Summer Opportunity for Intellectual Activity
The goal of the project is to quantify percussionists' timing as a diagnostic tool to break bad habits. A force sensor in the tip of the drum stick generate a voltage pulse upon impact with the drum head, and the oscilloscope monitors voltage over time. This strategy offers precise timing measurements that can be used to determine whether a percussionist has the tendency to lead the beat, compress triplets, etc.
Results
The red and blue traces represent the right hand and the left hand respectively, and the beat of the metronome is indicated by the dotted lines on the graph. All rudiments were played at 120 bpm. The participants learned that they had the tendency to lead the beat while playing diddles and paradiddles (diddle and paradiddle timing plots) and compressed eighth notes leading into triplets (multi-subdivision timing plot).
