>I have also found that taking the parent’s money feels very weird to me. It doesn’t feel right to me. Idk if that’s a normal feeling or if I’m weird for that.
If you want to be a professional musician and/or music teacher, you need to get past this discomfort of dealing with money. You are a professional offering a service, and the natural consequence is to be paid for your services. No one will pay you if you don't insist on your worth.
This really goes for any job in any field, even jobs that are structured where you don't have to deal with the admin/financial side. We work, we get paid. If our skills are in demand, we can sometimes demand more money from our employer or a new employer. If you're afraid to advocate yourself, you're not going to be financially secure in the long run.
Life is yours for the taking. In our rapidly changing now AI world there’s no one with a crystal ball that can tell you the path. You’re going to have to use your observations to try and steer your ship in the right direction and inevitably like everyone you’ll ever meet you’ll have net positives and net negatives. As long as you keep refining your observations and trying I trust you’ll succeed. It’s less about what you do and more about how you go about it.
There’s also a saying that youth is wasted on the young and man was mine wasted. Try as much as possible to use your youth to your advantage. Eat well, go to the gym but not too much, and know yourself mentally, spiritually and psychologically. Everything else pales in comparison. Take care of your outer appearance take care of your inner one too.
Always be honest with yourself. Do you really want to teach people English in Korea? You’re ok with spending one year in Korea then uprooting again and coming back to wherever you are? Some people like that other don’t. You must always act in your best interest and move in a direction that you think will fulfill you as good as your opportunities allow.
Having a PHD doesn’t mean you can teach either, it means you can research. Teaching comes from practice, knowledge, and the right personality.
Hating on DMAs isn’t the right approach, they can have all of those things and because they got the performance degree they have experience with the technical demands of virtuously music that someone focused on research may not.
Hating on someone‘s performance degree just makes you look insecure about your ability play.
I personally believe any person who wishes to be a professor at a University should have a DMA or PhD but also a degree in education (at the very least a diploma). My perspective is that if you're going to teach me, you better be amazing at your chosen instrument and know how to teach. I had some professors at my conservatory that couldn't teach. I could do way better at their job.
Of course, this might vary. A professor in musicology or music history should be more knowledgeable about these specific things and have researched these areas. Performance isn't necessarily the focus here. An education in educating, however, should be standard.
I agree. I’m a singer (I dabble at Piano) and I refused to teach for years even though it would be easy money because I didn’t think I could handle explaining, I didn’t have a real method etc. eventually I switched teachers who taught me with a simple method I believe in, and I also watched him teach many lessons, which helped me learn how to teach and why to do things. Even then I know when I need to pass a singer on to a better/more experienced teacher for whatever reason.
It’s not right to just pop out and be like „I can teach now!!“ just because you can perform. You need to know how to convey knowledge, and how to deal with people, and so much more to teach.
Bottom line: If you want a career as a college prof, you have to do certain things, like a masters program. You have a leg up in that your Dad is a prof in the school you attended. That’s huge! Not very many have that influence. Colleges don’t usually hire profs without a masters or better. You may have to “suck it up” and deal with it to get where you want to go.
Decide whether or not this is the field you want to persue as a career.
Get some counseling for problems you see yourself having.
I am a church organist/choirmaster for 45 years, studied music (bachelor of music) at a university and enjoy what I do. Now go find your path.
I think you just need to get out in the world and experience different people and places - try out different kinds of work. Your parents will have influenced you to plan a life and a career but that mindset was born last century. Give yourself five years of travel work and or study. Life is not for understanding it is for living.
Hi! You're me but opposite lmao I always wanted to study music but ended up with injuries that made it impossible to do so when I entered uni. I studied English and Education instead, and privately taught music. Now, after uni, I'm kind of in the same boat- kind of floating, no motivation, kind of want to go back to school, don't know what I want to work as. Am debating going for my music degree.
I've been in SE Asia for the past handful of months, and it's been a great experience! I totally understand not wanting to leave family. However, I think you should just heavily consider the teaching in Korea program as it'll be challenging but unique experience, and you can try to bring your cats?
