Finally: Science proves that drummers’ brains are different
Man, I’ve always thought it was just me.
When it was his turn to take Eagleman’s test, Champion spent nearly twice as long at the computer as the others—his competitive spirit roused at last. He needn’t have worried. Eagleman’s results later showed a “huge statistical difference,” as he put it, between the drummers’ timing and that of the random control subjects he’d tested back in Houston. When asked to keep a steady beat, for instance, the controls wavered by an average of thirty-five milliseconds; the best drummer was off by less than ten. Eno was right: drummers do have different brains from the rest. “They kicked ass over the controls,” Eagleman said. His next task would be to use the EEG data to locate the most active areas of the drummers’ brains, then target them with bursts of magnetic stimulation to see if he could disrupt their timing. “Now that we know that there is something anatomically different about them,” he said, “we want to see if we can mess it up.” …
What would it be like to have a drummer’s timing? I wondered. Would you hear the hidden rhythms of everyday life, the syncopations of the street? When I asked the players at Eno’s studio this, they seemed to find their ability as much an annoyance as a gift. Like perfect pitch, which dooms the possessor to hear every false note and flat car horn, perfect timing may just make a drummer more sensitive to the world’s arrhythmias and repeated patterns, Eagleman said—to the flicker of computer screens and fluorescent lights. Reality, stripped of an extra beat in which the brain orchestrates its signals, isn’t necessarily a livelier place. It’s just filled with badly dubbed television shows.
Yeah, pretty much, and I’m not even what you’d call a good drummer. It’s pretty useful to have that sense of time and timing when you work in radio, though, as I’ve done on and off during my career.
(via Instapundit)
Funny, I always knew drummers were weird.
What does that do to the old joke about “How can you tell there’s a drummer at the the door?”
(Answer: the knocking speeds up and slows down.)
It does not, however, change the musical question “How can you tell the drum riser is not level?”
(Answer: the drool only comes out of one side of the drummer’s mouth.)
Drummers have brains? Who knew?
I am the Anti-Drummer. I can lose the simplest beat instantly. There must be a hollow spot in my head where the ability to keep a beat is supposed to reside.
What a surprise. Someone who has practiced at something for decades is better at it, and that practice shows up on brain scans. Really, whom is this not true of?
I played drums for over thirty years (self-taught), and don’t drool. Though yes, there are tooth marks on all of my books. Urgh! Chewy!
I never thought about it, but yes, I do hear/see/comprehend patterns within patterns within patterns, all the time. And equally so as the article suggest, it’s really damned annoying at times.
Perhaps this explains why so many of us drummers are at risk for spontaneous combustion…
Now, during the Flower People period, who was your drummer?
David St. Hubbins: Stumpy’s replacement, Peter James Bond. He also died in mysterious circumstances. We were playing a, uh…
Nigel Tufnel: …Festival.
David St. Hubbins: Jazz blues festival. Where was that?
Nigel Tufnel: Blues jazz, really.
Derek Smalls: Blues jazz festival. Misnamed.
Nigel Tufnel: It was in the Isle of, uh…
David St. Hubbins: Isle of Lucy. The Isle of Lucy jazz and blues festival.
Nigel Tufnel: And, uh, it was tragic, really. He exploded on stage.
Derek Smalls: Just like that.
David St. Hubbins: He just went up.
Nigel Tufnel: He just was like a flash of green light… And that was it. Nothing was left.
David St. Hubbins: Look at his face.
Nigel Tufnel: Well, there was…
David St. Hubbins: It’s true, this really did happen.
Nigel Tufnel: It’s true. There was a little green globule on his drum seat.
David St. Hubbins: Like a stain, really.
Nigel Tufnel: It was more of a stain than a globule, actually.
David St. Hubbins: You know, several, you know, dozens of people spontaneously combust each year. It’s just not really widely reported.
Everybody knows drummers are different.
Who pays for these studies? Is this really where our scientific research dollars should be going?