6 ms·

One tools is to use a metronome to find the stress passages in a piece. Without a metronome, we hide the stressful passages by slowing down subconsciously. It'

One tools is to use a metronome to find the stress passages in a piece. Without a metronome, we hide the stressful passages by slowing down subconsciously. It's striking how one's self-perception can be faulty this way. I've had this sort of thing pointed out to me by a bandmate, years ago, using a tape recorder and a metronome. It's like I was in a Sci-fi time-distortion, not because the tempo change was that large, but because it was so invisible to me without the recording and metronome!

agumonkey 7y ago
Effects of metronome are quite insane. Even physically, as a faux drummer, playing with a stable time reference allows for so much more regularity you can be physically efficient, meaning more relaxed, less exhausting music playing (basically energy optimization). Then there's the mind massaging from perception of time .. Having a metronome is almost like a trance device.
- cormacrelf 7y ago
  Tempo is also one of the best expressive devices for performance. The mind massaging works in reverse! Lots of great choruses bump the bpm significantly, and the prevalence of recording and performing to click tracks has made it rare to have the kind of fluidity that you can get without them. You want to be able to manipulate your internal metronome expressively. I'm not a drummer, but definitely something to work on for every musician.
  - vonseel 7y ago
    the prevalence of recording and performing to click tracks has made it rare to have the kind of fluidity that you can get without them. Performing to a click is not nearly as lifeless as a hard-quantized MIDI production without live instruments. Sure, it may not have drastic tempo changes like a drummer who isn’t listening to a click, but it still has human variation. Making MIDI programming sound convincing and realistic is not an easy task
    - roel_v 7y ago
      " Sure, it may not have drastic tempo changes like a drummer who isn’t listening to a click, but it still has human variation. Making MIDI programming sound convincing and realistic is not an easy task" Not knowing anything about music at all I've wondered about this a few times. Isn't it just a matter of adding some stochasticity from an appropriate distribution? What is it that makes human imperfection different from machine generated imperfection?
      - jamesb93 7y ago
        There are ways similar to what you've described and certainly doesnt even have to be that clever. Just adding a small random offset using uniform white noise helps. People go to immense ends to get their programmed drums to sound good though - and the techniques that are coupled with this go beyond a statistical approach.
      - agumonkey 7y ago
        At the best of my crappy math abilities, the way we feel about movements (let's say music is a movement) is full of layers of continuity. Simple randomness won't fit the bill IMO. When I play I think about diffeq and nurbs .. but that's a highly subjective analogy. Think about what makes a groove or feel. You can play quarter notes that feels heavy metal or funk, just by altering the impact and accent. Also I believe that our ears perceive a lot more than discrete events. A single hit has a duration and is more like a tiny bell curve than a zero width line on a chart. Same for singing, if you hit the right note at the right time nobody will like it, it's all in the way you get there in between, even if you're off a little, the subtleties are there to make it pleasing to our ears.
      - uryga 7y ago
        i recommend this article if you're interested: https://www.ableton.com/en/blog/james-holden-human-timing/ https://www.ableton.com/en/blog/james-holden-human-timing/ tldr: there's been some research into it – turns out that if you have a few parts (instruments), the randomness you add to each of them needs to be correlated: > "The first [example] has had completely random timing errors inserted [...] with no link between the errors in different parts. The result sounds unmistakably unmusical and inhuman." someone built a "humanizing" plugin for Ableton Live based on that research. here's some quotes i liked: > "[...] the timing of each individual note is dependent on every single note that both players had already played – a minor timing hiccup near the start of a piece will continue to affect every single note after it, up to the last notes. And when you play a duet every note your partner plays affects your playing, and every note you play affects your partner [...]" > "[...] if everything is recorded together in the same take then quite large variations in timing are no problem – they don't sound like errors, just the natural movement of the music. But if the parts are multi-tracked, or sequenced parts are mixed with human parts, then the timing errors are glaringly obvious, they sound wrong because they are unnatural, and our capability to identify the uncanny marks them out as unpleasant and undesirable [...]"
  - spurgu 7y ago
    > Lots of great choruses bump the bpm significantly Would you mind sharing some examples?
    - cormacrelf 7y ago
      A classic example is Roxanne by The Police. ~132bpm verse, ~138bpm chorus by my rough measurement. You can really feel the rhythm section wind down after the first chorus, which wouldn’t have worked if the guitar hadn’t waited two bars to come in and resolve the shifting tempo with precision jabs right as the band hits the original pace. Great moment.
      - agumonkey 7y ago
        A copeland example on HN, what a nice day :)
        cormacrelf 7y ago
        I’ve been watching Rick Beato’s “What makes this song great?” series on YouTube. Highly recommended.
stdclass 7y ago
I recently switched to using a metronom when I play live with my band and it changed everything. When you play live, you are always rushing a little bit, the louder you play, the faster you play. Now when we play according to our own tempo from our recordings, I really have to concentrate not to start rushing again - but it is so worth it, everything sounds much better in a precise way.

