7 ms·

Roger Linn on Swing, Groove and the Magic of the MPC's Timing (2013)

86 points by omnibrain 4y ago

colanderman 4y ago
Note there are actually 3 pages to this. I didn't notice the page buttons (which are below the related articles images) at first.
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  ty. > I can’t help but imagine a skilled drummer quietly chuckling inside when they see someone going to so much trouble in order to avoid learning to play the instrument skillfully.
  - leviathant 4y ago
    I got my start on tracker software in the late 90s. I got meticulous about drum fills, and custom patterns that had little nuances so that it wasn't just the same loop playing for three to five minutes. In the early 2000s, I joined a punk band at their drummer, and over a couple of years, got to be pretty okay at it. When, a few years later, I found myself in front of a drum machine again (the Tempest mentioned in this article) I suddenly found the idea of "writing beats" to be absurd. I still recorded patterns, but most of the time, I was tapping them in, in real time. I reflected on how silly it was doing things how I used to, now that I could just... Play the drum beat
  - marssaxman 4y ago
    I once built myself a parametric real-time rhythm sequencer - a little black box with knobs and buttons and lights and an LCD screen, which spat out MIDI notes to drive a drum machine - because that seemed easier than either learning to play the drums or learning to program drum patterns.
nzoschke 4y ago
Here is a great video about J Dilla and his usage of the MPC. It covers what groove is and shows how to program various timings on the MPC. https://youtu.be/B_fZVUn44h4 https://youtu.be/B_fZVUn44h4
- jjulius 4y ago
  Seconding the video's recommendation for the book "Dilla Time", which is also apparently going to be a documentary soon. Highly, highly recommended for anyone into electronic music production, hip hop, neo soul, Dilla, contemporary jazz, swung beats, wonky time, fucking around with rhythm, etc. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dilla-time-dan-charnas/1140323921 https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dilla-time-dan-charnas/1140...
yesenadam 4y ago
(2013)
mrcolinjohnson 4y ago
Ive been using the MPC1000 since around 2004, and owned and used an MPC60 for about 5 years. I recently had my 1000 serviced by a guy who does nothing but MPC refurbishments/customizations and he asked me how I felt about the whole "MPC Swing Magic" and what not. My feeling is that the MPC60 really DOES feel better, but mostly because of its velocity sensitivity. You can really easily get a ton of dynamics without much effort at all. Much much more easily than with a 1000, or a midi keyboard, or any number of pads devices that I've tried. and yeah that for me includes machines which allow for variable velocity curves. The thing that blew me away was that he told me most of the guys he's selling MPCs use them on FULL VELOCITY at all times. that making sure the pad sensitivity was in perfect condition was not a priority for them. I was shocked... but he was equally shocked I felt it was the velocity which makes the difference lol. Keep in mind these are pretty hardcore old school Chicago producers buying the best of the best vintage machines. Im not trying to make a point. Just an anecdote. You can check out Kanamit and the work I got done here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CeXOIE0LuvX/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CeXOIE0LuvX/
- les_diabolique 4y ago
  I picked up my first MPC (the 2000) around 1999. Since then I've had the 2000XL twice, an MPC60 and I current have the MPC2500. I'm one of those guys that always had it on full velocity. Whenever I wanted a kick or different sound at a different velocity, I would just assign it to a different pad and add adjust the volume and maybe add some additional filtering to it. For me, I found the 2000XL gave me the best workflow. It took a while to adjust to the 2500's way of doing things. Everything is hidden behind a menu, but it's easier to move stuff to and from the computer.
- dwringer 4y ago
  That's equally shocking to me but I guess it makes sense considering what the industry seems to prioritize. I got an Elektron Model:Cycles on which the only way the pads are even really usable is to set the velocity on them to full (or turn the velocity modulation depth so far down as to be mostly nonresponsive). Or, I guess, bash them so hard they'd probably crack the circuit board within a few months. I have a Korg PadKontrol (now, disappointingly, discontinued) which has really nice velocity response and even lets you set different response curves to each pad. Not sure why they pulled them when there are very few alternatives.
Gordonjcp 4y ago
