So You Got Into Berklee...

hi everybody welcome to Amy Nolte music this is my vlog about my trip to Boston I decided to go a week before I went because someone from YouTube wrote to me and told me they had an extra VIP ticket to the Jacob Collier concert plane tickets weren't that expensive so I went for it I have to apologize because when I got to Boston I realized that I had forgotten to bring the battery for my nice camera so everything is shot with my iPhone I did the best I could forgive me a big thank you to Sarah who got me the ticket [Music] I got here a little bit early so I'm taking a walk in the park [Music] there was plenty of time to look at Jacobs gear and to say hello to the man himself I basically play notes on here and the different betas do different stuff so I can freeze [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the next morning I met up with these crazies from Berkeley we walked and walked in the snow till we got there and they showed me around a little bit they called this part the maze and then we had some time to play some music together so fun [Music] [Music] and then checking the metronome to see if we slowed down which we did and now it's time to find out everything I can about Berkeley see who booked the room Jessie how hard is it to book a room on Saturday like this it opens higher but probably make it easier but you like you can watch it like most the time you like you click one it's like okay that's about how this one was yeah is this a classroom yes it's used for classroom but do all the rooms have like monitors and TA stones like mm-hmm and these amps were just in here right yes you guys didn't bring any amps no these are specifically like band rooms but every classroom classroom has a piano and monitors projectors how's the Wi-Fi for students good it's good hey you guys you guys needed a microphone right in the middle of while we were playing how hard is it to go get a microphone if you need one what's the craziest piece of equipment anybody who's ever rented I've seen people like in the music production an engineering major go don't get like 30,000 tell me about some of the guests that come in and and like help out in classrooms or like you know give you the clinics and who have you seen like this year what did Maria Schneider do she did comp the composition Department brought her in actually and she they have like a comforter Department likes to do kind of like score review things so you can submit your pieces and then they'll like whatever the guest is will like comment on them in like review them for you Oh Joe dart was just here oh and Victor Wooten comes like every month he's here constantly does not work here but he's here like I was gonna ask ya for the base department bringing so many crazy guys all the time like modern ian is here Yannick was da Louis here yeah and they're super cool they come to give a monster clinic they give some like small sessions they show up to some classes just unannounced and cetera and then sometimes they even try to have like limited slots of a private instruction where you get to go in or semi-private structure there is two of you guys and you get half an hour with them can you tell me the ensemble's the that you're in right now I've token small jazz band to that several times it took middle eastern I took several gospel on songs taken Latin jazz on some afropunk on song I did an ariana grande tribute on song who let that well round I was being led by T a full of it risk saxophonist faculty here who was actually nominated for a Grammy this year what was the Middle Eastern one like that one was at the study abroad campus in Valencia Spain and so the teacher they say he really knows his stuff we got play I had to play a fretless cuz we did stuff and we're time signatures as well as we did we're tonalities that you had to like get accustomed to the singing was also and he even brought in some of like his guests from around there that are actually in this industry with him to come play and perform at Leon song Jessie how about what ensembles have been your favorite that's dress falling esperanza spalding which was led by a fellow but the ball confusion was also super cool so like punt you to traditional blocking music some of them were traditional like the Balkan area folk songs like Macedonia Romania they were all none of those like one of them those at Ford and then the rest of them were in like what instrument did you stick and fretless yeah because to confer this guitar this guitar yeah tell me didn't you hear a number of approximately how many like recitals and shows are given during a space time someone told me that there were 4,000 events every semester spread out you know across the various buildings and departments so there have to be multiple events every night yeah yeah there's Dennis II music every night you can I think you gotta clear out because there's someone coming into loded for their 3 o'clock show at the same venue and they have like one ten years or so and something's always going on in all of them I asked Justin what the entry-level core classes were for beginning students over Typhoo just a little bit later Justin told me that in your first four semesters you're taking for ear training classes for harmony classes - arranging classes and after that there are a lot of electives to choose from I guess in the first arranging class you kind of arrange for like rhythm