Finding Your Rhythm: From Gut Feeling to Global Stages. Today Kelly Saward speaks with Vicky O' Neon

Finding Your Rhythm: From Gut Feeling to Global Stages

What if the thing you’re meant to do in life isn’t something you plan but something you feel?

In this inspiring episode, Vicky O’Neon shares her journey from a small town in Finland to performing on global stages as a professional drummer and percussionist. What started as a spontaneous connection to rhythm during a backpacking trip through South America turned into a full-blown career—built on instinct, courage, and saying yes to the unknown.

We dive into trusting your gut, breaking away from traditional paths, and the power of having just one person who believes in you. From her first paid gig to touring with global artists and shaping the future of music education—this is a story about following the beat that calls you.

If you’ve ever felt pulled in a different direction… this is your sign to listen. 🎶

#MusicJourney #drummer #drums #WomenInMusic #LiveYourPassion #MusicianLife #InspirationDaily #TrustTheProcess #CreativePath #GlobalJourney #FindYourRhythm #PodcastInspiration #listen

Who is Kelly Saward?

Kelly has been presenting radio shows for a while, and has often been asked if these shows can be heard again many months after the show has aired, listeners wanting to listen again. She heard what was being asked and now brings to you ...

'Conversations with Kelly'

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She wants to hear you, and shares here what's been heard so far. We all have a story, we all have something of value to share, we just need a safe space, the right ears, and a deep trust in what is felt. I'm beginning to understand the rest speaks for itself.

I invite you to listen in, get in touch, and if you'd like ... be curious to live the question!

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Kelly Saward in Conversation with ...

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Today I have got the pleasure of speaking with Vicky O'Neon, who is a musician, an excellent drummer, which I had the privilege of witnessing myself, and that's what's led us to this conversation. Vicki, good morning. Hello, how are you? Good. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me further today, following my introduction to your amazing work, which I want to talk all about. But first of all, just introduce who you are and what you do.

unknown 0:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

So my name is Vicki O'Neon. I'm a drummer and percussionist that also sort of specialise in electronic drumming solutions and setups. And I'm also a drum educator. And I'm originally from Finland, but I've been living in the UK for the past 16 years. I moved there to study drums to do a degree in drumming, and then I sort of just stayed and started working as a session musician.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

So take us all the way back to the beginning. So obviously, you grew up in Finland and when you were at school, did you have an interest in music in school?

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Um yes and no. Um it the music education in Finland is unfortunately not as supportive of learning an instrument as it seems like it is in the UK. So you can't study an instrument as a part of like after school clubs or anything like that in Finland. We do have something else that's called like uh a music institution uh where you can study classical music. So I did start to do that as a four-year-old and studied classical piano until I was about 12. Um, but because I wasn't really listening to classical piano and it was only classical music that was offered to to study, right where I came from in my small town, um, I kind of lost interest in that. So so I didn't carry on. Um so so yeah, I it it the the passion for drumming sort of came in a lot later in my life and actually quite late. I think most people start when they are younger than I was.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

So when you left school, what was the plan?

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Um yeah, so so I left school when I was 18, graduated college. Um, I was lucky to have been in a college that had quite a lot of um exchange programs with other schools abroad. So I had had the opportunity with my school to travel quite a lot uh and really fell in love with traveling and learning about different cultures. So when I graduated school, I actually had a place in a university in Finland to study political history, but I thought, you know what, I'm gonna see the gap here and I'm gonna go backpacking with a good friend of mine, and we're gonna go to South America. Um, and we did for six months. We started in Central America in Cuba, and then we sort of traveled all the way down, did a lot of the majority of the countries in South America. Um, and it was that trip that I would say really changed my life because I completely fell in love with rhythms. It was something that was awakened in me when I was on that trip, and I would often find myself with a pair of bongo drums or something like that on a beach just tapping away and having the best time. So when I came back from that trip, I was like, what was that? What was that feeling? It was something I was really drawn to. Um, so yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

I think that's really important what you say though, there is a lot of people now I think are really understanding to lead with how they feel rather than what they think, and what um, you know, the thinking mind teaches us this is right, and that can often take us off in different directions. But when you are able to feel into what, you know, really feels good to you, or if you go to a city or a place, and some places don't resonate, do they? But sometimes you arrive somewhere and you feel it feels like home and you just don't know why. And it's that following that feeling which is magical, and you'll prove that by doing that, it can completely change the course of your life if you actually allow yourself to trust your gut, I guess, in in those moments. Yeah. Have you always had the ability to have that trust your gut feeling?

