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| Steven H. Cornelius Music and Stroke |
I mentioned in an earlier post that while I was still the ICU, a neurologist, who was interested in music, asked me whether or not I could tap out a steady rhythm. I responded by tapping a complex rhythm loop with my unimpaired right hand (presumably by using my unimpaired left brain). But I didn’t really understand the problem. Nor perhaps did he.
When I began regularly to practice drumming, I used a metronome. Before my stroke, by playing exactly in sync, I could mask the metronome’s click and make it seem to disappear. But now, I wasn’t even close. Ahead or behind? I had no idea. Part of the problem was coordination (I was accurate when using the right hand alone). With my affected hand, however, I couldn’t even figure out when to begin the stroke so as to strike the drum pad at the proper time. Using my left hand also compromised the timing of my right. (More on this in a future post.)
How bad was my time? My violinist wife once came into my office and asked me, why turn on the metronome if I was going to ignore it? I wasn’t ignoring it, but my best effort was really lousy.
Even so, I used the metronome to discipline my basic tempo while gradually zeroing in on the beat. I came to think of drumming as a kind of musical game of darts. Now that I could throw a dart (a drumstick) and actually hit the wall (hit the drum pad), my next goal was to hit the actual “dart board”—that is, to play respectably close to the beat. A “bull’s eye” meant masking the metronome’s sound. That still happens only rarely. But the fact that it happens at all is most encouraging.
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