Shaan Singh, Matt Beachen, and Sam Thomson of Drax Project are all alumni of the New Zealand School of Music—Te Kōki at the University.
The band performed last week at Orientation Week in the Kelburn Hub, bringing their signature blend of jazz, rhythm and blues and pop to their alma mater. With five compilations and one studio album to their name, as well as a raft of stadium performances in support of big names, they are fast becoming New Zealand’s biggest music export to the United States since Lorde.
Asked for his advice to current NZSM students, Shaan says, “I would say take everything that gets taught to you with a grain of salt. Listen and understand and learn, but do your own thing. Because the path that’s laid out to you by other people is 99 percent of the time not your path. Take the information and use it to do your own thing.”
Shaan and his bandmate Matt Beachen became buskers while at the NZSM, playing saxophone and drum covers on the street in Courtenay Place. The name of the band is a portmanteau of ‘drums’ and ‘sax’, and was invented on the spot when someone wanted to put a recording of them playing onto YouTube in 2015.
Shaan and Matt originally met at the Young Musicians Programme (YMP) run by the NZSM for talented young musicians.
“Me and my younger brother did it,” says Shaan. “Vaughn Roberts was our tutor, and he was really inspiring. I just like getting better at stuff, and I was already playing sax. I went on to Jazz School at the School of Music because I was young and it seemed the right thing to do.”
Shaan is the lead singer of Drax Project, but he attended the NZSM for saxophone, after being advised, “Go for the saxophone. You’ll sing anyway,” by his singing teacher Charles Humphreys.
“The YMP was so good. My brother started younger than me, and at age 12 it was the right information for him at the age where you’re most affected. The later you start the harder it is.”
Shaan and Matt were joined by Sam Thomson, whom they met at the NZSM, and the fourth member of their band Ben O’Leary joined them as they began performing their own compositions.
“The best part of the NZSM was playing my own compositions for our third year recital. The tutors had faith in it and I got good marks for my compositions, so I figured why not play them?”
Shaan was impressed by the teachers at the NZSM, saying, “It is always difficult to be taught such a complex thing and know what to do with the information. Do your best to learn it really well and adapt on it as you work on doing it your own way.”
Finally, some good news if you’re finding it hard to carve out some time for practising. “Some people say ‘practise however many hours a day to get good,’ but I think it’s truer that an hour of good practice is better than six hours of bad. I can practise for 10 minutes a day and if it’s really good and structured, it will be much better than doing eight hours of trash.
“It’s important to make sure that what you are doing is actually making you better—don’t just practise the bits you are already really good at.”