people that play drums or music well – if you're playing a beat say with the cymbal and bass, are these two separate tracks to you: bass and cymbal or one track where they're interleaved?

put another way, can you seamlessly play the beat with one hand while the other stops or starts?

i can't do two different things with one hand each. i feel like im capable of a single track and i play the notes or rhythm as one beat after the other. the same for piano.

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You can seamlessly play each parlt individually. A common way to learn drum beats is to learn  the part for each limb individually and then combine them. There’s a drum instruction book called 4 way independence that goes very deep on this

Re: your last point: not being able to play the parts individually imo means you’ve probably developed muscle memory more so than actually learning to play the song. They are not the same thing

So do I, but I’ve never made that connection before with music and other things. Thanks for pointing that out

i think i do this in other areas of my life too, makes a lot of sense.