jay249

Maybe he's grown up a bit.

The crappy and annoying academic side of it, paperwork and 'key skills' that colleges have to incorporate is also a huge pain in the ass, I spent the last 3 years at Access to Music, and while I only feel my biggest improvement in playing has been in the 6 or so months since I 'graduated' (and decided to get my ass in gear), but I could never discount it as a 'waste of time' or what anyone else is saying. We only had an hour of instrumental tuition a week, which could never be enough, and about 4-6 hours using the rehearsal rooms. No it hasn't prepared me for work in music, yes it has given me 3 years to doss about and play bass every day, and I'm playing in quality function/party/whatever bands, with people of twice my age/''experience'' and getting paid, and I'm teaching people to play bass, and getting paid, and all of this happened in the 6 months since i left, so It must have done something for me, even if it's just a bit of confidence of having it under my belt.

Now the quality control on wedding gig girls, that's another thing entirely.

Bristol BIMM, for those of you who don't know is a new thing running in the center of Bristol starting september, it worries me - in that Bristol already has Access to Music and I think this is now over cooking it a bit, it's a small scene even, even for a fair sized city, and I'd be surprised if there's going to be enough students between them for it to work, given that quality control can also be fairly poor, and absolute shockers of musicians making it through the nets, come on, I got in, for god's sake! I think that for the right kind of person, of which I think i am/was, these courses can be a good time to focus on your playing and ''make contacts'' and I was one of the lucky ones and found work through it, the school leavers/dossers-about will come into these courses and leave with little or nothing.

I'm still not sold on this one, not with a solid bodied bass guitar.