At Home: Drummer Boy
How fast can you hit the drums? Couple hundred times a minute? How about over 1,200 strokes in 60 seconds? That’s the record set by a young Canadian drummer, who was recently named the world’s fastest speed drummer.
As the Toronto Star reports, 22-year-old Tom Grosset, an Etobicoke, Ontario native and graduate of Humber College’s music program, ?earned the title at the World’s Fastest Drummer finals? last week.
Grosset’s winning score?1,208 strokes in one minute?is just five strokes higher than the prior record. He’s the only Canadian to have earned the title to date.
Speed drumming requires skill, but It’s more than merely quick handling of the drumsticks. Grosset told reporters that he has to ?really [concentrate] on the sound of the pad because when You’re going really fast sometimes you’ll start to play in unison.?
Grosset initially became interested in speed drumming after ?some innocent Googling about drums,? but it took seven years of practice (an hour every day for seven years!) before he was ready to show his skill at the competition in Nashville, Tennessee this month.
After his triumph, Grosset’s decided to take a break and focus his musical energies elsewhere, including his role in a jazz fusion band. ?People are going to automatically assume that I’m a speed drummer, a metal head,? he told reporters, adding that this isn’t the case; he’s ?just trying to improve as a musician.?
Around the World: Roll Call
It’s widely known that dolphins and other sea mammals communicate through a series of whistles, grunts, and other underwater vocalizations. But recent research shines a light on just how distinctive these whistles can be.
As NBC News reports, newly published research on bottlenose dolphins indicates that dolphins ?call to each other using distinctive whistles that serve as names.?
The names are believed to arise when ?dolphin infants . . . begin making a unique whistle, and over time, that whistle becomes their name.?
As the dolphin matures, its unique, individual whistle?often used like a ?personal calling [card] to invite other dolphins to play??takes on a new meaning when other dolphins use it to call out to that particular friend.
Researchers previously knew that dolphins ?could learn specific vocalizations in captivity,? but this research is significant because it shows the same ?ability in wild dolphins.?
