Berklee school of music recognizes laptop+controller as a musical instrument

it’s about time

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Has anyone on the forum gotten a degree from berklee? Been eying some of their programs for a while.

Translation: “Our enrollment numbers were declining sharply, so we hired a consulting firm to help us understand why. They told us that 16-20 year-olds are less likely than ever to have seen or played a traditional musical instrument since funding for school band programs in the USA continues to be yanked, and anyway accurate reproductions of those instruments are available in Reaktor now. So yeah, it’s with pleasure to announce this update to our curriculum! —Berklee.”

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Music school is about money, them getting yours. Not you getting a career. School is about learning to learn. Elektronic musicians know what learning is, they have to. No need for school then.

:studio_microphone:

At the end of the day, who cares what Berklee thinks or recognizes, do what you do.

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lol whatever it takes! despite cynical motives, the greatest consequence of this is the normalization of the idea of “devices” as instruments

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I bet the business development team at Native Instruments immediately assumed bat form and flew off to a secret gathering in whatever crypt or graveyard they use for their most important meetings…

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haha the irony is that i was contemplating selling off my Komplete license just before reading this. i think The Universe is trying to tell me something. not sure what, but definitely something

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Me: shows up at first day of school with an empty Octatrack.
Professor: “Let’s have you sight read some standards, how about Giant Steps, we’ll take it down to 120bpm.”
Me: “I… can’t… Someone else needs to play it first.”

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I took the free online Ableton class from Berkelee last year via Coursera and it was ok. Definitely not worth paying the obscene amounts of tuition that they charge for a music degree. I learn fine on my own and with forums and free tutorials. I’d like to see them make the Elektron gear an instrument that would be cool.

From what I hear these expensive music colleges are about you paying for industry connections.

Who will ask you to make coffee and work for free the first 20 years :wink:

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Last year at an Animal Collective show a friend who went to berklee got way to high and left halfway because she said all those keyboards and things with wires weren’t instruments and they weren’t playing music.

She prolly would still feel that way and think it was stupid of Berklee to aknowledge electronics.

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Funny… Part 5 in this one. It starts at 1:05:04

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haha that’s perfect

Berkley recognizes the dosh

I don’t get the negative reactions in this thread. Why is this a bad thing?

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Lol this is just a perfect story. Just perfect.

I don’t think we’re reacting badly, we’re satirizing the old-fashioned Berklee (but also trying to problematize a bit what it means for formal music curriculums).

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yes i know. i don’t get it either. sure berklee is a for-profit institution with for-profit interests, but that doesn’t take away the normalization, the mainstream recognition, of our art as legitimate.

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Actually I think it democratizes their program. The point behind my initial comment was that there are so many people who are great musicians but just don’t have access to the instruments and training… every kid in America already has a screen and a MIDI controller is $100

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yes this is how I see it. recognition and legitimization of an art form, even if not “necessary”. Like when the turntable began to get recognized by academic institutes as an instrument or the inclusion of history of hip-hop classes in music programs.

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