An N.Y.C Music Professional Updates CareerZing.com!
We caught up with Robbie Kleinberg, a music graduate of Indiana University. He shares how he prepared for his latest gig – “Professional Musician” and what it’s like to be living, playing and exploring music in N.Y.C.!
The last time we interviewed you, you had just completed your first year at Indiana University. What did you do to supplement your education so that you were ready for the professional world?
In the spring of my junior year, I was a student teacher at Arsenal Tech High School, an inner city school in Indianapolis.
What did you do over the following summer to further your career development?
After a month at home in Florida, I spent the rest of the summer at school taking a music history course. I also got a chance to teach a former trumpet student who I have gotten to know well.
Outside of teaching, I got a chance to perform with a local funk cover band in Bloomington, Illinois as a guest member, playing trombone.
I spent time with the worship band at my church, which played every week at the college ministry service that was held over the summer. I played bass guitar with that group.
I also took the opportunity to meet with several professional colleagues to talk careers and get advice. This included a former teacher who is a band director at a local college, a semi-professional trombonist based out of Miami Beach, as well as two other professional trombonists based out of New York City.
Sounds like you did a variety of things. Were you looking for a specific experience to enhance your resume?
For me it’s a combination of natural interest and also looking out for what's best for my career. I am always looking to expand my network of musicians and I'll often go out of my way to meet up with people and build new relationships.
I enjoy talking with and getting to know these people, and they often provide me with insight into what my career could look like a few years from where I stand. Most are very helpful and offer fantastic advice. For a career path such as music, individual interests and career goals are often intertwined due to the personal nature of the profession.
In what year did you graduate from college?
I finished school in September 2011 after 4 years and 2 summers at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University.
What is your degree in?
I graduated with a Bachelor of Music Education and Minor in Jazz Studies in Trombone
What was the most helpful undergraduate experience for you (employment, internship, mentoring experience, professional exposure like working with a pro, or otherwise?)
Because I was involved in so many different areas it's hard to pin down just one.
With regards to teaching, my best experience, hands down, was working with my cooperating teacher during my internship at an inner city high school in Indianapolis.
In terms of performance, it has probably been my playing with a singer/songwriter in New York, because that was a professional experience that taught me a lot.
With recording, it was sitting in on a session with an accomplished music producer and watching him conduct business and work on mixes.
As you might have guessed, I have become interested in a wide variety of spheres within the music world.
What on-campus resource was most helpful to you prior to graduation?
It was definitely taking advantage of both official school sanctioned performance groups. At Indiana these were groups like The Soul Revue, a funk band that spans several decades of music, and the Singing Hoosiers, a Broadway-style chorus cabaret with rhythm section accompaniment. I also took part in groups started up by fellow students, which often were much more progressive and taught musical street smarts that I couldn't have learned in school.
What are you doing now?
I've found after being in the city for one year, I have had to keep experimenting. I expected myself to settle into a groove doing one thing, like maybe playing trombone in a band or doing regular pit orchestra shows or something, but I continually find new things that I want to try like playing bass in an indie rock band or learning to record and mix my own music in a studio. I want to have that healthy balance of experimentation while also gearing in on the things that I enjoy most.
What challenges are you finding now that you've started your professional career?
The biggest issue is finding ways to make money in my particular field. Even recently when I was hanging out with a recording engineer, he was being very frugal when it came to computer part purchases and purchases for his studio, even though it seemed like he had lots of money lying around. I've had to scale back my expenses and find ways to invest my time and finances into my work and barely any of it is paying dividends yet. I've gotten some money for performing but it's not sustainable. I'd like to try to monetize my recording and performance career, but I need to continue to expand my work until I've found the right setting.
I have also found that you need to move FAST in order to avoid losing steam on a project or letting it languish for months and then never getting it off the ground. For example: In the summer of 2012, I performed in a trio of guitar, trombone, and beatbox. Our performance went really well. So well, that we felt motivated to record our original song in a studio setting. A month or two goes by. We finally go to record it but we cut corners on the recording studio and our engineer totally lost his footing. As a result, we had to scrap the whole day’s recordings. Then when we finally did it again a few months later our singer got really picky and made us meet three or four more times, but she didn’t end up changing much. We finally mixed it nine months later, by which time no one really cared about the song anymore and we were glad to simply have it done for our own pride. But we totally missed out on a great opportunity. Had we moved forward professionally and swiftly, we could have had an inspired recording two weeks later, and potentially some song sales to boot.
Do you have a particular music style that you are most interested in?
It's been an amazing journey of figuring that out. I went to school and studied jazz and classical music, both of which I really enjoy but didn't see myself doing for a living. I've found that anything with a groove I can enjoy, and if it has an emotional tinge that's even better. But I've gone to pretty much all corners, from country/folk to hip hop, indie to electronic, R&B to alternative rock.
What instrument are you favoring?
Currently I'm playing bass the most. So I feel most expressive on it. I’m also playing lots of keys, mostly synthesizers. But trombone is currently coming back into the fold and I hope to pick up some projects in the near future playing trombone.
Check out samples of Robbie's music at www.robbiekleinberg.com
This article is a follow up to Robbie’s first interview with CareerZing.com titled “A Music Major Finds Direction and Inspiration”.