[quote]Professor X wrote:
perseng wrote:
Professor X wrote:
pookie wrote:
Last thought: Counting tempo might reduce performance at first, but eventually have no impact as you train for it. Football players are able to play at a high level of exertion while remembering the current play. The impact of counting tempo might subside after a few days or weeks of doing it, as it becomes “instinctual”.
Totally, the ability to multitask is a skill that can be developed. Consider the act of playing guitar (or drums, or tambourine) and singing a song with a different rhythm. It is quite difficult at first, you need to learn how to separate the ‘channels’ as much as possible so that you can do one thing without it interfering with the other.
This is slightly different. I play an instrument as well and the counting of rhythm doesn’t take more than a four count. I tap my feet to the correct pace, but I don’t actually count out “1, 2, 3, 4”, aside from when I first learned music. You simply keep pace…not count out the pace.[/quote]
i believe this is the same thing and has to do with what’s learned and controlled by the subconscious, which waaay faster and efficient at processing muscle movement and what’s being overidden by the conscious mind (counting). this to me is what the word “training” is all about.
many complex rhythms i can play i won’t be able to play when i try to count them out aloud. in fact this is the basis of alot of my daily practice: adding load to what i’ve already learned by challenging myself to be able to count aloud while playing. the next step is increase the load further by adding accents and syncopation to certain beats
and counting those aloud,while playing.
for example i’m tapping out a basic polyrhythm right now: a 2 count w/ the accent on 1 with my left hand and a 3 count w/ the accent on 1 w/my right. basic hemiola, 2 against 3 both starting at 1. i can perform this with my hands but cannot count either the 1,2 or the 1,2,3, out loud while playing. further load is trying to accent only the 1’s. then accent the 2’s. then accent the 1 and 3 the first time and the 2 the second and voila a whole new rhythm is born.
but here’s the relevant point: it’s not the voice that fails it’s the hands that fail and can no longer tap the rhythm when i try to add the voice. it’s a breaking point, a moment of overload, the straw that breaks the camel’s back etc.
its damn hard sometimes because you’re at the limit of what your brain can do until it learns to process more information subconsciously.
counting aloud in progressively more complicated ways is a major tool for alot of musicians to find weak points in a piece- the spots that are likely to to break down when there’s distraction.
i work the hell out of those spots adding load in every way i can think of precisely because something as simple as counting is a load and those who don’t understand this to be so have simply never done anything at its very limit of performance for any length of time.
this is also a major component of stage fright, when your conscious mind is hyper-aware and wishes to control everything but it’s too slow and clumsy and will never be able to flow the way the subconscious can if you’ve put in the time to train an absolutely flawless technique. thus the performance fails even if performed flawlessly minutes before.