I never had the chance to take a music entrepreneurship class or a music business class in college. Drury was too small, and Oklahoma at the time wasn’t interested in such things. And with a school the size of OU, there’s a diversity of thought, and unfortunately a fair amount of thought I saw rejected music as a commercial enterprise. If you wanted to do commercial music, there was the Academy of Contemporary Music in OKC, if you want to find out how to make money with your art, well, we don’t really do that here.
This wasn’t stated, and it may even have been a minority view, but it was my perception. And I think I understand the idea. I made a conscious decision early on that I wouldn’t pursue algorithmic composition, despite my interests in both music composition and programming. My reasoning was that I wanted my art–the creative process itself–to be as organic as possible, and all the other parts of being a composer (marketing, self-promotion, deciding what to compose, etc.) should be as systematized as possible.
I happened upon–and quickly integrated–a quote by Gustave Flaubet: “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
The question, it would appear, is where to draw the line between work and life.
