♪♪ >>From the second floo of the Orlando Public Library, welcome to Melrose in the Mix, our series of live recording sessions from here at the Melrose Center.

Hi, everyone.

I'm Jim Myers.

Today's session features I Am Drigo Steel.

Drigo is likely known to anyone who has visited the Melrose Center to take audio classes, as he is one of our audio production instructors here.

He also happens to be an accomplished drummer and multi-instrumentalist.

One of Drigo's creative pursuits is playing piano.

And in this session, he shares some of his original compositions.

Before the session we had a chance to talk to Drigo about his artistic influences, what drew him to music and to the piano, some of his memorable shows, and more.

♪♪ >>So, from playing in a metal band and playin in several different projects, most o my influences really come from just kind of putting eac instrument to a certain genre.

So piano will kind of be what I'm playing today.

Drums will kind of be metal.

So there's a lot of differen influences for each instrument.

So there really isn't just one big influence that will kind of influence everything.

So that's kind of how I split things up.

So, really when I, when I started playing music was around ten.

So I've been at this for, for quite a while.

♪♪ >>I think from being an instructor here for several years now what makes the center unique is the people and the knowledg that everybody brings together.

And even, for example, me being in the audio pod, we all kind of specializ in different aspects of audio.

So everybody kind of has the same thing in their pods.

So anybody that comes in not only are they going to have their their questions answered, but they're going to have a lot of experience from everybody here.

So I think that right there i probably what makes this place a lot more special than just go into, like your regular school or even other places.

So I dig it.

♪♪ Influences, I would say outside of just the contemporary classical composers, I would sa some of, like, the newer ones.

I'm really a big fan of Adrian Barringer.

Right now he's a Spanish composer.

And surprisingly, a lot of metal bands as well.

I really like Peeling Flesh.

Even though they're no necessarily anything beautiful.

Sometimes just going the completely opposite route will kind of spark somethin to allow you to finish a piece.

♪♪ Classical music and metal music are 100% connected.

I think with metal music coming from blues, jazz, and also classical music will kind of blend a lot just because of the technicality aspect of it.

But at the same time, most metal musician don't really know that they're kind of similarly composing as classical musicians.

So if you're a classical composer, you can kind of see the differences and the similarities.

But me being kind of best of both worlds, it definitely helps when I'm trying to write something in metal, because there's a lot of things you can pull from classical composing.

But I think in terms o composing for classical music, it's a little bit harder for me to pull from the metal worl as it is the other way around.

♪♪ Really what kind of led me into more of, like, a serious piano journey was just, unfortunately, just like friends dying and then just me playing at their funerals and stuff like that.

So over that span of time, I was just like, okay, it's probably better to learn how to play the piano better.

♪♪ So writing and composing piano, it's kind of evolved over the years.

For me I feel like when I was younger, I would try to stick to, like, a basic verse chorus kind of structure.

But as I kept going throug my piano journey, I would say, I kind of got more into, like classical music, classical composing.

So I stopped trying to repea so much, and I just kind of let things happen.

Whatever, wherever they go.

And obviously knowing sheet music and knowing like music theory, that helps a lot with trying to get out of certain problematic areas whenever you get to them.

But mostly it's just feel.

And then whenever you get to, like a problematic area or you get stuck, that's when you kind of rely on some of the sheet music for me.

♪♪ So my pian music has already been released.

I have, like, a pian CD that I had physical CDs for.

But most of my music is on Spotify.

The ones that I have not released on Spotify, I just haven't recorded yet.

But yeah, pretty much everything you can find on Spotify or whatever you use to stream music.

It's pretty much there.

But yeah, I pretty much release everything that I make, that once, once it hits the point wher I feel like it's releasable.

So.

♪♪ >>Thanks for joining us for this episode of Melrose in the Mix featuring I Am Drigo Steel.

We'll see you again soon for another live recording session here in the Melrose Cente at the Orlando Public Library.

♪♪