We recently connected with Kevin Katich and have shared our conversation below.

Kevin , appreciate you joining us today. Let’s jump right into the heart of things. Outsiders often think businesses or industries have much larger profit margins than they actually do – the reason is that outsiders are often unaware of the biggest challenges to profitability in various industries – what’s the biggest challenge to profitability in your industry?

This question is two-fold, as the music industry and the private education business have their own individual set of challenges. In the context of the music industry at large, there is no blueprint for success. There is no one-size-fits-all route and opinions will vary from person to person in regards to how success within the industry can be achieved. What I have discovered is that every musician’s path is unique and you have to be prepared to view your own journey as an individual work in progress that will ultimately test your judgment. I’ve learned to take advice with a grain of salt.

As a musician, whether in a band or solo, you will face challenges of profitability regardless of the route you choose to take. If you are independent, the freedom of unlimited artistic expression is liberating while its downside is funding. In contrast, getting signed to a label will take care of the funding, but at the cost of full artistic liberty. One must also be weary of deceptive contracts presented by major labels that actively exploit and leech off the artist.

In regards to music education specifically, finding out what systems of marketing work best for you is a huge trial and error, which of course comes with the territory of blind experimentation and financial risk. The reward is tremendous once you have clarity on what works and what doesn’t, but it can be a long journey to discovering those details. It took me a few years of experimentation to fully figure that out.

I’ll share a story from about two years ago to demonstrate the trial and error of experimenting with marketing methods. During lockdown, I was able to pick up online students from all over the country and world, which was awesome! As the world started to open back up and I was able to resume in-person lessons, I wanted to continue to pick up students globally, not just locally. I decided to hire a marketing agent to help me continue that process. Long story short, my instincts about his methods were that they wouldn’t work for me, and I could tell that they would be a massive time suck that wouldn’t produce results strong enough to justify the time investment. I told myself that he knew what he was doing and I was getting pushed outside my comfort zone. The results proved my instincts correct, and his ideas sometimes got the exact same flack and negative feedback that entered my head when he suggested it. That experience ultimately served as a lesson in trusting my instincts.

Kevin , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Kevin Katich and I am a working drummer and drum teacher in Los Angeles. I have my own teaching practice, Kevin Katich Lessons, located in a lockout space at 1950 Cotner Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90025. I teach students ages seven and older, ranging from total beginners to advanced drummers to fellow professional drummers who want to clean up their technique (including jazz legend, Marvin Smitty Smith and touring metal drummer, Greg Amentt). I am currently teaching on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday afternoon/evenings by appointment only. To reach out to me to book a lesson, please use the contact form at www.kevinkatichlessons.com and I will be in touch shortly!

I am a working drummer and percussionist. I have been playing since age seven, professionally since my teens and teaching freelance since I was 19 years old (I’m now 36). I also worked part time at School of Rock West LA for 11 of those years in addition to freelance teaching. Up to about age 30, I treated teaching as a side hustle to support my music career. I’ve worked as a session drummer/percussionist, been a full-time member of many bands and have worked as an audio engineer off and on. While all three of those occupations have moments that are extremely exciting and rewarding, the lifestyle is not as grand as I believe the general public perceives it to be. The work consistency is unpredictable, and thus, so is the pay. Working as a session musician comes with its frustrations, as it’s very rarely an artistically satisfying venture. Being a full time member of a band can certainly be a blast filled with incredible, high flying moments, but they’re balanced out with tremendous expenses, artistic compromise and loads of arguments, not to mention that your fate in that scenario is determined just as much by the work ethic, cohesiveness and functionality of your bandmates as much as your own. It puts you in a position of having to rely on those around you for success, which is an extremely difficult situation to be in more often than not. I reached a point where I’d rather generate my own consistent income on my terms without having to rely on anyone else, hence why the teaching business started to become the priority around age 30, and a shift towards treating music as an art and form of self-expression rather than an economic necessity to survive financially began to occur.

During lockdown, teaching really became a main priority, as during that time I was able to pick up students all over the country and world over zoom. Prior to lockdown I would teach at the student’s home, and nearly two years ago, I opened my teaching practice, where local students come to me (and I still teach online to students out of the city/state/country). I specialize in Moeller and French technique for the hands, slide and heel-toe techniques for the feet and focus on ergonomics, body mechanics and breath work to maximize efficiency and conserve energy.

I never would have envisioned that the path to financial freedom would be through freelance teaching, but it has been incredibly rewarding and liberating. In order to create my reality in such a way that I’m always around music and always creating is by teaching others to do the same. I’m most proud that I’ve been able to build a stable business with consistent and growing income around my passion. It really is fantastic and I’m grateful for the lessons I’ve learned along the way that brought me to this point.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I always make it a point to keep the lessons fun and engaging, especially when the material is challenging for the student. The whole point of learning an instrument is self-expression and it should be fun! That’s something the public education system, and especially more bureaucratic systems like music conservatories, get totally wrong. I make it a point to cater the lessons to the student’s musical taste once they have enough of a foundation on the kit, which is around the 5th or 6th song they learn. A lot of music teachers have an elitist, self-important attitude when it comes to music and sometimes lose sight of the fact that the lesson is for the student, not the teacher. Therefore, I make it a point to foster a welcoming environment that is all about the student’s musical goals. Some of the big music school chains rely too heavily on teaching through an app and put a little too much emphasis on a “song-first” curriculum for my personal taste. The “song-first” approach is great in a lot of ways and I make learning songs a huge part of the lessons, however, back-engineering every concept doesn’t always work. Having more context and muscle memory of certain techniques or musical concepts before tackling a song is often helpful. I approach it both ways and find that my students grow exceptionally fast as a result.

