The Part That Holds the Song Together – Sathya’s Trinity Grade 8

Sathya Ganesh was seven when he came out of a music summer camp and went straight towards the drums. What drew him was an idea a lot of players take much longer to arrive at - that rhythm is the thing holding a band and a song together, and that the drummer is the one playing that central role. Nine years later he sat Trinity Rock & Pop Grade 8, the highest grade the board offers, and passed with a Merit.

Away from the exam, this is his band Cardinality at Band Camp, playing Tool’s “Schism” - a song built out of shifting time signatures, and a fair picture of the kind of rhythmic problem he enjoys.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kihHgTRTIrQ

Why he went for the top grade

Grade 8 was his first drum examination. He had been playing for years without sitting one, and he describes the grade as a marker for his own skill development - a way to capture and quantify what he could actually do. Rather than work up through the grades below it he went for the top of Trinity’s ladder, because that is the level that asks for the widest range of playing along with the theory behind it.

Learning the parts note for note

The hardest part, by his own account, was memorising the notation for each song. Going into it he was used to building grooves on the spot, and this exam asked for something different alongside that - not only accuracy but memory, every part played exactly as written. He got there through extensive practice, working until he knew the parts by heart and by muscle memory. He credits his teacher Josiah, for the practice, for clearing up the questions he had, and for the feedback that tightened the details. Without that feedback, he says, he would not have performed as well as he did.

Not only drums

Drums are not the only thing he does here. Since joining Trill Route in 2024 he has taken guitar, vocal and music production lessons alongside his drum classes, played at Intramural, and spent time in Band Camp with Cardinality. He is 16, and outside music he is interested in sports and chemistry. When he plays, he says, he enjoys experimenting across different genres and the particular styles that go with them.

The result

He passed with a Merit. What he describes first is relief that the practice and dedication had paid off, and then something simpler: “I felt proud that I could finally say that I was a grade 8 drummer.”

What he wants next

What he is after now is range. He describes it as building a wide rhythmic vocabulary, something he finds both enjoyable and necessary to his growth as a drummer. He wants to get there through genres he has not played much yet, trap and jazz among them. The aim, in his words, is to become not just a competent drummer but a flexible one.

Congratulations, Sathya.

Drum lessons at Trill Route in Indiranagar, Bangalore take students from complete beginners through to graded exams - you can see how they work on our drum lessons page.