identify and interview a music professional of your own choosing. Identify someone you admire, someone you consider successful, and someone who is accessible to you.

For this assignment, you will identify and interview a music professional of your own choosing. Identify someone you admire, someone you consider successful, and someone who is accessible to you. You will also be asking that person if you can interview him or her, and you will conduct and document the interview to share with the class. Your documentation can be written.

You can write up the interview in a narrative or as a series of questions with answers. Or you can, with the music professional’s permission of course, share the edited audio or video of the interview. If you write up the interview, it will be 25 pages or so. If you provide audio to share, create the audio in MP3 format. Upload the video to YouTube (making sure to upload as “unlisted” to keep it from being public), and include the link in the assignment thread. Keep your audio or video interviews to no more than 15 minutes in length.

As you consider who to interview, think about your career contacts you worked on this weekthis can be someone new or someone you already know. The interviewee should not be a family member, close friend, or someone in your band. The goal is to reach out to someone you don’t know well who is involved in the music industry.

When you contact the music professional you would like to interview, be sure to explain that the interview will be shared with your classmates. Take the request seriously and make it formally. Tell the interviewee that this is for a class assignment to interview someone you admire. Most people will be honored. Make an appointment to conduct the interview. Be realistic about the amount of time it will take. It will take about an hour or a little more. This interview should be done in person, over the phone, or through video conferencing.

Before you begin, read the guidelines below on interviewing someone. Follow the guidelines as you complete the exercise. Read the sample interviews from To Be An Artist.

Interview someone working in a field that interests you.

Write up or edit the interview. Take your time.

Writing: You may write this as a series of questions with the interviewee’s answers or as a narrative where the questions are implied. Make sure, in either case, that you tell the interviewee’s story. Be sure to introduce the interviewee at the beginning. Read, again, the samples that are provided and review the guidelines. Ask for help if you need some.

Edited audio or video tape: Edit out the parts of the interview that are not interesting. Tighten this up so that it is something that someone would want to watch or listen to on YouTube.

Post the interview to share with the class.

Include written bullet points that explain what aspects of the interview were most important to you and why.

Read the interviews of others, and respond to your classmates’ interviews, noting how the people they interviewed define and embody success.

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