Spencer Tate: Engineer & Virtuoso

Courtesy of Spencer Tate

Spencer Tate is a multi-instrumentalist hailing from Frederick, Maryland. 

He studied engineering with a minor in music at Swarthmore College in Philadelphia and now is a water resources engineer. 

“I've been playing music since I was six,” Tate said. “Even before I was six I was always interested in music.” 

He began by taking private classical violin lessons and branched out into other genres and instruments as he got older. 

For Tate, YouTube was instrumental in expanding his musical repitore. 

“I think YouTube was the biggest way in which I taught myself different instruments and genres,” Tate said. “Since I was homeschooled, I feel like I had a lot of time to myself to pick up an instrument  between subjects that I was doing and kind of mess around, but I think YouTube was a huge teacher for me when it came to things other than classical music.” 

Tate plays violin, mandolin, guitar, bass, banjo, ukulele, viola, and perhaps other instruments, often forgetting some of the instruments he’s able to play. 

“I don't know that I have one identity when it comes to music. I think there are three big things that I do and that's classical violin, and then jazz r&b, and then I also play bluegrass on mandolin and such,” Tate explained. 

Bluegrass has been an interest of Tate’s since childhood.

“I've been interested in bluegrass since I started taking classical violin lessons. My mom keeps telling the story about how this one time when I was really young, I had just begun violin lessons and there was this bluegrass band playing and I was just like glued to their performance and she's like, ‘oh boy, this kid's getting into bluegrass at some point’ and it ended up happening,” Tate said. “I started playing it on fiddle and on mandolin when I was around 10.”

As a teenager, Tate participated in a traditional music festival in Maine. 

“That’s where I learned a lot of tunes and got into the culture a little more,” he said. “That was a huge influence for me as well.”

The switch between genres comes with ease to the virtuoso. 

“I'm pretty good at pattern recognition and what can differentiate certain certain genres and figure out what makes genres different and so I feel like it's easy for me to just hop in and play an entirely new genre fairly quickly,” Tate said. “In college, I was in a tango string ensemble and that was just something that I picked up pretty quickly. I have a friend who likes Indian classical music and it wasn't long before I was playing stuff with him on guitar.”

Tate is a member of a gospel band called “Hey Barnabas!” with music out on all platforms. 

“The guy who put it together, he was a friend from church back in the day and he now lives in Austin, Texas, but when he was in Maryland, he was a huge mentor to me. Getting me up on stage to play for worship and yeah, just helping me begin to improvise and not have to always play off of sheet music,” Tate said. 

While Tate is a gifted musician, he chose a different path for this day job: environmental engineering.

“I feel like I never wanted to fully have to rely on doing music. Like it's just really hard to make a living as a musician, and the problem is that you could be an amazing musician and still not be able to find any work to stay alive,” Tate said. “I was also really interested in environmental engineering. I really care about the environment and who it affects. I feel like it disproportionately affects lower income communities and Black and brown communities and I really wanted to study something to figure out solutions to that and help people.”

For Tate, his science and music endeavors are separate sides of himself, but are connected by one core desire. 

“I think the one thing that I could say is a similarity is with what I want to do with environmental engineering, it's about connecting with people. It's about helping people. That was my passion.”

He went on to say, “I guess music is kind of like that as well, at least how I see it. It's like connecting with people, helping.”

Tate utilizes social media as a way to connect people with his music during the pandemic. 

 “I really got into posting on social media during the pandemic, and for me, that was a huge way to help people. It was rough for everybody during those times, and not only was it a good de-stressor for me, but it was really nice to see that my music could be used in a way that could help comfort others during that stressful time.”

To stream “Hey, Barnabas”! on Spotify, click here or to keep up with Tate on TikTok, click here.