As the story goes, Ray Charles, with 12 minutes left in a four-hour show near Pittsburgh in 1958, had run out of material. He took a breath, placed his fingers on his Wurlitzer piano, and started playing a riff. Y'all just follow me, he called out to his band, and then he did what years of work and study had prepared him for: He improvised a new song, What'd I Say, right there on the spot.
Improvisation doesn't only happen on a stage, and it rarely comes about as effortlessly as it seems. It's a learnable skill that takes years of practice to fully master. It requires listening, preparation, communication, problem solving, and, most of all, vision for where you want to take an idea, musical or otherwise. And if you can learn to improvise in a musical setting, you can learn to do the same-to think on your feet, to respond swiftly and creatively to new challenges and information-in any setting.
A recent study found that at least 65 percent of employers listed listening and communication in the top three of the most coveted qualities they seek among new hires.
Case in point: Will Cady B.M. '09 worked as a touring bassist, songwriter, and music teacher after graduating from Berklee. Fast forward to today and he's found himself in a surprising new role as the leader of brand strategy for Reddit. How did he use his music skills to recast himself as a creative, rather than just a musician? As Will climbed the ranks at Reddit, he came to understand the advantage his artistic skills gave him in this new context: I knew how to practice and redeploy those parts of my brain that were trained through music, he explained. It's the same thing, just different material.
A 2019 study by Morning Consult found that at least 65 percent of employers listed soft skills as the most coveted qualities they seek among new hires-listening and communication were in the top three. These are also skills that are critical whether you're leading a band, booking a tour, running a dance company, or launching a startup. Which is all to say: they're exactly the skills students acquire at Berklee.
Situated as we are in an ever-changing industry, we're committed to helping students stretch their passions and diversify their career goals, to think entrepreneurially, to be nimble and willing and able to pivot, and to course-correct when necessary.
A Changing Industry Looking back over the last two decades, it's clear the entertainment industry has undergone a series of massive disruptions, each presenting a new set of opportunities.
Our consumption model has been recast in surprising ways. We saw the compact disc virtually go extinct and digital downloads eclipsed by music streaming services, even while vinyl sales have ticked up again.
Enter new technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality, and their hybrid: mixed reality. VR has offered dancers a new stage and musicians new platforms to design, compose, and produce immersive videos and live performance experiences.
Regardless of the medium, people around the world consume music and the performing arts in some way, every day.
Those sound effects, voice-overs, and background scores you hear in cars, video games, apps, and operating systems? That's the work of sound designers, who compile or create audio assets for games and other technology.
Though not a completely new format, podcasting has exploded in the last few years-and with podcasts come the demand for mix engineers, composers, and music editors.
Social media marketing and advertising have emerged as the way to target and engage with fans. Grammy Award-winning bassist Esperanza Spalding B.M. '05, for instance, harnessed these platforms for her most recent album, 12 Little Spells, strategically releasing one song per day on her website, Facebook, and Instagram, and performing 12 pop-up shows, each inspired by a spell.
Through all the change and evolution, one thing has remained constant: the relevancy of music and performing arts. As much as part of the industry might have declined, other parts of the industry, including live entertainment, remain vital. Regardless of the medium, people around the world consume music and the performing arts in some way, every day.
The Right Skills for the Job We've found that Berklee talent is in high demand, especially among some of the fastest-growing fields in music and the performing arts, such as data analytics. Artists, labels, managers, distributors, and producers are learning more and more about music consumption, including influences and sharing habits. Notably, streaming services such as Spotify, Amazon, Netflix, and Apple Music are looking to our graduates to leverage this data, broadening fan awareness of new artists, and in so doing, helping musicians grow their audiences and create new revenue streams.
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Anahita Bahri B.M. '15 is among the many Berklee alumni who've found their way into this field. Bahri works at Netflix as a music data and insights manager. Berklee gave me a great understanding of the music industry. At Netflix, we touch so many aspects of the industry: composers, labels, producers, performance rights organizations, she says. Even my conducting minor has given me a different perspective on the other people we're working with at Netflix.
Meanwhile, students in Professor Alexandre Perrin's Data Analytics in the Music Industry-a course in the Master of Arts in Global Entertainment and Music Business program at Berklee's campus in Valencia, Spain-are learning how analytics affect management decisions, firms' strategies, and artist success. And thanks to partnerships with Sony Music Germany and the Orchard, they're crunchin
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As the story goes, Ray Charles, with 12 minutes left in a four-hour show near Pittsburgh in 1958, had run out of material. He took a breath, placed his fingers on his Wurlitzer piano, and started playing a riff. Y'all just follow me, he called out to his band, and then he did what years of work and study had prepared him for: He improvised a new song, What'd I Say, right there on the spot.
