Students studying how to promote local bands and original music, held their finals with a full-blown outdoor concert, while getting a rock n rolling lesson in concert production. All of them finding their way into the music industry, learning firsthand the production, promotion, sound engineering, stage management and performing.
Students studying how to promote local bands and original music, held their finals with a full-blown outdoor concert, while getting a rock n rolling lesson in concert production. All of them finding their way into the music industry, learning firsthand the production, promotion, sound engineering, stage management and performing.
Featuring nine bands, The 5th Annual Coyote Music Festival at Cuyamaca College’s Grand Lawn on Saturday, drew crowds that got a sampling of San Diego’s next generation of rock, alternative, folk and Latin music.
Taylor Smith, chair of Performing Arts Department said Cuyamaca offers a musical industry degree that students take every semester for two years. This class produces the festival.
Smith said at the beginning of the semester, that students audition bands, solicit the community, choose the artists they want to play at the show and then spend the rest of the semester developing promotional things to get people to come.
“They set up all the logistics, run the sound, do the stage on, they do all of it,” said Smith. “The students take that four times in the effort to develop their skills fully. If they want to work in that industry, it gives them the chance to kind of cut their teeth in on this and see if they really want to do this job, see what it is really like.”
In the springtime, students organize the concert and in the fall do an indoor gig, on a little bit of a smaller scale. Smith said also in the fall, after students audition bands, they split up into teams and become the helpers for that band.
“They help them get more gigs, a website built, get recorded and along that way the students are building up their portfolio producing recordings and the bands get free services,” Smith said. “It’s a winning situation.”
Jaime Flor, 24, music and sociology major, is in his third semester in the program. He said he came to Cuyamaca when he was 18 and did not have the passion to pursue a music career, but returned in 2011 to find the college’s growth and the difference in what the music industry studies program offered.
“I’m taking music theory and extra classes that will set me up for a music career now,” said Flor. “We have a class every Friday, we split off into three groups, one for advertising, one for sound and one for the art. I was on the art team, so we prepared all the promotional material for the show.”
Cuyamaca’s Music Industry Studies program combines music, technology and business with state of the art facilities to back up the combined curriculum.
