Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK
MY SWEDISH CAREER

JOBS

‘Sweden isn’t for everyone. You have to be open to change’

Brazilian guitarist Thiago Trinsi has studied at the prestigious Berklee College of Music and taught in three continents. Now living in Sweden, he explains to The Local why he thinks his new instructional videos can help other musicians to take a step forward with their playing.

Published: 7 November 2016 06:59 CET
'Sweden isn't for everyone. You have to be open to change'
Brazilian guitarist Thiago Trinsi who now lives in Sweden. Photo: Cha Trinsi

It’s not often that internationals moving to Sweden do so because they want to come to a bigger country, but that’s exactly the case for Trinsi.

“I was living in Iceland for eight years, teaching music technology in public schools, and I thought it would be nice to move to a bigger country that has more access to other countries,” he explains. “Iceland is an island and you need air travel for everything!”

“So that was the idea. I started applying for jobs in the field and got a job and moved here two years ago,” he continues.

The job came in Härjedalen, a small, mostly rural county in central Sweden bordering Norway with a population of only 10,000 people.

It’s a dramatically different place to his native Porto Alegre in southern Brazil, a city which with more than 4.4 million people in the metropolitan area, is about twice as big as Swedish capital Stockholm.

“It was good for me to get my knowledge in Brazil, because it was during a time when you could get inspired by others there. They’re just more into the passion of it, making things happen. If you are good, you have your space and you can have success. In Sweden, if you’re good it doesn’t matter. You need to be someone’s friend and most of the time you need to be Swedish,” he notes.


Cha Trinsi. Photo: Private

Don’t be fooled though. Even if the close-knit nature of the music community in Sweden can be frustrating at times, Trinsi has plenty of positive things to say about his life there.

“The quality of life is way better. It’s great. Everything is clean, the system works. In Brazil it can be chaos. For inspiration, you get a lot. For learning music, it’s the best place. But after you graduate and need to get a life you should move to somewhere like Sweden which has a great system,” he suggests.

“It’s very hard to pay the bills in Brazil if you’re a music teacher. Sweden is much easier. If you’re a teacher you can pay your bills, travel.”

It was while teaching music in schools in Sweden that Trinsi finally decided to put his latest lesson concept into practice. The idea had been with him for a while: to create a new, more comprehensive way for guitarists to improve their alternate picking technique. With life in Sweden going well, it was time to get the venture off the ground.

“I have worked for companies doing video lessons before but it was different. I created an idea for a guitar solo with a few techniques, then broke it down into pieces to show people how it is played both slowly and quickly,” he notes.

“But then I saw that guitar players, especially in rock and metal, struggle with authentic technique, playing their up and downstrokes cleanly. I started looking for something on the internet that could change that, but everything was the same, I couldn’t find it.”


Cha Trinsi. Photo: Private

Realizing there was a gap in knowledge waiting to be filled, he started formulating his lesson plan.

“I took about eight months researching, experimenting and attempting to develop the lessons in a better way. I got great results, and it really changed my playing and brought it to a brand new level. It was really exciting, so I decided to make it into ten studies that everyone has access to.”

Trinsi’s package combines videos, e-books, musical notation, guitar pro (a form of guitar tablature musical notation), files and audio playback. It’s an impressively comprehensive effort, inspired by a desire to do things better.

“I’ve got a way to work here. It’s not like in Brazil, where for example if I needed someone to mix something, I always knew a friend who knew a guy who does it to a very high level. Here I need to become a master of these things and do it myself. It’s very hard to find people. And the people you do find charge a lot of money for it. I understand why, it’s very difficult to do it,” he muses.

“Knowledge is something that comes to you and stays forever. I’ve been teaching for more than 18 years, developing materials for schools, so I’m used to working fast. It doesn’t take me so long to master a subject.”

Even if he has decades of experience, the Porto Alegre native explains that he is always hoping to learn new things. Though he is trained in orchestration at Berklee College in the US, he still thinks there is plenty to learn from Swedish music, and in particular its master producers.

“If I take a Katy Perry song written by Max Martin, I can put some headphones on and it’s like a lesson. You hear the elements, how well it’s produced and composed, it’s great.”

“Swedes are very good composers and producers.”

His hope is to one day work with some of Sweden’s big musicians.

“One of the points of coming here is I know it’s the land of heavy metal. A lot of great bands are from here. I hope to work with some of those guys one day, record for them or play a gig with them. I’m always open to new projects.”

Yet some of the biggest inspiration Sweden has provided for him comes not from its musical masters, but from the kids he teaches regularly.

“I love my day job and I feel great doing it. A huge percentage of my students are from Afghanistan and Syria. It’s really nice to see them develop and play contemporary music, the things they hear on the radio. They let me hear stuff from their countries too on Youtube, and I’ll take a listen, then in two minutes show them how to play it. It always adds something.”

As for whether working in music in Sweden would be easier if he lived in a hub like Stockholm or Gothenburg, the Brazilian thinks the internet makes up most of the difference.

“In terms of gigs or projects it can be tough not being in Stockholm or Gothenburg, but with the internet I can do pretty much everything except concerts. I record for artists in Europe, the USA, Brazil and Asia. Last year I recorded for a Grammy-nominated producer,” he boasts.

“I can pretty much do all my work here from my home studio. If I was in Stockholm, just getting from my home to the studio could take a couple of hours or something. In a town it’s easier, and everything is here in a way thanks to the internet.”

