Summer — 2009

David Brown

Music

“The fact that we have an entire campus dedicated to performance is really quite amazing.”

He was in his third SMC semester, and was definitely stoked about what the future would bring. “In about a year and a half, I plan on transferring to the Berklee College of Music in Boston,” said music man David Brown. “It’s definitely the Taj Mahal of musicianship.” But in the meantime, SMC has given David every opportunity to stretch and grow and explore his musical creativity.

“The best teacher that I’ve had here would have to be Dr. Takesue, who teaches both piano and music theory. She makes the relationship between those two classes very clear. And for piano, she breaks it all down to where it’s completely easy to build individual skills like playing separate melodies with both hands. I’m certainly not a master yet,” says David, laughing, “but I’m bound to get there someday.”

David works at a frozen yogurt shop, gets help from his parents, and even gets financial aid from SMC. He feels there’s really nothing in the way of his making progress toward his ultimate goal. “I want to produce music, so I’m taking a double major in production and performance. And I’m gonna use those skills to—one day—launch my own record label. It’ll be a lot of hard work, I know. But I just want to be around people whose talents I believe in. Hip hop, electronic, rock-’n’-roll; it doesn’t matter as long as the music is catchy and has substance to it.”

Advises David: “Students here should really plan out their day because, if you do that, you’ll be amazed by how much free time you have. And also take some classes outside your specialty area, because you’ll take away a lot of valuable info from whatever you study.”

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