SPEAKER_00 4:28

Um I've never thought about that actually. Uh maybe, yes. I I think definitely later in life I've become more more aware of it than realizing that it is something powerful about just having having a gut feeling about something and then just following that. Oh, actually, sorry, I would say I've learned from not always having done that. Because there's been so many times in my life, yes, uh, where I it's something hasn't just felt quite right about a person, a project, uh, whatever thing I was involved with, but I didn't trust my gut. And then every time I've looked back at that situation, it hasn't turned out well. Um, so so then I learned after being involved in multiple situations that has just taken me on the wrong course or been really complicated projects to be involved with musically or whatever it's been, relationships, all sorts of different paths of life. Uh yeah, I I've learned, okay, listen to your gut because it will tell you already way before you're going down a path, whether that's path is that path is worth going down.

SPEAKER_01 5:43

I think that's really interesting and sort of uplifting to hear and encouraging, particularly for young people, because I think there's a lot of pressure when you're growing up, isn't there? Around do this, follow this path, and you look at peers and other people around you and automatically feel that you've got to do this to keep up or fit in, and that feeling's always there, and it's often ignored, isn't it? The pressure.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Yeah. And and I think in Finland and I mean, probably in the UK as well, there is a lot of pressure on academia, and and you sort of need to know at a very young age, or so you're told that you need to know at a very young age what you want to pursue as a career, and you might not know that. Most people, in fact, don't know that when they are 14 years old or 18 years old, or even 25 years old, or even 39 years old. Sometimes but what I've learned from from life is that it's okay to change that path whenever in your life, when you get that feeling of like being drawn somewhere else, getting inspired by by something else, and it's never too late, and we don't need to have it all figured out, especially not when we're teenagers.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

I know, definitely not. What did you what drew you to political history before the gap year? Did you enjoy that subject?

SPEAKER_00 7:09

Yeah, I think um we had an amazing uh history teacher in our school. Um, so it was I definitely have a lot to to thank him for just opening up the understanding of the world to me, because everything is history, so it's just understanding why there are certain dynamics between certain groups of people and countries in the world, and we need to understand history to understand that. Um, so so yeah, I was grateful to get introduced to the world in that way with a plethora of knowledge. Um, and it was most of the traveling that we did with the school was actually as a part of different history classes. So, one thing we did, for example, was that we went with the Transsiberian trainway all the way from Helsinki through all of Russia to China, and then we stayed in China in three weeks with different families, uh and we learned so much about the history of Russia and the Soviet Union and China on that trip. So then when you get to actually see the places and be in those cultures, it sticks in a different way, and you understand the history in a different way by traveling to those places as well.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

It's amazing, isn't it? And I suppose you're picking up your own history lessons now, even with the drumming, aren't you? Just moving around and exploring new places and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

Well, that's what's been so amazing with then this career path that I've had, because my first passion was actually for travel before the music came into the picture, but I've been able to combine my passion for traveling with my career in music, because I primarily work as uh as a touring drummer or touring percussionist, so I get to see loads of different places through my work, and because often when you're on tour, you're performing in the evening and you have the whole day off to just go out and explore, and most days you will wake up in a different city or in a different country altogether. So that's been amazing to be able to then bring that history geek and go out and explore, you know, in all the different places that we go to.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Oh, so tell me when the music started to creep in, Vicki. So when did that so you had the feeling of the movement and that Latin America kind of I just I can hear that kind of music just moving through you and I can imagine what that must have felt like. So tell me how you went from just sort of jamming around on the bongo drums to taking this into where you are now? How did music creep in?