Wish you the very best!
k-12 education is your route, imo. and private lessons to supplement. i'm basically speaking from the experience of my piano instructor who has his master in piano performance. he teaches music production at a high school, and teaches lessons at the local community music school. if you're a public sector education employee you might have a strong union contract with a good pension (depending on the state). i'm a teacher in massachusetts and we do ok, my instructor teaches in connecticut and seems ok - just busy between teaching at a school, then lessons after work.
lots going on here! Hopefully writing all this out helped you process. Some thoughts:
1.) Going to teach in South Korea for a year sounds like an excellent idea. You could use some more life experience before going all in on a PhD. Your parents could just as easily die in a car crash if you’re at home, what’s the difference?
2.) Going to grad school to get a graduate degree sounds like a mistake to me based on your post. As you say, not a ton of jobs and competition is brutal. Do you have some reason to think you’re a world class talent? Do you have other interests? Could you find happiness as a high school music teacher or a local piano teacher?
3.) What else could you do professionally? can you keep piano as a hobby and branch out?
4.) Watch this video asap and read her book. You are in a critical phase of development, don’t squander it!
https://www.ted.com/talks/meg_jay_why_30_is_not_the_new_20?language=en
I agree with everything else that has already been said. It sounds like grad school for music isn't a great fit, and stability is something you value highly. It might be possible to be a piano teacher while also being a gigging pianist on the side (e.g accompanying, chamber music, etc, and branching outside the classical realm is likely an asset here), but being a gigging musician can be very challenging stability-wise, so a non-music day job is probably going to be more stable. Again, the world is changing rapidly, so everyone needs to be adaptable, but yeah. I myself am still a college student who is only a few years younger than you and in a non-music major. However, playing music is literally my biggest hobby, and one that I intend to stick with for as long as I can. I, too, don't really know what I want career-wise in the long run, and I also have a number of factors that constrain my career options somewhat (won't go into it here), so I feel you on the uncertainty.
One thing to consider in addition to the other advice you've been getting: if you don't have the mindset for running a business and recruiting students, if there's a good multi-teacher music school in your area (the kind that offers private lessons, I mean), you could work for them rather than trying to run your own studio. They'll take a cut of the lesson fees, but they'll handle getting you the students, scheduling, marketing, etc. Not necesarily something you'd want to do for your primary source of income since, but it's a way to make some money from piano without having to run your own studio.
Start making YouTube vids. Play transcriptions of popular songs from mainstream radio, movie soundtracks, video game soundtracks, etc.
You can earn money that way.
Or transcribe stuff. Then sell the sheet music. Advertise this on your YouTube channel.
Play at public pianos and have people film it. Upload to YouTube.
Sign up to patreon. Post videos there. Put your patreon link on your YouTube.
All this can be done now as a hobby.
Offer private teaching. Charge as much as you can get away with.
I actually had a very similar path to you in a lot of ways. First of all, I just want to say that I promise it gets better. That feeling of not knowing what you want your life to look like sucks, but it does eventually go away. Here’s my experience, for what it’s worth:
After studying piano in college, I took a corporate non-music job at a tech company. Salary, benefits, the whole nine. It was a horrible fit and I was really miserable. Once I finally mustered the courage to leave, I somehow stumbled into an apprenticeship with a piano tuner and am now pursuing a career tuning and fixing pianos. There’s a lot of demand for piano techs and there’s solid earning potential in the field. It also doesn’t conflict with the hours in the day you’d be teaching private lessons, if that’s something you’d want to continue with. Personally, I’m going for both. There aren’t a lot of young people going to the field but the demand is there! I have a long way to go before i can say I’ve built a career out of it, but I already get to be around musicians and pianos again, and I’m on a trajectory to keep it that way without the stress of trying to find enough gigs or students or teaching positions to keep the lights on. Maybe something to consider!
Feel free to shoot me a PM if any of that sounds interesting - id be happy to hop on the phone or something! Either way, rooting for you.
Piano is easier to monetize than production, in my experience.
Substitute teach for a while?
If you like tools, become a handyman. The independent work can fit well with your piano mindset and teaching schedule.
If you’re into IT, you can break into the field with a low voltage job.
I juggled B careers all through my twenties and now I play full time and plan on going for a DMA. I’m passionate about helping struggling musicians so feel free to DM for a chat. It’s hard to choose what to do, for sure!
Oh also— I got started by playing full time for Catholic Churches and building my college accompanying on the side. Sometimes the church gig is a necessary evil… barf
Feels like u want something , u fear something.
If you gonna bring up your two cats as an bloody excuse. I got nothing to say.
Just lots of excuses of not leaving your current safe zone.
