BLOG: Scientists prove that drummers are not dumb
MusicRadar, Tue 22 Apr, 11:51 am BST
What do you call someone who hangs around with musicians? A drummer. What did the drummer get on his IQ test? Drool. Jokes about drummers aren’t exactly thin on the ground and we’re all guilty of laughing along. Hell, even a drummer would probably smirk because they’re too stupid to realise we’re laughing at them, not with them. Or are they? A scientific report published by The Telegraph thinks not.
An experiment carried out at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm asked 34 right-handed men to keep time with a drumstick before sitting a psychometric test of 60 questions and problems. The results were conclusive: those with the best sense of rhythm also scored highest in the mental tests. So, there you go – drummers are natural intellectuals.
The problem I have with these results is that the participants were not actually drummers – they were average Joes asked to tap a drumstick at “a variety of different intervals”. Now, I’m not saying that drummers are dumb – anyone that can keep rhythm with four different limbs at the same time must be teetering on genius – but surely, all this proves is that good, time-keeping drummers are clever and bad drummers are not so?
Oh, and before we get started with the drummer jokes – how many guitarists does it take to change a light bulb? Five. One to change it and four to stand around discussing how they would have changed it better…
By Tom Porter
User comments (2)
-
Doesn't the drummers version of the lightbulb joke go something like "... four to discuss how Bill Bruford would have gone about it"?
-
I knew a bass player who once thought if you tightened up the wheel nuts on a car too much, the wheel wouldn't turn! I'm not making that up, either - he nearly killed himself after changing a flat tyre a few years back.
I also knew a singer who thought that when Top of the Pops wanted to show a music video, they filmed a TV playing the tape. "How else would they get it on the telly?" he said, as I fell about laughing!
You need to be logged in to post a comment. Login or Register to post a comment.
Magazines published by MusicRadar
Click on the magazine logo for more
musophilr
1 week ago.