Don McMullin

Don grew up in Concord, CA and began his music career studying classical piano in the 3rd grade. After watching Buddy Rich on television, there was no doubt he wanted to become a drummer. His folks wouldn't agree to playing drums in elementary school band, so Don settled for the trumpet. He became 1st chair in all of his local bands, however once in high school, Don switched to drums and joined the Concord Blue Devils Drum and Bugle Corps as a snare drummer. He was a charter member of one of the most talented drum lines to dominate drum corps competition. He "aged out" in 1974 and the corps went on to become world famous. They have won more DCI world championships than any other drum corps in history. At the same time, during high school Don became interested in writing and arranging for the jazz band. With encouragement from his HS jazz band teacher he continued his studies at the local college. While in college Don was awarded scholarships to the Berklee College of music, the University of Nevada Reno, University of Hawaii Oahu and the newly established Dick Grove School of Music. He also began arranging music for a Las Vegas lounge act and eventually put together a band and went on the road as the musical director and drummer. Shortly thereafter he joined the 50’s touring group “The Platters” as their musical director, arranger and drummer.

After a few years after touring the world with the Platters, Don landed in LA and began doing studio work at Paramount. He made some contacts with a number of notable studio players, but also spent time in Las Vegas and Reno in pit bands and back up bands. He was arranging music for Las Vegas acts and received some notable comments from performers including Mel Torme, Duffy Jackson (drummer for Sammy Davis Jr), Lou Rawls, Don Lamond, Roy Burns, Dave Garibaldi, Don Alias to mention a few. Don moved to San Diego in early 1980 and began gigging with local jazz musicians. He was recording and working with Dwight Stone, Carl Evans Jr., Hollis Gentry, Mitch Manker and other local players who went on to form the jazz group "Fattburger".
Throughout the late 70's and early 80's electronic music was just beginning to evolve. Don had always been interested in electronics and began reading about how sounds are created/modified. Reading and studying many of the electronic “cookbooks” of the time, Don began to build black boxes and gizmos for his musician friends. He designed and built one of the first drum synthesizers, along with multi-mode metronomes, phase shifters, mixers, analog time-aligned filters and just about anything anyone requested.

In 1985 he moved back to LA and became a father for the first time. It was clear trying to raise a family while on the road and pursuing a music career was going to be difficult. However, he realized building electronic projects was something he could enjoy doing. Knowing he needed a formal technical education, Don enrolled in college and began the path to earn a degree in electrical engineering. At the same time he found a job at a small high-end audio company in Tarzana CA named Kinergetics. Starting the job as a technician, he eventually became the chief electronic engineer and designer of the flagship high-end audio power amplifier the KBA-75 (still considered to be a stellar pure class A amplifier). Also during this time Don suddenly found himself a single parent, which pushed the music career even further out of the realm of possibility. Don finished his BSEE at Cal State University Northridge in 1991 and landed a job in aerospace with the Hughes Aircraft company. After meeting the love of his life (30 years of marriage and another wonderful son) things finally seemed to be going in the right direction, although it was not the music profession he imagined in earlier years.

At Hughes Don was selected to be part of an elite group of engineers working on Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) night vision systems and aided target recognition computers which are still deployed on Cobra and Apache helicopters today. Working on a number of top secret projects, he won several corporate awards for excellence. It was through Hughes contacts that Don was first approached to join a small start-up company named Broadcom. Don was selected to join Broadcom as one of the first 50 employees. Two years later Broadcom went public and is now one of the largest semi-conductor companies in the world making communication chips for virtually every connected device including iPhones, iPads, cable modems, Ethernet routers/switches, cable set-top-boxes and virtually any device that carriers digital information. Don is named as an inventor on 39 US patents. Along the way Don has enjoyed sharing many activities with his wife and sons including snow skiing, scuba diving and flying, they are both private pilots sharing the left seat duties of their Cessna 172SP.
Throughout this journey Don has continued to play and write music, although not professionally. Back in 2013 he decided it was time to release some of his music. The seven CDs released to date he plays all instruments/VSTs, and recorded/mixed all tracks as well. We hope you find something you like . . .