Profile of the musician David Franz
Pots and pans started it off. Those kitchen jams when I was age 1 led to “Hot Cross Buns” piano lessons at age 5. When my parents got mad at my drum set made of dictionaries at age 12, they relented and let me take drum lessons. Soon, “Hot For Teacher,” “Tom Sawyer” and “When The Levee Breaks” were shaking the picture frames off the walls.
Run DMC, Prince, The Beach Boys, Hall & Oats, Van Halen, Stevie Wonder, Willie Nelson, Rush and Beethoven all mixed it up and eventually helped me land the drum major gig for our 300-piece high school marching band… white tuxedo and all.
While at Virginia Tech, trying not to be a musician, I studied Industrial & Systems Engineering, but I couldn’t stop playing in multiple bands, signing up for music technology classes and taking lessons in piano, drums, guitar and bass. During my master’s degree in the same field, I finally caved in to music and wrote my thesis about “Mathematically Modeling Jazz Improvisation with Markov Chains.” After analyzing every recorded note that John Coltrane played on Giant Steps and creating domain specific measures of intelligence and creativity, I decided to go all in… I attended Berklee College of Music for a second bachelor’s degree in Music Production & Engineering.
While at Berklee, I figured I couldn’t just go to school and work several jobs and play in a few bands and have a girlfriend, I needed to really challenge myself. While working for the revitalized Berklee Press, I stumbled upon the first review of the Digi 001 and Pro Tools LE. Right time, right place… a year later with the help of Digidesign and Berklee, I wrote the first book about using Pro Tools and graduated Berklee (well, almost… I still have to take the Pro Tools course ☺).
Music is my life and my livelihood… and I couldn’t be happier about it. If you’re curious about working with me, please send me a message.
