Courtesy of Alex KlingleWhen school gets overwhelming, the fantasy of dropping out and making a career out of something more meaningful can become all too appealing. For former U of A student Alex Klingle, that fantasy became reality when he left the classroom and entered the recording studio.
After studying Computing Science at the U of A for two years, Klingle dropped out to make a go of a career producing music. The decision has seemed to work out well so far, with his songs being endorsed by electronic music heavyweights such as Armin van Buuren, Above & Beyond and Ferry Corsten. He also signed to one of the largest trance music record labels, Enhanced Music.
Although Klingle’s career has flourished since choosing to drop out, his original plan was similar to many others’: go to university, get a degree, and a real job. It didn’t take long as a university student, however, for Klingle to notice the disparity in interests between his classmates and himself.
“I didn’t have the same passion as the best people in my program, and I wanted to do what I felt I would be best at,” says Klingle. “It would’ve been okay, but (I) just felt that it would be just as hard to make it in the music and art and media world as it would be for (me) to get cool programming jobs.”
After this realization, Klingle left academia behind, along with most of everything else, in pursuit of his passion. Knowing only a handful of people, he moved to Vancouver and started building his music career from the ground up, interning and finding small opportunities along the way.
“I was interning for free at a recording studio, while kind of building my network and doing my own stuff on the side. I’d work a part-time job to pay the bills,” says Klingle. “After a while, I was able to kind of start riding a bit of a wave and keep doing the projects (I wanted), expanding my network and learning new skills I could apply.”
Now that Klingle is a full-time producer, his day-to-day tasks vary from producing records, remixing songs, and even film scoring. This diversity is something he believes is paralleled by today’s music industry, and is a necessity to survive.
“Nowadays, when things are spread a little bit more thin, you have to have multiple income streams,” says Klingle. “Whereas a song used to be produced by an entire team of people — there would be multiple recording engineers, a mix engineer and a mastering engineer — it comes down to one or maybe two people in a lot of cases now, so you have to have a lot of different skills.”
Although Klingle has produced some high profile remixes in the trance community, his definition of success is always changing and has been the source of his motivation and self-appreciation.
“For a while, my definition of success was just being able to quit a part-time job and do music full-time, Klingle says. “But if you were just satisfied with whatever came your way, then you wouldn’t want to push further than that. I think it’s important to look back at what your goals were and evaluate if you’ve achieved them or some of them. Then you’ll be able to be proud of yourself.”
To leave the security of school to pursue your passion is a huge gamble (even if you have a degree), but in Klingle’s case, it seems to have paid off. Not only has he been able to establish a professional career in music, but his unique experience of transitioning from student to producer has also taught him things he would’ve never learned in the classroom.
“When I was in university I had this belief that everything was gonna turn out okay. That if I passed my classes and finished my degree I’d get a job and be happy for the rest of forever,” says Klingle. “I would say, consider university and class as a tool to push you towards your success, but ultimately you still have to do a lot more outside of that.”