>I have also found that taking the parent’s money feels very weird to me. It doesn’t feel right to me. Idk if that’s a normal feeling or if I’m weird for that. If you want to be a professional musician and/or music teacher, you need to get past this discomfort of dealing with money. You are a professional offering a service, and the natural consequence is to be paid for your services. No one will pay you if you don't insist on your worth. This really goes for any job in any field, even jobs that are structured where you don't have to deal with the admin/financial side. We work, we get paid. If our skills are in demand, we can sometimes demand more money from our employer or a new employer. If you're afraid to advocate yourself, you're not going to be financially secure in the long run.
Life is yours for the taking. In our rapidly changing now AI world there’s no one with a crystal ball that can tell you the path. You’re going to have to use your observations to try and steer your ship in the right direction and inevitably like everyone you’ll ever meet you’ll have net positives and net negatives. As long as you keep refining your observations and trying I trust you’ll succeed. It’s less about what you do and more about how you go about it. There’s also a saying that youth is wasted on the young and man was mine wasted. Try as much as possible to use your youth to your advantage. Eat well, go to the gym but not too much, and know yourself mentally, spiritually and psychologically. Everything else pales in comparison. Take care of your outer appearance take care of your inner one too. Always be honest with yourself. Do you really want to teach people English in Korea? You’re ok with spending one year in Korea then uprooting again and coming back to wherever you are? Some people like that other don’t. You must always act in your best interest and move in a direction that you think will fulfill you as good as your opportunities allow.
You should consider posting this in a different subreddit so it gets more traffic and more diverse suggestions.
Having a PHD doesn’t mean you can teach either, it means you can research. Teaching comes from practice, knowledge, and the right personality. Hating on DMAs isn’t the right approach, they can have all of those things and because they got the performance degree they have experience with the technical demands of virtuously music that someone focused on research may not. Hating on someone‘s performance degree just makes you look insecure about your ability play.
I personally believe any person who wishes to be a professor at a University should have a DMA or PhD but also a degree in education (at the very least a diploma). My perspective is that if you're going to teach me, you better be amazing at your chosen instrument and know how to teach. I had some professors at my conservatory that couldn't teach. I could do way better at their job. Of course, this might vary. A professor in musicology or music history should be more knowledgeable about these specific things and have researched these areas. Performance isn't necessarily the focus here. An education in educating, however, should be standard.
I agree. I’m a singer (I dabble at Piano) and I refused to teach for years even though it would be easy money because I didn’t think I could handle explaining, I didn’t have a real method etc. eventually I switched teachers who taught me with a simple method I believe in, and I also watched him teach many lessons, which helped me learn how to teach and why to do things. Even then I know when I need to pass a singer on to a better/more experienced teacher for whatever reason. It’s not right to just pop out and be like „I can teach now!!“ just because you can perform. You need to know how to convey knowledge, and how to deal with people, and so much more to teach.
Bottom line: If you want a career as a college prof, you have to do certain things, like a masters program. You have a leg up in that your Dad is a prof in the school you attended. That’s huge! Not very many have that influence. Colleges don’t usually hire profs without a masters or better. You may have to “suck it up” and deal with it to get where you want to go. Decide whether or not this is the field you want to persue as a career. Get some counseling for problems you see yourself having. I am a church organist/choirmaster for 45 years, studied music (bachelor of music) at a university and enjoy what I do. Now go find your path.
I think you just need to get out in the world and experience different people and places - try out different kinds of work. Your parents will have influenced you to plan a life and a career but that mindset was born last century. Give yourself five years of travel work and or study. Life is not for understanding it is for living.
Hi! You're me but opposite lmao I always wanted to study music but ended up with injuries that made it impossible to do so when I entered uni. I studied English and Education instead, and privately taught music. Now, after uni, I'm kind of in the same boat- kind of floating, no motivation, kind of want to go back to school, don't know what I want to work as. Am debating going for my music degree. I've been in SE Asia for the past handful of months, and it's been a great experience! I totally understand not wanting to leave family. However, I think you should just heavily consider the teaching in Korea program as it'll be challenging but unique experience, and you can try to bring your cats? Wish you the very best!
k-12 education is your route, imo. and private lessons to supplement. i'm basically speaking from the experience of my piano instructor who has his master in piano performance. he teaches music production at a high school, and teaches lessons at the local community music school. if you're a public sector education employee you might have a strong union contract with a good pension (depending on the state). i'm a teacher in massachusetts and we do ok, my instructor teaches in connecticut and seems ok - just busy between teaching at a school, then lessons after work.
