Drums – Page 2 – The Destinators

Quebec City, part 1 – Drums

We met Stephane Chamberland, an internationally known drum educator, at the Drumeo meet up in Toronto last July. His session there was amazing – a series of small yet effective changes that would radically transform the sound of our drumming. At that time I knew that if I ever made it anywhere near Quebec City, I’d be signing up for a private lesson. We’re in Quebec City. Time for a lesson!

Halloween visit with mom

My mom loves Florida! In fact, she claims no desire to ever be in New England again, so we’re grateful that she lives is a senior facility with exceptional staff, where she loves the people and the activities that are customized for her. Although we’d like to see my mom more often, we only get to visit 3-4 times a year due to the distance (1500 miles/2400 km). We try to drive at least once a year which allows for an extended stay, a few stops along the way, as well as bringing along some music gear. Then, of course, we aim to pack all of her favorite things to do into that visit!

Jams with friends, part 2

Each time we drive down to visit my mom, we select a different route, aiming to see different sights along the way down and back, meet up with friends, and hopefully find opportunities to play music. For this trip, we opted for a relatively western route through the Appalachian Mountains. The timing would be great for us to visit 2 national parks we’d not yet visited, and it would be peak foliage season in both – New River Gorge and Great Smoky Mountains National Parks.

Coincidentally, and serendipitously, 2 Drumeos we met in the last year were in our most direct path through the mountains. Wanna jam?

Jams with friends, part 1

When we travel, we seek opportunities to meet up with other musicians and play music. Our universe of on-line musician friends is growing quite large. Doug has long been a member of Blues Guitar Unleashed and I’ve been a member of Drumeo for the past 4 years, and more recently we’ve both begun singing and piano lessons with Singeo and Pianote. Can we put together a virtual jam band? What about IRL?

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!

Myrtle Beach, SC

Dorothea Taylor is one of my favorite instructors at Drumeo, my favorite online drum education program and drumming community. She’s relatively new to Drumeo, having joined the instructor team about 2 years ago. However, she’s not new to drumming, nor music education – she’s been playing for 56 years and working with students for almost as long! Dorothea preaches the benefits of using rudiments (think marching bands – yup, she started out in a drumline) on the drum kit – and rudiments are what I most need to learn to take my drumming to the next level. Her no-nonsense, disciplined teaching style resonates with my learning style.

Monroe, NC

My friend Lloyd has only ever sold one guitar, and I bought it. We met online through the Blues Guitar Unleashed forum, which we were both using in our quests to become the amazingly excellent blues guitar players we are today. Since that seminal transaction, we’ve gotten to know each other pretty well through our online interactions. We have met in person once or twice, and we have tried and failed to meet in person at least one other time. This time, it was relatively simple for Sue and me to adjust our northbound route between Florida and Vermont to include Monroe, NC, which (not coincidentally) is where Lloyd and his wife Maurette have chosen to make their home.

Jabs and jams, part 1.5

This time, it was a cosmic, serendipitous, path crossing of two Drumeos…

During an online conversation about drumming, fellow Drumeo member Shawna (aka Music Dragon) mentioned she was heading out on a road trip. I perked right up and asked about the trip. Numerous online conversations later, she mentioned that although she lives in North Carolina, Shawna was starting her road trip from her mom’s place in Florida. Florida? Where? Satellite Beach, about 5 miles from where my mom lives… And, she’d be in town for 2 weeks – overlapping with our stay. Gotta meet up!

Jabs and jams, part 1

As Doug mentioned in the previous post, we’re on our way to spend some time with my mom in Florida. We decided to treat ourselves to a little bit of normalcy. We made plans to visit a few OVFs (Old Vaccinated Friends) along the way. Doesn’t that sound, er, normal?

Abbotsford, BC

There’s no chance we’d miss a certain stop in Abbotsford as we came through southwest BC. Our loyal readers know I’m a drummer. Actually, I’m proud to say I’m now a professional drummer, having earned $108 so far this year (all before leaving for this trip in May)!

For the past few years, I’ve been a member of Drumeo, a drum education website and fabulous on-line drumming community with world headquarters in Abbotsford, BC. The team at Drumeo produces state-of-the-art, video-based drum education material featuring awesome in-house drummers, a distributed, international cast of world-renown drum educators, and a generous dose of bona fide rock stars in the drum world. They have programs in place to support the student members at all levels, in virtually any musical genre. And certainly for this drum student, it’s working.

I checked in to see if I could stop by to drop off a couple of hugs to a few of my online heroes, and perhaps get a quick tour. I got a resounding ‘Sure, c’mon over!’