A neat thing about the ubiquity of cheap microcontrollers like the Arduino family is you can easily try this sort of stuff out at home. Given a MIDI interface and something to trigger, it's not hard to see how counting six MIDI clocks for every trigger will give you straight-ahead semiquavers (16ths) because MIDI clock runs at 24 pulses per crotchet note. With a bit of thought then you can see how pairs of semiquavers will be 12 pulses long, which you can split up any way you like. "50%" is obviously six and six, 58% shuffle would be seven then five, and so on. But you don't need to stop there. Imagine making a list with a velocity for each hit, and a "time to next hit" in clocks. As long as the total number of "time to next hit" added up to the right number of clocks per bar, the actual notes could be anywhere ahead of or behind the beat. If you deliberately used the wrong number of clocks, you'd end up with your pattern drifting out of step with the rest of the sequence, and if you do that right you've just (re-)invented polymetric rhythm.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
IAmPym 4y ago
I wrote the DSI Tempest OS (including sequencer and swing) Feel free to ask questions!
- Slow_Hand 4y ago
  Hey. Thanks for chiming in. Did you and the designers have any guidelines or rules of thumb about groove that informed your design choices? Do you recall any design choices made that had a large impact on the musicality of the instrument? Any neat epiphanies or breakthroughs? Do you have any insights about what kind of swing patterns feel the most musical?
  - IAmPym 4y ago
    Roger made sure it sounded 'right' but beyond that I had a lot of control over the specifics. I shot for a much higher degree of precision than other instruments (even lots of digital) and more or less hit the target I was going for. Low jitter, under 3ms in all cases I could push it into. Was quite proud of that Oh tons and tons of design ideas... I plan on blogging about them at some point once I am more steadily designing my own instruments, right now it would just help the competition. Been writing out articles. I'll post some here when I do It depends on the bpm and the intention. A swing for jazz is much different than for house or hip hop.
- leviathant 4y ago
  Can you talk a little bit about the origin of the sequencer in the Tempest? As in, did you start from scratch, were you looking to emulate a particular preexisting model? I recognize that the Tempest was built on different hardware than anything that I presume Roger had ever worked on, but I imagine he contributed to some conceptualization that you then had to translate into a functioning OS. A long time ago now, I wrote a crude Javascript emulation of a Boss DR-110, and when I got to the sequencer part, I threw in the towel because it seemed to be a step beyond the "hobby" level of effort I was willing to commit, lol.
  - IAmPym 4y ago
    I did the whole thing from scratch. I was not trying to emulate anything in particular, I was working with what we had in the hardware to optimize. We basically pushed the chip to its limits without going heavily into assembly, although if I were to do it again (WHEN I do it again...) it'll be way better =)
TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
In theory quantisation should snap everything into perfect time, and quantised swing will still be perfectly mechanical. But there are a number of reasons why the timing might drift. This is trivially easy to test. Use the pads to record a groove with a standard collection of samples. Replace the samples with clicks. Patch each track to the separate outputs and record into a DAW. Any timing shifts will be very obvious, down to individual samples. With respect to Mr Linn, he's quite wrong about randomisation being uninteresting. Real drummers play with a Gaussian distribution, even when they're playing to a click. The tiny variations add a surprising amount of interest and liveliness. But this works best as a dynamic performance effect, and I've never seen it implemented in a drum machine. Baking a randomised uniform distribution into a short repeating pattern is a lot less interesting.
- sastraxi 4y ago
  Agreed re: there being randomness with each hit in a live performance. I wonder, though, if the distribution of one hit is in fact independent of the previous -- perhaps the inner feedback loop of "am I falling behind / speeding up" in a musician causes the next distribution to be skewed differently or centered at a different instant. In which case I can understand the thought process of it being uninteresting, in a way. And you're absolutely right that when the randomness is applied into a short loop and repeated it falls into a strange uncanny valley (at least to my ears). Perhaps another aspect of this is that the randomness, added based on e.g. a seed to the whole track, would be hard to control as an artist. I know when I apply randomness to MIDI I tend to go back with a fine-toothed comb and re-distribute hits that don't go where my mind wants them to.
- not1ofU 4y ago
  You might be interested in a TED talk by Jojo Mayer. [0] TEDxZurich - Jojo Mayer - Exploring the distance between 0 and 1 [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KExLCJAuTXA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KExLCJAuTXA

86 points by omnibrain 4y ago

Note there are actually 3 pages to this. I didn't notice the page buttons (which are below the related articles images) at first.

