Last night I re-watched the documentary Triumph: Rock and Roll Machine. It tells the story of the band with the through line of having a fan event at Metalworks, the studio built initially for the band by member Gil Moore. It’s now the oldest studio in Canada and many legendary albums have been recorded there in the years since.
Over the years the business has expanded to include an institute of sound & music production, which is how I found myself there last month. I really wanted to see the studios but while I was there, I got glimpses into possible futures.
There’s the Music Business 1-year diploma program. It prepares you for careers in management or promotion. There’s the Live Event & Production diploma which teaches you every aspect of show production (and is the most physically taxing program as you’re hauling equipment a lot). There’s the Music Performance program (which you audition for) that not only teaches you all aspects of musicianship but also how to use music production software and technologies, and how to handle the business side of your career. (The business course is mandatory with all programs as a big selling point of the school is its connections within the industry.)
Then there was the course that interested me the most, Professional Sound & Business (Live Production Major). Unlike the others, it is a two-year full-time program that is “designed for students who wish to target their career toward both the business side and the creative and technical side of the live event industry.” It combines most of the courses I was interested in with the other programs and I was assured that I would also get opportunities to develop my performance side if I wished.
Pretty tempting. I’m really inspired by the work Robert Lepage has done on Peter Gabriel’s concerts and I’ll love to do that. But I really don’t want to go back to school for two years. Add in that while a lot of courses can be done remotely, it’s still a heck of a trek from where I’m currently living in Scarborough to where the studio is in Mississauga. And of course how much it would cost to go, although some financial aid is available.
It’s definitely given me a lot to chew on as I navigate this next phase of my life. My contract ran out the end of last month and while I loved working at TAPA, I was feeling the need for a new challenge. I will be still involved as one of the things it re-ignited in me was my passion for arts advocacy, so I’m going to help where I can with the upcoming Arts Week in the City. I’m in the process of migrating some posts here from my One Big Umbrella blog so I can use it again for advocacy work1. I also want to work on the Dora Awards again next year.
In trying to help understand where I need to go next, I also did an intuition course last month to get me in deeper touch of where my soul wanted to go. The message was very clear. My prosperity follows my creativity. Since the course ended, I have been meeting virtually with 4 amazing women from that class and we’re feeling that together we can create a community,
So while studying at Metalworks is really tempting, I know what I really want is to be recording in those studios. Studying there would give me easy access to them, which is a major selling point. It’s the big thing that I keep running away from, my desire to record and perform. I don’t practice regularly, either my voice or my piano, I’m not doing the work to get myself physically in shape to perform.
One thing that has been coming up pretty consistently for me is allowing myself to desire. I got a very strong message in one of the intuitive readings to stop pulling back. So the challenge is, how to I remove the barriers that are preventing me from going towards my dreams?
I shifted it to personal development posts when I launched my business under the same name but in tone it belongs here. I’ve hidden the posts on that blog and will soon be importing them.