Oh, I don't have to be disappointed in myself if I'm not right for something.

I just need to discover who I am and then really push that for everything I do.

This is Joe Wong.

Welcome to the Trap Set, where each week we explore the lives of drummers.

I want to play something for you.

I want to play something for you. You're hearing wildfire by John Mayer, featuring my guest Aaron Sterling on drums. Sterling's formidable percussive skill set could have earned him plenty of work in the bygone salad days of the recording studio.

But his attention to sonic detail and ability to self-engineer make him a quintessential studio drummer for the modern paradigm.

Aside from his work with Mayer, Aaron has recorded with scores of top-tier artists,

including Lana Doe Ray, Celine Dion, John McLaughlin, Glenn Campbell, and Marin Morris.

His funny and informative masterclass series,

Sound of Sterloid,

is available on his website.

I spoke to him in downtown

Los Angeles.

And now my conversation

with Aaron Sterling.

Music My dad is an arranger, he's a writer, producer, arranger, orchestrator. He's kind of one of those people that's just like he's kind of gone through

different iterations of the music business, but all kind of comes from the producing,

writing, arranging perspective. And then that got into orchestral arranging and stuff like

that as well. And then my mom was a background singer, mostly for sessions. Not like,

she wasn't really gigging, but she did session work in the 80s when that was a thing.

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