Grammy winning Toronto musician can play any song after hearing it one time

Toronto musician becomes Youtube viral sensation Larnell Lewis, a Toronto-based musician, is suddenly a viral video sensation thanks to his uncanny ability to replicate iconic rock songs.

TORONTO — With a music career that’s netted him multiple Grammy awards and Juno nominations, Larnell Lewis is anything but a one hit wonder. The Toronto-based drummer and composer is suddenly a viral video sensation thanks to his uncanny ability to replicate iconic rock songs in one take.

A YouTube video showcasing Lewis effortlessly performing Metallica’s 1991 hit “Enter Sandman” after listening to it just once has generated about four million views since being posted three weeks ago.

“ I work closely with an online drum education platform called Drumeo. They specialize in teaching drummers,” Lewis told CTV News Toronto.

“They started a segment with a few different drummers where they actually get them to listen to a song and see how many tries it will take for them to learn the song. They asked if I’d ever done 'Enter Sandman' before and I was like ‘no I’ve never even heard of that song before."

The ability to learn through listening was cultivated early on. Lewis’ father was a musician, and performed actively in the Pentecostal church. Lewis says he started drumming when he was two years old, banging on pots and pans when his drumsticks where longer than his arms. Dating back to his great grandfather, nearly every member of his family is a musician of some sort, including his brother Ricky, a touring drummer for the Weeknd, who appeared alongside the Grammy-winning rapper at this year’s Super Bowl.

“When you're at church you see a drummer playing and you want to do that too,” explained Lewis. “That environment was important, as far as maybe one of the intelligences that I have, being in scenarios where I've had to learn very quickly. You find ways of retaining information, or breaking it down, and then absorbing and executing it.”

“If you're a drummer and you see somebody do something like this, it really should inspire you to practice,” said Allan Cross, a music historian, radio personality and former drum instructor. “Enter Sandman is a song that's five minutes and 25 seconds. That’s a lot to remember. There are a number of tempo changes. To do it in one take? That’s phenomenal.”

“I remember hearing about this kid coming out of the gospel scene, and people telling me he was going to knock my socks off,” said Mark Kelso, head of Humber College’s percussion department. Kelso taught Lewis in 2004, a year that would see him win the Oscar Peterson award as the school’s top music student.

“It was clear that he was sort of a head and shoulders above, a lot of the other students that I had been seeing,” recalled Kelso, who isn’t surprised by his star pupil’s ability to nail an iconic rock song so quickly.

“Coming out of the church, reading music charts is not a big thing. It's mostly based on your hearing abilities and listening skills. His were at a very high level, so I really kind of tried to talk to him about upping his reading to match his hearing skills because that would be a deadly combination for him. He took those words to heart, and now he's a vicious musician because he can read anything and he can hear anything. It’s like a double whammy.”

Life has come full circle in a number of ways for Lewis. He recently released his second solo album, Relive The Moment, a follow-up to 2018’s Juno-nominated In The Moment. He’s also back at Humber College, teaching aspiring drummers alongside Kelso as part of the school’s music program. His home life is just as busy, where his two children, ages one and three, have followed the family tradition as diaper-wearing drummers.

“I just want to maintain and carry on the tradition of that communal aspect of music making that's been with my family for so long.”