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Ralph Peterson Jr., Professor
DEPARTMENT : Percussion Department"My teaching style is energetic, intense, and no-nonsense. I try to encourage interaction and to inspire my students to push their own limits. Beyond the obvious areas of technique and reading, one of the most important things I teach is total musicianship. This involves hearing and playing beyond the drum set. Understanding form, melody, harmony, and phrasing all have a profound effect on what a drummer plays."
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Kim Plainfield, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Percussion Department"Playing in a band is the culmination of everything my students do in music. All the practicing, all the listening, all the training—it all comes together in a band. It's important to understand all those dynamics and what's necessary to support them. Developing the capacity to listen while playing is paramount in becoming a good musician."
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"I deal with a lot of nonpercussionists, too—piano players, singers, horn players. I enjoy that almost more than teaching drummers. They don't have any preconceptions. One of the things that I show people who are not drummers is that just because you're playing this pattern on a hand drum, that doesn't mean that you can't apply the phrasing to your guitar comping or whatever. I'm trying to get them to think outside of the box. Many times they get caught up with the idea that it has to be done here, in this context. But that's not necessarily the case."
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Ed Saindon, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Percussion Department"There are always new things to learn about improvisation, and whatever I learn, I pass on to my students. Improvisation to me is like living. We all improvise every day, and it's an art; it's being open to all the possibilities, to be able to make quick decisions and do something on the spur of the moment. We do that in choices we make every day."
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Jackie Santos, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Percussion Department"My teaching style comes from life experience. The number one aspect of playing music is feel and time. You have to have great feel and great time; great touch, finesse, and interpretation. And you have to have good hands to impact what you do on a kit. So I make sure that their hands are cool. I'm not saying you have to have hands like Buddy Rich, but you have to have good enough technique to able to play a great beat. When you get out there in real world, it's nothing about chops. What gets you the gig is feel and time. It's how comfortable can you make this music sound and feel."
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Casey Scheuerell, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Percussion Department"I think that it's better to have a singular voice rather than be totally slick at everything. To me, that means do everything pretty well, but make sure you do one or two things really well, so that you have an identity."
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Neal Smith, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Percussion Department"I try not to create patterns in my lessons, so that the material seems really fresh, so that it catches students off guard. When you get called for a recording session, a lot of times you basically have one shot at this. You get called based on your reputation, you come in, and a lot of times you get the music at the session. You have to be able to sight read extremely well, you have to be able to interpret music extremely well, and you have to be able to adapt to your environment."
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Tony Smith, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Percussion Department"I thrive on passion, and that's the whole thing. Everything's got to be exciting. I'm looking for a student to say 'What if I did this?'. I'm after the student to grab hold of it and just go. That's beneficial to them. If they can find the techniques, if they realize what I mean by basically playing the same thing only differently, we get into a conceptual thing. Most of my students already have it, it's just a matter of getting it out of them. It's ready and willing to come out."
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Bob Tamagni, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Percussion Department"You can have all the 'watch what I can do' chops in the world, but if you can't play good time, play good groove, and keep it simple, your phone's not going to ring. To me having 'good chops' isn't about speed; it's about having the technique to execute just the right musical thing the right way when the music calls for it."
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Mark Walker, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Percussion Department"Carmen McCrae once said, 'It's more important to listen than it is to play.' It's such a simple concept, but very deep. It's a hard concept for some drummers to understand, but the working drummers understand it. That's why someone like Steve Gadd, one of the world's greatest drummers, plays next to nothing and everybody loves it, because he's totally supporting what's going on. He plays what the music needs. When it comes time to whip it out, he can deliver!"