Career Counselling Sessions with Mr. Tarun Balani
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Music is one of the vastest fields, including areas such as composing, orchestrating, songwriting, sound design etc. I am immensely passionate about music and hope to pursue it as a field of study in college and beyond. Therefore, I am in the process of looking for worthy colleges that best suit my interests. A strong profile is required to get accepted into the best possible colleges. Hence, I intended to gain guidance from an expert. Last summer, I attended a course on sound design and audio mixing offered by Global Music Institute - GMI, Noida (more details captured here).
Later that year, I also got guidance from Dhruva Kalyanram (a Berklee Alumni), who suggested that I should talk to Tarun Balani, the founder of GMI. I worked on contacting Tarun, and later we met over multiple sessions, during which he established an understanding of my current musical capabilities and future ambitions, in order to guide me accordingly. This blog captures my overall experience of having these interactions with Tarun.
First session
For the first session, the main goal was to get a basic understanding of my profile across. I concisely explained to Tarun my overall musical journey, which includes learning the tabla, drums (and other percussion instruments), the guitar, and the piano.
I have not decided what genre of music I want to study yet; I am considering pursuing composition or scoring for visual media as a course option. Hence, the most crucial advice I received was that I do not need to finalize a single major right now. The better approach would be to keep my options open and explore what I enjoy learning as part of the first few semesters of graduation. To do this, I could focus on internships and attend a semester at GMI. Furthermore, I was advised that focusing on a single instrument (piano, for me) is essential. To target admission to colleges such as Berklee College of Music, mastering the entry audition is crucial, which can only be attained by being proficient in your main instrument.
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Second session
The main goal for the second session was for Tarun to understand my musicality and taste in music. Hence, during this entire session, I demonstrated my current level on the piano, guitar, and drums, which helped him to understand my skill level and what instrument I enjoyed playing the most. The feedback I got was that I am able to play the piano with the most amount of feel, possibly because I love understanding and experiencing harmony the most out of all the elements of music. Furthermore, I shared my music taste and details like 'my current favourite track' or 'all-time favourite artists'. I shared with Tarun, that artists like Jacob Collier and Charlie Puth are my current favourites because I can resonate with their music style. My all-time favourite would be Hans Zimmer because he has scored some of my favourite movies that I watched growing up. Adding on to this discussion, Tarun showed me several styles of music blended and experimented on, like jazz, electronic, and film scores by different artists, as those are the genres I am most interested in. It helped me recognize the options as a producer, composer, or performer.
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Third session
The third session consisted of two parts. Because the piano is my primary instrument, we spent about an hour learning various piano techniques. One of the first things I learned was about Hanon’s piano exercises. These are a set of piano exercises that set up basic piano playing techniques. These skills will be of great help once I start taking piano lessons. Apart from such techniques, I also learnt music theory concepts such as the 7-9-3-5 voicing, which is a new and interesting way of playing a chord. After this session, I understood how to approach practising the piano, as I have been self-taught till now.
After spending this time, Tarun advised me on how to approach my learning during and after the summer break. For the summer break, I should start with basic piano technique exercises. After the summer break, I could attend an offline GMI course and school in parallel. Even though the courses are not made for school students, Tarun mentioned that there can be an exception so that I can attend GMI a few days a week so that my schooling does not get affected.
Overall, these sessions were tremendously helpful. This guidance has enabled me to lay the foundation for my music learning and understanding of how to approach it before college.