Career stoff

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

Right, I'm looking for a career in music. And I'm thinking of going to university to study music when I leave school. I'm gonna do a tafe course before that no matter what, but before I decide on University, I need to know if it'd be feasible for me to be able to make money off of music in the first place. otherwise it mightn't be worth the money spent.

So, does anyone know a few ways I can garner some exposure so I can find out if it'd be possible? I feel kinda (very) attention-whoreish for asking, but it's kinda something I'd really need to know before I commit to a music course at University. Or maybe I'll go do it regardless...but it'd good to know that I'd be standing on solid ground first.

Sorry if I'm bothering anyone with this, I kinda just need some advice right now.

[Natas_blackmane]

Yo dude i am doing a music in University and playing live in a death metal band and i must say its one of the best things i have ever done haha and sure you can make a liveing thats what i am doing right now haha lets see.
You can make money from playing live (Ya start off slow like when we started playing we could make 30 pounds a night but now we can get 200 pounds up easy).
Then you can do Djing on the side you can get 200 or more for that and thats just for mixing other peoples songs haha theres much much more you can do thats only some things now on top of that what ever Cds tees you make and sell that will get you even more.

but thats only the playing side you can also start your own Studio and make some good money from that you can write songs for others mix songs for others do the live sound at gigs (my mate dose this and he gets lots of money for it haha) ect

But its not like any other job you know you dont go in and just start makeing good money it starts off slow then picks up sooo yea sorry about my band english but all and all i would say go for it if its something you really want to do.

and for exposure you know on websites like this make a facebook and pass it around ask your mates what they think and if they like it to show there firends just little things like that Oh and try and collab with other artists you might get some of there fans that might have never seen your work other wise XD.

P.s i hope that was ok advice XD.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

Well, it does help me a decent amount. Thank you. I wanna do it more than anything, but I'm sorta unsure of my self at the best of times. I should probably just go ahead and do it, and while I'm at it try and get some gigs and whatnot. And I have about a year or 2 to worry about exposure, I just feel like I have to plan waaaay ahead for anything to work for some reason. I'm weird like that.

Anyway, thanks for the advice man. I kinda needed something to stop me from overthinking this.

And your English ain't that bad

[itroitnyah]

What blackmane suggested is mostly playing live, which would probably be a great path to go into, you can ask 4thImpulse about that and he'll testify to you about it

Other than that, there's careers in sound design where you can design the sound effects for videogames, movies, advertisements, tv shows, etc.

And that's just about the only other career path for music/sound that I really know about. There are probably also a few that relate to sound and the science of soundwaves and stuff where you could probably find a good career in a studio or just freelance acoustic treatment type jobs, designing speaker and monitor and headphone systems or other hardware involving audio, but now I'm getting more offtopic. You could also pick up C++ coding and learn how to code your own synths, get a job with NI, Sugar-Bytes, Image-Line, Steinberg, or any other big synth company designing synths or something.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

Well, I'd like to aim for sound design and composition, programming ain't my forte or something I'm very interested in, headphone design maybe, I'm pretty keen on headphones...plus it'd be kinda neat to work with headphones I designed :3

Also, sound design for video games could be cool.

[CommandSpry]

Sounds really fun but if I were you I would always have a door open for emergency escape

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

Sounds really fun but if I were you I would always have a door open for emergency escape

I'm studying retail and I work in a studio with my parents. I'm keeping my options open, even though retail kinda sucks. But it'd be a job.

[the4thImpulse]

Well, I'd like to aim for sound design and composition, programming ain't my forte or something I'm very interested in, headphone design maybe, I'm pretty keen on headphones...plus it'd be kinda neat to work with headphones I designed :3

Also, sound design for video games could be cool.

If you're going for headphone 'design' you will need electronic engineering more than audio engineering and if you want to do video game sound effects you will work with coding just as much as normal sound design.

Just a heads up there.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

Thanks for the heads up. I'll look into all my options tomorrow.

[nOk]

Yeah I have the same questions as well, exposure-wise. As for a career, I'm more interested in video game composition rather than sound design. (I found this article that's very descriptive if you're interested.)

I'm not much for playing live, and I suck at programming, so those two options don't really work for me...

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

That was pretty informative. I'll keep it in mind for future.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

there are pretty much no places in my town that do sound design. All I could find from internet searches were things on music theory (good start) and musical history and culture. Which would be fine if I was planning on focusing on the cultural and historical side of music, but I'm not.

The only places that offer what I'm looking for are either in Melbourne (a long ass away from where I live) and the Gold Coast which is a few hours from home. But I'm not made o' cash..moving from home may not be possible for uni. And learning about 30% of what I actually want to learn about seems a bit unbalanced to me. But there may be some options that weren't shown on the website, I'll look into talking to someone in person at some point so I can know for sure.