I've participated in a couple of hobbies pre-web and one pre-digital. When I returned to both in recent years, I was amazed at the tooling, availability of information, etc.
The Pre-Digital:
I found a drum teacher around 1970 through a weekly throw away called a "Pennysaver". He came to my apartment (yup I played drums in an apartment, I feel sorry now for my neighbors), all I remember is that he used to time me doing the rudiments off of his wrist watch. We recorded the times in a notebook. One week he brought a new watch and all my times were slower. I can't remember why (maybe this was a digital watch), but it felt like I somehow slowed down.
The next guy I must have found through the same weekly and he used to bring a portable keyboard and the end of every lesson was him vamping a little on it in various styles and me playing. That was my only experience ever playing with anybody for a long time.
I then finally tripped across another teacher, this guy I thought was a superstar, he only taught in is house, in his basement, where he had 2 sets setup and a stereo so we could play to music. I thought this guy was the bomb because:
1. His drum set looked just like Carl Palmer's from the ELP live album
2. He would play Tarkus sped up to 45RPM
I also remember thinking that I would surely not need a metronome after a few weeks, because my timing was so good, but this "superstar" guy made me use one everyday. Since I only really knew 2 other drummers in my life, I somehow didn't know that metronome use was normal.
Ah, the good old days of isolation
