After learning how to play the piano as a boy, Alexander Smith, 22, music therapy major, soon picked up a set of drumsticks and joined the concert band during his eight semesters at EC.

Smith learned how to play the drums when he was about 14 years old. The reason was to have a way to control his anger and to channel it into something positive.

“It was a way of anger management for me,” Smith said.

Not only does Smith play in the EC concert band, but he is also in the jazz band and plays in a swing band called The Esquires every first and fourth Monday of each month in the Alpine Village.

But playing in the swing band was not his first experience in a band.

When he was younger, he played for a local punk rock band called False Alliance.

“I played with them for five years. We played for high school crowds and backyard parties mostly,” Smith said.

Smith said that he credits a lot of his success in playing to many people: his church, his grandparents and his four semesters of being in the Applied Music Program at EC.

“The program has opened up a lot of opportunities to play outside of school and has helped me be able to play in front of crowds of people,” Smith said.

The Applied Music Program gives students the chance to work with a private tutor once a week to perfect their craft and then gives students the opportunity to perform once a month for other students.

“I started playing in church when I was younger and it gave me the confidence to start playing in front of the public and be comfortable with that,” smith said.

Smith continues to play in churches. He plays at three different churches with the bands.”

“I thank God every day for giving me the gift of playing music to play for others in my community,” Smith said.

Other people who have helped him along the way and have influenced him as a musician, Smith said, are his grandparents.

His grandfather is a jazz pianist named Paul Smith and his grandmother, Annette Warren, also had her hands in the music business.

Smith said that he has been attending EC for eight semesters and has enjoyed his time here immensely.

But before he attended EC, he took a year off and attended a drum school to learn even more of something that he loved.

But now, Smith said that it’s going to be hard to leave EC at the end of this semester to attend Cal State Northridge and to get his degree in music therapy.

“It’s going to be hard to leave,” Smith said. “After being here for eight semesters, I have met and made many new friends, so it’s going to be hard to leave them.”