2010
As a hobbyist bass player, I was recently bewildered by a song I was trying to learn by ear. Although I can read music, I’m usually able to pick out bass lines without written assistance. On this particular song, though, I was confounded again and again by a rhythm pattern, or what seemed to be the lack thereof. A sequence was established during one section of the song, and I expected to repeat it. But as the sequence cycled again, it was as though the notes had been shifted to different beats. This threw me off every time.
I finally determined that the bass line was cycling through its sequence at a different pace than the drums were cycling through their sequence. I’m used to keeping time with the drums, and I expect my own notes to “stay in place” on top of the drum pattern. My expectation was perpetually confounded on this song. It was as though the bass and drum lines had been written in different time signatures. Indeed, they were: I’d encountered polyrhythms.
Here’s a brief explanation for those without a musical background: a time signature dictates how many beats there are in a basic song unit, called a measure. Rock songs, for instance, typically have four beats per measure. When you tap your foot to such a song (assuming you’ve “got rhythm”), you’ll find that patterns in the song repeat themselves over some fixed number of four-beat measures.
In one example of a polyrhythm, one element of the song repeats after so many three-beat measures while another element repeats after so many four-beat measures. This is different from something like the “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” round wherein two elements cycle on different schedules, but do so over the same number of beats. Imagine singing “row, row, row your boat” while someone else sings “row, row your boat” (with one of the “rows” missing); that’s a polyrhythm. You can see how easy it would be to get confused. Polyrhythms are for advanced musicians!
What does all this have to do with motorcycling?
As I was struggling to learn that song, I kept thinking of my very first track day, which was, in one way, my very best. It took place at Talladega Grand Prix Raceway (TGPR). TGPR is a compact, 1.4-mile track with about ten corners, depending on how you count the bends. The lightly modified little Honda Hawk GT I’d borrowed for the event was a perfect fit for the combination of a tight, relatively slow track and a rider of meager ability. Years later, when I returned on a bigger, faster bike, I had less fun, partly because the machine was too brawny for the course (and my still-meager abilities) and partly because I felt I had more to prove after bringing the extra power. That ended up being a step backward for me.
Back at my first track day, I could manage both the bike and the track (eventually). This allowed me to achieve something unique in my experience. By the middle of the afternoon, I’d truly settled into a rhythm. I had my braking, turning, and throttle-opening markers memorized such that I didn’t have to think them out at each corner. Instead, I found myself “playing” the bike’s controls very much like a musical instrument. That didn’t mean I was setting any lap records, but I was having a blast.
When playing familiar music, I don’t count the beats, look at my fingers to see if they’re in the right places, think about the names of the notes, and so forth. Instead, I just make sounds that match the ones “in my head.” Everything is orderly and predictable, and I’m on autopilot. There may be periods of improvisation when I deliberately deviate from the established pattern, but then I settle back into the routine and resume cruising. And even when I improvise, I stay true to certain structures, like the key of the song and its time signature.
The author at his very first track day. Talladega Grand Prix Raceway, with its compact, flat, and readily memorized layout, is perfect for beginners. It thrilled on subsequent visits, too.
Late in the day at TGPR, it was exactly that way. I’d have to improvise here or there because of traffic, but mostly I could flow around the track without having to think about what to do next. The different control actions became repetitive rhythmic sequences, as though the track were a musical pattern and my braking, turning, and accelerating were taking place on specific beats within the larger framework of the racetrack’s “song.” Not surprisingly, my lap times grew much more consistent.
With all the basics occurring as effortlessly and reflexively as tapping a foot to a well-known tune, my perspective evolved. Instead of attacking each corner as a discrete unit, like measures in the racetrack’s song, I could string them together in longer sequences, like verses and refrains. I began appreciating the music instead of just the notes. It was exhilarating!
So, it wasn’t a graphic image of the track that was forming in my thoughts. Instead, it was a rhythmic pattern. Although you can translate an auditory rhythm into visual form with written notes, the experience and memory of a rhythm isn’t visual at all. In fact, I don’t know what to call it. It isn’t simply “in my mind’s ear,” like a melody is. The sense of rhythm is somewhere (everywhere?) in my body. I just feel it, though the vagueness of that description doesn’t do justice to how precisely organized it can be.
And that’s what I experienced at TGPR, except it all applied to the Hawk instead of to a musical instrument. No, it wasn’t the Hawk as a separate entity; it was the Hawk/TGPR combination, just as you don’t play a guitar without also playing a tune, even if it’s an improvisation.
Racetracks are fantastic places to learn because of their repetitive nature. There’s nothing like practicing the same pattern over and over again to build confidence, allow for systematic experimentation, and develop/coordinate skill sets. But what about transferring all that to the street? Obviously, I couldn’t just continue to play the Hawk/TGPR song when I rode a different bike on a mountain pass!
Real-world riding is like learning a never-ending new song with a constantly changing time signature. It’s not rock or R&B or classical music; it’s more like improvisational jazz. We’re continually trying to get in sync with the immediate timing demands of the road ahead of us. Timing may not be everything, but it’s the single biggest factor involved.
This may be the most important aspect of track-day learning: developing a precise/reflexive sense of control input timing for different corners allows for interpolation in novel situations elsewhere. A complex, multidimensional “map” (think fuel-injection software) forms within us, with timing as a fundamental organizing principle. Surely this draws on the same bodily sense as musical rhythm. And it’s a similar matter of learning basic patterns (chord progressions or throttle/clutch/brake inputs) and then applying them in ways that are new but still obey rules about sequence and timing.
Even bizarre musical forms have rules. They may not be readily apparent to a naïve listener, they may change over the course of the song, and they may even be different for different instruments playing simultaneously. But the musicians all obey those rules as they move through the piece together. As we ride, we’re engaged in delicate and complicated timing operations, sequencing control inputs on separate—yet intertwining—rule-bound schedules; hence my odd association with TGPR during the encounter with polyrhythms.
When we ride well, our actions are well orchestrated. That’s the perfect word.
On the Trail
I’m a bit puzzled by all the things I haven’t written about in this category—no descriptions
