How drummers can find someone to play with part 1

A decade of playing the drums I've learned a thing or two about finding other musicians to play with. 

1st some prerequisites

1. Lose your shyness. The faint of heart never won the fair maiden.
   
2. Know your worth. If you're not quite sure where you sit in the drum pantheon, ask your teacher. They'll give you some honest assessment and a few ideas.
3. My ability to read music and follow a conductor from my activities as a pianist really helped me out.

Now let's go hunting.

1. I played for a year in private, in the practice studio before I ventured out into the world. 
   
2. First stop was the Burlington community concert band. This was a band that didn't require auditions, wink wink. I heard they needed another percussionist. I was prepared to play triangle. The night I arrived there was no drummer behind the drum set. So they ask me, "you play drums?" I said yes,  I sat in and sight read for the next two hours, they said you got the spot. Next week I was playing an outdoor concert bashing my way through Hawaii 50 TV theme.  I was terrified. But I made it through with my dignity more or less intact. I stayed for the next couple years. It was really really fun. I miss that bunch.
   
3. Up next I started a jazz band that met a few times a month in a community center in Oakville.  One of my adult jazz students played piano. The conductor of the Hamilton concert band played upright bass. My student, the pianist, was a guitar teacher, he invited one of his adults students to play guitar. We were a band. 
   
4. Along the way I joined the Hamilton concert band, which was another community band They did want to hear me before I joined. That was fun too. Then I moved to Toronto and started all over.

up next: Off to the big smoke

​David