> there's some very well developed verbalization of percussion
It's called bol[1] in Hindustani music, and koṉṉakkōl[2] in Carnatic music. The basic 4-count syllables are 'na dhin dhin na' in the former, and 'ta ka dhi mi' in the latter.
Both are easily heard and seen performed by live musicians in the archetypal North and South Indian dance forms, Kathak and Bharatanatyam respectively.
For the life of me I couldn't cope with western bar notations especially regarding polyrhythms/polymeters trying to follow accents and groupings ... it gets unwieldy
So in the spirit of "pass the goddamn butter" [0] I was introduced to konnakol via this book [1] some time ago.
There seems to be a lot of truth in the the notion: "if you can say it you can play it". Once I can "vocalize it" it is way easier to translate that into the instrument itself. It is very intuitive to learn this e.g. the "takadimi" route.
[A pretty fun dissection of a Meshuggah song with the help of konnakol.][2]
I think you are exactly correct. My big revelation in graduate school (music performance) was the idea that vocalizations of music "short circuit" our learning process and tend to get a performer closer to what we'd call an "expressive" or "musical" rendition.
Notated music's function is simply to give a systematic way to for people to reproduce/recreate an aural experience, but it is a "lossy" format that western classical musicians have to spend years training in performance practice and interpretation to adequately recapture the expressive elements that are not easy to capture in notation but are vital for engaging performances.
It's called bol[1] in Hindustani music, and koṉṉakkōl[2] in Carnatic music. The basic 4-count syllables are 'na dhin dhin na' in the former, and 'ta ka dhi mi' in the latter.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bol_(music)
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konnakol
Both are easily heard and seen performed by live musicians in the archetypal North and South Indian dance forms, Kathak and Bharatanatyam respectively.