SPEAKER_00 9:46

Yeah, so so when I came back from that trip, I still had my place in this university, uh, but I went to a concert, uh, my friend's concert, local concert, because and they were in a pop and rock music school, and I was so blown away by their performance. And I was like, What can you learn to sound like this if you go to this school? I want to do that. Um, so instead of then starting my history studies, I said to myself, I'll take another gap year just to have some fun with music and really explore this feeling. How I thought about it at the time was to get this feeling out of my system with music so I can then do the serious stuff. But that's how I sort of had been wired to think. Uh, I didn't know anyone around me that was a professional musician, so I didn't think it was really a career option. Um, so so then I started this pop rock music program. Uh it's we have this concept in Scandinavia called folk schools, where you can um try a creative subject for a year in a school, and you often live in the school as well, and you have access to all the tools that are required to develop your craft within that creative project. So when it came to our school, we were living in the school, but we also had access to a recording studio and to a rehearsal space, a fully kitted out rehearsal space 24-7, which was amazing. Um, so that made me realize then when I was in that school that oh my god, no, this is this is really what what I want to do. And I started taking drum lessons as a as a side instrument. Piano was my main instrument at first, because that was all I knew. Um, and I had a really inspiring, amazing drum teacher who really sort of pushed me to say, you know what, like you could do this, and you know, people do this for a living, and so could you if if you really want to put put in the work. Um, so that's when the wire sort of the narrative started to change, and that gave me the confidence to go, okay, actually, you know what? This is what I want to pursue, this is what I want to do, and I think it's so incredibly important to have that one person, whoever that might be, in your life, whether that's a teacher, whether that's a family member, whether that's a a friend, that is just giving you that encouragement and that belief in yourself to really go for something. Um, so thanks to him, I then started looking up for music schools uh where I could develop my skills and essentially study to become a professional drummer. Um and I found a school in in London, which was the first contemporary drum school in Europe. It was called drum tech at the time, and now it's under the BIM B I M M BIM umbrella. Um, so yeah, I flew to London, uh visited London for the first time in my life to do an audition, and at that point I had only been playing drums for a year, so I was very green still on the drums, and you have to remember you have to play loads of different styles of music, and you had to sight read, and it was all quite scary. But I was very lucky to to get in on their diploma year, um, and that was now 16 years ago, and that's how I ended up moving to London, and that was sort of the beginning of the professional career. And at that point, I said, bye-bye, history, history studies, you're never gonna have been in my life.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

Although slowly, slowly, you'll probably have little bits of that drip in for your personal interest, but I think it's so important what you just shared about having a supporter in your corner, because the more conversations that I have with people, their whole life path could have changed because they had either a good or a bad supporter, be it a teacher, a parent, a friend. And if someone tells you no, you can't do this, you you really do lose confidence um in yourself. And if you've got someone backing you and really lifting you up, you've got something to kind of lean on when the days feel a bit harder, haven't you? And it just makes the world of difference.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

Yeah, and there I'm so grateful that my parents were always supportive of the decisions that I made. They they were not in a position where they could tell me you're an amazing drummer, because they simply didn't have that skill set themselves. I mean, I wasn't an amazing drummer at the time, but you know, the encouragement that the drum teacher could give. But when I did tell them, hey, I'm thinking of applying for a school in London and moving to London and pursuing a career in this, they didn't go, No, that's gonna be really hard. That's gonna be they said, okay, if that's what you really want to do, we support you all the way, which is equally important. So even if they weren't the instigators, they were still supportive of my decisions. And I had some good friends uh in the local school here in Finland that were really great musicians that also wanted to pursue a career in music, but their parents were dead against it, and and I could really see sort of the mental struggle and mental battle that followed them for years. Because some of them went against their parents' wills and decided to study music, anyways. Uh, but the conflict and the wrath that that created within the family dynamic and therefore within themselves, then had massive implications in their lives, or then they decided to not pursue a music career, and that also impacted them because then they were studying something that they weren't really that passionate about.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

Yeah, so it does make such a big difference, doesn't it? I mean, how did it feel for you? Because you're obviously quite well travelled anyway, even prior to discovering the drums. You'd had that experience with travelling. What star sign are you, Vicky? I'm Gemini. Are you? I just wonder when people have got different traits for travels. I wonder. Um, what did it feel like when you knew you were permanently moving to London? How was that for you initially when you first got here to just start this new career? How was that? What did it feel like?

