Russell Buddy Helm

Latency in music causes schizophrenia.

Latency in recording music means that there is a slight lag time between the different instruments on the recording. It is a result of overdubbing different instruments using a digital computer recording system. The delay is about .0009 milliseconds, which varies. But the effect on the human nervous system is  very debilitating. The human DNA is programmed to lock into the dominant rhythm in the environment in order to survive. This fractured recording creates a nervous jiggling or wobbling sensation on the intellectual belief system trying to lock into instruments  and vocals that are slightly out of synch with each other. When digital recording first appeared, the technicians knew there was a delay between the moment that the musician hit the note and the resultant recorded tone on the digital recording system. As the arrangements get more complex, there is more confusing delay. Percussionists overdubbing precise parts started to notice the synch problem first. They would hit the note on a drum while listening to the basic track, and know that it was “in time”. But upon hearing the playback their part was incrementally out of synch. The producers and engineers did not think this was a noticeable effect. It was more cost effective to use a digital recording system than the old fashioned magnetic tape analog recording systems that made all the music rhythmically compatible. That is one reason old music “feels” so much better than the modern stuff. With each overdub, the delay is compounded. The final overdub is so far away from the original basic track that you can hear it when isolating the tracks. I have clients who can feel the difference between 60 beats a minute and then laying it back to 58 beats a minute in order to relax.When digital recording started, most of us couldn’t tell the delay. Like in 24 frames per second of film that was seamless back in the nineteen thirties, but now we see that. Our senses evolve.

“To defeat your opponent, all you have to do is break their rhythm”……Bruce Lee.

Drumming Dispels Fear
Generally speaking, people do not want to go to war if they have to participate in it. They would rather drink wine with their girlfriends or something just as peaceful. To get young boys (and now young women) to go to war, drumming has been used since the beginning of time. The steady pounding of a drum dispels fear in an interesting number of ways. But what interests me are the other uses of grooves to dispel fear. Personal fear. The kind of gut twisting anxiety that renders us impossible. What I have witnessed with the gentle penetrating grooves is that the fear dissolves. As if it were a stain on our souls, a bathtub ring of karmic grime, a spiritual residue that rinses away with a forgiving groove.

So I get a call from Marvel in New York. They’re releasing a collection of Star Wars newspaper comic strips I wrote in 1979, under the name Russ Helm. May the farce be with you!

God bless Butch Trucks. Watching Butch and Jaimoe drum together in the Allman Brothers was a symbol of all the good things about playing music in the South.

http://soundofheart.org/galacticfreepress/content/study-suggests-group-drumming-better-prozac

Syncopation as an antidote to depression

Modern society has been programmed to march on the downbeat. Stay in step, do what you’re told. This is reinforced with march music. Marching is flatfooted. It’s on the downbeat. There is no syncopation. It is a way to keep everyone’s mind focused on the mission of the culture. This is inherited from the dark ages where it was a sin to feel syncopation and to dance. When we feel syncopation – Just one upbeat – Our body wakes up and starts to move. When our bodies move in rhythm we heal. We throw off stress and the restrictive inhibitions of mass culture. Our survival thinking is based on fear. Our inability to feel syncopation-the upbeat- is based in fear and shame. So get in the groove, feel the upbeat and share it.

Here is a simple exercise to discover an upbeat syncopation for the people who do not feel the upbeat very clearly. First of all, play five notes on the drum and feel the downbeat on the “one” and the “five” and keep the downbeat  steady and repeating so that the critical mind feels safe and sure of it’s ability to perform this simple task. Then take away the last note, but keep the same groove going. You will feel a pulling where that last note should be. You are now feeling an upbeat, a syncopation. It starts to swing. Notice that you might even begin to smile. This is the quickest antidote to anxiety and depression I have found.