“I’ll make it easy — my passion is music.”

As he gets comfortable sitting in a creaky wooden chair in the dimly lit Manzanita Hall, Alex Rule (12) smiles gently and warmly, with a faint sigh of satisfaction as he says “music.” Whether it be through jazz band, music production, DJ’ing or his solitary pursuits with music, for Alex, “music” is the repeated motif.

“I play trumpet in the jazz band, and I’ve been [playing trumpet] since elementary school. I’m trumpet one now, which is fun, and I enjoy that performance aspect of it,” Alex said.

Though he thoroughly enjoys his time spent in jazz band, whether playing trumpet or singing as he’s been doing for the past two years, Alex is especially fond of electronic music, having even dabbled in music production. His first encounter with production, which he fondly remembers, mixed campaigns, rapping, a digital audio workstation (DAW) and Neil Ramaswamy (12) all into one story during Christmas of freshman year.

“I got what’s called a digital audio workstation and I started to play around it with it. I made my first song… I gave that to Neil, because he liked it I guess,” Alex said. “He actually rapped over that; it was like a campaign song for his spirit run… He made a whole rap around it. Everybody in the circle still remembers that.”

Alex has also had a couple of highlights as a DJ, which he finds to be a perfect way to share his musical taste with others. He began when Alycia Cary (12) asked him to DJ for a sweet 16 birthday party during sophomore year.

“I went into it and I didn’t really know what to expect, but I ended up having a blast,” Alex said. “I just discovered that I love showing other people what I listen to through a more performance sort of deal. I learned how to read a crowd and do smooth transitions — there’s not that much to it, but I still kind of enjoy it.”

Throughout his development in music, and while growing up in general, Alex has always looked up to, and often followed in the footsteps of, his role model: his brother Andrew Rule (‘17).

“I used to really just want to be him, you know, so when he started playing trombone, I started playing trumpet. When he was running, I was running … It’s all really just been him inspiring me, because he’s just a great guy, and I really do look up to him,” Alex said.

His relationship with his brother evolved in high school, as Alex became more independent and started finding his own voice.

“When I couldn’t hit one of his achievements, like a very specific thing, it started to bother me less,” Alex said. “Instead of looking to him as something that I should be, I’ve started to really appreciate what it means to have a brother, as someone that can give you advice and that you can give advice to. I feel like he’s the other half of me. It’s nice to be really close to my brother and not have to feel like I have to be him.”

Having watched Alex grow as a musician since he first picked up trumpet, Andrew certainly recognizes the heights Alex has reached with musical talent.

“I’ve never met anybody who has the kind of musical expertise that he has in so many different ways… He’s been learning music for a long time, and when he plays jazz, when he plays trumpet, it’s really impressive. I don’t know anybody who can just stand up without having practiced something and play it so well: he has a really musical brain,” Andrew said. “I don’t think he practices, but I don’t know.”

From Andrew’s perspective, Alex’s cool confidence creates a fun aura to be around that marks the two siblings’ interaction.

“He’s hilarious because he knows exactly how awesome he is,” Andrew said. “It may only come out with people he’s really comfortable with, and he’s never arrogant, but he totally knows how much expertise he has in video games or music, and he’s not shy about letting other people know. And that’s what makes it so fun to be around him.”

Yet on the academic side, Alex’s talents manifest themselves in a perhaps more quiet but still clear way, as English teacher Brigid Miller, who taught Alex in junior year in the Honors English 3: Survey of American Literature course, noted.

“Alex’s soft-spoken and at times taciturn approach to class discussion belied an intellectual acuity that was unmatched,” Miller said. “He sometimes waited patiently to add to the conversation, and then he would deliver his profound insights in his quiet but powerful manner.”

In fact, this duality of character is exactly what friend Noah Lincke (12) found as being the most special thing that he valued in Alex.

“You can talk to him both in a really deep and emotional way, open up to him really easily… but it’s also easy to go between that and just having fun and joking around. It’s very comfortable and easy to talk to him between those two things,” Noah said. “Usually [for others] it’s one or the other, but for Alex, it’s definitely pretty much equal halves.”

In the busy activity of being a student, brother, performer, and friend, it’s often hard to find the time to just listen or think alone, as Alex enjoys doing. That’s where running comes in, which Alex has been doing since middle school through cross country and track.

“It’s very meditative, and I can think about whatever I want to think about, whether that’s like a math problem I didn’t understand during the day or a conversation I had with someone,” Alex said. “During the day it’s hard to just devote time just to listen to music, and you kind of have to do that if you want to get all the nuances of the song… I don’t have to pay attention when I’m running, and it just gives me more time to appreciate the music. And the nature is cool too.”

The introspective side of music is perhaps what Alex finds most appealing and rewarding. For him, music really is the key.

“I look to music to kind of explain things about myself that I can’t explain with thoughts or words, just these kind of questions that I have about life,” Alex said. “When I listen to music, those things become clear to me, not in a logical sense — but you can kind of feel why life is worth living.”