• "caution, common sense spoken here"
  • "finess not force"

Peer Review on Physics of Drumming

I have had the wonderful opportunity to have a very qualified massage therapist use your creation, the biopulser, during treatments over the last 2 months. I am a drummer by profession and my wife is a massage therapist so I have a working understanding of bath modalities. Your device is a work of true genius.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart and the bottom of my plantar fasciitis- suffering left foot. There is no way even an expert percussionist or massage therapist could create the kind of tapotement that your device makes available for the therapist and their client. I asked my therapist about the speed of the percussive striking because I felt that the combination of the rate and amount of force applied were somehow "tricking" my muscles not to respond to the touch, and that there was to NOT be any tensing of the muscles in response to the therapy- The net result was actually an almost immediately noticeable RELAXING of the muscles! It seemed as If the speed was just the perfect rate to require no autonomic or conscious response or twitching of the muscles being worked on.

I just read some text from the BioPuiser website and voila! There was a description of just what my therapist and I were discussing. The explanation was brilliantly simple and mirrored exactly what I felt as I marveled at the experience of the BioPuiser doing its work on my overworked foot. I cannot ever thank you enough for putting all of the work and thought into creating a device that can offer this kind of relief to those of us in this kind of pain. In its operation the BioPuiser is actually a very simple machine, but what it does to and for the muscles in a state of unwanted constant tension is beyond compare.

For all the paragraphs of text required to explain the proper use of the BioPuiser to someone not already familiar with it, the technique was intimately familiar to rne because of my actually being a musician who has made his living for over 30 years by finesse striking membranes and metal plates with mallets, sticks and brushes of all types. The technique described is exactly the way a GREAT percussionist relates to striking a drumhead or cymbal, or the bars of a xylophone or marimba. It truly is all in the way the mallet or stick is pulled away from the surface IMMEDIATELY after the impact has occurred.

The impact MUST be instantaneous and last absolutely the shortest amount of time humanly possible. This does not preclude differing amounts of force being applied which result in different VOLUME coming from the percussion instrument, but the instantaneous nature of the impact and the resulting "snap" referred to in the BioPulser instructions remains constant for the drummer regardless of the desired volume. Even the tempo of the music does not change the instantaneous nature of the impact, it only changes the amount of time before the next properly executed stroke and recoil of the mallet or stick.

That "snap" mentioned in those instructions is the stock in trade of the very best drummers and percussionists and is instantly recognizable by the trained eyes of a fellow expert. Many drummers do not employ this kind of technique and consequently break many cymbals and drumheads, and eventually pay for it in injury to the soft tissue of their wrists and forearms. This is not to say that a great deal of volume cannot be induced by the more delicate sounding "snap" technique, quite the opposite. I have never studied martial arts, but have asked many questions of a few students and teachers of karate and found that a technique mentioned quite often to me employs a similar focusing of force on a small area by the side of the hand or foot with a "snap" recoil of the appendage being used as the weapon.

I would like to say God bless you and thank you again for the dedication required to see this invention through the R and D stages and the prototypes you must have worked countless hours on. The work you have done is definitely helping people like me. I wish you much success and good health. I would greatly appreciate a reply, as it would be an honor to communicate with the creator of such a wonderful instrument of healing.

Sincerely,
Braxton Pacatte