section and in the second one you start arranging for up to five horns and everybody has to do it some of the crazy electives that exist at Berkeley are microtonal solfege atonal solfege they're transcribing classes and not just transcribing but all of the instrument chairs have specific transcribing classes for your instrument so say you play saxophone you can take a saxophone transcribing class or a bass transcribing class you can also test out of all of the core level classes if you're smarty and then they have project bands which students that form into groups that just meet for two hours and they'll assign you a 50-minute slot and you come in with your chart which is a project and read it for you and at the end of it you get the mixed class as well as a recording [Music] because so even though the press would also have cwp majors you also need the music production and engineering majors in order to facilitate the actual recording of it the music business majors normally have the administration of it the running of it so it is really a collaborative efforts between all of the profits of the school like a well-oiled machine does it feel like that but that matters yes like about the goal of music education else you can take whatever moving classes like student life and kind of like administration student interaction is not like people have had issues of scholarship it is troubling at any yeah and then I really think they need to put you guys not want to be on camera talking about that describe I think it comes from Berkeley initially being super small you know when it started in the 40s and 50s it was just about you know like I want to play in a big bin or I want to write for big band charts you got bursaries and that's like it yeah but it just kept growing and growing so it's kind of like a semi a city that the bad city planners didn't think about the big picture when they started yeah right so now you're just like trying to make the best of what you already have yeah but how do you feel like taking care of emotionally as like do you feel like even go to your professors you have a sorry I can do a good job of that right well there's lots of counseling services available there's all ya health and wellness you can get therapy you can even get like massages sometimes something that I find very interesting is especially performance major have a mandatory or that he's something called a health and wellness yeah to take care of your body yes thank you so there are different electives for that one effect for example is joka yes so it's mandatory we have to choose one of those of course everything's great everything's include is the training sessions that are provided so as a student you can get a job at person providing training so either training at harmony or ear training or even like technology trained in my job I'm a peer trainer so I can train students who need harmony that's also completely free and you can register for like a whole hour Wow but the the tutors are getting paid yeah yeah in fact there's some more advanced tutoring too because one of my favorite cheering I ever took was I'm a bass player so when I started doing all cop stuff I needed to get into synth bass and I was able to secure someone to just he'd written traces of synthesis and tone generation and they just sat with me with Oh anyone like whatever you want to do there's like 20 majors that you can choose from and they're so like Institutes apart from the majors like anywhere masters I think there are others really yeah you can combine certain elements of different majors and you start out when you declare Pro music you map out your entire selection that's called Pro music just like individually tailored look yes yeah later but I'm one system have a lot of music business stuff I mean there are outgoing one is some technology stuff console they'll basically like create your curriculum of what courses you need to take to fulfill those modules you know some personal relationships with your your private lesson teachers they would literally know you and your instruments so well it's like a relationship where you just built for growth my private instructor also leaves one of my ensembles so I see him so much yeah but like he's such a great guy and so yeah I'm definitely starting to and you're on your second semester huh what tell me the ensembles you've been in your vocal ensembles so I I'm actually kind of died pretty deep I'd say I've done right now I'm doing vintage books which is like I told you about kind of like pre-1950s all sorts of melt oh my these are like six of us uh-huh it's really nice the harmony is just beautiful and I also do the jazz fire which is what contemporary like you can head and transferring to your voices tech stuff I'm also a shame require all that crépuscule inquire maybe you've heard of it yeah that does like Eric Whitacre Moses Hogan type you know funny music cuz I love for music and I love singing I'm also in a barbershop quartet I have to go to rehearsal for in like 10 minutes like I'm just singing a lot yeah I mean what a departure vocal jazz we had Evan Sanders of accent come clinicas I'm kind of singing too much this semester tone it down learning all about myself in my living I'm gonna take that wellness class exactly Sebastian told me about the professor's hours all professors have office hours during the week where any student can just show up and talk to them about