All things drums or drumming
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?
Continue reading “Jams with friends, part 1”
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!
Continue reading “Toronto – Drumeo live meetup”
Sue, Iris, Doug
Our last stop before we arrive in Toronto was Brampton, ON where we enjoyed getting together with our musician friend, Iris. Of course, it was an opportunity to jam!
Continue reading “Brampton, ON”
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.
Continue reading “Myrtle Beach, SC”
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.
Continue reading “Monroe, NC”
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!
Continue reading “Jabs and jams, part 1.5”
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?
Continue reading “Jabs and jams, part 1”
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!’
Continue reading “Abbotsford, BC”
Last July we stopped on our way to Calgary for a visit in Linden, AB with my friend Larry and his wife Barb. Larry is a guitar-playing blues brother that I met through Blues Guitar Unleashed (BGU), as we’ve both been working our way through learning to play the blues. Well, we had a fine time and it seemed a great idea to see if we could stop by again as we head for Alaska. Answers: yes, we can stop by, and yes, it was great!
Continue reading “Jammin’ with Lucky Larry”
Our most essential piece of travel gear is our contact list. It includes family (yup, Sue’s cousins are half of it…), friends and other people we’ve met over the years or along the way who meet stringent criteria – fun, stay in touch, we’d rather hug than shake hands. We love stopping by to visit people, becoming temporary neighbors while keeping in touch when we travel.
Although we had to narrow the range a bit during the sprint (remember when we visited Howard because he was only 4 days away?), and shorten the visits, we did manage four totally awesome stops.
Continue reading “The Sprint, part 2 – What stays the same”