Berkleemusic Student Spotlight: Andrew Ells-O'Brien

For guitarist Andrew Ells-O’Brien, who is currently enrolled in Berkleemusic’s Guitar Master Certificate Program, his online coursework isn’t simply supplementing his professional work – it almost single-handedly got him his current gig. A week after finishing Dan Bowden’s Getting Your Guitar Tone this past spring, Ells-O’Brien received a call from country music singer Chad Burdick requesting an audition to join his band. “I decided to give it a try,” Ells-O’Brien said. “I had learned all about how to get the sounds of Nashville in Dan’s class - everything from what type of wood and pickups the guitar should have, to the amplifier settings, to the effects with the proper use and settings of each. So, I went to the woodshed with the proper equipment, a list of songs for the audition, and twenty-five years of knowledge.”

Needless to say, he nailed the audition. “I aced the songs,” he continues, “but more importantly, I also aced the sound that they were looking for. The comments I received ranged from things like, ‘The last guy we auditioned was just so loud and distorted it sounded terrible’ to ‘Could you turn up your volume? That sounds really great.’ I got the gig!”

Growing up in the Boston suburb of Chelsea, Ells-O’Brien’s education at Berklee actually started some twenty-plus years ago. Just don’t tell his parents. “I remember sneaking into Boston - highly forbidden by my parents - when I had a half day of school and hanging around the halls of Berklee,” Ells-O’Brien recalls. “I would listen in to all the practice rooms and ask anyone carrying a guitar if they could show me a cool riff. Not a single person said no.” The rest, as they say, is history. In addition to gigging constantly, O’Brien also runs a teaching studio that keeps him busy with students from all over eastern Massachusetts.

Ells-O’Brien learned of Berkleemusic’s online courses through a brochure that he received in the mail. After putting off enrolling for a few years, he decided the time was finally right. He’s now finishing his third course towards the Master Guitar Certificate, and anticipates completing the program in just under two years. Despite his extensive experience, he finds he learns something new almost every week. “Sometimes it's as simple as a new scale pattern for an old scale or a new inversion of a chord, but other times it can be discovering an entire new form of music, or having one of those ‘eureka’ moments when all those years of playing finally click.”

With his private students taking up the majority of the hours in his week, Ells-O’Brien schedules himself a few hours each day to practice and record his assignments. “I have a separate room set aside in my home for practice so that I am able to shut out any other distractions, but I may still need to get a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign,” he says.

While online studies allow someone as busy as Ells-O’Brien the chance to learn from the comfort of his home, he has found other advantages as well. “The hidden advantage,” he says, “is that you have a private instructor available to you twenty-four hours a day, via email. In a typical school environment a professor may have office hours to visit for help, but online at Berkleemusic, I can send an email to my instructor at 1:00 a.m. and get an answer before 9 a.m. that morning, before I am even awake!” On top of that, he finds that he will often relay the information that he learns in his Berkleemusic courses to his own private students, and for those students who might go on to study at Berklee, he can share some of the musical language that they might encounter when they get there.

Ells-O’Brien claims Steve Vai as his greatest influence on guitar. “When you listen to his music, you feel as if you know him personally, as a friend. When you see him at a live show, it's as if you have known him all your life. When a musician can speak through their instrument and allow you to feel the emotion they felt when a song was composed, they have truly become a virtuoso.”

Ells-O’Brien will be touring with Chad Burdick summer and fall, and will go into the studio this winter to record Burdick’s second album.