Other musicians are cool, but only drummers have superpowers.
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People who encounter me as the CEO of Techbook Online, a news and event company headquartered in Philadelphia, inquire often as to where the Flood the Drummer® brand name comes from.
Once they become aware that I, in addition to being an award-winning journalist, am an accomplished drummer, their next questions usually aims to understand why then is a musician running a global media company that, as its tagline suggest, is trying to change the world.
For those who think of drummers simply as another component to a melody would be somewhat justified in their assumption that talent extends only to the edge of the stage.
But those individuals who acknowledge drummers as integral to community building and innate problem solvers can not only understand why my time off stage is dedicated to connecting communities through content, but themselves hold drummers in high regard.
An example of that type of person is Professor Frederic Ullen, from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, asked volunteers to keep time with a drumstick before taking intelligence tests and concluded that there was a link between intelligence, good timing and the part of the brain used for problem-solving, according to international publication, The Telegraph.
Other publications as of late have touted how much smarter drummers are than the average person. And many media outlets have gone as far as to analyze the health benefits of drumming, even noting how drummers can split their brains into separate functions all at once in order to exhibit limb independence.
University of Oxford researchers, as reported by several outlets, discovered that when drummers play together, both their happiness levels and pain tolerance increase, similar to Olympic runners.
And in an article by Jump Philly Magazine entitled “Drummers maybe Sitting, But They’re Working Their A**es Off,”Dr. Lois A. Butcher-Poffley, sports psychologist and assistant professor in the Kinesiology Department at Temple University, spoke to the physicality of drumming.
“There is a fitness component, no question. There is a lot of upper body work. While there is a lot of hitting, there is also a lot of moving across the body. There is spinal motor movement and gross motor movement. You have all limbs going.”
Since that post was published in the spring of 2013 the public will for drumming as a sport has increased, and more and more people are recognizing that drummers, and the steady beats they produce, can change the behavior of people around them.
Drumming is good for the body and for the community at-large, so let’s us all get behind a drumset and together PLAY an end to the world’s toughest problems!
Thanks for reading. Until next time, I’m Flood the Drummer® & I’m Drumming for JUSTICE!™
All musicians need timing, not just percussionists. Keyboard players (especially organists) often have multiple rhythmic patterns going at the same time (sometimes with the same hand). This is in addition to keeping track of melodic and harmonic elements. Conductors, especially those who work with modern music, conduct two beat patterns at once, give cues, and listen to make sure everyone is together, tuning is correct, etc. Not do downplay percussionists, but they are hardly unique.