Is it worth taking a music technology course?

If you’ve been making music for a while, the chances are that you’ll have learnt quite a bit along the way, both through trial and error and – if we may be so bold – from magazines like Future Music (our sister site MusicRadar also carries lots of tutorials, all of which can be accessed for free). There’s a lot to be said for taking this approach, too: you’ll pick up new skills as and when you need to, and you won’t waste any time learning stuff that isn’t relevant to the way you work.

We’re all in favour of education, though, and if you have a particular gap in your knowledge base that you need to fill, finding a course that

does this could certainly help. Having a structured learning programme might mean you get up to speed that bit quicker, particularly if you don’t have much experience. Remember, too, that many courses can be taken online and fitted around your other commitments. As a side note, check out Ableton’s new ‘Learning Music’ course, which is interactive – you can export your work in Ableton Live format – and covers beats, notes and scales, chords, basslines, melodies, arranging and even some more advanced music theory. Find it at https://learningmusic.ableton.com/ index.html.

Signing up to take a full-time music technology degree course (or similar) is a whole different ball game. If you want to carve out a career in music production, this could certainly be beneficial, but it probably won’t surprise you to learn that there are plenty of successful people in the industry who haven’t got any kind of formal qualification, and plenty of ‘qualified’ producers/ engineers who aren’t particularly successful. Having letters after your name is one thing, but where music is concerned, talent and dedication are always going to be more important.