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Eruch Kimball ’03 is an electric bassist, composer, arranger, audio engineer and marketing professional.  Originally a Professional Music major in performance and songwriting, he completed Master Certificates in Film Scoring and Music Business through Berklee Online and is currently competing an MBA in Marketing.  Over his 16 years of music industry experience he has performed and engineered over 3000 concerts for over 2 million people across the U.S. and East Asia.  A military veteran, he served six years of active duty service with the U.S. Army Band.  He owns and operates SynchroMuse LLC, an audio branding and music services company based out of Los Angeles.  He loves to blog about life and food and is developing an online community where these two passions of his intersect called Urban Bento.  You can follow him, his music, and his writing on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (@urbanbento, @synchromuse)

Name: Eruch Kimball
Major(s): BM in Professional Music; Orchestration for Film and TV (Online), Music Business (Online)
Hometown: Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
Current City: Los Angeles, CAEruch Kimball

What has been the most challenging thing about your transition from college to career?

Balancing my artistic, career, and life goals. Basically finding time to practice and develop while also building on my skill set and career path and being able to pay rent and eat well.

How does your degree play a role in your current career path?

My degrees have all been focused on building upon related skill sets to make myself very valuable in a lot of ways. You don’t need a degree to be a great player, but having the theory knowledge, a common musical and professional standard to live up to, and some business acumen can give you the edge above the next guy (or girl) in line for the gig you’re after. The more ways you have to “sell yourself”, performing, arranging, composing, engineering, marketing, automatically you’ll become more connected and increase your chances of success.

How has your Berklee experience shaped your view of the music industry? Was it spot on or did you need to shift your perspective?

Having worked with many professional and semi-professional musicians since Berklee I’ve noticed just how thorough the curriculum at Berklee is and how vastly influential the Alumni community continues to be in the music and entertainment industries. The competitive nature really reflects the real world of required skills and passion that a graduate must have to make it in our business.

What should a new alum focus on as they enter the job market?

Have a really clear idea of what you want to do and have a short term and a long term plan. They don’t have to be extremely detailed but as you get closer to achieving some of your smaller goals the plan should become more concrete. Also, be very willing to adapt and change your plan rather than get bummed out or, worse, give up. When I graduated I knew exactly what I wanted to do and I went for it and it didn’t work out so I shifted gears a couple times until I started making progress and I’m still working at it!

How do you connect with other people? How much does social media play a role in your career as an employee and artist?

Social Media is extremely important, but it can help you or hurt you if you’re not careful. I use all the standard stuff, Facebook, Twitter (@synchromuse), LinkedIn, PressKit, etc. Having a plan and some consistency with your online presence it extremely important if you want your network to really grow and work for you rather than feel like you’re just chasing your accounts around to keep them up to date.

BONUS:
What are you listening to right now?

Bass and Mandolin by Chris Thile and Edgar Meyer (Amazing!!!)

Two Five One is a series of blog posts by alumni. They write about two places (where they’re living & their hometown) answer five questions about their post-graduate experience, and it’s a one-off post. For more information about blogging for Berklee as an alumni, email alumniaffairs@berklee.edu

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