Brian Stephens started both his professional teaching career and his freelance drumming career in Meridian, Mississippi in 1991. It was then that Brian began to put himself through college by building up a weekly drum teaching practice of 30-40 students and by playing scores of nighttime club & weekend wedding gigs.

In 1995, Brian moved to Atlanta and by the middle of 1996, he was a member of the teaching staff at the Atlanta Institute of Music. Brian left that position at the beginning of 1999 to concentrate on his growing freelancer gig schedule which ushered in the second chapter of his private drum teaching practice.

Over the last 20 years, Brian has split the teaching portion of his work schedule between his weekly private drum & audio engineering students with occasional stopovers as Visiting Faculty at schools like The Atlanta Institute of Music & Media and the SAE Institute Atlanta.

Because of his incredible love for teaching, Brian extended his instructional work to audio engineering and music production by training students of vocational programs like The Recording Connection and by apprenticing interns 1-on-1 through the educational arm of his recording studio, Secret Cove Studios.

In addition, Brian has also spent time over the past 20+ years as a clinician and Brand Ambassador for companies like Paiste cymbals, ProMark drumsticks, Evans drumheads, Puresound snare wires, Planet Waves / D’Addario cables, and Waves, the pro audio software company.

In print, Brian has combined his teaching and writing skills to pen drum lesson columns and interview articles for magazines like Modern Drummer and Drum! Magazine. For several years during the early 2000’s, he even wrote a monthly recording column for Performer magazine. 

Around 2001, Brian also successfully tried his hand at teaching through the medium of the digital audio with the release of his audio book, “Stickin’ It Out - The Anatomy of A Professional Drummer”.

Sold through his own website at a time when companies like Audible where in their infancy and the iPod was just reaching consumers, this audio book was Brian’s first shot at producing, marketing, and selling musician-centric products. It proved to be the spark that lit his fire of enthusiasm for being a serial entrepreneur in the field of music.

The most recent evidence of that continuing entrepreneurial spirit would be his newest company Session Ace, maker of high fidelity in-ear monitors and several other products designed for musicians, which was started in 2016.

Throughout all 25+ years of this drumming and educational activity, Brian also lived parallel professional lives as a Studio Owner, Music Producer, Audio Engineer, Front of House Mix Engineer, church-based AV Coordinator, and Online Content Creator. He has also worked as a seasoned Technologist, knowledgeable Consultant and for-hire Educator for several large AV Integration companies.

At this point, it should also be mentioned that Brian’s professional drumming career has included working with successful musical artists like:

• Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame members The Drifters, The Platters, The Coasters, The Crystals, The Marvelettes, and The Shirelles
• Both Wet Willie AND their lead singer Jimmy Hall (Jeff Beck, Hank Williams, Jr.)
• Blueground Undergrass
• Atlanta Braves’ organist / jazz artist Matthew Kaminski

Brian has played on over a 1,000 recording sessions and, in addition to scores of albums and singles, his drumming has been heard on ABC, Disney+, MTV, Oxygen Network, and SoapNET, as well as a ton of jingles and incidental music.

He even appeared on-screen as Mary Steenbergen’s drummer in the 2013 movie “Last Vegas” starring Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, and Kevin Kline.

Many of Brian’s students from the past 28+ years have also gone on to become full-time professional drummers and drum / percussion teachers. Some have even found success as Grammy nominated recording drummers and International touring drummers, the most notable being Adam Box of the band Brothers Osborne.

Chapter Three of Brian’s life as a drumset and music educator now begins here on the Internet with The Drum Corner™. This site & this method of online digital instruction were ideas that Brian originally started working on in 2004 but, because of limits in web technology, his own time, and funding, was shelved until 2019.

Starting in 2020 and going forward, the Drum Corner™ site will be a primary area of focus for Brian and will be the principal platform that he will be using for his drum instruction work with individual students.

This new platform allows Brian to teach and drum students to learn in a manner that is not constrained by time or location. Students can go through the lessons and courses here at The Drum Corner™ at their own pace, selecting programs of study that meet each of their individual needs today while keeping an eye on the future of their musical trajectory.

Leveraging today's cutting edge web-based technologies, students can enjoy the benefits of a world class education and realtime professional feedback at a distance as close as their nearest Internet connection.

It is Brian’s hope that all of the courses, lessons, lectures, and personal interaction you encounter here at DrumCorner.net will help you expand your abilities technically, grow your understanding musically, and reach each of your goals successively as you move down the continuum of your journey as a lifelong student.