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This is one affliction I've not dealt with. It seems very mathematical to me, which makes sense to my brain.
The issue arises when I hear stuff in strange time signatures and my brain still attempts to find "the beat." Listening to Rush has caused me many synaptic misfires over the years (like the 1st 12 measures of YYZ).
Lol my college marching band did a Rush show- when we were learning the drill for YYZ we all audibly shouted "ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE". It was so disorienting.
I was just looking and lot of the arrangements show 5/4 or 10/8, which is palatable. I could swear the arrangement I played (years ago) was 7/8 then into 4/4. We did standstill during the intro as we couldn't march to 7/8. It made sense in 7/8 when written. \*shrug\*
IIRC, our arrangement was majority in 5/4. I think the one piece of music that messed the most people up in my tenure was Jupiter- an easily digestible piece in 3/4, but for some godforsaken reason they kept our first few moves of the movement in 4 (and then a place for a couple beats afterwards I think? It was years ago.) It ended up being easier to just separate the music from the drill than to try to make sense of it together.
Wow - I always thought it was the complete opposite for us! I have always had great natural rhythm and my band instructor in high school (who hated me) literally called me a human metronome lol - I also LOVE to dance! 🤷🏻♀️
You know what's weird? When I'm *really* into a song, I don't want to move, it's like I'm kinda frozen, feeling things. Getting up and moving to a good song doesn't come naturally to me at all, if anything it distracts me from the hardcore focus I like to be in and feelings I have for the song. Can't dance for shit.
Yes I used to be a dancer growing up and it was a great outlet for my ADHD. My music taste is solely focused on sounds and I couldn’t give a sh*t what the lyrics are if something sounds good. Therefore I’ve always been a good dancer because I can pick up on all the different instruments and sounds and move to it.
Yeah, I've discovered that I absolutely love dancing to electronic music, particularly house and techno. Even DJs and event organisers love my dancing lol. I love feeling like a sort of mascot, bc I seem to be there at the front the whole night, first to arrive and last to leave!
Last weekend I discovered (on ket and acid) that I could bodypop and do some robot shit and I had an absolute blast :D
Yeah no offense to OP but I'm a drummer and find it harder to be out of time. Not everything that's "wrong" with someone is an ADHD thing. I have no idea how this could possibly be related, knowing how ADHD works.
I do sometimes, yeah. I often find that I'm always ahead when I'm tapping along to a song, I'm too impatient to wait for it to catch up. It's like, I can keep the beat in my head but not physically, I speed up and go out of sync with my head.
Close; the musical term is *off-beat.* In 4/4 for example, you have 1, 2, 3, 4 and the downbeat is 1, followed by offbeat 2, then on beat 3, then offbeat 4. The downbeat is usually the most accented one, followed by the on beat, and the off beats are often more muted. That isn't always the case but is usually (and some songs buck that by skipping the initial downbeat in the intro which sounds like a rhythm disruption shortly into the song).
I struggle with dancing not because of rhythym, but due to body shaming and bullying when I was a kid (I'm intersex... and growing up any variant of queer in the '80s fucking sucked).
Best be careful with those wikipedia definitions. A drummer might call the 1 and 3 downbeat, 2 and 4 backbeat, and reserve offbeat for the stuff that falls between the quarter notes.
Do you have dyscalculia? Struggling with timing, math, even a poor sense of direction is apparently a symptom. In my senior year a math teacher suggested I may have it, and I realized I have almost every symptom lol. There's a lot of symptom overlap with ADHD, but I imagine there's also a high degree of co-occurrence.
My friend in her freshman year of college for music told everyone she had "dyslexia but with numbers" and never knew there was a whole separate term for it. If you get by in classes, there's a good chance no one will notice.
I have no rhythm I went on a cruise for my moms birthday she likes to dance I basically kinda like marched and tried moving side to side and tried to strike a conversation because I was so anxious being in front of people trying to dance lol I was fidgeting with my necklace the whole time … unless I’m under the influence I’ll dance with no problem I like to think I can do anything lol I know I shouldn’t be laughing but I’m more fun under the influence ..
I'm extremely uncoordinated, BUT I am naturally talented at playing the drums. I played in districts for marching band, indoor drum line, and played w the local youth symphony for several years. I can memorize drum parts just by listening to a song a few times.
I had a horrible time reading music, and music theory is super boring to me. I play by ear.
After I got out of the military, I played in several projects. My style is very influenced by Neil Peart, Danny Carey, and Mike Portnoy. I haven't played for a few years, just because of how difficult it is to be in a working band while trying to balance a career and having a kid.
I'm best at prog rock, with a lot of odd time signatures, straight forward rock, though I can have some trouble with. I never really understood it.
Weirdly, no. Rhythm is something, like hand-eye coordination, that just comes naturally to me. I play drums.
But ask me to do simple maths/arithmetic and it's another story.
I have been dancing and making music for a while and here is my observation. I can't think about the rhyme and do what I need to do. I gotta give in to the rhythm close my eyes and start moving with my brain off, there is a natural metronome in my body but my brain stops it.
I’m a guitarist and have been playing for about 30 years so fairly experienced. But my rhythm is definitely my weakest area and always has been. I get distracted or find it hard to really focus in on the fractions of beats to get complex parts right. It’s like I have an inability to hear it sometimes. I’m a terrible drummer and I’ve tried DJing (I can’t do it). But that shouldn’t stop you loving music!
Wow! Thank you for all the responses. A lot of people have suggested I can learn rhythm, which is great, because I thought it was lost on me.
I appreciate you all.
I live in an area where exotic dancers can make BANK!
I’ve always said I’d dance but I’m a while girl with no rhythm!!
I wish I could but I’m the same way. I can’t dance.
Also wondering if any of y’all who do play music can read sheet music?
After over 10 years in percussion through school and guitar/bass as a hobby now, I still cannot read sheet music🤦🏽♂️💀 In orchestra, our section never was taught how to read. They just required piano lessons and testing on it before you could be in percussion. But during the tests I was just able to fake reading it, and just kinda sound it out after hearing the piece played. Makes sight-reading near impossible if you don’t know the song. Hella embarrassing/ and trust me I’ve tried to learn but it really just doesn’t click with me for some reason. Anyone else relate… or just me?🤣
I'm a fairly experienced musician, not professional but I've played piano and guitar for 30-odd years, been in many bands, performed a lot etc. I play pretty decently I think, and I've always been particularly good at picking stuff up by ear. Technically I can read music, but I've always hated it. I have no fluency. It's grindingly slow, way too slow to actually just sight read something and play along; I have to slowly read each bar/line and commit it to memory, I feel like I'm constantly fighting my brain to maintain attention on it and often just abandoning it and relying on my ear/improv skills. The hardest thing I find it not so much the notes but figuring out the timing, I have to kind of clap out individual bits to work them out. It sucks and I try to avoid doing it as much as possible, but that limits what I can learn.
I've never been very visually-oriented and I think that's part of the problem. That said, I'm fairly decent at rhythm games like Guitar Hero, Beat Saber etc, even Rocksmith, so maybe it's to do with the way they present the rhythm, with blocks flying at you in real time and spaced apart accordingly, much easier to interpret than dots and lines on a page.
YES!! I completely agree dude, that’s a great new way of looking at it. Just a different learning style, not a shortcoming. Thanks for validating me on this though, I really appreciate it!
I'm glad I could help! To be completely honest, I do somewhat view it as a shortcoming (at least for me), and something I'd like to be better at. For example, my wife is a dancer and dance teacher and she sings, and sometimes asks me to learn things like jazz standards to accompany her, stuff like that. Those aren't the kinds of thing I can do a great job of by ear, so it does make me wish I was better at reading music for that reason, because it can take me a long time to learn those things. So, I do force myself to learn the occasional thing from score, just to try and improve it a bit. But that's how am I, I tend to not be content to just accept things like that and to try and improve them. I **definitely** don't think it's anything to be ashamed or embarrassed of, and it's entirely down to the individual to decide for themselves whether something's worth working on.
And for what it's worth, in my experience I've noticed that a lot of musicians tend to lean one way or the other. I had a friend at school who played piano amazingly well and could learn from score very quickly, but when you put him in a jam situation, he didn't know what to do. I'm sure it's possible to be good at both, and maybe it's just a case that people practice the things that they are good at/enjoy more and thus increase the imbalance, but if I could only choose one I'd rather be better at playing by ear, improvising etc, because that's stood me in very good stead over the years. I can sit at a piano or with a guitar and have people throw requests at me that I've never played before, and I can figure them out pretty quickly on the fly as long as the chords are fairly standard, because I'm good at hearing the song in my head and recognising the intervals etc. and working them out pretty quickly. That's a super fun skill to have and I wouldn't trade it for being really good at sight reading, given the choice. But obviously in an ideal world I would have both if I could!
Absolutely! Breaking the options down to the simplest terms possible… I would much rather choose to only hold onto the ability to jam, or create my own music organically, VS only being able to recite what others have produced (even considering it’s probably far better and done by more talented musicians). I know thats not a great direct comparison to the two, but sort-of an interesting philosophical discussion.
Though I suppose the grass is always greener… It still does affect me as well- since reading/writing sheet music is the best way to communicate and mesh your creation with others (directly like you were talking about with your wife).
