Rainer "Ray" Lindquist

Background

Notwithstanding the old joke "I'm not a musician, I'm a drummer", I have always thought as a musician, listened as a musician, and worked at playing my instrument(s) as musically as I can. This means being fully aware of what is going on around you and also within oneself from a musical perspective. A very difficult question, though, is 'What leads the physical processes of neural activity in my brain to make me consciously aware of a subjective feeling and determination of musicality?' Neuroscientists and philosophers struggle with this type of question and, naturally, so do I.

In recent years, as I get older, I have begun to think of drumming and skills development in terms of neural networks and the establishment of new neural connections in my brain. More on this is described in the section on "Brain functions" further down in this blog.

To begin, I think it is appropriate to provide background information about who I am as a person and musician before we delve into the challenges I have set myself to keep my cognitive abilities sharp as I get older.

When I think back to highlights from my music career, many performances with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra around England and in London's Royal Festival Hall, and a "live" TV recording with Luciano Pavarotti in front of an audience of 25,000, are high on the list.

I was born and raised near a large city in Sweden, growing up in a community which, luckily, had a wonderful music school, available to children from an early age. Hence, from the age of 10 I took drum lessons at the local music school. After high school, I did my military service in the Swedish cavalry and when completed, moved on my own to London, studied with famous English percussionists, (notably James Blades the ‘Father’ of British percussion and Mike Skinner, principal percussion in the Covent Garden Opera Orchestra) and in 1976 was admitted to the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, where I studied until 1980.

I have worked as a freelance musician with major English orchestras such as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet Orchestra, and the Covent Garden Opera Orchestra, among others. I have taught in schools in Germany and at the College of Music, University of Cape Town, South Africa. I worked as principal percussionist at the Cape Town Opera for 10 years where I was also orchestra director for a couple of years.

After 12 years in South Africa, my wife and I moved our family to the United States where I found a job in the IT industry, working as, among other things, project manager for various IT projects for 19 years. During these years I continued to be active in the music field, playing drums in a blues band and leading my own jazz quartet on the vibraphone. My experiences in the IT field, coupled with daily use of technology, has facilitated my understanding and use of technological aids such as apps and digital tools to enhance my instrumental practice.

After more than 50 years as a musician I still practice as much as possible, between 3–5 hours per day, and have since 2020 conducted individual research in the field of music pedagogy, with a special focus on how musicians work to build up their expertise. Additionally, since 2019 I have been collecting biometric data during my own practice, using different data collection devices to identify moments of stress during practice; these are described later in this blog.

Challenging myself


        “Si l’on se préoccupait de l’achèvement des choses, on n’entreprendrai jamais rien”
        
           If we were concerned about the completion of things, we would never undertake anything

        ~ Francis I, King of France, on the building of Chateau Chambord
Many studies show the positive effects on people's health from singing and music making in communal settings and learning a musical instrument. Such effects manifest themselves in relaxation, increased blood movement, deeper breathing and activation of the internal muscles of the body and the brain (Magrini, 2019). To make music together with others adds to the communication and social interaction, giving a sense of community with other musicians and provides extraordinary physiological benefits (Tsugawa, 2009; Balbag et al, 2014; Daykin et al, 2014; Yesil & Ünal, 2017; Helton, 2019; Barbeau & Cosette, 2019).

A study at the Royal College of Music, London, UK, explores the practice habits of students at music conservatories (Taylor, 2019). Another explores results from a practicing workshop in a music academy (Johansen and Nielsen, 2019). No study, to the best of my knowledge, has focused exclusively on the individual mature (50+) musician and possible health and well-being benefits derived from individual instrumental practice.

The individual musician spends many hours alone on individual practice of his instrument or voice. This can often be both physically and mentally demanding. Of great concern is that research over the past 30 years reveals alarming rates of injury and unacceptably high levels of performance related health issues among musicians of all ages (Wijsman & Ackerman, 2018). 

Though correlational and experimental studies showing the role instrumental practice has on slowing the natural decline of cognitive facilities have been conducted on individual musicians (Roman-Caballero et al, 2018), studies of the individual musician are few and needed (Lehmann, 2014, p. 181). A study by Talbot-Honeck and Orlick (1999), limited to classical musicians from a younger age group examined, inter alia, practice routines. However, no study has focused on the older musician sitting alone in his room during long practice sessions and especially on how the perceived general health and well-being of the musician is affected by such a disciplined regime.

I base my personal practicing activities on the goal of at least 1% improvement every day, and, in the early part of 2019 set myself a set of challenges as part of my daily drum practice regimen. 

Well aware that I am no longer a 'young' drummer, I asked myself the following:

"As I am already working on poly-rhythmic patterns such as Latin beats with Clave patterns played by my left foot, and having worked with independence studies in the "New Breed" books for several years, what else is my older brain capable of handling? How far can I go?"

I thought about this for a while and came up with an ever-expanding set of exercises that, after a step had been mastered, grew out of asking myself "now that I have mastered that challenge, what else can I do, how can I build on this".

The idea of writing a descriptive summary of what I have achieved so far has been bouncing around in my head for quite some time but now, mid-November 2019, I decided to get started.

It is my hope that what I describe on this website may serve to inspire others to develop and experiment with challenging musical exercises to stimulate activity and continued growth in your brain cell connections. This is not only meant for drummers, any instrumentalist can come up with ideas of this kind that work for them.
As I have been writing this blog over time, beginning well into my 60's, I have become increasingly interested in learning about the processes occurring in my brain and its capability to adapt and even grow in advanced age. Contrary to popular belief, our brains change throughout life; the adult brain is indeed capable of generating new neurons (known as neurogenesis), albeit a small number primarily in the hippocampus, associated with learning. What our brain also does as we learn new things is to, by what is known as synaptic plasticity, create and strengthen new connections between neural networks. The polyrhythmic exercises described on this site will most certainly have developed both new connections between neurons and new networks of neurons "firing together".  To learn more about how the brain functions, and with the hope of one day being able to participate in neuro-imaging of my own brain, I have during 2023 to 2024 enrolled in several online classes in Neuroscience offered by, inter alia, Johns Hopkins University and duke University in the USA.