Berklee Blogs follows Marco Angelone, an international student from Milan, Italy as he continues his internship started last summer through Berklee at Notable Productions

My internship has been very meaningful to me. An internship is by definition an official or formal program that provides practical experience for beginners in an occupation or profession; and for me it was more than that.

My internship was at Notable Productions, located in Watertown, MA. Notable Productions is a recording studio built inside a house. The owner is Daniel Cantor who is a great drummer, writer, engineer and producer; I met him for the first time this past June when I went for my interview. I was impressed because I had never before seen a professional recording studio built in someone’s house and I thought right away: “This man realized his dream, founding his own recording studio inside his own private house”.

So my internship hasn’t been just an internship, but a life experience full of different situations where you need to be flexible and professional. Honestly, there were situations where I was kind of lost and afraid to do the wrong thing, but Dan and his co-workers have always been comprehensive with me and other interns. When I think back to the spring semester of 2011, I remember that I didn’t know what an internship was and I thought: “It’s probably something challenging that I am not able to do.” Of course this was the worst approach that I could have for something new; but thanks to the staff at the Office of Experiential Learning and at the Career Development Center, I started the process to apply for an internship.

I realize now how much I have learned in terms of being organized and efficient on the job and that it’s always your professionalism that brings you to where your goals and expectations are. In my first journal, I wrote something that I’d to share with you:

”It’s really important to have experience in the professional world and everything is precious and valuable. It’s crucial to have a solid process to save your data, have clear visualization of your income and outcome (cash flow) and know as many musicians, producers and engineers as you can. I am doing an internship for all these reasons and I am sure it’s a good investment of energy and time”.

So I think that my experience at Notable Productions has been deeply valuable because Dan really cares about teaching something to interns about his profession. But as an intern, you need the will to learn and be ready to give your time and energy- even if internships are usually unpaid experiences. I think that knowledge is the key to move forward in your career and that’s why an internship is a really good investment of energy and time in which you gain lots of information, contacts and suggestions from many different people.

I want to point out how important it is to be able to work in different contexts for different artists coming from different genres. For those of you that read my blogs you will probably remember when I wrote about the Trinity International Hip-Hop Festival, the collaboration between Nomadic Wax and Notable Productions or the latest beautiful project called ”Rock stars for Life”. I like the versatility that Dan has in his job and I want to incorporate it in my own professional life.

I also saw with my own eyes and touched with my own hands the importance of human relationships and teamwork in a career in the music field. This internship gave me the chance to meet many artists that came to record or work with Dan on different projects and this brings my focus back to “networking” which is fundamental in this job. I am aware that this is just the beginning of my career as a musician, but thanks to my studies at Berklee and at the internship, I will be more prepared to face many different problems and situations in the future.

I really appreciated the opportunity for an internship trough the school because there is someone able to help you and answer your questions all along the path.

In three words my internship has been a great, hard and challenging experience.

Bio

My name is Marco Angelone. I come from Milan (Northern Italy) and have a diploma in Accountancy with a specialization in “Staff Administration”. I started playing in 2002, but I really started to study guitar with a private teacher in 2006 which was my last year of high school. In March 2008, I auditioned for Berklee in Dublin. In May 2008 I got accepted.

It was not easy for me to deal with all these new lessons in music, software and technology, but coming here was one of those things that I had to do in order to go forward in my personal and professional life. Here at Berklee I am studying Contemporary Writing and Production, because I love to write music. Last spring I said to myself, “Everybody is talking about internships, but what are they exactly?”

I went to the Office of Experiential Learning and I found out everything about them. So I started working things out with my coordinator and the rest is history. In June I started my first Internship at a recording studio in Watertown called Notable Productions.

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