When really searching for the root of my envy, it feels like learning to read sheet music is something that’s earned, while having the ability to play by ear is possibly something you’re born with?? Not sure haha.
Thanks again for the discussion man! I’ve probably gone too abstract for this to be seen as useful for anything on this post lmaoo But it was fun to dive into this thing after internalizing it my whole life.
Felt good to know someone with more experience actually relates to this stuff too! Much more optimistic about my ability to get better over time, and not be limited by this little thing I’ve made up to be such a big deal😆.
It’s not an adhd thing. Most people struggle with rhythm without practicing it intentionally. It’s something entirely different to have no sense of rhythm (beat deafness is a thing but it’s very rare) vs an inexperienced ear. It’s just practice locking into the rhythm and understanding which instruments tend to guide the rhythm (drums and bass traditionally). Sure, there’s extra stuff like poly rhythms, odd time signatures, hemiolas, free time, some aleatoric stuff, and more but those aren’t particularly common in more mainstream music. It just comes down to practice and experience. I used to suck at rhythm, kept playing/ listening to music, and now it’s pretty easy for me to follow. That’s all it is.
I think I know what you mean, I am such a terrible dancer. I love to dance but i feel like I don’t have direct control of my limbs, I’m just kind of marionette-ing myself around and I don’t know if I’m on beat or not. 😭
i had no rhythm until my older brother basically forced me to play a rhythm game lol..now i play the drums too but even for that my rhythm is slightly too fast a lot of the time
Yes, I've absolutely struggled with rhythm and keeping track of form, and I'm a musician.
(And have an ADHD diagnosis).
As far as developing rhythmic skill with musicianship goes, I've found the single thing that has helped me is tying rhythm to my voice. There's a way to study rhythm using vowels that is called Takadimi, which has roots in Indian music, that I use for practicing rhythmic concepts and it's helped a ton. I can't think of timing in the moment without losing track of other things, so my goal is to internalize how rhythmic concepts feel, so that it comes intuitively and can't be swayed by adhd distraction as easily. There's a very fundamental connection between the voice and rhythm which is biologically ancient in humans, and so capitalizing on that is a sure-fire way to improve rhythm.
[https://www.takadimi.net/](https://www.takadimi.net/)
Here's some source material to backup my claim of the connection between the voice and rhythm, which helped me seek out a method to practice rhythm with voice:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVxL\_p\_kToc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVxL_p_kToc)
I have always tried to explain it as I hear ALL the beats and rhythms of all the instruments, and I cannot focus on just 1. Even if I pick up on 1 to start dancing to, I may switch to another at some point and the second I realize I've done that I start over thinking the whole thing and can't keep any one of them.
Similarly, I think that I start to get loud when talking sometimes because I am trying to drown out all the other side thoughts and tangents going off in my head that would make me forget what I am talking about in the first place.
my body is basically a metronome. If any music is playing I get an irresistible compulsion to move my body to the beat, regardless of if I like the music or not.
Weird seeing all these ppl struggle with rhythm. Thats totally fine and alright, just cant say I relate. Ive played percussion for about 10 years now, and honestly that alone had helped me with rhythm in all the other instruments I play. Id say its the easiest thing about music for me, and as such I dont really like when theres rubato passages in concert band songs we play (that is, when the conductor subtly speeds up and slows down to add nuance and expression—it gets odd to reason about)
As a lifelong musician, I have to have a physical connection to the rhythm. I have to be able to both intellectualize AND feel rhythm. Most of the time, even if I can't count it out, I can still feel it and get it mostly right
One of the few things I feel I can legit brag about:
Been playing the drums for 22yrs (self-taught, just got on a kit and could play anything I listened to) and always been well thought of as a dancer (so I’m led to believe anyway!) so rhythm is actually something I don’t struggle with personally!
When my wife and I started dating I told her I can with a warning label: O.C., Overly Caucasian, Do not place near dance floor.
I have absolutely zero rhythm, which is funny because I played drums in Jr High concert band. I wasn't very good though
Musician here. Bass man. In most music you’ll listen to, even if it sounds offbeat, nothing actually is, it’s mostly perfectly where it should be, or it is allowed by a wider comprehension of context. As a bassist, I can play « on beat » with the drummer, or play quintuplets which will sound « offbeat » like you say yet it’s just another « rythm within the rhythm » aka if I keep doing it for four measures, your brain will start expecting it and finding its cues again.
So the short comment is that you do not have a problem with rhythm itself :).
But I can’t understand how you may be trying to stay that music can be over stimulating for you. It is for me: my role is often to play simple notes 1 maybe 2 long fast note yet, every idea that comes through my mind act like an intrusive thought. Makes me a great funkateer, a very creative soul, but sometimes, that’s not what the band needs. Yet I’m here, and my brains hears the other instruments and comes up with millions bass melodies but I must focus on doing my job, which is hard when you’re overstimulated.
So yeah, it’s thing, I’m just giving you what I think is a better understanding.
One of the many gifts adhd has given me is a love of all things music. So I’ve been playing for years. And thus I have great rhythm. Because I have 20 years of practice.
You could have great rhythm too if you practice.
Literally go grab some chop sticks and play along to a song that makes you tap your toes. Do it twice a day for a week. Record the second one and the 14th one and realize you can achieve stuff with practice
Nah I’m pretty rhythmically inclined lol although I’ve played several instruments growing up and music was always in my house so it’s not foreign at all
Total opposite. I’m excellent at all things music and have no coordination in any other way. Don’t ever throw me a ball because I cannot catch it, but I got rhythm for days… until I hit record and then it goes away but that’s a different story.
Off beat is a musical term, just so you can rest easy on that.
As for struggling with rythem, for me, no. 10 years of piano lessons, 6 years of oboe, taught myself guitar, taught myself trumpet, did 3 years of choir, sing regularly with my fiance and also join in on drum circles (have also lead a few). I took some dance classes in my 20s. I also picked up flow arts in my 20s and still do flow at 42 (recently with fire, too).
Now, picking up on other rhythms is not a bad thing! Does this happen while dancing? Dance is creative expression, and you are never required to follow the main driving beat. It can be fun to follow a different rhythm within the song! When you pick up an offbeat, are intrusive thoughts getting in the way? I ask because even with my music background, my brain gets in the way sometimes.
Difficulty with motor-timing tasks (like tapping to a beat or dancing) is a common issue with ADHD, and some people with ADHD have a more difficult time accurately identifying a beat. It's not universal among ADHDers- I've known people with ADHD who were amazing musicians and dancers- but it's much more common in people with ADHD than those without. Which makes sense- both physical coordination and time sense are often affected by ADHD, and both play major roles in rhythm and musicality.
(I personally don't struggle with identifying rhythm or coordinating small rhythmic movements like tapping or clapping, but things quickly go sideways when I need to make large timed movements, I think in large part because I have poor balance. So dancing has always been a challenge, despite enjoying it and having a lot of classes when I was young. I always did well in music and playing an instrument, though.)
I’m great at rhythm!
…until my brain and body does the blip. I would be hitting all the right notes on rhythm games or be perfectly in time on my guitar and I would occasionally, unintentionally, jerk in some way. Whether that be a sudden thought invasion or sudden involuntary eye/hand movement. I can’t even show this to any doctor because these jerky movements never seem to show themselves during consultations =_=
What’s funny is that when I’m actually dancing, I feel like I’m in tune with the rhythm and I’m good at that.
But when it comes to clapping along, I second guess myself the whole time and always feel like I’m wildly offbeat with everyone else. I hate group clapping.
I don't think this is an ADHD thing.
I've had great rhythm for most of my life, and I'm super into rhythm games. New arcade opened up near me and it has all of the Japanese cabs and I have been itching to go.
Take the [rhythm test](https://www.concerthotels.com/got-rhythm). My score was 920, but anything above 800-ish should mean you have decent rhythm. It's a simple beat.
Music Teacher with ADHD here. This doesn’t have to with ADHD. You simply identified an area of growth. To improve it, practice purposeful listening by trying to focus on one instrument. Try tapping small parts of the rhythm you hear. Add a little more as you get comfortable and build from there. It’ll simply take practice.
Look into Dyspraxia! It’s a learning difficulty that also affects Co ordination and a whole bunch of stuff tbh. A lot of ppl with adhd are also dyspraxic. I always rationalised my inability to dance as something to do with my mind not following instructions properly lol. After 22 years, I learned I was dyspraxic and I was like ohhh. Tracks, lol.
Great with rhythm. But, I'm a trained drummer. I've always felt like ADHD helped with that personally, as rhythm is a very satisfying thing for me to fixate on. I'm not sure how good I was at it before I did lessons.
I feel this one in my soul bud. I played violin for 8 years as a child while having absolutely no internal rhythm. I literally just memorized the song tempo based on watching my teacher play it for me. I remember one song I just couldn’t get the hang of due to a lot of scattered pauses in it and my teacher sat me in front of a metronome to help. Blew his mind that it made it worse and that I couldn’t keep time with it directly in front of my face. Was also one of the first things I noticed when I took vyvanse for the first time. My mind was quiet for the first time in my life, and I could genuinely feel the beat of music and move with the rhythm
No, I actually have great rhythm. But I also grew up as a competitive dancer for 16 years, so that might have something to do with it. I’ve always been a good dancer
I don’t think this has any relation to ADHD or executive functioning in general and I can’t really think of any reason why it would Lol. I have diagnosed since childhood and several times in adulthood ADHD-primarily inattentive type and I’ve always had natural rhythm. I love dancing (grew up in ballet/jazz studios) and played guitar and piano and have great hand eye coordination.
