The Harvard Crimson: “What’s your trajectory in the next five years?”
Shock: “Right to the top, my boy, right to the top.”
Braden Shock Ellis ’24 picked up the violin when he was four. Then he moved to the cello. Then the bass. Between the Juilliard Pre-College program, NYO, Curtis Summerfest, and Interlochen, he found a new love: producing.
“My dad produces for fun and used to do it a lot back in college and I was like ‘that’s so cool’ so I started doing it myself; so I taught myself,” he said in an interview with The Harvard Crimson. “I learned, outside of bass, how to play guitar, electric bass, drums, and a little bit of trombone when I need to, and piano most prominently.”
In high school, rather than the typical path, he took college classes and allowed his musical exploration to take over his academic free time.
“I had all this other time where kids are in school from seven to three … to explore my sound and develop,” he said. Collaboration with other artists, he found, became an integral part of the musical journey.
“One of my friends I used to play with in high school, Julian Miltenberger ’22. I was in a band with him. We had a really nice pianist named Micah Graves. The way that they meshed together, I wanted to be them so bad. They had so much groove, so much style, and I would just try to imitate that,” he added.
Arriving at Harvard, a world of artistic freedom and possibility opened up for Shock.
“In high school, I was always really busy with the classical stuff,” he said. “I have mad ADHD, so making beats was like my escape from everything else; I would always be making all this kind of random stuff, but since I got here more people have a demand for one kind of thing over the other.”
By responding to requests for “slimy” and “Young Thug-type” beats, Shock found a new niche. Indeed, his status as a musician on campus is well-known to both friends and peers alike. “Mostly, what people know me as is the…