It’s official: drummers are smarter than you (and everybody else)

http://consequenceofsound.net/2015/10/its-official-drummers-are-smarter-than-you-and-everybody-else/
 
"Far too often, drummers have been given the shaft. Second to only, maybe, bassists, they’re the member in the band considered most replaceable: you can just pull some chump off the street, sit him behind a kit, and on with the show. According to science, however, drummers aren’t the mouth-breathing neanderthals humorists have made them out to be. News and analytics site PolyMic compiled a group of studies that indicate drummers are not only generally smarter than their bandmates, they actually make everyone around them smarter too.
 
The research suggests that drummers have innate problem-solving skills and a positive impact on communities. Researchers at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institutet found that, after playing a series of beats, drummers who had better rhythm scored better on a 60-question intelligence test. Seems using all the various parts of a drum kit to keep one steady beat is actually an expression of intrinsic problem-solving abilities.

Furthermore, other studies show that rhythmic music can actually make other people smarter. A University of Washington psychology professor found that his students got higher scores after undergoing rhythmic light and sound therapy. A University of Texas Medical Branch researcher using the same method on elementary and middle school boys with ADD noted an effect comparable to Ritalin. In fact, the boys’ IQ scores actually went up and stayed up.
It gets even crazier, and more primordial, with reports suggesting drumming played a role in our own civilization. Researchers at the University of Oxford discovered that drummers produce a natural “high” when playing together, heightening both their happiness and their pain thresholds. The researchers extrapolated that this rhythmic euphoria may have been pivotal in mankind establishing communities and society. Essentially, drum circles were the very foundation that made human society possible.
 
And for one final bullet into the heart of drum machine enthusiasts everywhere: When drummers make errors in beat, they’re actually tapping into a natural rhythm found all over Earth. Harvard smarty-pants discovered that a drummer’s internal clock doesn’t move linearly like a real clock, but rather in waves. This wavy rhythm pattern is found in human brainwaves, sleeping heart rates, and the nerve firings in felines’ ears. So when a drummer slips up, they’re actually just matching the elemental beat of the world.
To boil it all down, drummers are smarter than you, more in-tune with nature than you, and are the whole reason you and I have a society in which to mock drummers in the first place. Kind of puts a whole new perspective on our “Greatest Drummer of All Time” poll, don’t it?
PolyMic also recently looked at research on guitarists’ brain power, determining that shredders are more intuitive and in fact slightly psychic. Next, we’ll learn how bassists are better than the rest of us at 2048."
 
 

As one who has actually knowledge about many of the areas talked about (and has worked with a PhD to design light & sound glasses that are too strong for average consumer use), I'm getting a good laugh out of this!  Ignoring my own theories of why the current intellectual quotient system is basically a flawed ranking methodology, the author took several areas which are proved to be connected both to improving intelligence, added Circadian Rhythms and the trance-inducing stimulus response mechanism, then drew a sideways conclusion based on no actual evidence or tests.  Brilliant!
 

The face of higher intelligence.  Daryl will like this!

Now if we could only train them to shower... and change their socks occasionally.
 
/jk
//but not really
///THREEVE

I think triplets were created by a drummer who couldn't count past three.  "1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3..."

I'm surprised that the author didn't talk about Elliott Wave theory too.  Lots of fan-boys around that (not that it's all that inaccurate, I've just discovered there's more to it than what's been published and followed).  Gann is closer.  Scarily closer.
 

Now, just to be fair, I DO know some intelligent people that play drums (including some that post here), but to stay that playing drums will make you intelligent, well...
 

Well - Im not a nuerologist.. or a scientist, but I am a student.  My first instrument was the drums, also my college major, even though Im holding a guitar in that pic over there.
 
Id like to see the slipping up tempo - natural rythmns of our planet thing unpacked a little more as it is interesting.
 
One thing I want to point out here is that the articles listed above don't disclose much about the test subjects.  The level of development of someone who maxes out at 4 on the floor isnt the same as someone like simon phillips.
 
I will say, that without a doubt, playing, practicing drums, and working on 4 way co-ordination has physically evolved me in irreplaceable ways.  When you can get all 4 appendages in control, and in sync.. with music... its the coolest thing ever.   I would imagine that someone who has spent years finetuning 4 way co-ordination with a metronome would have incredible mental capacity... however... it would be something they developed through steady, meditative practice.
 
A band is only as good as the drummer.

The only proof I need to provide that I'm NOT psychic (maybe they meant side-kick?) is that I spent $3,900 to go to Europe in 1981 instead of investing that money in Microsoft.

mikedocy
 
Harvard smarty-pants discovered that a drummer’s internal clock doesn’t move linearly like a real clock, but rather in waves.

So what happens to time when a drummers speed approaches that of light (such as Buddy Rich)?

quantumeffect
So what happens when a drummers speed approaches that of light?

They go back in time and de-evolve into Neanderthals or Homo Erectus.
The presence of this phenomenon is readily detectable in most drummers.