SPEAKER_00 16:15

Um, yeah, it is definitely a big thing, I think, for anyone to uproot and start a new life in a different country where you don't really know anyone. Um, and now I know a lot of people, and I have a lot of friends in London that's done that exact same move as me. And I think I was quite lucky because one of my good friends, um, me and her moved together. She's a vocalist. So she started in the same school as me. They had different departments. So she started in the vocal department, and I started in the drum department. So that made everything just so much easier because I wasn't completely by myself. We had each other uh for the three years that we were doing our degrees. So essentially, what I did was I did a year of diploma, but then I jumped straight to the school's second year of their degree because they had an option to do that if your uh grades were good enough. So I ended up staying three years to get a degree from that school, and so so did she. So the first three years in London, we had each other, which made all the difference. Um, and then after that, she decided to to move back to Finland and or then go traveling, and and I stayed, but at that point, I had already I had my network in London, so then it wasn't as as scary.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

Yeah, and what followed for you after that when you got your degree? I imagine it's quite hard putting yourself out there and getting work, isn't it, in the in that industry?

SPEAKER_00 17:41

Yeah, I I think the it was actually scarier uh when I was about to graduate. That was like that was the real sort of oh my god, what am I doing now? It was scarier to do that than actually make the move to to move to London. Because also um when you're studying, you get a student loan. So you have some type of money coming in even when you're not working. Uh, and in Finland we also have a really great support system for students where they actually uh pay you for um at least a part of your accommodation, the government pays you, um, and they also give you uh a study support, which is something that you never have to pay back. So it's not even a loan. So that meant that for the three years when I was studying, I didn't really have to think about being able to support myself financially as long as I lived um sparsely with the little money that I had. But then as soon as your uh studies finish, then it's like, well, all of that support is now gone. So and London is really expensive to live in. It wasn't as expensive back then as it is now, now it's just ridiculous, but it was still expensive. So it's like, well, how do you then earn start earning money, you know, uh from this? Did this in some ways it's like I was at that exact um pipping point that everybody had been warning you about. But how are you gonna make a living? It's so difficult to be a musician and blah blah blah blah. And then it's really standing there like screaming at you, yeah, how are you gonna make this work now? You know, it's really scary. Um, so fortunately all already when I was studying, I was doing educational work back home in Finland where I created my own workshops and I had some drum students. So I've always been really passionate about teaching and education. Um, so I sort of had a little bit of that that I could start fall back on going back home to Finland, but then also start to get a few drum students in London. Um, and then just try to network as much as I could. I started going to loads of jam nights in London to meet other musicians, and that's eventually how I got my first gig playing in a band at a wedding, which was my first paid gig, and then there was loads of musicians in that band. It was like a collective of musicians, so then I met more musicians that then booked me on other gigs, and slowly that thing started to roll, and and I sort of got out on the other side, and and that allowed me to to stay in London instead of moving back home.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

And how did that feel your very first paid gig? What did that feel like? It must have been quite a moment, that first one.

