Toronto – Drumeo live meetup

The event of the summer for us was a live meetup of a group of people from Drumeo, my online drum program. Drumeo provides a plethora of video lessons and workshops, live-streamed or online. We, the students, post videos of ourselves demonstrating our new learnings or a new tune on the Drumeo website forums, and we share feedback with each other. We also have the option to post our videos for a Drumeo instructor to critique and make recommendations. Of course we’ve met some Drumeos on past trips, however, a live get together with 14 students is a rare thing. And outrageous good fun!

It was surreal… We initially met in a rehearsal studio on Friday night to get the space set up for the Saturday session. Within less than an hour, everyone had the same thought – it’s like we’ve known each other for years, even though we’ve (mostly) never met. Of course, we’ve all seen each other on Youtube, so there was no extended round of introductions, and the conversation immediately just flowed like that of old friends. We finished the set-up and kept the conversation going through dinner at a local pub.

Saturday was the main event. Stephane Chamberland from Quebec City and New York City was our drum clinician/educator for the day. I don’t think there could have been a better choice! He’s a brilliant jazz fusion drummer with humility and a sense of humor, excellent teaching skills, and jaw-dropping grooves. His focus through the 3 workshop sessions was improving all the little things that make our drumming better. Wonderful stuff!

We scheduled a break to connect on a Zoom call with a concurrent live Drumeo meetup in Europe!

The schedule also allowed some open time, which 10 of us used for a jam session. The jam band was a drummer’s dream! Since we were meeting in a rehearsal studio, the room came with a pretty nice Mapex kit. Stephane plays Yamaha drums and Yamaha Canada provided a top-of-the-line Tour Custom kit for him (and us!) to play. I had my Samsonite kit along, so we had 3 drum kits, and an electric guitar and a bass guitar that Doug brought in filled out the instrumentation. Doug and Christine took turns playing bass while Sandy, Marlene, and Doug swapped around on guitar. We just played simple chord progressions with different rhythms and everybody kept changing instruments and drum kits. A few of the Drumeos had never had an opportunity to play live with other musicians and it looks like they loved it!

Dinner in a very nice restaurant let us continue the conversations. And a few hadn’t had enough, so connected for breakfast on Sunday, reminiscing and already talking about future meetups! Long may they continue!

Thanks to organizers Vihar, Joy and Matt (who could not attend) for all the care, time and energy they put into making this a totally successful event!

For anyone who’s interested, more meetup pix… And here’re a couple jam clips (courtesy of Joy B)…