Drum beats can never be music to anyone’s ears but the tempo guides the rest of the musicians. However, drummers are also butts of jokes, similar to blondes and Irishmen:
What's the difference between a drummer and a drum machine?
You only have to punch the information into a drum machine once.
What's the best way to confuse a drummer?
Put a piece of sheet music in front of him.
What's the difference between a drummer and a savings bond?
One will mature and make money.
What did the drummer say to the band leader?
Do you want me to play too fast or too slow?
Did you hear about the bass player who locked his keys in the car?
He had to break the car window to get the drummer out.
But to quote Phua Chu Kang, “don’t ‘pray pray’ “with drummers…
as according to a Daily Telegraph (UK) report:
'Drummers are natural intellectuals'
By Gary Cleland
Drummers are better known for their beats than their brain power, but research has suggested that they might actually be natural intellectuals.
Scientists who asked volunteers to keep time with a drumstick before taking intelligence tests discovered that those with the best sense of rhythm also scored highest in the mental assessments.
Born smart? The late Keith Moon, drummer with The Who, could have had natural intellect
Prof Frederic Ullen, from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, concluded that there was a link between intelligence, good timing and the part of the brain used for problem-solving.
He said: "The rhythmic accuracy in brain activity that is observed when a person maintains a steady beat is also important to the problem-solving capacities measured with the intelligence tests."
For the study, Prof Ullen and Guy Madison, from Sweden's Umea University, asked 34 right-handed men aged between 19 and 49 to tap a drumstick at a variety of different intervals.
They were then given a psychometric test of 60 questions and problems.
Prof Ullen said: "We found that people with high general intelligence were also more stable on a very simple timing task.
"We also found that these participants had larger volumes of the white matter in the brain, which contains connections between brain regions."
Scans of the brain have shown that it uses a wide distribution of areas to listen to music.
The left side tends to process rhythm and pitch and the right looks after timbre and melody.
Incidentally, I was at Mahogany music shop in Amcorp Mall, PJ and saw a contraption that looks like parts of a scaffolding frame – black tubes on three sides held together by brackets. The only give-away was a foot pedal and a console on the left. When asked, the shop assistant said it is actually an electronic drums kit! I thought it was just a support for electronic drums kit which at least shows some round pads to show some semblance of drums. Anyway, she was willing to connect it to a nearby amplifier and I had a go at it. The most disappointing part was the hi-hats and cymbal, which could never give the ‘bounce’ of the real stuff. Its price has dropped from Rm6,000 plus to Rm4,200 but I would rather have the one with round pads (picture below) instead of bars (imagine the frame supporting the round pads but without those pads!) if I wish to have an electronic one.
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