185 – Jake Wood: Touring with “Hamilton,” The San Francisco Scene, Building an Independent Teaching Studio

Jake Wood has been touring with Hamilton since early 2017, playing percussion, keyboards, electronics, and running Ableton. With no prior experience in musicals, he landed the gig through a San Francisco acquaintance, and proved himself by taking a month away from pretty much everything else in his life to spend ten hours a day practicing and learning the show. In addition to Hamilton, Jake plays with Bay Area groups including Diego’s Umbrella and March Fourth, and has been running his own teaching studio for nearly a decade.

In this podcast, Jake talks about:

* How he landed the Hamilton gig with no prior experience in musicals

* Creating drum cover videos using songs with no drums

* How his social media content became a useful resume booster

* The month-long process of learning the show

* The intricacies of his part and learning to follow a conductor

* The mix of acoustic drums and samples in the pit set-up

* Playing continuous grooves vs. isolated single notes

* The Bay Area scene, and his musical life there outside Hamilton

* His strategy for building his teaching studio