The Value of Music Education

0:00 What's good everybody, it's Scoobert Doobert here for Love Music More. So some of you might know that this podcast was originally named Music Appreciation 101.But it became Love Music More because I realized that they're actually one in the same.The more you appreciate music, the more you love it.And I want to focus on the solution, the end, rather than the means.But still, based on that conversation I had last week, which was super fun with Harper,

0:48 I wanted to dig deeper into the value of music education and share, I don't know, some of my perspective.And I think that it starts with, are you doing music to make money?Or is there another value that you're getting out of it?Because if you're doing it for the money, you should stop.I mean, it's ridiculous. That's just doing anything else.Like, literally anything else and you'll make more money.

1:16 But money isn't all about value necessarily.It's how other people maybe value it or how the economic system values it.But what about how you value your life, your limited time, the limited amount of thingsyou will ever be able to learn?There's a finite amount of information that you're going to be able to consume and process and become.Where are you going to point that?

1:39 And I guess all these things need to be balanced.But I think that there's real value in a music education.While it might not be economic, I think it's a wealth of everything else.And I also think that it can lead to wealth because it changes you as a human being as a person.Like, what you can do, the amount of intensity that you can bring to a problem.

2:02 And also, if you're a musician, like an artist, you're going to have to learn everything.You'll be a PR person, you'll be writing press releases, you'll be a website designer,you can be a music video director, you're going to be editing stuff.And designer, you're going to be learning all the Adobe tools, you'll know a bunch of complicated

2:21 programs like Pro Tools, you're going to be a little bit of everything because you have to.And then you're not even going to necessarily get that rewarded with it in the economic sense.But guess what?Those tools are transferable.I know a bunch of people that were musicians and I go to the normal day job and they'resaying this is easy compared to the thing that I'm passionate about.

2:42 So then that's the central argument, I guess, is where's the value?And for me, the value is like who you become, the network that you build and the communitythat you become a part of.And so much of the music education process is not even the technical stuff.

3:03 And a lot of the technical stuff is only taught to get you to either have tools to overcomechallenges, super valid.I talk about that with music theory all the time where it's like, okay, I ran out of inspiration.What do I do next?You can dip into your bag of music theory and wait for inspiration to strike again.Or to like what my friend Max who's been on the pod has said often, draw a circle aroundthe bulls eye.

3:27 You might never be able to necessarily find the bulls eye, but you can kind of draw a circlearound it.And that's what this sense of that osmosis, that just being in it, swimming in the waterof music itself, that you start to figure it out.Don't exactly know how you figured it out.Nobody necessarily explained it to you.But enough people around you were kind of doing it that somehow you started to find your

3:55 own path up this mountain that nobody ever travels the same path up.But music education unlocks the tools that, you know, like the water bottle.And it's like music education is like that REI, like you can get that nice back back.And you can get all the tools you need to be able to summit the mountain.But ultimately when you're on that mountain, it's just like, what wilderness skills haveyou acquired?

4:20 What's your common sense?How are you going to dip dig deeper into your endurance and keep climbing higher?I really, music is a mountain is like a thing that's just keep sticking with me becauseI swear that's what it feels like.It feels like hiking these incredible peaks and the higher you get the less air there is.Sometimes you need to retreat so you can go back up again.

4:43 And sometimes the descent is more dangerous than the ascent all for us to, you know, puta little tiny pebble at the top of the mountain or on the side of the mountain and say, hey,I contributed to this massive thing.But how do you get up the mountain without the tools to get up the mountain and then also

5:01 without the, like, osmatic that community vibe that you kind of just learn illogicallyjust by being a part of it?That's what music education offers you and also teaches you how to learn and how to hustleas all education does.Like, it's funny.

5:23 I mean, that's one of the things I thought was so interesting with college for me was eachstage of education kind of tackles a problem in a different way from the memorizationto the very final boss level of there's no solution.Think really hard about the question.And that's your homework.And music is the ultimate version of that.

5:52 And so that's why, you know, Einstein was violinist, I'm just saying, there's a reasonit unlocks a certain part of your brain, a certain way of thinking that you can onlygather through participation.And the participation includes listening, doesn't just mean composition or playing, itincludes just being immersed in it.And that's what I advocate for with education.

6:22 And that's why I'm like a little bit hesitant for the people that view, like recording,engineering, trade schools, or super immersive, kind of like boot camp versions of guitar,shred school, it kind of misses the point for me.So the point isn't like I can play really fast, I worked really hard to get able to playreally fast and no one wants to listen to that.

6:48 I do it sometimes, but it's for me, it's not, I know, it's not for the people.The people want to hear beautiful colors, they want to hear emotion, they want to hearsomething new.They don't want to just hear you just playing notes at a million miles an hour.In the same way that like recording engineering school, recording engineering is really simple.Here a problem, try and fix it, you don't have a lot of tools.

7:13 Control your low end, control your high end, and don't try to do everything right on thetrack, try to do it in the way that it relates to everybody else.That's pretty much it.Make sure your cables work, you know, it's pretty simple stuff.In the same way that like even playing guitars, pretty simple stuff.There's a few shapes, few strings, keep it in tune, you know, practice them.

7:39 But it's that next step that makes you meaningful, that gives you value.And without that, then you're just playing notes, or you're just pushing buttons, justturning knobs.It's not even just the intention of like, oh, now I know how a compressor works.I'm going to use a compressor.

