When I was at Berklee, the first summer I came home and took a summer job. It was a concrete job my dad got me with one of his clients. It was good pay. It was extremely hard work. I was not interested in doing that again. So I decided the next summer I would stay on campus and just go ahead and take the summer semester and continue on my education. I decided that I would take a few classes that I really wanted to do just for fun that weren’t necessarily a part of my major.
So I took a songwriting class and a lyric writing class which were both a lot of fun, and I took a drum lab. The drum lab was a lot of fun and of course it was a little bit different than how we do drum labs here, but still in many ways it was kind of an inspiration for what we do here in our drum labs.
It was really cool as a trumpet player primarily, to be able to study drums under a Berkelee professor and an amazing musician. One of the things he did which I really appreciated was he will bring in recordings for us with some amazing drum work and break down what they were doing into often very simple little pieces that he would then put together for the whole groove, effect, and song. It made me think a lot about how when you listen to drums. You hear this beautiful sort of blend of several different ideas and concepts across different pieces of the drum set with the hi-hat, the ride symbol, the bass drum, the snare, maybe even hand percussion elements, and they all come together to create this groove. It made me think about drums a lot differently both when I listen to them in music, and also as a composer and band leader.
If you want to think about drums in a new way, to study the drums with Eli. You’ll have a blast.
