
The Neuroscience of Drumming - hunglee2
http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/the-neuroscience-of-drumming.html
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Cshelton
As a drummer for 15 years, including drumline at a competitive level, the head
of a top university drumline, "drum cantain", and years of playing set in a
band, I've observed a few things among different people.

For the people that are trying to learn, it became very noticeable, some
people can naturally drum, and some people simply...just can't. The divide is
quite large in fact. A natural drummer could pick something up in 5 mins,
while someone who 'can't' would take weeks to pick the same thing up. Then of
course any iteration of that new thing, the natural would almost immediately
get it, and again....the other would take the same amount of time. It's really
like how the brain is wired. (I'm not a neuroscientists)

Among people outside of the drumming world, you can notice people tapping all
the time. At a concert of just to music playing. Some people I can tell right
away, they would make a good drummer if they actually did it. They can stay in
time to what they are listening too and it comes naturally.
Others...well...rhythm just isn't going to happen for them.

Put 10 people in a room with music playing to a steady beat, say 128 bpm. Now
ask them all to clap to that beat. 99% of the time it will rush. Try it out.
If there is someone who is "natural" at it, that person, or several of them,
will separate from the group, and you get the flam, or out of sync, clapping
sound.

As for "smarter"... I don't know about that. I would say that many drummers I
have known would easily be consider the best musicians in the band. Whether it
be a rock band, jazz, or marching band.

~~~
ssharp
You are substantially more accomplished than I am, but I do have one
observation to add to this.

I think there are four elements to making a drummer:

1) Being able to keep time 2) Limb independence 3) Speed 4) Taste

For me, #2 was clearly the hardest. I found that it took lots of practice in
order to achieve relatively decent independence. And even after all that
practice, I find many other drummers are much better than me in that regard. I
can't say it's ever held me back in terms of confidence because I play the
types of music I want to play and can still say I'm better than many other
drummers. I started out on snare drum and later moved on to the set and even
though I had a strong foundation in rhythm, stick control, etc. it was still a
lot of practice.

I'd be very curious to know what you think some people can pick up in five
minutes. I've always been curious about how long it takes others to develop
that muscle independence.

You can also hide some technical proficiency by playing tastefully. This works
well in many genres of music, but certain genres require substantial amounts
of technical ability.

~~~
Cshelton
I was more thinking along the lines of the mental side of drumming. Although,
limb independence is all mental I guess...

Talking about picking up in 5 minutes, I meant more for rudimentary drumming.
i.e. playing rudiments, or a certain combination of notes, different tempos,
going from eight-notes, to triplets, to sixteenth-notes back to a triplet on
beat 4, all in a measure. Stuff like that.

It applies to the set and limb independence as well. I never really thing
about limb independence anymore. At a certain point, if you can "think it",
you can play it. Thinking it means something different to a lot of people, but
literally count out the notes, however you do it (1 e and a), and make sure
you say the number of the downbeat on the downbeat. You'll get to the point
where you see a rhythm, and without having practice what your arms and legs
are doing, you can just play it on set. Now it takes a bit of practice to get
to that level, as it involves an understanding of music, reading,
comprehension, etc. Of course there are uncommon time signatures and stuff you
may run into that are weird, but you would be playing some very uncommon music
haha. I played with Steve Smith (of Journey) and he was thrown off by an
ensemble we were doing, took him a few hours to get it, even with his
experience. It was just something he had not see before.

