When we began jamming at roughly 1/2 am I had already began to feel that same ominous sense of tiredness, it began by severely limiting my capabilities as a drummer; the response of the kick drum felt extremely weighted and the sticks felt heavier than normal. In comparison to a normal day of practicing in which the sticks often feel like an extension of the body, on this occasion, there was a clear divide between sticks and hands. The ability to play doubles, a rudiment in which two notes are consecutively played with the same hand, began to become a seriously limiting process.
Whereas on a regular day I am often capable of jamming for fairly long periods of time, usually continuously for 3-4 hours, on the occasion I was limited to literally 30/40 minutes; more consciously focusing on literally trying to stay awake as opposed to playing drums.
After a walk in a desperate attempt to wake up and refresh, we returned to the studio. This resulted in an extended 30 minutes of playing, ending due to the lack of physical capability.
During this time truly revealed the extent that deprivation can play on the mind. For what is often a fairly generic jamming session, became a gruelling battle of mental and physical stamina. The mind severely took its toll due to deprivation, although processes such as setting up the drums and recording equipment almost became an act of sub-consciousness, other activities began to become more obscured. One thing that has been documented on numerous occasions is the experience of hallucinations, although I'm not entirely sure if people see complete meta-physical creations of their mind, or perhaps something a little more obscured, I am relatively positive that I began to experience this in some elements. Throughout the jam, which was arguably the most physically straining process of the entire project, I began to become aware of shadows / shapes that although I knew were there in general, began to almost become questionable elements. For example in the studio live-room, I was aware of the reflections of both myself and Luke; however on numerous occasions I was expecting there to be someone in the studio.
After leaving the studio we spent most of the final hours between the common room and some (very short) time outside trying to wake ourselves up a bit; although it was fucking freezing!
This period of time was easily the hardest. After attempting to break through the second wall by taking a tour of the university at about 4:30am, the walk around the Armstrong building exploring, became a bit too much. The hardest part was the feeling of what felt like impending doom, my eyes literally wanting to just shut; having a continuous feeling of slowly drifting between consciousness and sub-consciousness before feeling the head drop and regaining some form of minor stability.
At around 6am we began to question how long this could be carried on for; we decided to throw the towel in, finishing finally at 7am. A full 48 hours deprived of sleep.
Reflections:
First of all, it sounds a lot easier than it is. We originally planned 4 days and 4 nights, when then became 72 hours, which resulted in 48 finally.
Although warned that it was a hard exercise to apply ourselves too, we were both too engaged to take no as an answer.
Although I would never do it again, if I were to give some advice, it would be to start off relatively slow and always have something to do, particularly on night times. The hardest part was keeping active during night times in particular. Throughout day time, it almost felt as if we had slept. We were occupied and were able to simply carry on with normal life; however night times were totally different. We spent most of the night within the studio, predominantly with just ourselves as company. The hardest time was spent staying awake between jamming and what I would consider morning, around 8-9am when life begins to reveal a new day.
I'm sure that if we had planned more in-depth and organised activities slightly differently than I'm positive that we would have been able to have lasted a little bit longer. However, although we aimed to stay awake for a set period of time, our intentions were to look into the effects of deprivation on musicians.
I can happily conclude it can drastically effect the way in which in we all perform, especially musicians who require more physical activity to produce music such as drummers. Although the stylistic qualities varied due to tiredness, it was more the physical strain that varied the music.
As far as listening to music, when we were tired we listened to more up-beat tracks in order to try and stimulate some for of energy; when we felt relatively normal, it did not truly effect the styles of music that we listened to.
Recovery:
At 7am I literally went straight to bed, waking up at 1pm so I did not exceed too much rest before night time. I then had a short nap from about 3-4pm. I feel relatively ok as I am writing this blog, so will hopefully be able to sleep properly tonight! Apart from this, I find getting back to normal relatively easy.
Hopefully within the next few weeks we will be able to upload both the video footage and recordings from the sessions.
If anyone has any questions or wants to try the experiment for themselves, please do not hesitate to contact us: a.elsender@newcastle.ac.uk; l.gaul@newcastle.ac.uk
