Mike Mangini has an enlightening article on his realization of his adrenaline problem playing on stage:
https://www.drumeo.com/beat/mike-mangini-slicing-up-time/?fbclid=IwAR1SVDk-ZWKoGhXQKfjjA2Qyxd3GpZAnaozgoGeBZnJ3Q42O4uL9GBa41kAI admire Mike's humility to recognize his problem, which allowed him to manage it and turn this physiological problem into a blessing.
I have been playing in a gong and percussion group since 1996 and we have a band leader who we suspect has an adrenaline problem. He never acknowledged it, was always stubborn about it, which compromised the music we practiced for hours. It was especially hard for the dancers, whose grace was sometimes not showcased because we played so much faster than what we did at practice, with our band leader always using the excuse of feeding off the audience's energy.
Mike's story can actually make for a good TV movie about a man perceiving his world as very slow.
"I realized that my perception of reality wasn’t reality. And that’s freaky!
I was dejected. But I discovered that while this was a curse, it was also a gift. I was playing impossible speeds, gig after gig, and my feet were doing things they absolutely had no right to do. It was weird that they could go up to ‘extreme’ speeds on stage, but not off stage. That’s where the gift was. I just had to learn how to understand it so I could harness it.
It’s like time slows down for me. People and time are in a kind of slow motion around me. I can take one second and stretch it out, which gives me more control of where my hits are. I can carve a space up into more slices. I used this adrenaline to increase my ability to play on the grid by expanding it, and these days that’s required in a lot of environments."
And I like this bit on Dream Theater.
"When I’m playing live Dream Theater shows, I’ve got to play three hours knowing that they write their parts at the top of their game in the studio. If I pump up the tempo too much, the parts would be ridiculously difficult or impossible to play, so my tempo has to be right.
I believe that [John] Petrucci often pushes himself to his maximum chops on every new record knowing that he can trust me to not play a song or part too fast for him to pull off his incredible moves night after night. All the guys push, but I’m singling him out due to the nature of his being the soloist he is. He has a billion cell phones practically shoved up his nostrils at close proximity on a nightly basis. With the tempos nailed and consistent, he can count on me. Literally.
They all can. I feel the confidence in them when we play. It’s really cool. It’s like an unspoken language with serious trust."