agumonkey 7y ago

Effects of metronome are quite insane. Even physically, as a faux drummer, playing with a stable time reference allows for so much more regularity you can be physically efficient, meaning more relaxed, less exhausting music playing (basically energy optimization). Then there's the mind massaging from perception of time .. Having a metronome is almost like a trance device.

cormacrelf 7y ago
Tempo is also one of the best expressive devices for performance. The mind massaging works in reverse! Lots of great choruses bump the bpm significantly, and the prevalence of recording and performing to click tracks has made it rare to have the kind of fluidity that you can get without them. You want to be able to manipulate your internal metronome expressively. I'm not a drummer, but definitely something to work on for every musician.
- vonseel 7y ago
  the prevalence of recording and performing to click tracks has made it rare to have the kind of fluidity that you can get without them. Performing to a click is not nearly as lifeless as a hard-quantized MIDI production without live instruments. Sure, it may not have drastic tempo changes like a drummer who isn’t listening to a click, but it still has human variation. Making MIDI programming sound convincing and realistic is not an easy task
  - roel_v 7y ago
    " Sure, it may not have drastic tempo changes like a drummer who isn’t listening to a click, but it still has human variation. Making MIDI programming sound convincing and realistic is not an easy task" Not knowing anything about music at all I've wondered about this a few times. Isn't it just a matter of adding some stochasticity from an appropriate distribution? What is it that makes human imperfection different from machine generated imperfection?
    - jamesb93 7y ago
      There are ways similar to what you've described and certainly doesnt even have to be that clever. Just adding a small random offset using uniform white noise helps. People go to immense ends to get their programmed drums to sound good though - and the techniques that are coupled with this go beyond a statistical approach.
    - agumonkey 7y ago
      At the best of my crappy math abilities, the way we feel about movements (let's say music is a movement) is full of layers of continuity. Simple randomness won't fit the bill IMO. When I play I think about diffeq and nurbs .. but that's a highly subjective analogy. Think about what makes a groove or feel. You can play quarter notes that feels heavy metal or funk, just by altering the impact and accent. Also I believe that our ears perceive a lot more than discrete events. A single hit has a duration and is more like a tiny bell curve than a zero width line on a chart. Same for singing, if you hit the right note at the right time nobody will like it, it's all in the way you get there in between, even if you're off a little, the subtleties are there to make it pleasing to our ears.
    - uryga 7y ago
      i recommend this article if you're interested: https://www.ableton.com/en/blog/james-holden-human-timing/ https://www.ableton.com/en/blog/james-holden-human-timing/ tldr: there's been some research into it – turns out that if you have a few parts (instruments), the randomness you add to each of them needs to be correlated: > "The first [example] has had completely random timing errors inserted [...] with no link between the errors in different parts. The result sounds unmistakably unmusical and inhuman." someone built a "humanizing" plugin for Ableton Live based on that research. here's some quotes i liked: > "[...] the timing of each individual note is dependent on every single note that both players had already played – a minor timing hiccup near the start of a piece will continue to affect every single note after it, up to the last notes. And when you play a duet every note your partner plays affects your playing, and every note you play affects your partner [...]" > "[...] if everything is recorded together in the same take then quite large variations in timing are no problem – they don't sound like errors, just the natural movement of the music. But if the parts are multi-tracked, or sequenced parts are mixed with human parts, then the timing errors are glaringly obvious, they sound wrong because they are unnatural, and our capability to identify the uncanny marks them out as unpleasant and undesirable [...]"
- spurgu 7y ago
  > Lots of great choruses bump the bpm significantly Would you mind sharing some examples?
  - cormacrelf 7y ago
    A classic example is Roxanne by The Police. ~132bpm verse, ~138bpm chorus by my rough measurement. You can really feel the rhythm section wind down after the first chorus, which wouldn’t have worked if the guitar hadn’t waited two bars to come in and resolve the shifting tempo with precision jabs right as the band hits the original pace. Great moment.
    - agumonkey 7y ago
      A copeland example on HN, what a nice day :)
      - cormacrelf 7y ago
        I’ve been watching Rick Beato’s “What makes this song great?” series on YouTube. Highly recommended.

stdclass 7y ago

I recently switched to using a metronom when I play live with my band and it changed everything. When you play live, you are always rushing a little bit, the louder you play, the faster you play. Now when we play according to our own tempo from our recordings, I really have to concentrate not to start rushing again - but it is so worth it, everything sounds much better in a precise way.