Evolution 001

Once upon a time, there was a wonderful music college that specialized in training young people for the cut-throat relatively-high technology world of modern music. That school had a great name, considering its mission; MusicTech College. The school's mission was to help young musicians and musical technologists find their way into a "life of music." Since modern music is technological in function and design, "MusicTech" was a terrific brand for the school. So much so, in fact, that groups of graduates from the school were called "MusicTech Bands": a description that indicated to other musicians that these kids were a special breed of skilled, theoretically informed, technically adept musicians who were a head above the rest of the pack. I know, that's not saying much since obtaining a music degree isn't known for being a smart economic decision. 

Being a MusicTech College instructor was a thing to be proud of. The faculty was focused and mission-driven and we were led by a man, Michael McKern, who epitomized that mission and focus. The school's two founders, Jack McNally and Doug Smith, were somewhere in the background in those days, but were not academically involved and barely seemed to know what was going on in the facility they owned. That was particularly apparent when the school moved to St. Paul from Minneapolis and in the last days of construction the two owners were occasionally shepherded around the nearly finished building marveling at the accomplishment. I was on the studio construction crew, which worked 18-20 hours a day for a couple dozen days to get the building in shape for the spring 2002 semester and, before they appeared for one of those tours, I thought McKern owned the school.

In 2005 and after a couple years of wrangling with accrediting bullshit, politics, egomania, and academia, general foolishness, and the usual American mismanagement disconnect from rational business conspired to force the school to "re-brand" the school and the mission went with the brand. The liberal arts community feels threatened by anything connecting "tech" to education. Apparently, MIT, Georgia Tech, Cal Tech, and the host of America's best institutions that proudly label themselves with the dreaded word "tech" don't live up to the dubious standards of today's for-profit fluffball liberal arts and Cardboard Blue trade school accrediting organizations. I'm sure the fact that a half-conscious, completely incompetent liberal arts accrediting agency disrespects "tech" bothers those great institutions deeply.

Sometimes I remember those days, probably unrealistically and overly fondly, and I do a search on "Music Tech" and hope to see some remembrance of that school and its students and instructors. In early February, I got a bunch of hits on that word (brand?) that was incredibly encouraging: The SF MusicTech Summit.

"The SF MusicTech Summit brings together visionaries in the evolving music/business/technology ecosystem, along with the best and brightest developers, entrepreneurs, investors, service providers, journalists, musicians, and organizations who work with them at the convergence of culture and commerce. We meet to do business and discuss, in a proactive, conducive to deal-making environment."

Shades of the good old days.

Another hit produced Music-Tech.com, which is the personal business site of "Award Winning Mixing Engineer" Stephen Sherrard. Sherrard has put together a fairly interesting "Resources for the Recording Musician" blog/informational website and also seems to be an echo of the old Musictech College mission.

One of the copout justifications for the name change was that their was competition for the name from the British music magazine MusicTech Magazine. That made no sense in 2005, since the school had been operating under the MusicTech College name for more than a decade and MusicTech Magazine came into existence in March of 2003. Anthem Publishing, the owner of the magazine version of "Musictech" didn't do much with the magazine for a couple of years, but after the college relinquished the name the magazine seems to have really taken off. Good for them. (Oddly, one of the school's most talented ex-instructors, Rob Schlette, named his mastering business Anthem Mastering. My wife would call that something more spiritually coincidental than "odd.")

My favorite MusicTech reincarnation might be the Musictech Society.  "We are the society in Imperial College Union for Music Producers and DJs. We meet to make music, mix music and discuss music (and drink and things)." Like rap (the printer left off the "c"), the whole DJ thing loses me, but I like their attitude.

Epilogue: It took me more than a few years to remove all of the old MusicTech College links and logos from my school presentations. Even in recent years, I have uncovered hidden MT logos or reference in my stuff. I, clearly, did not want to let go of the idiotic dream that MSCM would come to its senses and return to the name that implied a mission (and that mission). Instead of replacing it with the new brand, I eventually decided to stamp my work with my Wirebender logo and wait to see if anyone would notice.

What Every Good Teacher Knows

Back in June while running errands around the Cities, I listened to a really good NPR program on education (I really recommend following this link and listening to the whole program.). The lead-in was a a trio of quotes from an Indian physicist/computer programmer/educator, “Children will learn to do, what they want to do” and “Education isn’t broken, it’s obsolete” and a line from Arthur C. Clarke “A teacher who can be replaced with a machine, should be.” 

Every real teacher knows that you can’t teach anything to disinterested “students.” What is less well-known is that real students teach themselves. Or, maybe, that is less accepted.

I have “taught” a lot of students a lot of stuff in my 35 year career: basic electricity, electronics troubleshooting and repair, manufacturing quality systems, music, pacemaker and ICD implant and programming techniques, human cardiac biology, recording and live sound “engineering,” writing (fiction and non and technical), investments and money management, and stuff I have probably forgotten altogether. Most of my “students,” until the last ten years, were industry-based; in-house education of people who were wired to learn and true self-teachers. I was more of a facilitator than an “educator.” In many of those classes, my response to questions was “I’ll have to get back to you on that” because the questions were beyond my knowledgebase. (I did, in fact, always try to get back to the questioner with an answer, no matter how long it took me to find that answer. When I began my medical devices career, I couldn't ‘t find a heart with an axe. I used this line constantly when docs asked questions. Fuckin’ cardiologists look for a hole in your knowledgebase and poke at it until it bleeds.)

