Mrdangas, Metronomes, and Muscle Fibres

In mrdanga playing power is good, endurance is great, but precision is king.

If you have power and endurance people will notice you. If you have precision you can become invisible - the kirtan will rock so hard that people will forget you're there.

And that's the goal.

To develop precision you need to practice with a metronome. It's a form of hasta-sadhana ("finger practice") that involves subordinating yourself to Krishna in His form of time (kalo 'smi). It can be hard on the mind, but that's what it's all about - conquering the mind and becoming a faithful and useful servant of the kirtan.

After I shot this video I had a realisation about muscle fibres. You see, I've been practicing with a metronome for 30 - 60 minutes a day, and my precision is pretty high. However, I've been noticing that while my power and endurance have been going up with my new physical training program, my precision has been disappearing.

Here's my theory as to why: the precision is not simply in the brain, it's also in the muscle fibres. High speed mrdanga playing uses reflex actions. These reflexes are stored in the muscle memory. As you add new muscle you need to retrain it to make it precise in mrdanga playing. So it's back to the metronome and hasta-sadhana for me, otherwise all this power and endurance is just for show.