Michael Farquharson

"Because the music business is such a tough business, my teaching style tends to emulate that reality. I am the client and the students are the musicians I have 'hired.' My goal is to bring out the absolute best that they can do and not settle for mediocrity."

"The classes that I teach are at the very end of the contemporary writing and production major, so I see graduating students. I tell them, 'In several weeks, you'll be out there, starting your careers. If you're writing film scores, your competition is John Williams, not the person sitting beside you in class."

"Berklee is a practical music school, for people aspiring to make a living from music. I like to think of us all as journeymen. These are the people working hard every day, under the radar—all the people creating the music we hear on the various broadcast media, all the great writer/producers, the great engineers."

"For musicians, stylistic diversity is very important. The most successful freelance musicians can go from playing a theater show to doing weddings, to going into a recording studio, to engineering tracks, to getting writing gigs, to making their own records…. I want my students leaving Berklee with these trump cards in their back pockets."