Sleep your way to better meter

Larry

"Uncle Larry"
Here's an off the wall idea. Tell me what you think:

If a person has uneven meter, do you think putting a click type metronome under the pillow and leaving it on all night as they sleep would do anything to straighten things out?
 
Not sure. I probably couldn't sleep.

Once a week, I put on some acoustic jazz and play with an eyeshade. Not being able to SEE my kit forces me to concentrate more deeply to the flow of the tempo, helping me to lock in.

Not only does this help me with my meter, it is damned relaxing. Eliminating the visual aspect of playing tends to enhance the sonic aspects. At least it does for me. I can play along to songs I do not know, or never heard, simply by flowing with the meter. On songs I know well, it is even more fun.

Of course, you have to know exactly where you kit is, as no light gets through. Play totally by feel.
 
Sounds like a variation of the college college question: I put the text book under my pillow, can I absorb the information?

Personally, it would drive me crazy and keep me from sleeping.

I would think a better idea is listen to, and practice to music made with a drum machine (insert boo, hiss sounds) and save sleeping for sleeping.
 
I would experiment with visualization. The process of subliminal learning that you described is different than visualization. Visualization is actually imagining the experience as if it were actually happening. You try to feel your limbs play in time...you mentally see and feel yourself behind the set. You visualize everything including the smell of the venue. You can out on a drum machine or a recording that is really grooving and visualize yourself playing in time.

There was a famous experiment which had surprising results. I have quoted from the artice on http://www.llewellynencyclopedia.com/article/244
Visualization plays a key role in the successes of many great athletes. Most obviously, of course, visualization in-creases confidence and motivation. Less obviously, it affects and sharpens players’ muscles.

This was discovered by physiologist Edmund Jacobson when he had subjects visualize certain athletic activities. Through the use of sensitive detection instruments, he discovered subtle but very real movements in the muscles that corresponded to the movement the muscles would make if they were really performing the imagined activity.

Further research revealed that a person who consistently visualizes a certain physical skill develops "muscle memory" which helps him when he physically engages in the activity. A related study by Australian psychologist Alan Richardson confirmed the reality of the phenomenon.

Richardson chose three groups of students at random. None had ever practiced visualization. The first group practiced free throws every day for twetny days. The second made free throws on the first day and the twentieth day, as did the third group. But members of the third group spent 20 minutes every day visualizing free throws. If they "missed," they "practiced" getting the next shot right.

On the twentieth day Richardson measured the percentage of improvement in each group. The group that practiced daily improved 24 percent. The second group, unsurprisingly, improved not at all. The third group, which had physically practiced no more than the second, did twenty-three percent better—almost as well as the first group!

In his paper on the experiment, published in Research Quarterly, Richardson wrote that the most effective visualization occurs when the visualizer feels and sees what he is doing. In other words, the visualizers in the basketball experiment "felt" the ball in their hands and "heard" it bounce, in addition to "seeing" it go through the hoop.
 
I once put the clave on my old drum machine, slept with it, then woke up in a foul mood, and nearly broke the thing. Then I discovered walking to the groove.
 
I played the half time shuffle over and over in my head and tapping it out in the car for months> I actually still do it occasionally. This works. My kit wasn't at my house, it was at my friends band room and this was really the only way I was gonna get it done.

I can tell you that today half-time shuffles come outta me automatically.
 
I think it's a little different than putting your textbook under your pillow. It's more like having the information from your textbook being played from a recording, which I think is a little more viable. Having your textbook under your pillow would be like having your metronome under your pillow without it on. That just sounds uncomfortable (though probably more pleasant than hearing the thing while you're trying to sleep...dear God).
 
Once a week, I put on some acoustic jazz and play with an eyeshade. Not being able to SEE my kit forces me to concentrate more deeply to the flow of the tempo, helping me to lock in.

Not only does this help me with my meter, it is damned relaxing. Eliminating the visual aspect of playing tends to enhance the sonic aspects. At least it does for me. I can play along to songs I do not know, or never heard, simply by flowing with the meter. On songs I know well, it is even more fun.

Of course, you have to know exactly where you kit is, as no light gets through. Play totally by feel.

i love this idea! i am going to try it out as soon as i get a chance.
 
This would make me have an A.D.D night more than anything. I have nights where I can't stop tapping my foot in the bed with a beat in my head; that is without a metronome. It would be torture to me, ha. And of course it would eventually get annoying. It would seem to be a good idea, but when you think about it more, not so much.
 
My dear sister once gave me a CD to listen to that was supposed to help me sleep. It was very relaxing music, but I kept waiting to see what song was next. Got about 2 hours sleep that night. Gave the CD away. I now listen to comedy recordings to put me to sleep. They work.
 
My dear sister once gave me a CD to listen to that was supposed to help me sleep. It was very relaxing music, but I kept waiting to see what song was next. Got about 2 hours sleep that night. Gave the CD away. I now listen to comedy recordings to put me to sleep. They work.

That's the exact problem I have when falling asleep to music! I think a looping, instrumental track might be better.
 
Sleep...Sleep...What is this thing I keep hearing about called sleep? I must get a chance to try it someday !
 
Wow Larry,
Novel, to say the least! I think you've got to try it and let us know. Kidding, I'm sure your meter is fine. I can almost see this working-if a person can indeed sleep through the click. Awake, people absorb good meter through listening to a click or timer. Personally, i know that my time is better for having done a ton of keyboard programming to a click. Point being, you don't always have to play to the metronome to benifit from it. This sounds like an experiment that you'd have to pay people to do! I don't think it would hurt someone's timekeeping, but, again, only if they didn't go bonkers from it...
 
My dear sister once gave me a CD to listen to that was supposed to help me sleep. It was very relaxing music, but I kept waiting to see what song was next. Got about 2 hours sleep that night. Gave the CD away. I now listen to comedy recordings to put me to sleep. They work.

See, I CAN'T fall asleep when I'm not listening to music, unless I'm really burnt out (Y)

I can fall asleep to anything (except rap and country :). Lately I've been falling asleep to Katy Perry's CD. I know it sounds weird but it works. Falling asleep to music gives music in general a whole other meaning to me. I could just plain out not want to listen to a certain album in the day time, but at night I could crave it so much!

But yes, I agree. Comedy is very fun to fall asleep to :D
 
I remember reading a tre cool interview in modern drummer several years ago and he said he slept with a metronome set to the tempo of the song they were going to be recording the next day. But one time he slept to the wrong tempo and couldn't play the song at the right tempo.

It seems a little extreme. just play to a click in the studio.

I have put a metronome on just walking the dog before, but I don't think it does anything.

Most of the problems I ever have with time are subdividing the beat not keeping a steady beat.
 
i could never do that. i'm a light sleeper and any kind of noise keeps me awake. i can't fall asleep with music playing because i can't help listening to it.

one thing that's helped me improve my timing and feel, i believe, is playing along to cds and the radio while i'm in my car by tapping on the console or steering wheel with my fingers. i do it all the time when i'm in the car. i think it's improved my timing, but one thing for sure, it's made me a very, very good finger tapper! i can tap with the best of them!
 
I fall asleep to the beatles song that ringo sings "Good Night" the song is magical i tell ya. As far as the click goes that would make me crazy.
 
When I was small, I used to have a clock that ticked really loudly in my bedroom. If someone took it away, or took the batteries out, I couldn't sleep. Perhaps if you had it on quietly enough that it didn't disturb your conscious thoughts, it might be ok...

Although thinking about it, I should really have completely internalised 60bpm by now, shouldn't I! Perhaps I have.
 
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