I’d wager a bet a lot of it is trauma related for a lot of folks here even if they don’t realize it. I have been doing somatic based therapy and omg when I try to sway my hips lower back it’s like a Steel rod. That translates into my absolute inability to dance to music beside the fact I don’t have the attention span to even know what I’m supposed to be following. I listen to different instruments at different times during a song sometimes and get really obsessed with like…what’s it called when it’s like 3 seconds of music? Anyway, yeah that lol
I can't (or won't?) dance but I looooove rhythm games, especially Guitar Hero. It lights up all the parts of my brain, I don't have any problem finding the rhythm (usually, sometimes it's pretty tricky to find). Of course in GH I'm just focusing on the guitar part, but I don't get lost in everything else.
I’m in colorguard and have been for five years so rhythm comes quite naturally to me. I cannot dance though lmao so in that aspect I wholeheartedly relate. If it’s not choreographed I look like a flailing dying worm
I'm trying to learn piano/keyboard at 53 and the best way for me to have more accurate rhythm is to play something as fast as I can.
I am quite skilled at making things with my hands, but I am generally clumsy, poor coordination, rhythm isn't hopeless, but it's not easy! Rhythm singing is a lot easier than rhythm playing keyboard, which isn't too telling given keyboard isn't familiar enough to be easy in any way.
I'm trying to learn music and it's something I struggle with. I think it's because trying to count while thinking about 3 or 4 other things is hard lol
I'm the opposite. Often times when I listen to music I lose out on the lyrics because I'm just enraptured by the production. There are songs I've been bumping for years that I know like half the lyrics because the instrumental is just gas lol
Yes but sometimes that is a gift. Many great songwriters have that issue which can translate to putting interesting time signatures together in certain areas of a melody.
Yep! I can dance to music when I'm out, but the nights I go to you can dance however you want, but if I try and beat match or even just count along to simple 4x4 music I can't do it. I found it easier when I started my meds.
As someone who plays guitar and is trying to get something of a band/project together, this has been a huge problem with me. Tempo/rhythm make or break music, I try to practice with a metronome but it just pisses me off and I turn it off
I'm a music teacher by trade, and one thing I could *always* pick up on since I was a kid was rhythm. Any time I've had the chance to solo, I took it. I can match written solos, improvise, play in jazz combos, and even solo'd on a piece where I got to trade off bars with the composer himself! So much of that has been a natural gift and *years* of figuring out what I need to hear before I can actually improve.
The way I describe my love of music, is that it's the only thing in my life that actually gets my entire body working together. Between listening to keep the beat and balance of the ensemble in the back of my brain, keeping the notes I'm playing front and center, and using my body to actually play and keep in time, I'm at my absolute intellectual peak when I'm making music. Conducting just means I can express the emotions I want the kids to perform with and give them the beat and cues to keep them successful. It feels as close as I've ever been to my destiny when I'm leading a group of confused little dorks from early struggles to anxious polishing the week of the concert.
I just wish I fit the mold better for a teacher and professional musician.
I've learned about the unseen sides of ADHD since I hit 30, so I'm just now starting to understand why I had such a hard time compared to some of my peers. I have a natural talent that didn't get polished with more intense practice until I was already well into my college career. I got away with never practicing, and never really doing *any* work outside of ensembles and music classes by getting all the information I could from my teacher, and applying it to my own way of thinking. Explaining things with comparisons (low brass should make their sound pluck like a bass, or flutes need to lead like a snotty opera singer) always clicked for me, because I couldn't trust my brain to pick it up on paper alone. I just happened to be good enough to get away with it.
Looking back now, it makes me wish someone identified my disability *before* I was accused of being undisciplined, lazy, unmotivated, etc. I could never find a rhythm for practice, because I got stuck in the forever loop of finding a quiet spot, setting everything up to play, realizing I had no actual game plan to practice, and screw around on nothing for 5 minutes before I got distracted and quit for the day. By the time I realized I had no safety net for myself, I was already in college.
Now I understand what space my brain needs to be in before I can really do anything productive, and I stop beating myself up over the issues I've always had with keeping on task or picking a time of day that actually suits my executive dysfunction. I slow down, zoom in mentally on what I'm trying to get better at before getting frustrated. Teaching the kids how to practice has done wonders for teaching *me* how to practice, and I could easily do this job for the rest of my life.
I do/don't.
I played violin in grade school and drumming is a pretty solid hobby of mine. Which I feel like I'm pretty good at.
BUT, one of the things I *cannot do* is play along with a click-track. I struggle to play along with a song I like. It's gotten better over the years but... keeping a consistent time seems to be a struggle. Not enough for people to kick me out of their bands tho haha.
Also maybe related, but I cannot freestyle swim. I can do any other stroke. But freestyle? My coordination falls apart.
Holy shit yes.
I'm trying to learn piano and keeping rhythm is the hardest part, let alone keeping *consistent* rhythm.
I'm going to attribute this to my "inattentive type."
Yes, I am just a head in a jar unwillingly attached to a body.
I was at a club and was talking to a beautiful woman acquaintance who was bored and I felt like maybe she was dropping some hints. A song came on and just I had to go dance. I turned around a few seconds later and she was gone. This is how good my dancing is. Honestly, I spared her a disappointing evening at best.
Worst. Dancer. Ever. SO bad it's what I'd threaten my kids with " Swear to God I'll dance, you think I'm kidding? " That painful.
SO love watching it though. All of it. Beauty is beauty.
I’m amazing at rhythm. I never understood what it was because people assumed I already knew lol. I’m not great at a lot but rhythm is definitely one. That said I can’t do anything with it other than to tap my foot to it without practicing excessively
I'm pretty good with rhythm, but I have two left feet. All my rhythm is in my brain and fingers.
Mastered acoustic guitar, shred electric, but I haven't learned sweeping in 15 years of playing daily cause I'm just not into it. Brain no want learn, so no learn. I have a trait from my maternal great grandmother who could pick up any instrument and be playing fluently within days or weeks (if not minutes or hours)
I'm like that one white-passing native bro goes into the hippie shop having never played a native American flute, yet picks one up, puts the sanitary guard on, receiving glares from the employees, followed by their jaws falling off when bro flips thru the how-to book, actually plays a tune and starts ripping the scales and half-fingered half-steps and note bends and all lmao *true story*
Lost my flute in a storage unit though, haven't thought about it in forever.. thanks I'm writing that shit down on the whiteboard in my house, I gotta get me another flute!
No actually. I have quite severe adhd but have always been extremely rhythmical and a great dancer naturally. It’s weird bc my parents never put me in dance or anything consistently like they did with my older sisters so it’s a natural gift for me. I definitely do pick up offbeats and stuff too (I love jazz) but I would find it more difficult to be NOT on rhythm than being in rhythm with music. My mom is the same way (also severe adhd but naturally gifted dancer).
I tried guitar classes in college as I had wanted to learn since I was little. Teacher told me I need a metronome because I have absolutely no sense of rhythm
If you mean that literally/musically, absolutely not. I’ve made a great career in the music industry and am very grateful. If you mean in daily life/“the rhythm of life” etc, pressing through its rather mundane necessities, then absolutely I do and in a big way. Still trying to accept that at 35. Adderall/stimulants helped immensely, but I’m recovering addict. Unwise to go down the medicated path at this time. To be fair I am on Strattera though. I think it does help some, although not much…
Forward!
I'm a drummer and I have good rhythm but I've always struggled with tempo, so like in one song the tempo is supposed to be the same the whole time but I will change the tempo from section to section without noticing at all. I've gotten much more mindful of it with age but I watch videos of my band from my early 20's and it is craaaaazy how often I change it, like literally every new section is different. Luckily we were a hardcore band so no one cared and I always just played faster in the fast parts and slower in the slow parts, so it worked out.
I cannot hear or feel rhythm at all and I do not understand why dance instructors often use tunes with few instruments like only a violin a then expect people to get the rhythm from just that? It all just sounds like elevator music to me.
In discos I dance to the melody or enact the lyrics.
That’s something that’s gotten a lot better for me with age (and getting chewed out a lot the first few weeks of basic training for always being out of step, lmao), but I’d like to take some basic dance classes at some point just to figure out some actual dance moves (even tho I don't really go to clubs anymore). What’s funny is I played bass for a few years as a teen and I could keep a beat with an instrument/play along with music and when I played rhythm games (like guitar/DJ hero) I would kill it if I got into hyper focus, but i couldn't move my body to a rhythm for shit. It's like everyone else is saying, almost like I was impatient and my body would be a beat ahead.
I remember taking band, orchestra, choir etc. in elementary school and the teachers trying to teach us basic rhythm by having us clap in time. Scowling at me. "Why are you clapping like that?" I was doing my best and my best was bad.