Now stuff like that crazy blast metal or whatever it's called now is
different...getting your feet to play sixteenth notes on the double bass at
200 bpm is (stupid) just muscle building...

~~~
ssharp
I completely get what you're saying. I've achieved good enough independence
with my arms and my right leg, but never really got there with my left leg.
Outside of playing quarter or eighth notes over whatever else I'm doing, I
never really got there with the rest of it. If I were to try and learn
something more a more syncopated left leg pattern, like a lot of latin grooves
have, it would take me a lot of practice before I felt comfortable with it.
That's where I really began to struggle and start noticing shortcomings in my
play. When I started working through Complete Modern Drum Set, which probably
increased my proficiency on the set more than any other book, is when I really
started to notice how much I struggled with it. A lot of that stuff wasn't
that difficult to pick up -- the linear patterns, time signature changes,
playing off the beat, etc. But through in some odd hi-hat work and I just fell
apart.

I never really struggled with some of the other stuff you mention though.
Rudiments, keeping time, understanding tempos, and how notes break down, etc.
That stuff came relatively naturally. Once I understood notes break down into
whole, half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth, etc., understanding things like
triplets came very naturally.

Interesting story about Steve Smith. I remember seeing a video of Carter
Beauford struggling through odd time signature changes as well. I'm sure
unless you're immersed in things like progressive music on a regular basis,
things outside of standard time signatures probably are a little foreign,
especially to pop drummers like Smith and Beauford.

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Cthulhu_
Bit of a chicken-and-egg problem there; are they different because they drum,
or do they drum because they're different? Same can be postulated about
software developers; do they think different because they work with
programming languages, or vice-versa?

~~~
rprospero
Since there's a lot of drummers checking in on this one, I thought that I'd
come in from the reverse side. Rhythm never made any sense to me. When we were
supposed to clap to the beat of a song in music class, I usually just cheated
off the kids next to me and tried to match my hands to their own. If that
failed, I'd just clap every time the person in the song said a word. For
children's music, that was usually close enough.

~~~
zo1
" _If that failed, I 'd just clap every time the person in the song said a
word. For children's music, that was usually close enough._"

It's not just children's music. Most songs you find today, if you listen
closely enough, the words _follow_ the beat. I.e. every once in a while, a
word starts on the "one" beat.

And we take it for granted. You'll very quickly realize something is "off" if
that's not the case. That's usually what you find in "artsy", "look at us
we're weird and different" type of music. Annoying most times, and incredibly
difficult to get right.

------
otis_inf
"Could you come up with a counter-example to the hypothesis that drummers are
actually natural intellectuals?"

"Lars Ulrich"

"..."

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11thEarlOfMar
Jaco Pastorius started as a drummer and then moved to bass. In that crossover,
he held tightly to his initial drumming bent and incorporated rhythm into his
playing, frequently playing off the drummer to add complexity to the music's
rhythms. He also used a sequencer to sample his bass as the rhythm track for
his solos. I am guessing it would have been fascinating to image his brain and
compare it to both drummers and non-drumming musicians:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3FAbGepa14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3FAbGepa14)

(kicks in sequencer at 4:10)

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mkesper
Where's the science? (Didn't have time to watch the videos though)

------
kailuowang
I take MOOCs as a hobby. HavardX's fundamentals or neural science
[https://www.mcb80x.org/](https://www.mcb80x.org/) is probably the best
produced MOOC I've ever seen.

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benmarks
Drumming is almost as sublimely infectious as yawning - try tapping a little
rhythm around others and see how regularly others start tapping themselves.

------
jefurii
As a bassist, I'm curious when neuroscientists will think about analyzing the
brains of the rest of the rhythm section.

~~~
duderific
As a musician and drummer for many years... I am putting myself in the
"natural rhythm" camp - I never struggled with keeping time, it came easily
and I didn't have to work too hard. Now, actually learning to play a drum set,
actually getting the limb separation down, took years and years of practice
before I could feel really comfortable.

As far as the rest of the rhythm section -- it's the same for any member of
the band. You either have it, or you don't. I played with several bass players
who didn't have it, and I felt like as the drummer I was working twice as hard
as playing with a bass player that did "have it". I knew a bass player who
practiced for hours with a metronome, and he could never play an upbeat in the
right place. That's something that comes at an intuitive level.

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dbhattar
I didn't see anything definitive in the article. Didn't go through the videos
though. The takeaway seems to be if you can play music to the point of causing
pain ('musician's high', may be), then your brain probably is different.

Isn't that true for any field, musical or non-musical?

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usefulcat
"... the work of Terry Bozzio (below) playing the largest drumkit you’ve ever
seen."

Unless you've ever seen Neil Peart.

~~~
codq
In it's largest incarnation, Terry Bozzio's drumkit absolutely dwarfed
Peart's.

[http://i.imgur.com/W81F6XN.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/W81F6XN.jpg)

~~~
usefulcat
Agreed, but that's not the same set in the video the article refers to.