Perhaps the most important element is that I focus on teaching the HOW just as much as teaching the WHAT. What I mean by this is that I focus on ergonomics, posture, body mechanics, stick rebounds, bass drum beater rebounds and breath work alongside whatever music and concepts we are tackling. I specialize in Moeller and French techniques for the hands and slide, flutter and heel-toe techniques for the feet. I’m all about efficiency and protecting one’s body for the sake of both comfort and longevity while playing drums. Drum set is such a physical instrument, and in the grand scheme of things is a new instrument considering that it’s been around for only a little over a hundred years. A lot of techniques and approaches went unquestioned until recently, and a real emphasis on ergonomics is only now starting to enter the greater conversation. When the student develops the muscle memory of proper ergonomic techniques, their tone, dynamic control and overall endurance rapidly become better and more consistent. This, in turn, keeps the student excited because they’re in a constant state of growth, as opposed to hitting walls often.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Throughout the 90s and 2000s (and very likely earlier), most drum education content had a strong emphasis on musical diversity, with rhetoric that you must be a well-rounded drummer that doesn’t necessarily specialize, but rather can play anything. As I was coming up, I embraced that approach. Fast forward the clocks fifteen years, and I find this approach to drum education to be both completely outdated and tone deaf. Don’t get me wrong, I believe learning music outside of one’s comfort zone is valuable, but the approach from the teacher and the desire from the student will make or break the effectiveness of that. For starters, this idea that drummers MUST be diverse while guitarists, vocalists, keyboardists and to a certain degree bassists are encouraged to specialize is total nonsense. In reality, a drummer who is passionate about bebop jazz but not super passionate about thrash metal is unlikely to get hired to record a thrash metal album or go on tour with a thrash metal band. A drummer who is all about reggae and ska but not as invested in samba is not likely to get hired for samba gigs. As a songwriter and arranger, I’m not going to hire a jazz guitarist to record a metal album or vice verse. I encourage specialization because it keeps musicians playing music that they’re honestly passionate about and pushes one to find their own unique voice within those contexts.

To use myself as an example, I specialize in rock, metal and reggae in particular. But I can and thoroughly enjoy playing/teaching jazz, funk, soul, neo-soul and various world genres no problem. In application to teaching, let’s say I have a student who is really into extreme metal but hasn’t shown any interest in jazz. I will use the opportunity to explain that much of the ride cymbal technique used in extreme metal drumming can be traced back to jazz and show some musical examples. If the student is interested in exploring jazz more as a result of that, I will gladly take them down that whole rabbit hole and turn them into a competent jazz drummer within four to six months. But if they don’t show an authentic interest in jazz after I show them some musical examples, I don’t force them to learn jazz. That desire has to come from within to see real results, not from social pressure.

Over time, I have unlearned the need to focus on and teach everything, both for myself and for my students. I have learned that specialization is a terrific method that is more in alignment with subjective taste and objective reality that also allows the student to explore what they want when exposed to different styles. Musicians are like actors. We will inevitably be typecast into the music we like, at which we excel, more often than not anyway. Music, at the end of the day, is an art form. It’s important to stay true to yourself and your vision and not give into the social pressure of having to play all styles of music to have success in music. That rhetoric is simply untrue.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.kevinkatichlessons.com
• Instagram: @lucid_drummer
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@kevinkatich7413
• Other: https://www.google.com/search?q=kevin+katich&sca_esv=4fbe7c869920a6f3&rlz=1C5MACD_enUS1047US1047&sxsrf=ADLYWILr_t0T3bXrRVJckG2knqDK250F0w%3A1736771699107&ei=cwiFZ8GhBrqhkPIP-tz18Qw&gs_ssp=eJzj4tVP1zc0zDFKzzBJSS42YLRSNaiwMEg2SkpKS01KsTBKTTa2tDKoSDUyTjFNNDZONE81TDJMM_DiyU4ty8xTyE4syUzOAACtKxSs&oq=kevin+katich&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiDGtldmluIGthdGljaCoCCAIyBxAjGLADGCcyBxAjGLADGCcyERAuGIAEGLADGMcBGI4FGK8BMggQABiwAxjvBTIIEAAYsAMY7wUyCBAAGLADGO8FMgsQABiABBiwAxiiBEjeClAAWABwAXgAkAEAmAEAoAEAqgEAuAEByAEAmAIBoAIHmAMAiAYBkAYHkgcBMaAHAA&sclient=gws-wiz-serp