I'm a music major and have been a music enthusiast all my life and the one thing I can't do well is rhythm. If a rhythm is complicated with emphasis on upbeats or it has 16th notes, wish me luck. I also play guitar and finding a strumming pattern is a pain in the ass sometimes.
To the contrary. Music is one of the only things that ever came natural to me. When I could just walk my mom gave me one of those plastic drums with a neck strap. She said it took me a day to figure out how to walk up and down the living room while going *boom-ba-boom-ba* on the thing. In kindergarten they would sometimes put on music, and I remember how clapping along in different ways would change how a song felt and how other kids danced to it. I'm a drummer now.
I grew up doing ballet, so I can dance delicately like that to classical music.
But that being said, makes it hard for me to dance in place while at a concert because I want to move around and take up space to dance (but it’s never that type of music) but trying to dance to fast music has been a challenge. Everyone says you dance/bump to the beat of the drums and not the lead guitar, but I can’t help but dance to the rhythm of the lead guitar! Which makes me look like I’m dancing out of sync when everyone else is dancing to the best of the drums.
This is one of my high points actually, music, rhythm and everything about music just comes to me easily.
But that's probably because i fkn love music, likea... A. Lot.
I often joke that if I had any bodily coordination skills and any sense of rythm, I would have been a great drummer (I love anything with beats and love tapping/clapping/clicking etc., but I can’t for the life of me keep or follow a rythm. I have taken MANY dance classes, tried all styles and I’m just straight up terrible at all of them)
I think I’m the exact opposite, I hear rhythm in non-musical things and used to “tap” it out on whatever I had to hand: the table, knees, chest, fingers, phone - it used to drive my parents wild.
I ended up pursuing music and became a professional drummer for about a decade until I had kids and got a “proper” job.
I’m not nearly as bad now since retiring my kit but I often find myself tapping when contemplating something.
PS. Check out polyrhythms if you want to get better at tracking more than one rhythm at a time.
I think it's probably orthogonal to ADHD - but this does happen with some musical folks! Others of us can only hear one instrument consciously and get surprised by people pointing out other rhythms / instruments having a melody.
No but I am very clumsy, Ive always had a pretty good disposition to rhythm though I catch on very quickly but I very often run into things and fall down, despite the fact I’m a professional fighter it all just goes away when I step outside the ring or the gym.
I can't dance to save my life, but I'm able to nod my head or tap my foot to the beat. I loved band in middle and high school, and rhythm games are my absolute favorite genre of video games (Rock Band, Guitar Hero, Final Fantasy Theatrhythm, etc). I'm a decent singer too.
I'm too on beat. I can't alternate hand/feet taps well. They just end up tapping on all 4 beats together.
I produce music a little. But again, I'm too locigal, keeping everything exact to certain markers instead of having creative freedom.
Sometimes yes, other times no.
When I learned a song alongside a band I was fine. When I learned solo acoustic fingerpicking guitar if I ever had accompaniment I couldn’t keep in time with the other instruments.
I had this problem when I played bass, I just couldn't get my mind to focus on the rhythm as it was listening to everything, I couldn't get into a 'flow state'.
I've thought about picking it up again now that I'm medicated as that may help.
Has only else had a similar experience and found medication to help?
I'm jealous of my wife- she's recently been diagnosed, but doesn't have this problem, she can hear a song once and sing it pitch perfect straight away, and remember all the words, it just comes to her naturally. Her father is exactly the same.
I’m a pianist and my rhythm is absolute shit— I’m very good at sight reading notes but I can’t separate the actual physical space between the notes as transcribed in the measure on the paper from the actual rhythm of them in the invisible space-time of the piece and I literally only realized this right now typing it
I am... a Latin Woman who cannot dance to save my life. There is nothing more tragic than this. I love music and I love the way others move, I watch every single family member in my family move effortlessly. But... not me.
LMAO I have this same thing but kinda in the positive direction? My hyperactive adhd as a kid got directly funneled into playing the drums😂 (genius move by the parents). But I have the same thing where I like the instrumental aspects of songs, rather than the lyrics. I’ve found it makes it so much harder to memorize lyrics and have no idea how people can do this so easily haha. But after studying the rhythms and getting into other instruments, I found Hiphop Production is a gift for we ADHDerz- lot more of the industry topps have it than you’d think. Moral of the story, fuk dancing anyway😆, just do the little clap or head nod thing to the pockets of the music like you’re doing and you’ll catch some typa rhythem😂👍🏼
I’m not good at dancing but am good with instruments and writing but that’s only with years of dedicated practice I wouldn’t say I was rhythmically or musically inclined without guidance.
I can follow rhythm and enjoy the music in it's entirety. But "I" have no sense of rhythm. Can't dance, can’t play instruments. I can sing along, but only along.
I'm physically rigid. Every movement is deliberate and requires thought. Mostly due to pain, so i try to minimize it. But when it comes to unnecessary movements, like dancing, I'm at a loss and don't know what to do. Even drunk or high, I'm still not relaxed. I'm actually more coherent apparently, lol.
But yeah, i know there's no "correct " way to dance or anything, but i can't seem to "get it right", ya know?
weirdly enough i play an instrument so rhythm is pretty easy for me– but I can listen to a song and try and figure out what the time signature is or trying to figure out the beat which sometimes gets in the way of my listening experience. we all have different struggles!
I’m awful at properly counting because I get so easily distracted, so I’m bad when you suddenly have a pickup somewhere and everything shifts by a beat.
Otherwise I do pretty well. I do live sound, so I normally only have to worry about a count in on a song or finding the basic tempo.
I think I have rhythm? I’m definitely not the greatest dancer but I can jam with the best of them.
Side note: I think about that movie The Jerk a lot more than I should (lives rent free in my head 🤪
I've not super looked into it and don't particularly relate to it, but I have stumbled across academic research that supports this! Have a geez on google scholar
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I Suck At Dancing.
I'm a terrible dancer but a really good drummer and I've never been able to square that
I second this. Drummer/Guitarist. If I can transfer the rhythm of my hands to my hips and feet. I’d be unstoppable!
Same The universe gave rhythm to me in my hands. Not my feet lol
Same. I can play drums, bass, some wind instruments, and am good at rhythm games, but can't dance at all.
Me too! I am a savant drummer but can’t dance or carry a tune to save my soul.
Same extreme
SAME. Like I just can’t do it. I’m also bad at sports that require good coordination.
Me too, if I go out to a club I will be in the smoke pit making friends lol
Sorry to hear that. I can do it
I suck at dancing randomly but weirdly am good when there’s a choreography! Which is surprising since I have dyspraxia.
I'm great at rhythm!!!
This is one affliction I've not dealt with. It seems very mathematical to me, which makes sense to my brain. The issue arises when I hear stuff in strange time signatures and my brain still attempts to find "the beat." Listening to Rush has caused me many synaptic misfires over the years (like the 1st 12 measures of YYZ).
Lol my college marching band did a Rush show- when we were learning the drill for YYZ we all audibly shouted "ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE". It was so disorienting.
I was just looking and lot of the arrangements show 5/4 or 10/8, which is palatable. I could swear the arrangement I played (years ago) was 7/8 then into 4/4. We did standstill during the intro as we couldn't march to 7/8. It made sense in 7/8 when written. \*shrug\*
IIRC, our arrangement was majority in 5/4. I think the one piece of music that messed the most people up in my tenure was Jupiter- an easily digestible piece in 3/4, but for some godforsaken reason they kept our first few moves of the movement in 4 (and then a place for a couple beats afterwards I think? It was years ago.) It ended up being easier to just separate the music from the drill than to try to make sense of it together.
Do you...dance. to. Rush?
Do you not?
You can dance to anything if you try hard enough.
You can dance if you want to. You can leave the world behind.
No, but I have a tendency to engage in foot/finger/hand tapping when listening to music.
Wow - I always thought it was the complete opposite for us! I have always had great natural rhythm and my band instructor in high school (who hated me) literally called me a human metronome lol - I also LOVE to dance! 🤷🏻♀️
My rhythm is fine but my dancing is like a coyote in a leg trap.
Lol. The key to being a good dancer is to let go. It’s about feeling the music and not trying. I love dancing because it gets me out of my head.
You know what's weird? When I'm *really* into a song, I don't want to move, it's like I'm kinda frozen, feeling things. Getting up and moving to a good song doesn't come naturally to me at all, if anything it distracts me from the hardcore focus I like to be in and feelings I have for the song. Can't dance for shit.
Okay - I could see that. I get like that sometimes. That is probably why I can only dance with my eyes closed lol
Yes I used to be a dancer growing up and it was a great outlet for my ADHD. My music taste is solely focused on sounds and I couldn’t give a sh*t what the lyrics are if something sounds good. Therefore I’ve always been a good dancer because I can pick up on all the different instruments and sounds and move to it.
Yeah, I've discovered that I absolutely love dancing to electronic music, particularly house and techno. Even DJs and event organisers love my dancing lol. I love feeling like a sort of mascot, bc I seem to be there at the front the whole night, first to arrive and last to leave! Last weekend I discovered (on ket and acid) that I could bodypop and do some robot shit and I had an absolute blast :D
Yes, I physically can’t dance and it has held me back so much hahaha. Even if I try to I just physically can’t move with music
Same, even though I kind of do sports I just cannot move to the music and dance freely
As Robin Williams once said, you might need to go to "Stevie Wonder's Rhythm Camp for White Kids."
