I don't have dsycalculia, but I can feel for him. I have a terrible working memory, so simple calculations in my head are very difficult. I always struggled with math in school. Even though the concepts weren't hard for me to understand, I'd always get the wrong answer because my arithmetic was a disaster. Spelling was also always a disaster, because I couldn't keep track of where I was in the word.
This makes me wonder if in spite of all these years of education by play, Elementary Piagetian* education is still overlooking mental methods of arithmetic that musicians use. Musicians have an easy time understanding structure - and also knowing how to learn by repetition (to tell a student to repeat something is often a task in itself)!
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget%27s_theory_of_cognitive...
Maybe it was Larry who actually wrote the opening words to the song Vertigo.
If he can't count, how does he know where he is in a measure?
He can, but it's hard for him
> “When people watch me play sometimes, they say, ‘you look pained’. I am pained because I’m trying to count the bars,”
johnea asked about within a measure, not counting bars.
That said, the 1-2-3-4 of a single bar doesn’t need to be counted numerically as such, any more than we need to number the corners of a square. Orienting within a pattern of beats does not require numbers any more than orienting position in a square room.
Not everybody internalizes easily the length of a measure though. Even for advanced musicians, it can be very useful to count to improve one's sense of time, or to work on complex rhythm.
See this video from drummer Shawn Crowder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aun3-bKojnM&t=76s
Adam Neely has similar content.
The numbers are irrelevant for counting time though. It could just as well be A B C D rather than 1 2 3 4. In fact, tabla drummers use words/syllables instead of "counting". Counting measures is completely different as in that case, you're actually measuring something. Counting time is more declarative than measuring imo. Especially when you consider notes between the beats. It's not 1.75, its one-e-and. It's not 2.5, it's 2-and.
Feel. I think it's mostly the case that people who play rock are not constantly counting to figure out where they are in a measure. In fact, I'd imagine that's the case for a lot of jazz players too.
I have dyscalculia (and dyslexia) but I can keep time like you wouldn't believe. I once met a hotel lobby musician who was unreal and I said to him, you must be excellent at math, he said actually I can't even do basic algebra. I have a very rich audio/visual memory and thinking style, I can think in sound and movies, but that thinking style kinda creates the limiting factor for numbers and letters (literal no framework for them) maybe?
After spending a huge chunk of my time growing up in rhythm sections as the bass player, not only can I follow time like nobody's business, but I've grown to develop a penchant for weird time. Give me a time signature beyond 3/4 or 4/4 (15/8, anyone!?), or more importantly, give me a musician who will play some heavily syncopated rhythms and polyrhythms (looking at you, Chris Dave) and just do their best to stretch, bend, re-shape, and - pardon my french - fuck time. That's my jam.
Ask me to do anything beyond add/subtract/divide (forget algebra entirely lol), though, and my brain shits itself. Even at a certain point, division becomes complicated for me. But I will hit that pocket and never, ever lose the beat every single time, and that's always been interesting to me.
Can you play complex polyrhythms?