What music are you playing these days for your own enjoyment and what made you choose it?

Johann Sebastian Bach wrote “6 Suites for Violoncello Solo senza basso” which are now among the most recognizable solo pieces in classical string literature, especially the Prelude to the first Suite in the key of G major. The sixth of these Suites in D major is an outlier, because it was composed for a five-stringed instrument called the violoncello piccolo or viola pomposa which was rare even in Bach’s time.

Professional performers seem comfortable playing the sixth Suite on a regular four-stringed cello, but I’ve always steered clear of attempting it, though I’ve studied and played the other five Suites. Recently I decided to transpose the piece from the original key of D down to G, which changes its sonority but makes it vastly more accessible on my instrument. I’m having a great time. Each of the six suites has a different character. This one projects a feeling of joy and confidence, which I find particularly uplifting right now.

Who were your biggest musical influences and what did you learn from them?

My father loved to sing and he expected me and my two sisters to sing with him. We sang in the car on any trip that lasted more than five minutes. Folk tunes, show tunes, old ballads, rounds. I’m forever grateful. Thanks to New York State’s rational public education priorities, my grade school music teachers, Arlene Fisk and Ira Krupenye, got me started with choral and instrumental music. My early inspirations were Pablo Casals, Pete Seeger, Doc Watson, and Ali Akbar Khan. From each I took away a realization there is really no boundary around any kind of music and that character and culture are always in foment.

What’s your advice for busy adult students who can’t always practice regularly?

Schedule a 15-minute daily practice time on your calendar, as early in the day as possible. Even if you can’t get to it every day, you’ve demonstrated a positive intention!

Start your 15 minutes with something very basic, like a slow scale or a simple rhythmic pattern or even just long tones. If you do nothing else in that session, you’ll enjoy the resonance of your instrument or your voice and derive a sense of satisfaction.

Never beat yourself up about missing a practice time or cutting one short. In fact, don’t ever beat yourself up about anything.

Sing to yourself in the car or the shower or anywhere else you find yourself alone. If you can sing something you’re learning on your instrument, so much the better. If not, just sing!

How has your approach to teaching evolved over time?

I’m wrestling with the tension between the two primary ways of teaching music – the aural tradition and the written tradition. Learning by ear is laborious yet ultimately liberating, because it forces us to rely on not just our senses but our thoughts and feelings as well. Learning by eye is efficient but can be terribly misleading, because so much musical information is missing from the page. I have been asking my students to take the songs they can sing by ear and play them from the page in hopes of wedding these two fundamental methods. It’s too soon to say how it’s working.

What’s gotten you excited about music recently and how has that impacted your teaching?  

Two things. 

One is going back to the fundamentals of snare drumming and working on the techniques I first studied as a freshman at Berklee [College of Music] in Boston back in 1990 with books like Elementary, Intermediate, and Advanced Snare Drum Studies by classical percussionist Mitchell Peters, The All American Drummer and Modern Rudimental Swing Solos by Charles Wilcoxon, and Accents and Rebounds by G. L. Stone. Stone describes the four primary ways you strike a drum with a stick. They are the Full, Down, Tap, and Up Strokes. Working on these techniques and exercises can seem tedious and sometimes feel awkward but it trains you to play more efficiently over time. When you minimize extra motion you create a smooth relaxed flow while playing.

The other exciting thing is a giant book of jazz transcriptions that I found online by Vinnie Ruggiero called simply Vinnie’s Book.

It’s basically a book on bebop drumming transcribed from actual recordings. The author was close with some of the biggest legends of jazz drumming. The language they created and the way that they developed the instrument was picked up on and copied by many of the rock drummers of the 60’s, who then influenced everyone after them.

I love the history of the instrument almost as much as I love playing it. I’ve been using these phrases and techniques together to teach students of all levels of ability the language of drum set while working on coordination and playing efficiently.

Where and when can members of the MCMS community hear you in action?

I play a lot of gigs in all kinds of settings. I’m a freelance drummer. I play in a couple of local Bay Area groups that are doing original songs and actively making records. One is Go By Ocean and can be found on Spotify or other streaming services. The other is the Alex Jordan Band who is doing a North West Tour in the fall. I met Alex at Terrapin Crossroads in San Rafael where I was one of the house drummers for 9 years. There were a lot of talented people around that scene and a lot of great music to play. It really was a gig factory, as guitarist Scott Law used to say. I was sad to see it close but through those connections I still play a good amount of Grateful Dead and other cover band music. I’m also drumming on an album by Canadian songwriter Gord Downie (Tragically Hip) and music producer Bob Rock. It’s called Lustre Parfait and was released in April 2023. I play on the title track and three other songs on the album.

How can students practice more effectively and enjoyably?

Practicing is what we should teach, primarily. That is what I think in-person lessons are mostly about. You’re not going to learn how to practice from a YouTube channel. They might tell you what, but almost never how to practice. Showing students how to manage their practice time in a creative and thorough way is so important. Far more than just what part to play for the song. A student needs a plan! I am always coaching my students to make sure they cover three parts of a good practice routine:

WARM UP.

WORK OUT. 

PLAY! 

Ideally in that order. You choose something from each category each time you sit down to practice, taking a little break between each category. This keeps things from getting boring or overly frustrating. My students warm up first (5-10 minutes) with sticking patterns and rudiments (think scales for drums) as well as other technique-based fundamentals. 

Once they are warmed up (both physically and mentally) they’re ready to start working on what they can’t yet do well. After 20 minutes or so of real focus on challenging work they are encouraged to take another short break. Then they PLAY. Always find time to be playful with what you have previously practiced! 

I very much encourage students to improvise and be creative and to try and make the thing they are working on their own. Once they have done that, it’s much harder to forget. I could go on and on about practicing. When someone says practicing is boring they aren’t doing it right. 

What have you learned lately from one of your students?

I have an adult student who is a beginner drummer and an avid swimmer. When I was demonstrating the wave-like motion of the arm and wrist while playing a pattern on the ride cymbal he told me how his swimming coach discussed a similar motion with the arm starting at the side  of the body and reaching outward and extending fully over head before releasing and pulling back to the side. It’s called the serape effect, where the rotation of a large body is transferred to a smaller body, causing acceleration. He noticed that it was a macro move very similar to what I was doing (micro) with my forearm, wrist and fulcrum, where I hold the stick between the thumb and finger. It’s all about the efficiency of the motion of the body and waves are powerful both big and small.

Thanks, Sean, great to speak with you!