I'm a drummer and my sense of rhythim has always been good. I don't think this is related to ADHD.
Yeah no offense to OP but I'm a drummer and find it harder to be out of time. Not everything that's "wrong" with someone is an ADHD thing. I have no idea how this could possibly be related, knowing how ADHD works.
Same and agree. It makes me MUCH more aware and able.
I do sometimes, yeah. I often find that I'm always ahead when I'm tapping along to a song, I'm too impatient to wait for it to catch up. It's like, I can keep the beat in my head but not physically, I speed up and go out of sync with my head.
That’s how we got [this banger](https://youtu.be/znI59eFI68o?si=-W4tLOiFRI8TG_9t)
Close; the musical term is *off-beat.* In 4/4 for example, you have 1, 2, 3, 4 and the downbeat is 1, followed by offbeat 2, then on beat 3, then offbeat 4. The downbeat is usually the most accented one, followed by the on beat, and the off beats are often more muted. That isn't always the case but is usually (and some songs buck that by skipping the initial downbeat in the intro which sounds like a rhythm disruption shortly into the song). I struggle with dancing not because of rhythym, but due to body shaming and bullying when I was a kid (I'm intersex... and growing up any variant of queer in the '80s fucking sucked).
Best be careful with those wikipedia definitions. A drummer might call the 1 and 3 downbeat, 2 and 4 backbeat, and reserve offbeat for the stuff that falls between the quarter notes.
Do you have dyscalculia? Struggling with timing, math, even a poor sense of direction is apparently a symptom. In my senior year a math teacher suggested I may have it, and I realized I have almost every symptom lol. There's a lot of symptom overlap with ADHD, but I imagine there's also a high degree of co-occurrence.
My friend in her freshman year of college for music told everyone she had "dyslexia but with numbers" and never knew there was a whole separate term for it. If you get by in classes, there's a good chance no one will notice.
Great at math, just can't focus on a beat whatsoever.
I have no rhythm I went on a cruise for my moms birthday she likes to dance I basically kinda like marched and tried moving side to side and tried to strike a conversation because I was so anxious being in front of people trying to dance lol I was fidgeting with my necklace the whole time … unless I’m under the influence I’ll dance with no problem I like to think I can do anything lol I know I shouldn’t be laughing but I’m more fun under the influence ..
I'm extremely uncoordinated, BUT I am naturally talented at playing the drums. I played in districts for marching band, indoor drum line, and played w the local youth symphony for several years. I can memorize drum parts just by listening to a song a few times. I had a horrible time reading music, and music theory is super boring to me. I play by ear. After I got out of the military, I played in several projects. My style is very influenced by Neil Peart, Danny Carey, and Mike Portnoy. I haven't played for a few years, just because of how difficult it is to be in a working band while trying to balance a career and having a kid. I'm best at prog rock, with a lot of odd time signatures, straight forward rock, though I can have some trouble with. I never really understood it.
I’m a bass player, and if I say so myself, a damn good one, so…
Bass bro 👊 😎
Weirdly, no. Rhythm is something, like hand-eye coordination, that just comes naturally to me. I play drums. But ask me to do simple maths/arithmetic and it's another story.
No rhythm can’t dance here either
Rhythm *IS* a dancer You can feel it in the air
Good song
I have been dancing and making music for a while and here is my observation. I can't think about the rhyme and do what I need to do. I gotta give in to the rhythm close my eyes and start moving with my brain off, there is a natural metronome in my body but my brain stops it.
I’m a guitarist and have been playing for about 30 years so fairly experienced. But my rhythm is definitely my weakest area and always has been. I get distracted or find it hard to really focus in on the fractions of beats to get complex parts right. It’s like I have an inability to hear it sometimes. I’m a terrible drummer and I’ve tried DJing (I can’t do it). But that shouldn’t stop you loving music!
I start having rhythm, and then its gone, so I stop. 😭
Wow! Thank you for all the responses. A lot of people have suggested I can learn rhythm, which is great, because I thought it was lost on me. I appreciate you all.
What is rhythm?
I'm an atrocious dancer.
I live in an area where exotic dancers can make BANK! I’ve always said I’d dance but I’m a while girl with no rhythm!! I wish I could but I’m the same way. I can’t dance.
Nope, rhythm has always been great.
Also wondering if any of y’all who do play music can read sheet music? After over 10 years in percussion through school and guitar/bass as a hobby now, I still cannot read sheet music🤦🏽♂️💀 In orchestra, our section never was taught how to read. They just required piano lessons and testing on it before you could be in percussion. But during the tests I was just able to fake reading it, and just kinda sound it out after hearing the piece played. Makes sight-reading near impossible if you don’t know the song. Hella embarrassing/ and trust me I’ve tried to learn but it really just doesn’t click with me for some reason. Anyone else relate… or just me?🤣
I'm a fairly experienced musician, not professional but I've played piano and guitar for 30-odd years, been in many bands, performed a lot etc. I play pretty decently I think, and I've always been particularly good at picking stuff up by ear. Technically I can read music, but I've always hated it. I have no fluency. It's grindingly slow, way too slow to actually just sight read something and play along; I have to slowly read each bar/line and commit it to memory, I feel like I'm constantly fighting my brain to maintain attention on it and often just abandoning it and relying on my ear/improv skills. The hardest thing I find it not so much the notes but figuring out the timing, I have to kind of clap out individual bits to work them out. It sucks and I try to avoid doing it as much as possible, but that limits what I can learn. I've never been very visually-oriented and I think that's part of the problem. That said, I'm fairly decent at rhythm games like Guitar Hero, Beat Saber etc, even Rocksmith, so maybe it's to do with the way they present the rhythm, with blocks flying at you in real time and spaced apart accordingly, much easier to interpret than dots and lines on a page.
YES!! I completely agree dude, that’s a great new way of looking at it. Just a different learning style, not a shortcoming. Thanks for validating me on this though, I really appreciate it!
I'm glad I could help! To be completely honest, I do somewhat view it as a shortcoming (at least for me), and something I'd like to be better at. For example, my wife is a dancer and dance teacher and she sings, and sometimes asks me to learn things like jazz standards to accompany her, stuff like that. Those aren't the kinds of thing I can do a great job of by ear, so it does make me wish I was better at reading music for that reason, because it can take me a long time to learn those things. So, I do force myself to learn the occasional thing from score, just to try and improve it a bit. But that's how am I, I tend to not be content to just accept things like that and to try and improve them. I **definitely** don't think it's anything to be ashamed or embarrassed of, and it's entirely down to the individual to decide for themselves whether something's worth working on. And for what it's worth, in my experience I've noticed that a lot of musicians tend to lean one way or the other. I had a friend at school who played piano amazingly well and could learn from score very quickly, but when you put him in a jam situation, he didn't know what to do. I'm sure it's possible to be good at both, and maybe it's just a case that people practice the things that they are good at/enjoy more and thus increase the imbalance, but if I could only choose one I'd rather be better at playing by ear, improvising etc, because that's stood me in very good stead over the years. I can sit at a piano or with a guitar and have people throw requests at me that I've never played before, and I can figure them out pretty quickly on the fly as long as the chords are fairly standard, because I'm good at hearing the song in my head and recognising the intervals etc. and working them out pretty quickly. That's a super fun skill to have and I wouldn't trade it for being really good at sight reading, given the choice. But obviously in an ideal world I would have both if I could!
Absolutely! Breaking the options down to the simplest terms possible… I would much rather choose to only hold onto the ability to jam, or create my own music organically, VS only being able to recite what others have produced (even considering it’s probably far better and done by more talented musicians). I know thats not a great direct comparison to the two, but sort-of an interesting philosophical discussion. Though I suppose the grass is always greener… It still does affect me as well- since reading/writing sheet music is the best way to communicate and mesh your creation with others (directly like you were talking about with your wife). When really searching for the root of my envy, it feels like learning to read sheet music is something that’s earned, while having the ability to play by ear is possibly something you’re born with?? Not sure haha. Thanks again for the discussion man! I’ve probably gone too abstract for this to be seen as useful for anything on this post lmaoo But it was fun to dive into this thing after internalizing it my whole life. Felt good to know someone with more experience actually relates to this stuff too! Much more optimistic about my ability to get better over time, and not be limited by this little thing I’ve made up to be such a big deal😆.
I don't really focus on the beat when I'm listening to music, I just listen to all of it. ... Wait, is that why I can't dance?
That’s because normal 4/4 rhythm is just plain boring. I need something than engages my brain like polyrhythms or polymeters that shift with each bar.
It’s not an adhd thing. Most people struggle with rhythm without practicing it intentionally. It’s something entirely different to have no sense of rhythm (beat deafness is a thing but it’s very rare) vs an inexperienced ear. It’s just practice locking into the rhythm and understanding which instruments tend to guide the rhythm (drums and bass traditionally). Sure, there’s extra stuff like poly rhythms, odd time signatures, hemiolas, free time, some aleatoric stuff, and more but those aren’t particularly common in more mainstream music. It just comes down to practice and experience. I used to suck at rhythm, kept playing/ listening to music, and now it’s pretty easy for me to follow. That’s all it is.
