350 - Brandon Bush: Drumming with Dark Water, MD'ing Musicals, "Make it Great...You Will Win"

As a studio musician, Brandon has performed on over 100 recordings including Grammy nominated and winning releases by John Mayer, Sugarland and Shawn Mullins. As a member of the multi-platinum-selling rock band Train, Brandon toured the world, indulging in his life-long rock and roll fantasy of performing a keyboard solo on a smoke-emitting Moog synthesizer.

These days, in addition to touring with country music mega stars Sugarland, Brandon is a member of the music collective Songs of the Architect where he works as a songwriter, composer and producer on a wide variety of projects including film, TV, gaming and media formats. In recent years, he and his brother Kristian have been collaborators in the original project Dark Water, as well as numerous musical theatre productions with Kristian as composer and Brandon as musical director.

In this episode, Brandon talks about:

• The many responsibilities of being MD for a musical, from the micro (drum notation) to the macro (room tuning)
• Being self-critical without being self-defeating
• How taking 16th note interpretation out of the drummer's hands can strengthen a song/groove
• Defining the word "swing," in conversation and within a song
• Turning negative feelings (envy, bitterness, regret, etc.) into positive ones (gratitude, admiration, etc.)
• "Correctness" vs. human-ness in music production