If I were ever to play the drums, I'd have to try very hard to keep a rhythm. I think I might have a suggestion which would help.
What I propose is that the stool on which the drummer sits should have a spring supporting the seat. Adjusting the stiffness of the spring according to the mass of the drummer and the desired tempo would give the stool a bounce frequency matching the beat of the music.
Much as people crossing a flexible bridge find that their step frequency gets altered slightly to match the natural frequency of the bridge, this would help to prevent small deviations from the required playing tempo.
From here it all gets a bit half-baked. As set up, it'd be ideal for one tempo. This isn't ideal. Nor is laboriously retuning the stool in between each track. What I suggest is a servo-driven adjuster mechanism and an intelligent controller which, if a significant change in rhythm was detected over more than ten seconds, would retune the seat to that rhythm. FX-pedals could also be used to quickly set the seat to predetermined frequencies.-- david_scothern, May 19 2005 Trager psychophysical integration and Mentastics movement education http://www.trager.com/ [JesusHChrist, May 19 2005] Hmm... I generally need my throne (term for the drummer seat) to NOT move as much as possible, since I tend to sit on the very edge (I also move to different positions for different styles). Maybe there could be some sort of knocking device in the seat that sorta "taps" the beat into your ass. Not physically hitting you on/in the ass, but you could feel it through the seat enough to use it as a sort of "deaf man's metronome." And let me tell you, the first time you play drums, coordination is a much bigger devil than rhythm.-- AfroAssault, May 19 2005 If I'm totally honest, I'm not sure I've got enough of either... lack of one trips up the other.-- david_scothern, May 19 2005 I think you'd find it difficult to work the pedals with the seat bouncing.-- waugsqueke, May 19 2005 You would need to adjust your playing but it might add some kind of subliminal, underlying pulse to the beat. Certainly worth an experiment and certainly deserving of a bun for originality.-- doctorremulac3, May 19 2005 If you worked this right you wouldn't need to 'do ' anything except stay awake.-- JesusHChrist, May 19 2005 Sorry my friend but I have to bone this for two reasons:
1) There's only one thing that will cure a drummer with bad time and that is practice.
& B) Drummers are not just time keepers, but musicians.
A musician drummer knows how to manipulate the rhythm and tempo at will. It's all about the push and pull. The groove factor if you will. That's why drum machines have not replaced humans. It's a completely different animal.
Check out Billy Higgins on Lee Morgan's "Sidewinder". World class players, but the tune gradually slows down from start to finish. I don't know if that was on purpose or not, but this happens all the time, even with great musicians. It's okay for tempo to breathe. That's what makes it HUMAN.
<End of the groove sermon>
Now how do you get 2 sax players to play in unison? You shoot one of them.-- bneal27, May 22 2005 //And let me tell you, the first time you play drums, coordination is a much bigger devil than rhythm.//
my dear bro was a drummer and he used to get me to try to pat my knees and lift my toes (pivoting on the heels) up and down at the same time; the trick is to pat the knee belonging to the foot that is rising. even more difficult to do than to describe.-- po, May 22 2005 An extension of this could be a "Resonant Dancer" where by, instead of putting a drummer on a spring seat, you could etend a dancer at the end of a giant spring so that all of the energy they expended could be stored harmonically.
Other spings on the contraption could vibrate sympathetically and you would get a harmonically resonating over-all musical instrument.
This idea is sort of an extension of the "Subsonic music" halfbakery idea into dance.
Theremin's Terpsitone was supposed to translate all of a dancers movements into sound but dancers had a hard time working it.-- JesusHChrist, May 22 2005 The resonant drummer would slow down as he drank more beer. Whether it's due to increase in mass, and therefore a lower resonant frequency, or to inebriation, we will just have to wait and see.-- Ling, May 22 2005 random, halfbakery