A Psychology Lesson Interspersed With Music

I cannot recall if I have ever discussed left-brained versus right-brained drumming on this weblog before. It is a rather complicated topic, with its' roots buried in Psychology rather than music.

Understanding the complexities of the brain is a huge academic undertaking, and even leading professors of Psychology will tell you that we still understand only very little of the workings of the brain. So, please accept this as my disclaimer that I know very little about the brain itself, but I know enough that I can make a few generalizations to further facilitate this entry.

The frontal lobe of the brain is divided into two halves: the left side, and the right. Both sides operate differently, and both sides are responsible for different aspects of thought, and reasoning. The left side of the brain is the logical side. It is highly mathematical, and rational, among other things, controls the actions on the right side of your body. The right side, is the more creative side of the brain, and controls actions on the left side of your body.

There have been many studies that have shown that artists are generally left-handed. This would make some sense since as just explained, the right side of the brain controls creativity. I am not going to develop this argument further, as I really don't have much knowledge of these statistics, but I would like to take this a step further as it pertains to music and drumming.

When a student takes lessons from an instructor (such as myself), they are provided with a number of exercises that helps develop the student's coordination and reading abilities. Exercises are little more than that - read, and execute in ad infinitum until proficiency develops. Exercises such as the above are logical, and thus only develop the left side of the brain.

Many of my students have developed a proficiency in exercises not unlike those described above, but when I ask them to just "play the drums", they fail miserably. What they play is tortured, rigid, and unmusical. The answer to why they cannot "play the drums" is simply because playing the drums without written material requires development of the right side of the brain.

Developing the creative side of the brain is much more difficult than assigning exercises that develop coordination. I am attempting to address this issue with some of my more advanced students to see how they take to this new approach. It will take a number of weeks, but I am going to see if they can eventually make music without the aid of written material.

Creative drumming is a lot like singing a song, or even speaking a sentence. Music is a language, thus it has conventions that are similar to written and spoken language. There are nouns, verbs, adjectives, grammar, and punctuation of sorts in music. Trying to get my students to speak in such a language is going to be a difficult task. The only way I think I can facilitate this is by starting very simply. Get the student to play some simple figures on the snare drum, and try to get them to develop on that idea. The ideas should be further developed by adding more complex rhythms, and colors such as toms and cymbals.

Applying the rudiments to this exercise is key to the success of this program. So far, I am going to spend a few weeks on the single-stroke roll, as this is the most often used rudiment, and likely, the most diverse.

I will also have to find a way that I can teach them how to listen to other players in order for the experiment to be a success. I have yet to determine the best approach to this idea. If my memory remains intact, I will update this weblog to indicate the degree of success of this experiment.