Jamm Studios 2020 — Q1 Newsletter
Creating a Community
We hit the ground running at Jamm Studios Doha with a vision to inspire creativity through music. Our goal is to create a community of people passionate to learn music, and we achieve this with our innovative teaching style that is structured to enable a tailored approach to each individual student. We are building a diverse family of Jammsters who we want to help achieve their musical goals.
In just a few months we’ve grown to over fifty students with more joining us every week. We love sharing what we do and we have big plans for the coming year. This newsletter will keep you informed on all the details of Jamm life, from the big achievements of our students to the small day-to-day shenanigans of our staff, and everything in-between!
At the end of January Jess joined the team as our Studio Manager. She very quickly elevated the studio to new levels of operational efficiency, and since joining the family our student community has doubled. Big shout- out to Jess, and welcome to Jamm! She is the one to speak with for all your queries relating to scheduling and payments. If you need to contact her — the easiest way is by WhatsApp to the studio phone (+974 5533 9806)
At the beginning of March
Jamm family members from our UK team visited to say hi. Dominic and Christian got down to business with establishing partnerships and helping us build future prospects for Jamm Studios — we can’t wait to share with you what is to come!
Between sleeping (very little) and drinking tomato soup (quite a lot) Dominic spent time with the team sharing the ideals and inspirations central to our UK base — not forgetting to mention the goodies he brought with him. Amidst all that, he was meeting the Jamsters who made it all possible — if you missed him, don’t worry as he is sure to be visiting again this year!
Christian (pictured left) in his spare time can be found cultivating baby sweetcorn and making sculptures out of avocados — but he had no time for that in the 1 week he was here. The videosmith marvel worked tirelessly to create content for our Instajamm and Student Jamm series that will be released over the coming months.
Small Guitars for Small People
One of the new goodies we have at the studio is our new small-scale guitar (for our small-scale students).
Young beginners should have access to a small scale guitar so that barriers around size and weight are removed! We believe you are never too young to start engaging with music and we want to ensure our students can attain their full musical potential from an early age!
The Jackson Dinky can be used by our younger students in lessons and in the Jamm Rooms.
A Jammster is going down- under!
Alexia came to us for vocal lessons in January before moving to Australia to explore new education and work opportunities. Alexia has a passion for musical theatre and with our vocal tutor Elisa, they have been working on improving her range and developing character in her voice.
It has been a great pleasure to have her at the studios over the past couple of months and we wish her all the best and future success in her pursuits down-under!
We had the pleasure of seeing Alexia perform on stage as part of the Sleeping Beauty pantomime presented by The Doha Players — in which another vocal student of ours Patricia played the antagonist Maleficent (BOOOOOOO).
Good Things Come To Those Who Wait!
Presents brought from the UK included brand new drum heads for
our kits along with tone control rings and EQ pads for the bass drums — Kenjo our drum teacher was over the moon with the new arrivals!
Between eating sushi at his favourite establishment and imparting his expert drum knowledge on his students, Kenjo set out to replace all of the drum heads — for the snare and toms we have 2-ply coated drum heads, EVANS G2. Coated skins provide a warmer and more controlled sound, with reduced attack and less unnecessary overtones. On the bass drum, we fitted Evans EMAD drum heads which are a great tool for increasing the punch and low end of a kick drum.
We look forward to all our students reaping the benefits, so be sure to come down any time and make use of the new gear!
We filmed the first bunch of Student Jamms for our monthly episode in which our students have to perform a song/riff/rhythm of their choice in front of the camera. Students Jamms is a collective episode in which Vocal, Guitar and Drums students demonstrate the material they have been working on with their instrumental tutors. It’s been a long time coming for this to be launched here in Doha and everyone was really excited to showcase their progression for our international audience to watch.
We are very proud of them for doing so amazingly well and we cannot wait for you all to see it! In the meantime be sure to check out the series from the UK!
In our response to the Covid-19 pandemic we have transferred all of our lessons online, both in the UK and in Qatar — that’s around 500 students!
If you haven’t already joined us in the clouds, don’t miss out, our digital lessons are currently free for active students!
Hope you enjoyed our first newsletter — if you have any ideas or suggestions for what we should include in the future let us know!