SPEAKER_00 20:36

Yeah, it felt amazing. It it was like, okay, we could do this, and um I've always had a very sort of strict work ethic, I guess, even already when I was in primary school, secondary school, no matter what I've been studying, um, same whilst I was doing my whole degree, um, and same today, every single job I get, I really put the work in. Um, and I think that that has really paid off in my career in general. Um, so when I got that first wedding gig, I did put the work in, and and I made sure I really learned all the songs, like note by note, fill by fill. Like so I could walk in, and although it was like a new setting and in some case, in some ways scary, because it was a big deal for me. I wanted to get more work, you know, I wanted to impress the other musicians, I wanted to be good at what I was doing. Um, and the only way to really do that and and to not feel really stressed out about it is to prepare as much as you can. Um, so so I put the work in, and then I could really also enjoy that gig because I knew that I knew what I was doing, you know.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

Yeah, and you can tell it's paid off because now obviously this is your full time paid work, and you are a professional drummer. So tell us about what work looks like today. What do you do now? What does drumming look like in your world?

SPEAKER_00 22:07

Yeah, it looks like many different things, which I love. It really suits my personality to have a lot of different sort of projects and different balls in the air. So we did a big tour in Europe, UK, and Australia. I think we played around 70 shows maybe over the year. And she called it NTK 25, which was her debut album called Not That Kind. So that's what NTK stands for. And she never got to tour that when she initially came out because of bad management. And there's a whole story behind that that I'm not gonna go into. So that's why it was important for her to really get to celebrate that now. And we have an amazing band. Um, get to travel a lot. I have been traveling a lot with Anastasia for the past four years, and it's been an absolutely incredible experience. I grew up listening to her music. I'm a big fan way before I started working with her. So to then get the opportunity to work with someone like her is just incredible. So that's one thing that I do, and then the other um big chunk of work that I get um or that I do is playing the house band of uh a TV show called Name That Tune, which is also a really fun project. So of so that happens about once per year, once every year and a half. But when it does happen, it's kind of full time for for three months that we're working. Um, and that is a really fun game show that started in the UK and now it's actually coming back to the UK on ITV, which is really exciting because it's only been on American television the seasons that I've done so far with it. And it's two contestants that have a buzzer and they are trying to guess what the song is that the house band is playing. But there's loads of different ways that they sort of build the whole competition and then they win money doing that. Um, and what's so amazing and fun about that project is that you really have to dive in and and do a lot of deep active listening because we have to recreate all these famous songs, and it's thousands of them that we've done at this point, um, and really listen to well, what are the components that make this song sound sound exactly like this song? And then to be able to hear all these songs put back together like this, you know, is is it's amazing and so good for my ear development, for for my musicality and so on. So so and we're just about to start another season of that on Monday. So I'm very excited for that.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

That is exciting, and I suppose you're always learning, aren't you? Because creativity is such an excellent language that's undervalued, in my opinion. I think you know, we've got lots of different nationalities and cultures, and some people can't communicate, you know, by voice, can they? But through creativity, through music and stuff, people can really feel and understand through that. So to really have to dive down into that and break it down so that people can interpret it and then be able to name that tune essentially, yeah. You can see the layers of it, is um, yeah, it's amazing. Do you have a favorite type of music that you like to play?

SPEAKER_00 25:51

Um, no, and and I think that's probably why I've been so drawn to becoming a session musician, because what we did those three years at drum tech was essentially learning the quite solid foundations in so many different types of contemporary music. Um and I love them all. I think there's something like a genre wouldn't exist if there wouldn't be something great about the music within that genre. And and I love diving into different genres depending on what the music requires, what the artist requires, what the job requires. Um and for me it's just all about different moods and different head spaces, and that makes me put on different types of music. Um, this might come as a surprise. The music I probably listen to the most is binaural beats and meditative music, uh which I often have on in the background if I'm working or if I'm doing, if I'm just trying to relax. Um so that's often passive listening, just sort of creating a soothing atmosphere to be in. But then depending on if I'm what what mood I'm in, then I can go in so many different directions uh musically.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

You know, I I mean frequencies and sound waves are a mate. I'm a meditation teacher, so I do a lot of work with um with that, and I write a lot as well. I've published a book, and whenever I write, I'm writing something else at the moment. I always have binary beats in the background, different frequencies depending on what I feel I need, or if I can't sleep, or you know, there's so many different things, or even when you've got a cold or you're unwell, the frequencies in the music can just make huge shifts. It's amazing, really.

