As mentioned in the previous post, we're kicking off our series "My Life and Music" with the story of Joe Walker.

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Four years ago I started seriously considering music school. This month, I finished a Master of Music degree in jazz studies at San Diego State University. Before weighing the costs and benefits of my personal experience, I'll review the path that got me here.

Beginnings

I started playing guitar in 1998 at age 14. I was into alternative rock, blues, and virtuoso rock. (See Albums in My Blood, in which I embrace all my listening habits from that era.) I went to college for computer science but somehow found time to commit two hours every day to practicing guitar. I got into jazz, taking Bob Keller's jazz improv class and playing in Bobby Bradford's jazz ensemble. I got heavier into the virtuoso players; I even tried Steve Vai's 10-hour workout a few times. I also enjoyed learning classic rock tunes, and I spent a summer dedicated to Led Zeppelin. Before I finished college, I started the indie rock band Blue Judy with a few friends. We wrote, recorded, and performed a bunch of original music around Los Angeles, and we had a giant list of rotating covers we threw into our sets at college parties.

In 2007, after several years of dedicating my musical life to Blue Judy, I left the band, the city, and my job to spend a year doing nothing but practicing guitar. I started a guitar blog, From the Woodshed, in order to record my progress and articulate my thoughts. I also started looking into music schools to continue my studies after my year alone. I was primarily weighing LA Music Academy with Musicians Institute. I was accepted to the former, and I pushed for a scholarship, but upon discovering that they couldn't offer me one, I decided to work for a while before diving into music school. I ended up working in San Diego, still studying guitar obsessively and performing whenever I could. The San Diego State University jazz studies program popped up on my radar, and I started preparing for an audition.

Auditions

My first audition was rough. I had worked my butt off in preparation, but my improvising and sight reading were not up to the level the professors wanted to see. I passed at the undergraduate level, but I was shooting for a Master's degree. Since my previous Bachelor's degree was in computer science, I needed to prove that my musical experience was up to par with a Bachelor's in music. Apparently I hadn't, so I was denied entry to the grad program. It was a downer at the time, but I wasn't in any hurry, so I contacted Travis Daudert, a current student in the program, and I asked him to give me six months of lessons to prepare for the next semester's auditions. I figured he would have some valuable insights on the program, what I could expect to get out of it, and how I should prepare for another audition. Turns out I was right. I learned a ton that summer, redirecting my development from theory to practice as Travis encouraged me to sit in at weekly jazz jams.

My second audition, in September 2009, went much better. I could still feel the same glaring weaknesses, but I felt much more like I knew what I was doing. I was accepted, and I geared up to learn like the wind for four semesters.

First Semester

In addition to the audition, I had to take a few placement tests for all incoming music graduate students. They encompassed classical music theory, ear training, sight singing, and classical music history. I did well enough in ear training and sight singing, I might have even passed, but I remembered very little classical theory, and I'm sure I got every classical history question wrong. Along with the other students who didn't pass all the placement exams, I was enrolled in a remedial crash course for grad students in theory, ear training, and sight singing. I was also given a big music history research assignment, due at the end of the semester. I found the class fun and enlightening. I learned all the concepts and details fundamental to conventional music training that I'd never seen before.

The performing groups at SDSU are divided into a big band (sometimes two) and various combos, loosely based on skill level. I played in Combo 4 during my first semester. It was directed by another grad student, and the other players were all young undergrads. That was a good experience for me, because I could quickly bring my playing back up to speed (after five years since my only other experience in a rehearsing jazz band), and I was in a position to help out the director with insights in group playing.

SDSU jazz students take one to two hours of private lessons every week. The studio faculty are amazing. The guitar instructor was Bob Boss, a local veteran performing musician. The first life-lesson I picked up from him was perhaps the most valuable advice I received at the university: Learn tunes! My lessons with Boss had a strong emphasis on repertoire building. His approach to learning was to get the notes off the page and forget about the written music as quickly as possible in order to play from one's head instead of the paper.

My first of three required graduate seminars was this semester. The topic was jazz history, and the class included all the current grad students, roughly 15 of us, many of whom were already well into successful careers in jazz. The course format focused on student discussions and reports, and I learned a ton from my new peers. My two big reports were on Kneebody: The Future of Jazz and the History of Jazz Guitar.

All this intense learning and musical immersion inspired me to quit that day job I'd been working at since arriving in San Diego. My first semester had been pretty easy, especially compared to my grueling undergrad experience, and I saw an opportunity to finish in three semesters instead of the standard four. I cleared it with the administration, and I knew it would afford me zero free time for the coming year, but I pushed ahead in order to graduate in December 2010.