My Twenties Pt. 3

I knew I still had a lot to learn about drumming. After all becoming a great musician is a life long commitment. But I had no idea how intense this program would be. I wasn’t merely going to another music school, I was going to one of the best music schools in the world with some of the best teachers in the world. And let me tell you they took their job seriously. Not to say that they didn’t understand that the learning process could be slow at times and that some concepts would take quite some time to learn but they absolutely did not tolerate lack of effort. They weren’t baby sitters!

This is why going to MI was one of the best experiences in my life. I needed to have my butt kicked.

During my year at school I had two excellent, and very different, private teachers: Ed Roscetti and Tim Pedersen. Ed was also my Odd Meter teacher and single handedly taught me how to play shuffles. I think my first month with him we played the same exercise for almost the entire lesson until I could play a shuffle. That attention to detail on one specific topic has since helped me to learn many new things better and faster!.

Tim was quite different. He was a ball buster. I couldn’t tell you how many times he kicked me off stage because I wasn’t prepared enough or was playing like crap. I think he is the reason I’m usually over prepared for gigs and sessions now.

There was one time I showed up for my private lesson, it had been a somewhat busy week and I hadn’t really practiced the material like I should have. So I walk in sit down and he asks me to play the first exercise from the previous weeks lesson so I get comfortable and start to play. I think I only played a couple of bars and he stops me to ask if I had worked on the material over the last week. I give him some excuse about being busy with my other classes and didn’t have a lot of time. It sounded like a good excuse to me even though I knew it was just an excuse but it didn’t fool Tim. He told me if I wasn’t going to practice that he wasn’t going to teach me anything new and that I owed him a coffee. So, after only a 5 minute lesson, we were done and off to Starbucks halfway across Hollywood so I could buy him coffee. That was the LAST time I was unprepared for my lesson!

Although Tim and Ed had a very big impact on me as a player they weren’t the only great teachers I had. Gary Hess, Gary Garbatini, Tim McIntyre, Chuck Flores and Dave Salinas to name a few. They were all great! I received a lifetime of information in just one year.

I remember my first reading final with Gary Hess. He was (and still is) a tough cookie! I felt pretty good going into the final and my reading was pretty good. I sat down at the kit and Gary sat down right behind me and I mean RIGHT BEHIND ME!. I could hear him breathing. The first thing on the test was the sight reading part. He tells me the lines he wants me to play, gives me a tempo and said go. I wasn’t that nervous at the start because I was prepared but towards the end of the piece I blew a couple of measures. Not sure why I blew ‘em but I did. So I finished the piece and Gary shakes his head and says ‘You’ve been here 6 months and you still can’t play quarter note triplets’. Now I’m nervous. I still had 5 more things to play. Luckily for me the rest of the final went well.

Ahh, I love that story.

Besides all of the great teachers I had my year at school was also a great learning experience for me as a person. Being in LA, which is a little different than Minnesota or Kansas, having to be responsible for every little thing I did and being called out if I wasn’t pulling my weight, meeting a lot of new people from all over the world and making a lot of new friends, also from all over the world. This was my first experience with so many different types of people with extremely varying backgrounds. It truly was a worldly experience.

I also learned a lot about myself, good and bad. I thought that I knew a lot about lot of things and I quickly realized that I didn’t know nearly as much as I thought I did. I was forced to open my mind to many new things and many new experiences and because of that I grew tremendously as a person that year.

So if I could give one piece of advice to someone going into a new environment, school, culture or anything else new is to have an open mind. Let the barriers down for a moment and take in the new experience. You will not only learn a lot about new things but you will learn a lot about yourself as well.

25 Years of Drumming Part 1
25 Years of Drumming Part 2
25 Years of Drumming Part 3