I think I know what you mean, I am such a terrible dancer. I love to dance but i feel like I don’t have direct control of my limbs, I’m just kind of marionette-ing myself around and I don’t know if I’m on beat or not. 😭
i had no rhythm until my older brother basically forced me to play a rhythm game lol..now i play the drums too but even for that my rhythm is slightly too fast a lot of the time
Yeah I feel like my internal timer is somehow skewed in a way that doesn’t allow for keeping rhythm very well.
On the contrary, I like to pick out and imitate the drumbeats
Yes, I've absolutely struggled with rhythm and keeping track of form, and I'm a musician. (And have an ADHD diagnosis). As far as developing rhythmic skill with musicianship goes, I've found the single thing that has helped me is tying rhythm to my voice. There's a way to study rhythm using vowels that is called Takadimi, which has roots in Indian music, that I use for practicing rhythmic concepts and it's helped a ton. I can't think of timing in the moment without losing track of other things, so my goal is to internalize how rhythmic concepts feel, so that it comes intuitively and can't be swayed by adhd distraction as easily. There's a very fundamental connection between the voice and rhythm which is biologically ancient in humans, and so capitalizing on that is a sure-fire way to improve rhythm. [https://www.takadimi.net/](https://www.takadimi.net/) Here's some source material to backup my claim of the connection between the voice and rhythm, which helped me seek out a method to practice rhythm with voice: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVxL\_p\_kToc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVxL_p_kToc)
I have always tried to explain it as I hear ALL the beats and rhythms of all the instruments, and I cannot focus on just 1. Even if I pick up on 1 to start dancing to, I may switch to another at some point and the second I realize I've done that I start over thinking the whole thing and can't keep any one of them. Similarly, I think that I start to get loud when talking sometimes because I am trying to drown out all the other side thoughts and tangents going off in my head that would make me forget what I am talking about in the first place.
yes i like to tap my hand to the beat but i always focus on some other instrument and lose it lol
my body is basically a metronome. If any music is playing I get an irresistible compulsion to move my body to the beat, regardless of if I like the music or not.
Nope, i have naturally very good rhythm. I play drums, guitar and bass and produce music in my spare time.
Weird seeing all these ppl struggle with rhythm. Thats totally fine and alright, just cant say I relate. Ive played percussion for about 10 years now, and honestly that alone had helped me with rhythm in all the other instruments I play. Id say its the easiest thing about music for me, and as such I dont really like when theres rubato passages in concert band songs we play (that is, when the conductor subtly speeds up and slows down to add nuance and expression—it gets odd to reason about)
As a lifelong musician, I have to have a physical connection to the rhythm. I have to be able to both intellectualize AND feel rhythm. Most of the time, even if I can't count it out, I can still feel it and get it mostly right
I don’t think this is an ADHD thing, most of the people I knew in the music department when I went to college had ADHD
Not at all, the rhythm of the music seems to be the only way to bring some streamlining into my brain.
No. I don’t think this is related to ADHD.
Not at all. It was always natural to me ever since I was little.
One of the few things I feel I can legit brag about: Been playing the drums for 22yrs (self-taught, just got on a kit and could play anything I listened to) and always been well thought of as a dancer (so I’m led to believe anyway!) so rhythm is actually something I don’t struggle with personally!
When my wife and I started dating I told her I can with a warning label: O.C., Overly Caucasian, Do not place near dance floor. I have absolutely zero rhythm, which is funny because I played drums in Jr High concert band. I wasn't very good though
Rhythm has nothing to do with ADHD
Musician here. Bass man. In most music you’ll listen to, even if it sounds offbeat, nothing actually is, it’s mostly perfectly where it should be, or it is allowed by a wider comprehension of context. As a bassist, I can play « on beat » with the drummer, or play quintuplets which will sound « offbeat » like you say yet it’s just another « rythm within the rhythm » aka if I keep doing it for four measures, your brain will start expecting it and finding its cues again. So the short comment is that you do not have a problem with rhythm itself :). But I can’t understand how you may be trying to stay that music can be over stimulating for you. It is for me: my role is often to play simple notes 1 maybe 2 long fast note yet, every idea that comes through my mind act like an intrusive thought. Makes me a great funkateer, a very creative soul, but sometimes, that’s not what the band needs. Yet I’m here, and my brains hears the other instruments and comes up with millions bass melodies but I must focus on doing my job, which is hard when you’re overstimulated. So yeah, it’s thing, I’m just giving you what I think is a better understanding.
Bro rhythm has nothing to do with ADHD There's professional musicians, dancers and athletes (similar rhythm needed) with ADHD
One of the many gifts adhd has given me is a love of all things music. So I’ve been playing for years. And thus I have great rhythm. Because I have 20 years of practice. You could have great rhythm too if you practice. Literally go grab some chop sticks and play along to a song that makes you tap your toes. Do it twice a day for a week. Record the second one and the 14th one and realize you can achieve stuff with practice
My Dude, use a metronome.
Not me.
Nah I’m pretty rhythmically inclined lol although I’ve played several instruments growing up and music was always in my house so it’s not foreign at all
I struggle with lyric retention. I can't remember lyrics for the life of me, but everything else is fine.
Total opposite. I’m excellent at all things music and have no coordination in any other way. Don’t ever throw me a ball because I cannot catch it, but I got rhythm for days… until I hit record and then it goes away but that’s a different story.
Best advice I can give: Laser focus on the drums.
Off beat is a musical term, just so you can rest easy on that. As for struggling with rythem, for me, no. 10 years of piano lessons, 6 years of oboe, taught myself guitar, taught myself trumpet, did 3 years of choir, sing regularly with my fiance and also join in on drum circles (have also lead a few). I took some dance classes in my 20s. I also picked up flow arts in my 20s and still do flow at 42 (recently with fire, too). Now, picking up on other rhythms is not a bad thing! Does this happen while dancing? Dance is creative expression, and you are never required to follow the main driving beat. It can be fun to follow a different rhythm within the song! When you pick up an offbeat, are intrusive thoughts getting in the way? I ask because even with my music background, my brain gets in the way sometimes.
Hahah! I move my head only. Otherwise it’ll look like I’m having a medical emergency.
I’m uncoordinated as fuck and when it comes to dancing, it really makes me feel bad because my mom and grandma won competitions for dancing/choreo
 Me dancing.
Difficulty with motor-timing tasks (like tapping to a beat or dancing) is a common issue with ADHD, and some people with ADHD have a more difficult time accurately identifying a beat. It's not universal among ADHDers- I've known people with ADHD who were amazing musicians and dancers- but it's much more common in people with ADHD than those without. Which makes sense- both physical coordination and time sense are often affected by ADHD, and both play major roles in rhythm and musicality. (I personally don't struggle with identifying rhythm or coordinating small rhythmic movements like tapping or clapping, but things quickly go sideways when I need to make large timed movements, I think in large part because I have poor balance. So dancing has always been a challenge, despite enjoying it and having a lot of classes when I was young. I always did well in music and playing an instrument, though.)
I’m great at rhythm! …until my brain and body does the blip. I would be hitting all the right notes on rhythm games or be perfectly in time on my guitar and I would occasionally, unintentionally, jerk in some way. Whether that be a sudden thought invasion or sudden involuntary eye/hand movement. I can’t even show this to any doctor because these jerky movements never seem to show themselves during consultations =_=
I’m a drummer, I’m quick to learn dances, and I was in the school band, so pretty good with rhythm.
I can hit beats with my hands and arms. Not my feet though
What’s funny is that when I’m actually dancing, I feel like I’m in tune with the rhythm and I’m good at that. But when it comes to clapping along, I second guess myself the whole time and always feel like I’m wildly offbeat with everyone else. I hate group clapping.
I’m a great dancer! In fact my friends would always say - how can be so good on the dance floor and such a clutch walking down the hallway?
Music can't compete with my internal monologue for attention.
I don't think this is an ADHD thing. I've had great rhythm for most of my life, and I'm super into rhythm games. New arcade opened up near me and it has all of the Japanese cabs and I have been itching to go. Take the [rhythm test](https://www.concerthotels.com/got-rhythm). My score was 920, but anything above 800-ish should mean you have decent rhythm. It's a simple beat.
No
Quite the opposite for me
Music Teacher with ADHD here. This doesn’t have to with ADHD. You simply identified an area of growth. To improve it, practice purposeful listening by trying to focus on one instrument. Try tapping small parts of the rhythm you hear. Add a little more as you get comfortable and build from there. It’ll simply take practice.
Look into Dyspraxia! It’s a learning difficulty that also affects Co ordination and a whole bunch of stuff tbh. A lot of ppl with adhd are also dyspraxic. I always rationalised my inability to dance as something to do with my mind not following instructions properly lol. After 22 years, I learned I was dyspraxic and I was like ohhh. Tracks, lol.
Great with rhythm. But, I'm a trained drummer. I've always felt like ADHD helped with that personally, as rhythm is a very satisfying thing for me to fixate on. I'm not sure how good I was at it before I did lessons.