Ultimately, as an artist he is always looking for different experiences, whether they are in Sweden, or teaching in the USA and Denmark as he currently does.

Going forward, Trinsi plans on developing more teaching packages. “It’ll be a surprise,” he hints. “I can blend weird things like Balkan and Spanish music and make it work. So I’ll be working on more and more techniques, composition maybe someday. More packages but in different styles.”


Cha Trinsi. Photo: Private

As for his location, for the moment he is happy in rural Sweden, but he does have some important advice for any Brazilians looking to move there.

“Sweden isn’t for everyone. You have to be open to change. You have to change yourself first. Every country has a mentality and if you’re open you can move forward and be happy,” he recommends.

“Sometimes I see Brazilians here who complain they don’t have what they had in Brazil, but they don’t see the big picture. Sweden has a lot more to offer than just thinking about the kind of bread you liked to get in Brazil.”

Before bringing our chat to an end, The Local couldn’t resist asking the composer what he thinks of Sweden's big musical talking point of recent months. Should Bob Dylan have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature?

“Bob Dylan is an icon, he’s present in many life stories with his music and poetry. He deserves it.” Trinsi concludes.

For members

WORKING IN SWEDEN

‘Reassess your cultural background’: Key tips for foreign job hunters in Sweden

Many foreigners living in Sweden want to stay in the country but struggle to find a job, despite having relevant qualifications. The Local spoke to three experts for their advice.

Published: 7 May 2024 09:00 CEST
'Reassess your cultural background': Key tips for foreign job hunters in Sweden

One international worker who found it hard to land her first job in Sweden is Amanda Herzog, who eventually founded Intertalents in Sweden with the aim of helping other immigrants find work in the country.

Herzog originally came to Sweden to study at Jönköping University and decided to stay after graduating.

“I thought it would take three months, maybe six months to find a job, I was prepared for that,” she told The Local during a live recording of our Sweden in Focus podcast held as part of Talent Talks, an afternoon of discussions at the Stockholm Business Region offices on how to attract and retain foreign workers in Sweden.

“What happened was it took over 13 months and 800 applications to actually get a job in my industry, within marketing.”

During this time, Herzog was getting multiple interviews a month, but was not getting any further in the process, despite showing her CV to Swedish recruiters for feedback.

“They were baffled as well,” she said. “By the time I landed my dream job, I had to go outside of the typical advice and experiment, and figure out how I actually can get hired. By the time I got hired, I realised what actually works isn’t really being taught.”

‘Reassess your cultural background’

Often, those who come to Herzog for help have sent out hundreds of CVs and are unsure what their next steps should be.

“My first piece of advice is to stop for a second,” she said. “Reassess your cultural background and how it fits into Sweden.”

Herzog, for example, discovered she was interviewing in “the American way”.

In the US, when asked to tell an interviewer about yourself, you’d be expected to discuss your career history – how many people have you managed? Did sales improve while you were working there? – while Swedes are more likely to want to know about you as a person and why you want to work in a specific role for their company in particular.

“A lot of people don’t know this, so imagine all of the other cultural things that they’re doing differently that they learned in their country is normal,” Herzog adds.

“Just start with learning, because it could be that you don’t need to change very much, you are qualified, you just need to connect with the Swedish way of doing things.”

 
 
 
 
 
View this post on Instagram
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A post shared by The Local Sweden (@thelocalsweden)

 

Networking is important

“Don’t hesitate to reach out for help and guidance,” said Laureline Vallée, an environmental engineer from France who recently found a job in Sweden after moving here nine months ago with her partner, who got a job as a postdoc at KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

“You tend to insulate yourself and consider yourself not capable, but you’re not less capable than you were in your home country, you just need to explain it to the employers.”

Another tip is to network as much as you can, Vallée said.

“Networking is really important here in Sweden, so just go for it, connect with people in the same field.”

This could be through networks like Stockholm Akademiska Forum’s Dual Career Network, which helps the accompanying partners or spouses of foreign workers find a job in Sweden, or through other connections, like neighbours, friends, or people you meet through hobbies, for example.

Make a clear profile for yourself

Another common issue is that applicants are not presenting themselves clearly to recruiters, Stockholm Akademiska Forum’s CEO, Maria Fogelström Kylberg, told The Local.

“If you’re sending 600 applications without an answer, something is wrong. We have seen many people looking for jobs working in a supermarket, and the next application is a managing director post,” she said. “You have to decide ‘who am I? What do I want to do?’, you have to profile yourself in a clear way.”

This could be editing down your CV so you’re not rejected for being overqualified, or just thinking more closely about how you present yourself to a prospective employer.

“Which of my skills are transferable? How can I be of use to this company? Not what they can do for me, but what problem can I solve with my competence?”

Job hunters should also not be afraid of applying for a job which lists Swedish as a requirement in the job description, Fogelström Kylberg said.

“Sometimes if I see an ad for a job and I have a perfect candidate in front of me, I call the company and say ‘I have a perfect candidate, but you need them to speak Swedish’, they then say ‘no, that’s not so important’. This is not so unusual at all so don’t be afraid of calling them to say ‘do I really need perfect Swedish?’”

Listen to the full interview with Maria Fogelström Kylberg, Amanda Herzog and Laureline Vallée in The Local’s Sweden in Focus Extra podcast for Membership+ subscribers.

Interview by Paul O’Mahony, article by Becky Waterton

SHOW COMMENTS