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went to music production school and all said it was worth every Penny.
My story is a bit weird but bear with me...
My missus one day got grief entering the UK as a foreigner without a visa so it came time to do something else. I'd been working all sorts of jobs, always with a technical basis but I loved DJ'ing, had been doing it for about about 5 years by that point. barely really knew my way around a DAW and back then, youtube didn't even exist.
We knew people in Miami and Toronto but Toronto was easier visa wise and the school I chose was less than half of what Full Sail was in miami (my other choice).
I went to the Harris Institute in downtown TO and the experience was fucking fantastic. I think I learned more in that one year than I ever did in any other educational establishment.
Firstly, it was oldschool teaching. We didn't even touch a DAW until 4 months in, it was all engineering and producing theory (14 subjects at once which covered everything from electronics to live sound to marketing and music industry leadership skills etc). 40 hours a week and then homework.
The nice thing was that the teachers were the real deal. My music industry teacher for instance had been the Head of A&R for Warner music then after that was the manager of the band Rush for 20 years. The guy that taught live sound was one of the biggest font of house engineers (still working) in toronto. The guy that taught us Publishing was the drummer from canadian band, Honeymoon suite.
Our synth teacher had no nasal septum. Hardcore.
It was fucking intense in terms of learning and the tests were pretty damn intense too, but the thing that was priceless was the pearls of wisdom, the little nuggets of info about the industry that only get from professionals who've been there and done it. also good introduction to the humor, jokes and need for a thick skin in a studio environment.
I actually skipped the very last part of the course. I had been working in a couple of clubs doing lighting and sound eingeering (as well as the backup DJ for when the resident wanted to disappear with a lady to the toilet) but wasn't working towards the end and money got tight.
The bit I missed was really the application of what we had learned over the past year (i.e. actually doing in protools/daw).
There's things that were drummed (scuse the pun) in to me at that school that let me get jobs later on, really simple but fundamental stuff like how to properly coil a cable, dow to mic a drum set in under a couple of mins, how to get a basic balance on faders, how to EQ a live room in less than 3 mins....
....these were all things that over the course of the next 10 years that got me jobs or at last a food in the door. I didn't really know pro tools at all well, but I had engineering theory down so well that I could figure out anything i needed to.
Bottom line is, i wouldn't have got to where I did without the school.
The only one thing I regret is that the school was in a city/country that I wasn;t going to work in; I came back to the UK and had to start from scratch with zero contacts. All of my fellow students who lived in T.O. had an instant springboard because of the contacts via the school, teachers, interships and networking we had to do.
Still, it was the best educational experience of my life and without it I wouldn't have ended up here in LA working on film scores.
Did it help the DJ'ing or producing career? Aside from theory and understanding? not a fucking lick.
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