8:04 It's about learning how the entire mix works, and how the kick drum, and the snare drum,and the bass are all going to act together into that compressor, and how they're goingto act going into the next compressor, and the next compressor, and the next saturator.And like how all of this stuff will affect the way that the vocal is perceived.And you can't really teach all of that.You just kind of got to do it.

8:24 But it's a lot easier to do it if you have good musicians around you, and you have peopleto mix.And luckily we have the internet, so you can do that.But the technical stuff, that's easy to acquire.It's that next tier.It's like, it's easy to go up the foothills of the mountain.It's easy to buy a backpack, or a water filter.Anybody can do it.Anybody can filter water.

8:49 But once you hit 14,000 feet, are you still on your feet?Did you acclimate?Did you train?Did you read everything you needed to know, and hang out with the right people so thatyou could kind of soak it in, or have a guide with you that can guide you up that mountain?There are those next tiers.It's almost like a shamanic vision quest thing.If you just jump into that, you're going to have a bad trip.

9:17 This is like a sacred thing.You got to pay for it.Yeah, like paying for music school, or teachers, or whatever.You got to pay for it in terms of spirit as well.So my view on music education is just don't think of it so narrowly, it is not a tradeschool.It's almost the opposite of trade school.You come out and you know less than you came in.

9:45 You're less confident now that the whole point is to grow you as a person, to grow yourability to learn and to grow, and to immerse you in a network of people that are all pushingfor the same damn near impossible goal.

10:07 But if you can be an unsoppable force, you can move mountains, especially with a community,the enough people.But to think you can do it alone just with YouTube or whatever, yeah, that could handlesome of the technical side.This podcast can help you with some of the technical stuff, but it's that network, it's that

10:30 community, it's the shared growth, it's the immersion that gets you to that next level.I'm feeling it with my Japanese.I don't know what to do to give myself that level of immersion that I think is requiredfor me to get to the next level of Japanese.I've hit this intermediate plateau, and this is naturally the time where you'd be like,oh, just go live in Japan for a year and be like, yeah, that would probably do it.

10:55 But I can't do that.So like, where do you turn?I think it's the same kind of thought process.If you can't go to music school, there's got to be other ways you can figure this out.Other online communities, other types of immersion that you can do, so you'll be ready.It's like the people that live in Colorado, they can climb mountains every single day.No problem.People that live in Florida, a little harder.

11:22 It doesn't mean that somebody that lives in Florida can't train up to be able to climbsome pretty sweet mountains.While they might not be able to be as extreme or as good as the people that live at thefeet of the foot of the mountain, they can still get pretty close.And so that's what I'm trying to do is like, hey, you know, if you don't have unlimited

11:42 resources, if you don't live in Southern California where there's just musicians everywhere,do what you can.Find your ways.Find your squats.And find your online communities or communities locally that think like you, so you can allgrow together.Yeah.I mean, that's kind of where I'm at.I think that music is beautiful, too, that you can converse with people that are

12:09 long dead by just listening to their work over and over and over and over and over again.Listening to something once or twice, no, it doesn't soak in.You got to spam it.You have to swim in it and think about their influences.Think about everybody in this chain, this interconnected thing, and they're all likea foothold if you're going rock climbing.

12:37 It's like, okay, you got the Beatles, so you can start there or you can take a stepback, start listening to the people that influence the Beatles, like Little Richard,Buddy Holly, you know, it's the same thing with, I don't know, when I was learning howto play Led Zeppelin Riffs, some of the best riffs of all time.

13:06 It was a lot easier for me to play those riffs because I play The Ventures because JimmyPage also played The Ventures.So you're finding these paths that helped lead towards the, I don't know, the trailhead,right?And it's a lot easier to get there if you know the path that they took, too.But it's all that kind of thinking and then that kind of doing, because it's one thing

13:31 to think about that stuff, another thing to put in the hours and the time that music educationcan help you, because it can help you be accountable and can help you think that through.So like my guitar teacher, he was part of the infrastructure that I had with my familyand stuff that was sharing music and sharing how to get from that rung in the ladder to thenext.

13:53 And then eventually like music school, you're in a framework that you're going to getenough if you don't do this.And that helps, that helped me.You know, I'm, I'm, I feel like I'm pretty self-motivated.That's part of the reason why I'm able to put out a bunch of stuff and make a lot of music.But I'm not quite self-motivated enough to do what music education did to me.

14:19 It like really helps, it helps you to do the work if you have a framework.And without it, sometimes you'll be six months later and be like, all right, that lessonplan I made for myself, finding that priority, it's really hard.And I'm sympathetic, you know, I feel like very fortunate that I was able to make theeconomically worse choice.

14:48 But I still think that it's okay to be a advocate of value and of sacrificing for value,

15:03 because I think the music education is one of the most valuable pursuits that anybodyon the surface can undertake.And so yeah, I've gotten my fair share of criticism and jokes that I was a music major.But I take it on the chin, because they don't even know.Best move I could have ever made.And even if you don't go to school for it, I just encourage you.Go deeper.Take that next step, my next wrong of the ladder.

15:40 You might see farther than you ever thought you could see.Because you chose, you made the active, real choice to love music more.If you guys enjoyed this podcast, please throw me five stars and subscribe.And you can check out my music at www.scoobertdoobert.pizza.I'll put the link in the bio too, so you can check that out.Here what I'm working on.

16:07 And I've got a new album coming out on Friday, so I can't wait for you all to hear MÖB,MÖB, the start of my MÖB's album cycle.More to come on with that means, but until next time.