so for your next performance you cake on white makeup and scream a lot. The crowd goes wild, you get a CD out, you become famous, BUT, your music has diverged, and you don't like it. So you quit the industry, your albums don't sell anymore, and you are deep in the whiskey house.

Take the credits in University because then you don't have to change yourself for the audience, you can change the audience for you.

The world isn't going anywhere in the next 2-3 years. Finish school, get your diploma and, then, make music

Definitely stay in school! Since a musician should never give up his/her day job, you might as well have one that doesn't include flipping burgers or working retail for a pittance! :D You could also take some music related courses, if your school offers them. That would give you just that much more experience in your chosen musical profession!

I just finished up my first year of college, so i would recommend going with school.

Not only stay in school, but take business courses. A lot of the grief people have trying to make a living in music comes from not knowing anything about business. You'll be doing yourself a huge favor and giving yourself a lot of help in the long run.

Best of luck and fortune to you!

Peace

Does your school have any performing arts type courses that you can take as electives?

Are there any "coffee house" type venues on campus?

What I'm getting at is, you can do both. There are a lot of ears at usiversity. And they tend to be open to new experiences (I.E. performers and styles of music that they may not have heard of before).

One of my friends started up a weekly gig at the students' bar on campus. He called it "Blue Mondays" and it was basicaly an open blues jam. It gave the music students (and anyone else who wanted) an audience, and experience playing with a different group of musicians each week. And a hatful of coins. It brought in extra business for the bar, and it gave the rest of the students another night out (or another reason to be in the bar.. not like most students need much of an excuse IIRC).

Stay in school. You're halfway thru already.

Does your college have a radio station?

Record a demo of yourself and maybe some friends and get it put on college radio. You'll get some expierience recording, and if you have a good enough demo maybe you can form a band with other classmates. Plus you will learn all about how the radio stations operate.

I'm going to use the example of an old boy from my school - Trevor Brooking.

He has a batch of qualifications and could easily fall back into doing a desk job, but he listened to parental advice about having something to fall back on whilst he was getting into the school athletic record books, playing football for England Schoolboys, West Ham, and the full England squad, and is now Director of Football or something like that for the FA - and he got knighted the other year for services to football.

So, stick at the college stuff. You never know when you might need a regular job.

Best,

A :-)

you mean soccer, right...

Had to, sorry :)

The fact that you guys prefix 'football' with 'American' demonstrates that you know you've appropriated the term from something else... :mrgreen:

Anyhooo, yes, stay with education. When you read about some famous musician who ditched it to put all their effort into music and made it work, just remember that for every success there are thousands, literally, who did the same and failed. There's a balance to be struck between putting in the effort and having a fallback position, summed up in the old adage "Play for the best, plan for the worst".

There are many footbal teams in the UK that demand that their academy players learn a trade or profession alongside their football qualifications. Apart from having something to fall back on when they retire, they quite simply may not make it long enough in the big time to get enough money saved for them to retire on, either through lack of ability or through getting crocked.
Why give up the chance of a qualification (that no-one can ever take away from you), that will get you a steady income for a very uncertain future in the music business. Get the qualification, then try the music business. If you don't make it big playing, you may be able to put the qualification to use in production, management or whatever.

I mean soccer. Maybe. The word Football is actually a reference to the game invented at Rugby, which is a public school and not one that you get to go to because to live in the area LOL. Ah, England and America, two nations divided by a common language (Winston Churchill, I believe)

Who won the Rounders game on Monday? Red Sox or the Yankees? I was in New York last week and would have liked to see the game. PM me with the score, let's keep the thread on track.

A :-)

Rounders? that's poker right? :?

http://www.roundersmovie.com/

thanks guys i really appreciate it...the fact that your answers are basically unanimous makes me feel stupid for asking in the first place! I guess my biggest concern was whether or not I should be spending time preparing for my backup instead of going for my #1 first.