Recently, we shone a light into the benefits of attending a music production-focussed school or college. After speaking to a range of artists and music educators, we learned that the balance of cost, commitment and time against the benefits of certified education and a wider contact base might not be equally measured for everybody.
As part of our long-read, writer Adam Douglas spoke to Ski Oakenfull, the Head of Education and Curriculum at pointblank Music School, the well-known international music production school with campuses in London, Los Angeles, Ibiza, and online.
Ski informed Adam of the benefits of attending a course at pointblank, and how, when contrasted against the primary rival of music production colleges (YouTube-based video tutorials coupled with free educational content available online) pointblank (and schools of its kind) had a range of singular attributes that set them apart.
A main factor is having real-life experts on-hand, ready to provided expertly-curated content directly: “I mean, I look stuff up on YouTube all the time,” Ski admits, “if I'm stuck or there's some new feature I want to check out but there's normally about 10 videos that all do the same thing. The content that we create in our courses are really well curated and thought out.”
Oakenfull also points to the fact that it's easy to find yourself being 'succesful' in terms of musical recognition in the modern industry, but music production schools reinforce the market value of music-making and the job roles that orbit it. "Music production education is very much encouraging young people who are going into the industry to think about monetising themselves and being entrepreneurial having a portfolio career.”
