Alberto Netto, Assistant Professor

"When I was younger, I had one occasion when I was asked to play samba for a group touring in Brazil. I'm from Brazil, and I didn't know how to play the samba! I was playing rock 'n' roll, jazz, and fusion at the time. I had an audition for a gig with this band of major samba players, and I thought I could get it, but that wasn't the case. They had somebody else take the gig; they told me to come back after I put my samba skills together. That's something that I remember after all these years."

"The moral? Don't take it for granted, just because you're from a place, that you know that culture really well. You need to learn your own cultural rhythms sometimes. Now I teach drum set, and my expertise is Brazilian music."

"But the minimum I want is for my students to have well-developed timekeeping. After that, you can work on your technical skills and your 'chops.' Also, they have to be disciplined to listen to the other instruments and interact with the band, because the drum set is not a solo instrument."

"I tell my students, 'You have to work and be disciplined with whatever you're doing at that moment. Don't try to do 20 things at once just so-so; go one step at a time and make sure to do each step well. Also, be patient; it takes time to develop a talent, whatever talent God gives you.'"