SPEAKER_00 27:45

Yeah. And and I absolutely love uh sound baths and sound healing, and um, and it was less than five years ago, maybe, that I did one for the first time, and it was like, what have I missed? Also, like working with music as a full-time musician, but up until that point I had never had that experience. I couldn't believe I had been missing out on being able to feel literally in my body frequencies that way that you can during a sound healing session. Um, so that so that's something that I'm a big fan of these days, just to truly be able to get the frequencies to like resonate through through our bodies.

SPEAKER_01 28:31

I bet you would be amazing at delivering a sound bath. I've actually got some bowls. I bring some sounds into meditation mainly to shift like through different chakras or voice or throat or something. But I think, yeah, that'll be something that would be great that you did. You'd be amazing on a big one.

SPEAKER_00 28:48

I've never actually I've never explored um yeah, start studying or learning how to deliver it myself. I've always just been enjoying the experience, but it would be interesting to learn more about how to actually create that myself. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

I bet with your ear, you'd just be able to just do it. Definitely. Yeah, because each bowl has got a note and everything. And a couple more questions for you, Vicky. So I wondered one question that came to mind when you're now in the band, when you're now their percussionist, and there's obviously a drummer there, which was the position you had, how does it feel? Is there ever a part of you that just wants to get back on the drums when you're doing the percussion?

SPEAKER_00 29:34

Oh, yeah. That it's it's been such a fun experience, I would have to say, to be able to play essentially the same music with the same artist, but two completely different roles. Because although both drums and percussion is all about rhythm, it's very different roles in the band. And for those who don't know what percussion is, because a lot of people don't that I get that question a lot. There's basically any instrument that you sort of play with with your hands, so it can be kongas or bongos, tambourines, shakers, and I have a completely custom built set up for my percussion rig where I have these big thumbs behind me that I hit, and then I have these marching drums that I go out with and play in one section of the show. So so percussion is sort of anything that you hit that isn't a traditional drum kit, yeah, falls under the percussion umbrella. Um and and the drummer's role is kind of to hold down the band, hold down the beat, hold down the groove. So a very, very fundamental role, like carries a lot of responsibility. If if the drummer misses a beat, everyone can feel it in the audience on stage. You know, you have a lot of responsibility because of that, in that position, which can sometimes feel quite scary if it's big festivals, a lot of people in the audience, or even if it's smaller ones, you know, because there's it's just all you just know how important it is that you nail every single hit that you play. Um, and if you miss a beat, just one hit, you feel responsible, you feel guilty for all the fellow musicians on stage. You feel like you've let them down, you know, and the artist. Whereas uh when you're playing percussion, you're more sort of adding sound effects at the top. Um, so it's it's a very different role. And and a drummer is usually playing constantly, there's constantly a beat going that carries the music. With percussion, you can sort of come in and out and switch instruments that you play depending on what flavor you want to sprinkle on top for that specific section of the song. So I would say in some ways you have less responsibility, um, although everyone is carrying responsibility on stage because it's all about creating a sound that works as a whole. Um, but you can in some ways be a little bit more free and creative with it. So, for example, uh the brief when I was playing drums for Anastasia for those specific tours that we did was very much like she wanted the live show to sound as close to the recordings as possible. So that meant that all the drum parts were already there. So my job was to be able to recreate them live as close as possible. Whereas then last year, when we did this tour when I was on percussion, which is now continuing this year, um, she said, Okay, I want to do something new, I want to spice up these songs because I want to really celebrate them, but want them to be fresh for my fans. So we all all went into the band, went into a studio for for a few days and workshopped every song. Um, and a lot of her songs don't even have any percussion parts on them altogether. So that meant that I got to go in and create new parts, which was such a different approach, and it was so much fun, and that sort of uh became a very creative process, and that ended up then uh me creating the whole unique percussion rig because every song I was like, oh, maybe I could add a little bit of this, well then I need this little instrument. Maybe I can add a little bit of this, but then I need this thing. Um, and that's how my whole percussion rig came together.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

That's a lot of fun though, isn't it, for you? And great that you get, it's great. And you get to carry that on. So it sounds like you've got some great stuff coming up. Before we go, can you tell me a little bit about your educational platform? Which you obviously are really passionate about education and giving back and sharing your skills, which is how I discovered you through the workshop that you were running. What kind of things are you involved in in that sort of platform?