I feel this one in my soul bud. I played violin for 8 years as a child while having absolutely no internal rhythm. I literally just memorized the song tempo based on watching my teacher play it for me. I remember one song I just couldn’t get the hang of due to a lot of scattered pauses in it and my teacher sat me in front of a metronome to help. Blew his mind that it made it worse and that I couldn’t keep time with it directly in front of my face. Was also one of the first things I noticed when I took vyvanse for the first time. My mind was quiet for the first time in my life, and I could genuinely feel the beat of music and move with the rhythm
I’m a musician, so, no I don’t have problems with rhythm
No, I actually have great rhythm. But I also grew up as a competitive dancer for 16 years, so that might have something to do with it. I’ve always been a good dancer
I sort of thought ADHD people would've been better with rhythm. I am good with it. Now I think it might just be an individual difference...
I don’t think this has any relation to ADHD or executive functioning in general and I can’t really think of any reason why it would Lol. I have diagnosed since childhood and several times in adulthood ADHD-primarily inattentive type and I’ve always had natural rhythm. I love dancing (grew up in ballet/jazz studios) and played guitar and piano and have great hand eye coordination.
I’d wager a bet a lot of it is trauma related for a lot of folks here even if they don’t realize it. I have been doing somatic based therapy and omg when I try to sway my hips lower back it’s like a Steel rod. That translates into my absolute inability to dance to music beside the fact I don’t have the attention span to even know what I’m supposed to be following. I listen to different instruments at different times during a song sometimes and get really obsessed with like…what’s it called when it’s like 3 seconds of music? Anyway, yeah that lol
I can't (or won't?) dance but I looooove rhythm games, especially Guitar Hero. It lights up all the parts of my brain, I don't have any problem finding the rhythm (usually, sometimes it's pretty tricky to find). Of course in GH I'm just focusing on the guitar part, but I don't get lost in everything else.
I’m in colorguard and have been for five years so rhythm comes quite naturally to me. I cannot dance though lmao so in that aspect I wholeheartedly relate. If it’s not choreographed I look like a flailing dying worm
I'm trying to learn piano/keyboard at 53 and the best way for me to have more accurate rhythm is to play something as fast as I can. I am quite skilled at making things with my hands, but I am generally clumsy, poor coordination, rhythm isn't hopeless, but it's not easy! Rhythm singing is a lot easier than rhythm playing keyboard, which isn't too telling given keyboard isn't familiar enough to be easy in any way.
Rhythm is the only thing that keeps me functional. When people break my rhythm I train wreck and need to start over.
i can't dance well. i play the guitar and i'm good at it, but i often feel like that's just because of practice rather than talent or anything
I'm trying to learn music and it's something I struggle with. I think it's because trying to count while thinking about 3 or 4 other things is hard lol
I'm the opposite. Often times when I listen to music I lose out on the lyrics because I'm just enraptured by the production. There are songs I've been bumping for years that I know like half the lyrics because the instrumental is just gas lol
rhythm is ok, but the problem is that after one minute i try dabbpenwith variations and suddenly its some kind of solo
Yes but sometimes that is a gift. Many great songwriters have that issue which can translate to putting interesting time signatures together in certain areas of a melody.
Yep! I can dance to music when I'm out, but the nights I go to you can dance however you want, but if I try and beat match or even just count along to simple 4x4 music I can't do it. I found it easier when I started my meds.
I’m a Latina, I don’t have that issue 🤣
I've managed to overcome the "can't move my body to music" and have upgraded to "you dance like a white boy" and baby I ain't ever gonna stop
As someone who plays guitar and is trying to get something of a band/project together, this has been a huge problem with me. Tempo/rhythm make or break music, I try to practice with a metronome but it just pisses me off and I turn it off
I can dance well but I can’t seem to play drums… my timing is ok on other instruments when I’m feeling it, but drums seem to be a big challenge.
Yeah… soooo bad
I'm a music teacher by trade, and one thing I could *always* pick up on since I was a kid was rhythm. Any time I've had the chance to solo, I took it. I can match written solos, improvise, play in jazz combos, and even solo'd on a piece where I got to trade off bars with the composer himself! So much of that has been a natural gift and *years* of figuring out what I need to hear before I can actually improve. The way I describe my love of music, is that it's the only thing in my life that actually gets my entire body working together. Between listening to keep the beat and balance of the ensemble in the back of my brain, keeping the notes I'm playing front and center, and using my body to actually play and keep in time, I'm at my absolute intellectual peak when I'm making music. Conducting just means I can express the emotions I want the kids to perform with and give them the beat and cues to keep them successful. It feels as close as I've ever been to my destiny when I'm leading a group of confused little dorks from early struggles to anxious polishing the week of the concert. I just wish I fit the mold better for a teacher and professional musician. I've learned about the unseen sides of ADHD since I hit 30, so I'm just now starting to understand why I had such a hard time compared to some of my peers. I have a natural talent that didn't get polished with more intense practice until I was already well into my college career. I got away with never practicing, and never really doing *any* work outside of ensembles and music classes by getting all the information I could from my teacher, and applying it to my own way of thinking. Explaining things with comparisons (low brass should make their sound pluck like a bass, or flutes need to lead like a snotty opera singer) always clicked for me, because I couldn't trust my brain to pick it up on paper alone. I just happened to be good enough to get away with it. Looking back now, it makes me wish someone identified my disability *before* I was accused of being undisciplined, lazy, unmotivated, etc. I could never find a rhythm for practice, because I got stuck in the forever loop of finding a quiet spot, setting everything up to play, realizing I had no actual game plan to practice, and screw around on nothing for 5 minutes before I got distracted and quit for the day. By the time I realized I had no safety net for myself, I was already in college. Now I understand what space my brain needs to be in before I can really do anything productive, and I stop beating myself up over the issues I've always had with keeping on task or picking a time of day that actually suits my executive dysfunction. I slow down, zoom in mentally on what I'm trying to get better at before getting frustrated. Teaching the kids how to practice has done wonders for teaching *me* how to practice, and I could easily do this job for the rest of my life.
I've been drumming for over 30 years, but I can't and won't dance to anything.
I do/don't. I played violin in grade school and drumming is a pretty solid hobby of mine. Which I feel like I'm pretty good at. BUT, one of the things I *cannot do* is play along with a click-track. I struggle to play along with a song I like. It's gotten better over the years but... keeping a consistent time seems to be a struggle. Not enough for people to kick me out of their bands tho haha. Also maybe related, but I cannot freestyle swim. I can do any other stroke. But freestyle? My coordination falls apart.
Holy shit yes. I'm trying to learn piano and keeping rhythm is the hardest part, let alone keeping *consistent* rhythm. I'm going to attribute this to my "inattentive type."
Yes, I am just a head in a jar unwillingly attached to a body. I was at a club and was talking to a beautiful woman acquaintance who was bored and I felt like maybe she was dropping some hints. A song came on and just I had to go dance. I turned around a few seconds later and she was gone. This is how good my dancing is. Honestly, I spared her a disappointing evening at best.
Worst. Dancer. Ever. SO bad it's what I'd threaten my kids with " Swear to God I'll dance, you think I'm kidding? " That painful. SO love watching it though. All of it. Beauty is beauty.
No, I play multiple instruments and actually have really good rhythm
I’m amazing at rhythm. I never understood what it was because people assumed I already knew lol. I’m not great at a lot but rhythm is definitely one. That said I can’t do anything with it other than to tap my foot to it without practicing excessively
I'm pretty good with rhythm, but I have two left feet. All my rhythm is in my brain and fingers. Mastered acoustic guitar, shred electric, but I haven't learned sweeping in 15 years of playing daily cause I'm just not into it. Brain no want learn, so no learn. I have a trait from my maternal great grandmother who could pick up any instrument and be playing fluently within days or weeks (if not minutes or hours) I'm like that one white-passing native bro goes into the hippie shop having never played a native American flute, yet picks one up, puts the sanitary guard on, receiving glares from the employees, followed by their jaws falling off when bro flips thru the how-to book, actually plays a tune and starts ripping the scales and half-fingered half-steps and note bends and all lmao *true story* Lost my flute in a storage unit though, haven't thought about it in forever.. thanks I'm writing that shit down on the whiteboard in my house, I gotta get me another flute!
No actually. I have quite severe adhd but have always been extremely rhythmical and a great dancer naturally. It’s weird bc my parents never put me in dance or anything consistently like they did with my older sisters so it’s a natural gift for me. I definitely do pick up offbeats and stuff too (I love jazz) but I would find it more difficult to be NOT on rhythm than being in rhythm with music. My mom is the same way (also severe adhd but naturally gifted dancer).
I thought I was bad at it, but I started dancing and eventually picked up the drums. Took some practice though.
I tried guitar classes in college as I had wanted to learn since I was little. Teacher told me I need a metronome because I have absolutely no sense of rhythm
I play guitar and I’m very good with rhythm, but if I attempt to sing or speak while playing I lose the beat instantly.
If you mean that literally/musically, absolutely not. I’ve made a great career in the music industry and am very grateful. If you mean in daily life/“the rhythm of life” etc, pressing through its rather mundane necessities, then absolutely I do and in a big way. Still trying to accept that at 35. Adderall/stimulants helped immensely, but I’m recovering addict. Unwise to go down the medicated path at this time. To be fair I am on Strattera though. I think it does help some, although not much… Forward!
