My name is Mitchell Greenham, and I was born in 1995. I was raised in a small town just north of Toronto called Caledon. At a young age, my main hobby was playing video games. Music itself was something I simply enjoyed as a kid; it was by no means a main focus or a potential career path for me. I mostly listened to what my parents liked; a lot of rock and grunge from the 90s. I was not introduced to any instruments until it became part of our school curriculum in grade 6, where ended up learning how to play music with my father’s old alto saxophone from when he was in high school. Much to my surprise, I discovered that I excelled greatly in music; however, it didn’t necessarily become a focus of mine until much later in life.
As my high school education began, I was still very interested in video games. I started to get into a game called Rock Band, taking a massive liking to the drum peripheral within it. It started off just as a fun hobby for me, but before I knew it, I was playing many songs on the highest difficulty and putting in hundreds and even thousands of hours. I continuously devoted a lot of my free time playing this game over the years. I credit it for nurturing a musical ability I never really knew I had and growing it to where it is today. Part way through high school, I began to realize that music was something I wanted to be involved in as a career.
By the end of high school, I still had not grown out of my old musical taste that I had as a kid. I continued to listen to rock and grunge bands such as Incubus, Tool, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Korn, and Alice in Chains, but also started to incorporate and venture into metal and its various subgenres. Some examples of this are progressive bands such as Leprous, Haken, Periphery, the Devin Townsend Project, Native Construct, and many more. I was very intrigued by their ability to incorporate technicality into their music and still make a product more easily digestible to the average non-musical person. I began to believe that technicality is a very useful tool that can really help make music more unique and interesting. I base my own musicianship on this very notion.
I spent my first year out of high school taking lessons from a top drum student at Humber. He helped me learn a lot of the essential fundamentals of jazz, funk, and Latin music which helped me get accepted into Humber’s Music Performance Degree. During my time there, I had the privilege of studying under some fantastic drummers such as the head of percussion named Mark Kelso and a fantastic world-renowned drummer named Larnell Lewis, best known for his work with Snarky Puppy. However, I decided to leave the program after a year for personal reasons.
After another five years of practice and consideration, I made the decision that the music industry is where I feel I belong, but perhaps learning about the industry from the ground up would be a better approach. In hindsight, relying on music performance as a career path did not feel sufficient to me, as I felt I needed to be exposed to every facet of the industry that I could. That change of mentality is what has led me to Metalworks Institute. I have chosen to study at Metalworks to expand my knowledge in the field of production in order to create the highest quality drum content I possibly can.
My Mission
Through many years of experience, influence, and training, Mitch Greenham provides creative, unique, and intricate ideas as a drummer for the rock and metal genres.