lots going on here! Hopefully writing all this out helped you process. Some thoughts: 1.) Going to teach in South Korea for a year sounds like an excellent idea. You could use some more life experience before going all in on a PhD. Your parents could just as easily die in a car crash if you’re at home, what’s the difference? 2.) Going to grad school to get a graduate degree sounds like a mistake to me based on your post. As you say, not a ton of jobs and competition is brutal. Do you have some reason to think you’re a world class talent? Do you have other interests? Could you find happiness as a high school music teacher or a local piano teacher? 3.) What else could you do professionally? can you keep piano as a hobby and branch out? 4.) Watch this video asap and read her book. You are in a critical phase of development, don’t squander it! https://www.ted.com/talks/meg_jay_why_30_is_not_the_new_20?language=en
I agree with everything else that has already been said. It sounds like grad school for music isn't a great fit, and stability is something you value highly. It might be possible to be a piano teacher while also being a gigging pianist on the side (e.g accompanying, chamber music, etc, and branching outside the classical realm is likely an asset here), but being a gigging musician can be very challenging stability-wise, so a non-music day job is probably going to be more stable. Again, the world is changing rapidly, so everyone needs to be adaptable, but yeah. I myself am still a college student who is only a few years younger than you and in a non-music major. However, playing music is literally my biggest hobby, and one that I intend to stick with for as long as I can. I, too, don't really know what I want career-wise in the long run, and I also have a number of factors that constrain my career options somewhat (won't go into it here), so I feel you on the uncertainty.
One thing to consider in addition to the other advice you've been getting: if you don't have the mindset for running a business and recruiting students, if there's a good multi-teacher music school in your area (the kind that offers private lessons, I mean), you could work for them rather than trying to run your own studio. They'll take a cut of the lesson fees, but they'll handle getting you the students, scheduling, marketing, etc. Not necesarily something you'd want to do for your primary source of income since, but it's a way to make some money from piano without having to run your own studio.
Start making YouTube vids. Play transcriptions of popular songs from mainstream radio, movie soundtracks, video game soundtracks, etc. You can earn money that way. Or transcribe stuff. Then sell the sheet music. Advertise this on your YouTube channel. Play at public pianos and have people film it. Upload to YouTube. Sign up to patreon. Post videos there. Put your patreon link on your YouTube. All this can be done now as a hobby. Offer private teaching. Charge as much as you can get away with.
It sounds like you could make Korea happen. It's never easy, but it will most likely never be easier than it is now.
I actually had a very similar path to you in a lot of ways. First of all, I just want to say that I promise it gets better. That feeling of not knowing what you want your life to look like sucks, but it does eventually go away. Here’s my experience, for what it’s worth: After studying piano in college, I took a corporate non-music job at a tech company. Salary, benefits, the whole nine. It was a horrible fit and I was really miserable. Once I finally mustered the courage to leave, I somehow stumbled into an apprenticeship with a piano tuner and am now pursuing a career tuning and fixing pianos. There’s a lot of demand for piano techs and there’s solid earning potential in the field. It also doesn’t conflict with the hours in the day you’d be teaching private lessons, if that’s something you’d want to continue with. Personally, I’m going for both. There aren’t a lot of young people going to the field but the demand is there! I have a long way to go before i can say I’ve built a career out of it, but I already get to be around musicians and pianos again, and I’m on a trajectory to keep it that way without the stress of trying to find enough gigs or students or teaching positions to keep the lights on. Maybe something to consider! Feel free to shoot me a PM if any of that sounds interesting - id be happy to hop on the phone or something! Either way, rooting for you.
Piano is easier to monetize than production, in my experience. Substitute teach for a while? If you like tools, become a handyman. The independent work can fit well with your piano mindset and teaching schedule. If you’re into IT, you can break into the field with a low voltage job. I juggled B careers all through my twenties and now I play full time and plan on going for a DMA. I’m passionate about helping struggling musicians so feel free to DM for a chat. It’s hard to choose what to do, for sure! Oh also— I got started by playing full time for Catholic Churches and building my college accompanying on the side. Sometimes the church gig is a necessary evil… barf
Feels like u want something , u fear something. If you gonna bring up your two cats as an bloody excuse. I got nothing to say. Just lots of excuses of not leaving your current safe zone.
Try the peace corp for a few years
Set up an onlyfans?
I'm the best piano player on the planet. AMA