Can you clap on beat? Can you shimmy in time? If you're anything like Elaine from Seinfeld, you don't even know you're horribly off.
Neil Young recently stopped mid-song during a concert at Carnegie Hall because some folk were clapping off-beat.
"For instance, the preponderance of American pop music is based on the beat of two and four," Mike Love of The Beach Boys said, according to NPR. "You'll have a lot of cultural influences that cause people to do one and three. I remember being in the Vienna Stadthalle - the town hall in Vienna, with about 12,000 people in it - and it was, like, Teutonic."
Jessica Phillips-Silver, a Ph.D. in neuroscience and auditory development, teamed up with the International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research in Montreal and said she discovered that
"beat deafness" is a real affliction, according to NPR.
The research team sought out brave folk with the musical disorder, but only one qualified, according to NPR: Mathieu Dion, a 26-year-old reporter in Montreal.
"I just can't figure out what's rhythm, in fact," Dion told NPR. "I just can't hear it, or I just can't feel it."
Dion was tested in various ways including a dance contest (of sorts). Dion was given a Nintendo Wii controller and told to bop along to different types of music, including merenge, pop and Egyptian belly-dancing, but the only music that Dion was able to move in time with was techno, according to NPR.
"It was a salient, loud-ranging pulse. It's kind of like what I call a glorified metronome, which is something else he was able to move in time to: a simple metronomic beat," Phillips-Silver said, according to NPR. "It was important, because it told us he doesn't have a motor disorder."
Small victories for Dion.
At least Taylor Swift knows. She pokes fun of herself in the video for "Shake It Off."
Phillips-Silver told NPR she would like to test other members of Dion's family to see if terrible rhythm is genetic.
"One thing that we know about rhythm in the brain is that it's managed by a kind of widespread network - which means we can't just point our finger to one spot on the brain and say, 'That's the rhythm center' or 'That's the dance center,' " she said, according to NPR. "It really recruits sort of a variety of areas and pulls them together in ways that are beautiful and sophisticated, but we don't quite understand yet."
For Dion, this may mean he has an excuse when he steps on his girlfriend's toes.
"I am the first diagnosed in the world of having no rhythm, which is something great," he told NPR.
Dion should also avoid clapping at concerts, particularly if he sees Neil Young.
