Here is the advice for Derek Sivers’ Advice for a 19-year-old guitarist who wants to be a session musician:
James TING wrote on January 10th, 2009:
I have worked with many professional guitarist and none of them are from music school. And I know some musicians from music schools, to be honest, musician who developed his own skill by himself has got more edge and character in his playing style. Just an opinion from my observations. I am not saying that music school is not good. I personally did enter into a music school studying Audio Engineering, which gave me lots of exposure to areas that I’ve never thought of. However, I must say if I have spent the money buying myself audio equipments and built my own rig and spend more time daily practicing making music in my basement, that can be an alternative too.
And in order to make your music career life longer, money management is also one of the major issues which most of the artists/ musicians are lack of.
Just one more thing I want to add, which is: If you are really that great, people will come to find you, no matter what background you are coming from. The music industry is constantly looking from fresh blood to fill up their NEW PRODUCTS category.