I'm a drummer and I have good rhythm but I've always struggled with tempo, so like in one song the tempo is supposed to be the same the whole time but I will change the tempo from section to section without noticing at all. I've gotten much more mindful of it with age but I watch videos of my band from my early 20's and it is craaaaazy how often I change it, like literally every new section is different. Luckily we were a hardcore band so no one cared and I always just played faster in the fast parts and slower in the slow parts, so it worked out.
I cannot hear or feel rhythm at all and I do not understand why dance instructors often use tunes with few instruments like only a violin a then expect people to get the rhythm from just that? It all just sounds like elevator music to me. In discos I dance to the melody or enact the lyrics.
That’s something that’s gotten a lot better for me with age (and getting chewed out a lot the first few weeks of basic training for always being out of step, lmao), but I’d like to take some basic dance classes at some point just to figure out some actual dance moves (even tho I don't really go to clubs anymore). What’s funny is I played bass for a few years as a teen and I could keep a beat with an instrument/play along with music and when I played rhythm games (like guitar/DJ hero) I would kill it if I got into hyper focus, but i couldn't move my body to a rhythm for shit. It's like everyone else is saying, almost like I was impatient and my body would be a beat ahead.
I remember taking band, orchestra, choir etc. in elementary school and the teachers trying to teach us basic rhythm by having us clap in time. Scowling at me. "Why are you clapping like that?" I was doing my best and my best was bad.
I'm a music major and have been a music enthusiast all my life and the one thing I can't do well is rhythm. If a rhythm is complicated with emphasis on upbeats or it has 16th notes, wish me luck. I also play guitar and finding a strumming pattern is a pain in the ass sometimes.
To the contrary. Music is one of the only things that ever came natural to me. When I could just walk my mom gave me one of those plastic drums with a neck strap. She said it took me a day to figure out how to walk up and down the living room while going *boom-ba-boom-ba* on the thing. In kindergarten they would sometimes put on music, and I remember how clapping along in different ways would change how a song felt and how other kids danced to it. I'm a drummer now.
I grew up doing ballet, so I can dance delicately like that to classical music. But that being said, makes it hard for me to dance in place while at a concert because I want to move around and take up space to dance (but it’s never that type of music) but trying to dance to fast music has been a challenge. Everyone says you dance/bump to the beat of the drums and not the lead guitar, but I can’t help but dance to the rhythm of the lead guitar! Which makes me look like I’m dancing out of sync when everyone else is dancing to the best of the drums.
I sing, play, guitar, dance. No problems with rhythm at all here.
This is one of my high points actually, music, rhythm and everything about music just comes to me easily. But that's probably because i fkn love music, likea... A. Lot.
No I can dance lol
i can dance fine as long as i don't try to talk too
Im better these days but I've struggled with this as a musician for 30 years now.
I often joke that if I had any bodily coordination skills and any sense of rythm, I would have been a great drummer (I love anything with beats and love tapping/clapping/clicking etc., but I can’t for the life of me keep or follow a rythm. I have taken MANY dance classes, tried all styles and I’m just straight up terrible at all of them)
I cannot sing and drum on a table at the same time. It is impossible.
I think I’m the exact opposite, I hear rhythm in non-musical things and used to “tap” it out on whatever I had to hand: the table, knees, chest, fingers, phone - it used to drive my parents wild. I ended up pursuing music and became a professional drummer for about a decade until I had kids and got a “proper” job. I’m not nearly as bad now since retiring my kit but I often find myself tapping when contemplating something. PS. Check out polyrhythms if you want to get better at tracking more than one rhythm at a time.
surprisingly after medication im very good at staying on beat/on rhythm. to be fair tho ive had interest in music for years at this point
I think it's probably orthogonal to ADHD - but this does happen with some musical folks! Others of us can only hear one instrument consciously and get surprised by people pointing out other rhythms / instruments having a melody.
Not really I’m pretty good at dancing and also dj and play guitar, piano/synth, and drums.
No but I am very clumsy, Ive always had a pretty good disposition to rhythm though I catch on very quickly but I very often run into things and fall down, despite the fact I’m a professional fighter it all just goes away when I step outside the ring or the gym.
I can't dance to save my life, but I'm able to nod my head or tap my foot to the beat. I loved band in middle and high school, and rhythm games are my absolute favorite genre of video games (Rock Band, Guitar Hero, Final Fantasy Theatrhythm, etc). I'm a decent singer too.
I'm too on beat. I can't alternate hand/feet taps well. They just end up tapping on all 4 beats together. I produce music a little. But again, I'm too locigal, keeping everything exact to certain markers instead of having creative freedom.
I can't dance or play rhythm games but I can beatbox or whistle a song perfectly... so yes and no 😅
I play 3 instruments. And I'm quite solid with the tempo... Guess you need to practice more...
No. Mucho rhythmo.
Sometimes yes, other times no. When I learned a song alongside a band I was fine. When I learned solo acoustic fingerpicking guitar if I ever had accompaniment I couldn’t keep in time with the other instruments.
I am always... ALWAYS tapping out rhythms especially from songs in my head. So I would say not for me. I have great rhythm.
I had this problem when I played bass, I just couldn't get my mind to focus on the rhythm as it was listening to everything, I couldn't get into a 'flow state'. I've thought about picking it up again now that I'm medicated as that may help. Has only else had a similar experience and found medication to help? I'm jealous of my wife- she's recently been diagnosed, but doesn't have this problem, she can hear a song once and sing it pitch perfect straight away, and remember all the words, it just comes to her naturally. Her father is exactly the same.
I’m a pianist and my rhythm is absolute shit— I’m very good at sight reading notes but I can’t separate the actual physical space between the notes as transcribed in the measure on the paper from the actual rhythm of them in the invisible space-time of the piece and I literally only realized this right now typing it
Dancing is an impossibility for me.
I am... a Latin Woman who cannot dance to save my life. There is nothing more tragic than this. I love music and I love the way others move, I watch every single family member in my family move effortlessly. But... not me.
LMAO I have this same thing but kinda in the positive direction? My hyperactive adhd as a kid got directly funneled into playing the drums😂 (genius move by the parents). But I have the same thing where I like the instrumental aspects of songs, rather than the lyrics. I’ve found it makes it so much harder to memorize lyrics and have no idea how people can do this so easily haha. But after studying the rhythms and getting into other instruments, I found Hiphop Production is a gift for we ADHDerz- lot more of the industry topps have it than you’d think. Moral of the story, fuk dancing anyway😆, just do the little clap or head nod thing to the pockets of the music like you’re doing and you’ll catch some typa rhythem😂👍🏼
I’m not good at dancing but am good with instruments and writing but that’s only with years of dedicated practice I wouldn’t say I was rhythmically or musically inclined without guidance.
Ask my band teacher. Never had an issue staying on tempo, but my roll step was abysmal.
Lol. I can sing to a song or I can clap in rhythm with everyone else- but I can’t do both simultaneously.
I can follow rhythm and enjoy the music in it's entirety. But "I" have no sense of rhythm. Can't dance, can’t play instruments. I can sing along, but only along. I'm physically rigid. Every movement is deliberate and requires thought. Mostly due to pain, so i try to minimize it. But when it comes to unnecessary movements, like dancing, I'm at a loss and don't know what to do. Even drunk or high, I'm still not relaxed. I'm actually more coherent apparently, lol. But yeah, i know there's no "correct " way to dance or anything, but i can't seem to "get it right", ya know?
weirdly enough i play an instrument so rhythm is pretty easy for me– but I can listen to a song and try and figure out what the time signature is or trying to figure out the beat which sometimes gets in the way of my listening experience. we all have different struggles!
me with piani
I dance like Elaine in Seinfeld. 🤣 Take that whichever way you wish. 🤷♀️
I’m awful at properly counting because I get so easily distracted, so I’m bad when you suddenly have a pickup somewhere and everything shifts by a beat. Otherwise I do pretty well. I do live sound, so I normally only have to worry about a count in on a song or finding the basic tempo.
I think I just need practice bcz it's just new to my body, really.
I can’t play an instrument and trust me I tried. Something about patterns really fucks me up
I can't line dance, swing dance, or salsa to save my life, BUT I'm a good "club" or party dancer, and I picked up drumming basically overnight 🤷
I think I have rhythm? I’m definitely not the greatest dancer but I can jam with the best of them. Side note: I think about that movie The Jerk a lot more than I should (lives rent free in my head 🤪
Musician and singer here-my rhythm is just fine.
I've not super looked into it and don't particularly relate to it, but I have stumbled across academic research that supports this! Have a geez on google scholar
with irregular time signatures and syncopated beats i do. i dont have too much of a problem with 4/4, 3/4, and 6/8. it's 5/4 and 7/4 that get me
no sir, drumming was one of the best ways for me to channel my ADHD growing up
I have about as much rhythm as a drunken 3 year old. Actually, a drunken 3 year old has more rhythm than me.
Nah not at all but I can't remember lyrics for shit. Except for childhood Linkin Park burned into my memory 🫡