082349872349872 4y ago
ty. > I can’t help but imagine a skilled drummer quietly chuckling inside when they see someone going to so much trouble in order to avoid learning to play the instrument skillfully.
- leviathant 4y ago
  I got my start on tracker software in the late 90s. I got meticulous about drum fills, and custom patterns that had little nuances so that it wasn't just the same loop playing for three to five minutes. In the early 2000s, I joined a punk band at their drummer, and over a couple of years, got to be pretty okay at it. When, a few years later, I found myself in front of a drum machine again (the Tempest mentioned in this article) I suddenly found the idea of "writing beats" to be absurd. I still recorded patterns, but most of the time, I was tapping them in, in real time. I reflected on how silly it was doing things how I used to, now that I could just... Play the drum beat
- marssaxman 4y ago
  I once built myself a parametric real-time rhythm sequencer - a little black box with knobs and buttons and lights and an LCD screen, which spat out MIDI notes to drive a drum machine - because that seemed easier than either learning to play the drums or learning to program drum patterns.

nzoschke 4y ago

Here is a great video about J Dilla and his usage of the MPC. It covers what groove is and shows how to program various timings on the MPC. https://youtu.be/B_fZVUn44h4 https://youtu.be/B_fZVUn44h4

jjulius 4y ago
Seconding the video's recommendation for the book "Dilla Time", which is also apparently going to be a documentary soon. Highly, highly recommended for anyone into electronic music production, hip hop, neo soul, Dilla, contemporary jazz, swung beats, wonky time, fucking around with rhythm, etc. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dilla-time-dan-charnas/1140323921 https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dilla-time-dan-charnas/1140...

yesenadam 4y ago

(2013)

mrcolinjohnson 4y ago

Ive been using the MPC1000 since around 2004, and owned and used an MPC60 for about 5 years. I recently had my 1000 serviced by a guy who does nothing but MPC refurbishments/customizations and he asked me how I felt about the whole "MPC Swing Magic" and what not. My feeling is that the MPC60 really DOES feel better, but mostly because of its velocity sensitivity. You can really easily get a ton of dynamics without much effort at all. Much much more easily than with a 1000, or a midi keyboard, or any number of pads devices that I've tried. and yeah that for me includes machines which allow for variable velocity curves. The thing that blew me away was that he told me most of the guys he's selling MPCs use them on FULL VELOCITY at all times. that making sure the pad sensitivity was in perfect condition was not a priority for them. I was shocked... but he was equally shocked I felt it was the velocity which makes the difference lol. Keep in mind these are pretty hardcore old school Chicago producers buying the best of the best vintage machines. Im not trying to make a point. Just an anecdote. You can check out Kanamit and the work I got done here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CeXOIE0LuvX/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CeXOIE0LuvX/

les_diabolique 4y ago
I picked up my first MPC (the 2000) around 1999. Since then I've had the 2000XL twice, an MPC60 and I current have the MPC2500. I'm one of those guys that always had it on full velocity. Whenever I wanted a kick or different sound at a different velocity, I would just assign it to a different pad and add adjust the volume and maybe add some additional filtering to it. For me, I found the 2000XL gave me the best workflow. It took a while to adjust to the 2500's way of doing things. Everything is hidden behind a menu, but it's easier to move stuff to and from the computer.
dwringer 4y ago
That's equally shocking to me but I guess it makes sense considering what the industry seems to prioritize. I got an Elektron Model:Cycles on which the only way the pads are even really usable is to set the velocity on them to full (or turn the velocity modulation depth so far down as to be mostly nonresponsive). Or, I guess, bash them so hard they'd probably crack the circuit board within a few months. I have a Korg PadKontrol (now, disappointingly, discontinued) which has really nice velocity response and even lets you set different response curves to each pad. Not sure why they pulled them when there are very few alternatives.

