Hi, my name is Katrina
Rae and I'm a music student here at the University of Hull.
I'm actually really interested in finding out about the future
of music here, so I've decided to talk to some students today to find out more about it.
Let's go on with it.
So why do you think music is so important?
Music and like performing, that means to me
like you can just forget about everything and just do what you want to do.
Once I get on stage, it's this persona that I'm allowed
to just drop myself into, no matter how I feel or what I've been doing that day.
Once I get back on stage,
like that’s it, I'm a drummer, I can let loose and I can enjoy myself.
Music is so much more than just sitting in a concert hall.
I mean, this is a great concert hall, but it's so much more than that and
there are so many different strands to it and it can help people in so many ways.
There's always some music playing in my head at any given point in time.
It's a constant companion, really.
It's a way of sharing feelings with people,
sharing ideas with people. It’s very hard to imagine an existence without it.
How do you think the musical trends have changed?
The whole industry is like always evolving.
Like there's always something new coming in, whether it be something
to do with how you access music, how you see live music.
It's just constantly evolving.
So I think that the future of music
kind of depends on what happens like now and what people do now.
I think a lot
more people are relying on themselves as freelance musicians and composers,
reaching out to an audience that enjoys popular music and popular classical music.
It's possible to some extent more so perhaps than ever before,
for individuals to take control of their careers
and to really not feel they have to get past certain gatekeepers of the industry
in order to reach whatever heights of stardom
they're hoping to do. To really take advantage of that though,
people need to have a range of different skills
and to be flexible and to understand when they can apply them.
Obviously, the lecturers here have so much musical experience themselves.
How do you think that's helped you in having their support in that?
My band are going on tour tomorrow and throughout the whole process
of booking it, Rowan, one of the lecturers was very supportive in the fact that,
you know, he had all this advice for me since he's gone on tour,
he, you know, he used to be the drummer in Goldfrapp.
He's been around the world touring on like a, you know, a big professional level.
So he's very supportive, you know, telling me how to how to get shows,
how to talk to people and how to converse with people in the industry.
It's it's been extremely useful to have that kind of support.
They get in guest lecturers,
so we've had the producer of the Black Sabbath
live album, the last show they ever did, came into our studio and
we could listen to Black Sabbath, it was awesome and things like that.
And then in the hall that when we have BBC, you can go tour
with them and work with them, which is a really good hands on experience
I wanted like a uni experience to go out, get to know other people as well
from different subjects.
You want to do work, but you also want to have fun.
And I think that students are fun, lecturers are fun.
You can have a good time with everyone.
It's just a good environment to work in as well.
The university’s done a really good job
in sort of bringing external organisations in.
We've had the BBC, we've had partnerships with various ensembles
around the country as well, and from that it's
there have been really good opportunities to branch out as musicians and sort of
do things through the university.
But then also it gives you the skills to be able
to find those opportunities for yourself as well afterwards or during your studies.
Why did you choose here?
Why Hull?
I looked around quite a few places, but I think the best feeling that I
got on an open day was definitely from here and it felt like you could kind of
channel yourself into what you wanted to do.
So for me, that was really good because I could do classical,
but I could also do some other things alongside that, which was quite exciting.
Being here,
this is one of the only universities I applied for
that really wanted me to do musical theater.
So it's been great to actually carry on doing what I love, but
also having the opportunity to pick up new genres all the time.
So how do you feel that the university has helped you
in terms of opportunities and, you know, pushing you towards other things.
I think that the uni is like a nurturing process
and they're there to kind of like and to kind of take you,
take you on your way and, just make sure that you prepared
for what you meant to be doing outside like they’re like the kind of barrier
to make sure that we don’t do anything wrong.
Yeah but at some stage that barrier will be gone.
And you like to think that we're going to be ready for that to happen.
We’re gonna understand that we know enough.
You have exposure to things you had never even found before.
So immediately everything just gets
your scope just goes boom.
And you've got so much more you can do.
My second year I ended up watching this brilliant electronic
R&B-fused pop band, and I just
I just enjoyed every moment of it and we ended up supporting them on
their tour, their UK tour this April.
How have you found
making friends and you know, adjusting to hearing all the different
genres of music and the people from different musical backgrounds?
There's no real barrier between either of the courses.
One of your best friends is going to be like a cello player
and you're like a guitar player in a prog band or something
and you just end up collaborating anyway, just because it sounds cool.
There's not different departments here.
It's music collective, including tech, including your jazz, your pop.
We're all one.
When I first came here, as far as I was concerned,
I was just a guy who kinda likes playing the blues a bit,
whereas now I think I'm really,
you know, i've really sharpened my tools.
I mean, I just finished an album this year, so I'm over the moon.
Like I could have done that three years ago.
Helen and I have just taken a module called The Psychology of Music Performance.
And although it’s music performance,
it really helps you understand how music can help people in other ways,
and that could take you into paths like therapy and other things like that,
which you might not have thought of before.
We're interested in what students are interested in
and then hopefully, as well as taking you further along that road,
perhaps just broadening the horizons out a bit
and looking at some other connections that you might not have considered
rather than putting students into boxes according to whatever
it's going to say on their degree certificate
at the end. It’s much more important as musicians in the 21st century
to be open minded and to be taking what you can from other people's creativity.
So in a way, do you think Hull sort of framed what you want to do in the future?
With recording and stuff,
I've learned a lot more than I thought I would.
Yeah, like things to do with film and game and audio, that kind of thing.
My course steers me in a technology based way, but can allow me
to strand off into production. For my tech side of things,
I've just kind of grown a passion for it
and I want to just sort of keep learning more.
I want to keep learning about lights and just things in Middleton Hall as well.
For me, in music, I'm always going to be doing it.
It's part of my life.
What we want to achieve in five years
if you don't say it, you're never going to hit it.
So we're going to be famous.
We're going to be... I want to be in the charts.
Glastonbury. Yeah, perseverance and
hard work and a little bit of luck. Okay, a lot of luck.
I don't think it's luck,
I think it's being there, just making sure you where you're meant to be all the time.
This kind of right now is the future of music. We are
the future of music, the generation that's educating now, will be the future
of music.