SPEAKER_00 33:55

Yeah, uh, there's a few different um things I'm involved with at the moment. Uh, some of them exist online. Um, one thing that I did uh over lockdown um was I got some funding to create um an educational series about the history of drumming, which my my history interest did come back in. So, and that's that's on my YouTube channel, and it's called Drumming Through the Decades. And my YouTube channel is under Vicionion Drums, and it's a 12-episode uh series that is all about the development of drums starting 2000 BC up until today. But what makes that uh series different from other drum history things that we might have seen or heard is that I put a special emphasis on the develop um the history of female drummers because they have always been there. They were the first drummers in our societies, uh, but so many of them have been forgotten, so many of their stories have been forgotten. So it's really I did a lot of research into that, which was a maze, an amazing discovery. So I just wanted to put together a body of work where someone can come go and watch and learn about those things that I most certainly was wasn't taught in school. Uh so there's that. Um, and then I'm also involved with um a platform called Love to Learn Drums. And the main person who is running that channel, uh her name is Emma, and that's a really great platform for anyone who's interested in in learning drums. It's it exists, it exists on uh Instagram and TikTok and YouTube. And we are just about to uh start up uh a new channel under that channel, which is called drumming and technology, and that's where I'm gonna be sort of spearing that channel. Um, and that's for people that are more interested in how they can incorporate loads of different electronic tools or electronic instruments into their drumming setup. So that's gonna be launching uh in September. So that that doesn't that that's not out yet. Um and then I I do masterclasses like the one that you came to on Sunday. Um, and I I've done a couple of years, I've been performing at the UK drum show. So I'm always up for getting booked to do a masterclass on specific topics. So sometimes sometimes I'm do I do webinars. The last couple of webinars, I've done the topics on for those who are how to make a living as a musician and um like your visual identity as a musician. So, and that was on often I get like requests to do a workshop or a webinar or a masterclass around a specific topic, and then I build it around that. Um, and then I have some one-to-one students as well. So there's different avenues depending on what people are are interested in.

SPEAKER_01 37:03

That's amazing. There are so many more questions I could ask you, but for any aspiring drummers or anyone of any age, for that matter, because there might be someone out there wanting to learn drums or get more involved, how can they find you? Tell us all of the platforms, social media, websites where we can find you, Vicky.

SPEAKER_00 37:24

Yeah. So I would say I'm mainly active on Instagram, and my Instagram handle is Vicky O'NeonDrums. So you can start following me there. If you have any questions or want to get in touch, just send me a direct message there. That's how we now connected, right? For this as well after the masterclass. Um, and then I also, well, my website is actually down at the moment, but usually I have a website which is coming back up soon under wikione.com. Um, I have a TikTok channel, I have a YouTube channel, I'm not as active on those at the moment. Um, but people can also follow me there if that's their preferred platforms and Facebook as well. All under Vicky Oneeon drums.

SPEAKER_01 38:10

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to speak to me and share that. And I think it's really important, um, you know, everything that you've said, it's inspiring for anyone that's getting into music and thinks, oh, I can't make a living out of that, but you absolutely can. And I think it's really wonderful how you have actually, even you know, subconsciously brought the history of music back through, even talking about the series you did on YouTube, because you know, people have been drumming, you know, like shamanic drumming and things like that for years, you know, haven't they?

SPEAKER_00 38:42

And that's really healing and always in contrast. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:45

Yeah, and I just think it's really important that we understand all the di little different threads um of that. So thank you so much for your time. And yeah, thank you for being with me today, Vicki.

SPEAKER_00 38:58

Thank you for having me. Thank you.