whatever they want sometimes you can go to a teacher and reading this book is talking about this I'd like to go with this concept yeah yeah can we work on that that's something that one topic we covered at length but I didn't get new video of was how to succeed at Berkeley these were go-getters that I talked to students that are trying to put their all into everything that they do I asked them if they see any problems with people being addicted to their devices or not having the social skills that you know existed in the past and they all nodded their heads they said that they see a large percentage of students maybe like 30% they were guessing when the students described it to me they painted a picture of a student who wakes up maybe goes to class comes back from class plays 12 hours of PlayStation with their headphones on screaming at the TV the whole time neglecting the practice room hours that they signed up for showing up late for their rehearsals and only interacting with when they have to most classes have the policy that if you don't come three times you're kicked out Sarah told me that getting the most out of Berkeley requires a certain amount of maturity and motivation the ability to look for directed improvement and use all the resources at their fingertips to their advantage it's $45,000 a year to attend Berkeley Sarah really knocked me out she auditioned four times before she was offered enough scholarship money to make it worth their to make it affordable to her so she I did the first time they didn't offer her enough so she auditioned a second time they didn't offer her enough four times but she didn't hit she found some kind of loophole so that she didn't have to wait the whole year to audition again she auditioned at summer programs festivals Berkeley gives quite a few scholarships but most of the scholarships they give tend to be in the one to ten thousand dollar range there are seven people every year who get the presidential scholarship which means that everything gets paid for it as far as I can tell these scholarships are merit-based so it depends how good you are there are some things called achievement scholarships and achievement grants the GMAT scholarships are for people who came without a scholarship to Berkeley but showed improvement while they were there and their professors nominate them to get a scholarship after the fact but those are pretty rare once you have your scholarship or don't have your scholarship and you start Berkeley it's pretty hard to get more money after that the achievement grants are for students who do have a scholarship show big improvement and their teachers recommend them for even more money again not common students say that you're not going to find out all of this stuff on the Berkeley website maybe because they don't want to give all your money away but if you want to know this kind of stuff you pretty much have to talk to people who go to Berkeley and they'll give you the inside scoop one other thing I thought was so cool was that apparently last year the Jazz composition department merged with the Harmony Department I think it's so cool that there's a harmony department and the new chair who is George Russell the third has this thing every Saturday it's called chillin with the chair like normally chairs of departments just do bureaucratic type of things but he and I think it happens in one other department too they actually take the time to to have like a clinic or symposium or something every single week and they invite crazy famous players to come in and you know discuss whatever topic and I mean it's harmony so sometimes they're just discussing like this little facet of harmony and it brings in Joe Lovano to demonstrate and I guess those are really cool the other one is the ear training department and they have Friday with the ear chill them with the chair Friday with the ear I like that first one better okay I'm gonna let these guys introduce themselves to you and sign off my name is Justin Peter King I'm a baseball formants major my name is Jesse Tim I'm from Mendocino California I mostly play guitar I study classical and jazz composition and I'm 21 my name is sarah marie bhujiya I'm from the fine island of Malta I am studying focused as and I'm 24 hi I'm Yvette I'm marrying in performance and just composition my guitar and I'm 29 years old well you guys made me walking posters for for anybody that gonna watch my video I mean a lot of times I think I think you hear people like you know talking badly about it or maybe it's not the money or maybe you get neglected if you if you're really coming apply yourself hey don't stoked about it I had such a good time hanging out with my new Berkeley friends thanks to all of you for making my experience just a lot of fun last thing I'll show you is my trip to the Berkeley bookstore and I'll let the Joshua pay in Orchestra play us out with their cover of young folks [Music]

Channel: Aimee Nolte Music

Views: 27,224

Keywords: aimee nolte, should i go to berklee, berklee school of music, everything you need to know about berklee, jacob collier, boston, vlog, jazz, composition, major, department, harmony, ensembles, scholarships, berklee scholarship information, interview, vocal, ear training, best music school, which music school, attend, is berklee worth it, maro

Id: 7SFHkSumrR4

Length: 24min 50sec (1490 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 05 2019