The Feeling of Flow

Hokusai, The Great Wave Off Kanagawa

Someone made the comment on one of the music groups: "I can't count time when I'm playing." Actually, it's a continuum of counting and feeling: count, feel, count.

The expression to play "behind and ahead of the beat" is the attempt to play upbeats and downbeats without strict adherence to metronomic time. In swing rhythms, pairs of eighth notes are played "inegales" or unequal. In odd meters such as 5/8 and 7/4, the player can lock into a feel and not have to count continuously. In odder meters such as 11/8, 13/8 and 17/8, the groups of 2 and 3 can be asymmetric, requiring a constant counting. But even the counting can be a meditation or flow.

Music is the sensation of counting without being aware you were counting.--Gottfried Leibniz
In the percussion.io videos, there is a barrage of asymmetry performed with a comfortable flow of beat and subdivision, albeit with no syncopation (possibly an attempt to not interfere with the underlying beat structure). There is a natural flow that can be followed along, but the listener is usually more in the mind, as there is no palpable pulse strong enough to get you to move or flow ("dance") with it.