Gordonjcp 4y ago

A neat thing about the ubiquity of cheap microcontrollers like the Arduino family is you can easily try this sort of stuff out at home. Given a MIDI interface and something to trigger, it's not hard to see how counting six MIDI clocks for every trigger will give you straight-ahead semiquavers (16ths) because MIDI clock runs at 24 pulses per crotchet note. With a bit of thought then you can see how pairs of semiquavers will be 12 pulses long, which you can split up any way you like. "50%" is obviously six and six, 58% shuffle would be seven then five, and so on. But you don't need to stop there. Imagine making a list with a velocity for each hit, and a "time to next hit" in clocks. As long as the total number of "time to next hit" added up to the right number of clocks per bar, the actual notes could be anywhere ahead of or behind the beat. If you deliberately used the wrong number of clocks, you'd end up with your pattern drifting out of step with the rest of the sequence, and if you do that right you've just (re-)invented polymetric rhythm.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

IAmPym 4y ago

I wrote the DSI Tempest OS (including sequencer and swing) Feel free to ask questions!

Slow_Hand 4y ago
Hey. Thanks for chiming in. Did you and the designers have any guidelines or rules of thumb about groove that informed your design choices? Do you recall any design choices made that had a large impact on the musicality of the instrument? Any neat epiphanies or breakthroughs? Do you have any insights about what kind of swing patterns feel the most musical?
- IAmPym 4y ago
  Roger made sure it sounded 'right' but beyond that I had a lot of control over the specifics. I shot for a much higher degree of precision than other instruments (even lots of digital) and more or less hit the target I was going for. Low jitter, under 3ms in all cases I could push it into. Was quite proud of that Oh tons and tons of design ideas... I plan on blogging about them at some point once I am more steadily designing my own instruments, right now it would just help the competition. Been writing out articles. I'll post some here when I do It depends on the bpm and the intention. A swing for jazz is much different than for house or hip hop.
leviathant 4y ago
Can you talk a little bit about the origin of the sequencer in the Tempest? As in, did you start from scratch, were you looking to emulate a particular preexisting model? I recognize that the Tempest was built on different hardware than anything that I presume Roger had ever worked on, but I imagine he contributed to some conceptualization that you then had to translate into a functioning OS. A long time ago now, I wrote a crude Javascript emulation of a Boss DR-110, and when I got to the sequencer part, I threw in the towel because it seemed to be a step beyond the "hobby" level of effort I was willing to commit, lol.
- IAmPym 4y ago
  I did the whole thing from scratch. I was not trying to emulate anything in particular, I was working with what we had in the hardware to optimize. We basically pushed the chip to its limits without going heavily into assembly, although if I were to do it again (WHEN I do it again...) it'll be way better =)

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago

In theory quantisation should snap everything into perfect time, and quantised swing will still be perfectly mechanical. But there are a number of reasons why the timing might drift. This is trivially easy to test. Use the pads to record a groove with a standard collection of samples. Replace the samples with clicks. Patch each track to the separate outputs and record into a DAW. Any timing shifts will be very obvious, down to individual samples. With respect to Mr Linn, he's quite wrong about randomisation being uninteresting. Real drummers play with a Gaussian distribution, even when they're playing to a click. The tiny variations add a surprising amount of interest and liveliness. But this works best as a dynamic performance effect, and I've never seen it implemented in a drum machine. Baking a randomised uniform distribution into a short repeating pattern is a lot less interesting.

sastraxi 4y ago
Agreed re: there being randomness with each hit in a live performance. I wonder, though, if the distribution of one hit is in fact independent of the previous -- perhaps the inner feedback loop of "am I falling behind / speeding up" in a musician causes the next distribution to be skewed differently or centered at a different instant. In which case I can understand the thought process of it being uninteresting, in a way. And you're absolutely right that when the randomness is applied into a short loop and repeated it falls into a strange uncanny valley (at least to my ears). Perhaps another aspect of this is that the randomness, added based on e.g. a seed to the whole track, would be hard to control as an artist. I know when I apply randomness to MIDI I tend to go back with a fine-toothed comb and re-distribute hits that don't go where my mind wants them to.
not1ofU 4y ago
You might be interested in a TED talk by Jojo Mayer. [0] TEDxZurich - Jojo Mayer - Exploring the distance between 0 and 1 [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KExLCJAuTXA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KExLCJAuTXA