Perception of time is very Subjective
As a drummer…focusing on tiny increments ot time and trying to define them with short percussive sounds, loud, soft, dense, sparse…As a Drummer…Ive become very aware of time passing at different rates depending on the situation, the events surrounding me, the extra stuff in addition to ‘keeping time' or estimating time…the stuff that demands brain power along with counting, estimating, milliseconds!
The old sayings ‘time slowed down during the accident’ and ‘how time fliies’…are very apt for a drummer.
How does one take the subjectivity out of keeping time…how do you become your own ‘listener’.
Step one is to practice with a timekeeper, a metronome, a music track (which is even and predictable.
Step two to avoid time stretching and time compressing without you noticing is to accept that no matter how hard you try you wont eliminate the ‘wobble’. Focusing on the timekeeping over and above anything else…screening out those external events demanding attention allows more focus on the beats!
A great way to increase the prominence of the beats in your attention is to Count Out Loud!
Long focused outbreaths work wonders.
Adam Gust…and aptly named drummer into breathing….has many many insights into such things.
At Symmetrical Drumming Australia, supplying drum and percussion lessons to Canberra and the world, I teach the couting out loud method, the ‘remember’ to breath method, the play against a metronome and use the metronome creatively (ie: off beat, dotted, polyrhthically metronomic beats rather than crothet pulse on the count).
https://symmetricaldrummingaustralia.org