When I stumbled into academia, I found myself in a totally different environment. First, the only formal performance criteria I was evaluated on was “retention.” In academic-speak, retention means “people don’t drop out or get dropped from school until we have all of their money.” You’d like to think it meant something about retaining what is considered to be valuable information, but you’d be wrong. Second, no more than half of any class contained people who were vitally interested in the subject. Our current fearless leader likes to say, “No parent ever forced their kid to go to music school,” but that’s far from the truth. The whole “you gotta have a college degree to get a job” mental illness has gone so far from reality that “any degree” appears to be parents’ goal. (I’m from the Woody Allen school of thought that says you haven’t survived the third trimester and can still be aborted until you have a law degree, an MD, or a PhD in something useful.) All kinds of kids go to art school, music school, hairdresser school, cooking school, or whatever other hobby activity you can invent “just to get a degree.” They have no more interest in art, music, hair, cooking or basket weaving than does a chicken. They are just avoiding life and adulthood doing the Garrison Keilor MFA thing (My Fabulous Adolescence).

I think, in fact, education might be obsolete. Most of the K-12 system is a glorified babysitting service. The reason so many “parents” are in favor of abolishing summer vacation and extending school hours has nothing to do with education. They are just looking for more time either for themselves or work. If that’s your goal, don’t have kids, dumbass. Of course, these dimbulbs recently passed through the American babysitting service where crap like “parenthood is a wonderful adventure” propaganda is blasted as if it were true or actual information, so they can’t be blamed for being morons.

All of the “best students” I’ve enjoyed in the last decade have been self-taught. Looking back, I think the only thing I provided was a tiny bit of grandfatherly guidance (“Don’t grab the hot end of the soldering iron, dumbass!”) and the same kind of encouragement (Not bad for a dumbass, dumbass.”) When the students wanted to learn something, the school’s resources were their best tool. The teachers were just there to open the doors and keep the kids from setting the building on fire in the first couple of years.

Today is my 65th birthday and I think it is officially time for me to call this a “career.” I’m paid way too much to open doors and pat people on the back and way too little to pretend to care about young adults who are just burning the most valuable years of their lives hiding from themselves. Thanks for listening, it’s been . . . semi-real.

How to Tell when You Are too Late to the Party

Recently, the NY Times did an article on law student debt and the lack of jobs in that once profitable field. Who would have thought that the country would ever have too many lawyers. What will John Grisham write about now?

The interesting part of the NY Times article was that law schools are ignoring reality out of the usual profit motive and encouraging gullible students to dive into a quarter million dollars in debt. Regardless of the bleak prospects their students face after college, law schools are promoting a future that doesn't exist because they can get away with it. Berklee College of Music published the results of a survey on ProSound News a while back that stank of the same phony statistics.

It's a tough world out there, especially for the "lost generation" that was sacrificed by the pseudo-conservative movement starting in Reagan's administration and continuing through Bush I and Clinton and really going into overdrive during the Bush II "no child's behind left alone" programs. No only have they had their self-esteem hyped by the K-12 education system's touchy-feely psycho-babble, but they've been dumped into the most vicious economic depression (it's only a "recession" to the 75% who still have jobs) but they're being suckered by a desperate corporate education system that could care less about their future opportunities.

There is a plethora of education money-sinks advertised on late night television. Everything from chef schools to motorcycle mechanic schools to recording and live sound engineering. How does the modern student find a real career among the imaginary prospects? I have to think back to my electrical engineering education in the 1970s for my answer. When I was a young (yes, I was young once), all of my professors were of two types: old or part-time. The old guys were mostly teaching basic electronics, math, and theory classes. They had once been real engineers, many working in power electricity or tube electronics, but were now relegated to education because their skills were obsolete. The younger guys (and none were younger than 40-something) were working engineers who had some weird compulsion to teach the technology they were working with. As a student, you would work your way through the legion of old professors, getting basic concepts and mathematics under your belt, chomping at the bit to take the few classes offered with the adjunct instructors.

I realize now that I under-appreciated the old guys because I couldn't identify with their work history. I over-appreciated the adjunct instructors because they often tried to skip the messy steps to understanding and just talked about the cool stuff they were working on. Their tips-and-tricks were often really useful, but many students weren't even close to ready to design guidelines. While the classes were often fun, they weren't often valuable or useful for the work many of us would be doing. The basic classes taught by the old guys were the core of what many of us (definitely me) would use as engineers all through our careers.


So, with that background, this is my suggestion for picking a career field: If the instructors at your prospective school are young, talented, and in the prime of their careers, run-don't-walk away from formal training in that career path as fast as you can. 

At best and if you really want to do that kind of work, just go do it. You won't need a degree if the best people in the business aren't able to make a good living doing the work. The education system is all about security, not opportunity. Instructor salaries are low. Choosing a career in education instead of the field being taught is an admission that you are either not good enough to work in that field or that the field is economically bereft. If the best people in a field choose to teach a field instead of work in it, you know something is wrong.

What this situation tells us is that the best years of that particular career are in the past; or they never existed, but the glamor attached to that business is still hanging on. Going for that glamor isn't an insane move, unless you attach a few tens of thousands in student loans or a few hundreds of thousands in the case of the law students. The education system is slow, inbred, and self-referential, so it is rarely able to see a trend before the trend is in the dust and the rear view mirror. If you think about the history of popular music, for example, it's obvious how slow academia is. When pop music was in its prime, electric instruments were about as welcome in colleges as venereal diseases. When there were staff recording engineering jobs, there were no programs (outside of the major record labels) to train engineers. The only booming part of the music industry is in the live sound area and that is only life-like in the "house of worship" business. There are substantial differences between live sound for a rock band and sound reinforcement in a modern church. By the time this becomes common knowledge, academia will have waited until the next Enlightenment to get with that program.