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Can you think of (or know of) any effects listening to digitized music has had on your playing? I am sure that it has affected me, but not sure if I consciously know how.
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07-12-2018 05:53 PM
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Yea... I noticed I started counting rhythm only in 0s and 1s.
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I think pretty much all the music I like and really listen to doesn't have "digital rhythms" (I'm assuming you mean quantized/snapped to the grid rhythms, correct me if I'm wrong). Good musicians shouldn't want to be quantized and good singers shouldn't want to be autotuned. Both autotune and quantizing takes away the nuance. For example if you put a bit of a bluesy bend on a note, autotune will unbend it. Or if you are on top of the beat to create energy for that part of the tune, quantize will robotize it. Who wants that.
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I was thinking more of just the basic 0's and 1's that Hep to Jive counts off like Lawrence Welk would. "Ah one and ah zeRO, and ah one and ah zeRO..."
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Not sure if I fully understand the question, but I definitely notice tempo variations more in older recordings. It's like you develop an intolerance for that variation. I mean, when you can't listen to the frigging Beatles without thinking about the fact they're rushing slightly, I guess it's kind of insidious.
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I'm about as old school as you can get but I've embraced digital recording for what it is. It's a different style of music, assuming you're using all the available tricks, but isn't what you'd use if you want to sound like Johnny Smith. But for some kind of Funk Dub Jazz. Sure.
Things like quantizing and autotune can be used sparingly. The whole mix doesn't have to be saturated in it.
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The original question was more about if you think that digitized music has affected your playing. Like, do you find your sense of rhythm stagnating if your aren't concentrating or vice versa? Does your sense of rhythm run on when you have thought that it wouldn't? Has digital based pitches made your hearing seem more sensitive to things in tune or out of tune? Do you have a nervous tick? Things like that. Maybe they really can't be answered.
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No, digital music hasn't affected me, as far as I can tell. I don't willingly, knowingly listen to it. It's all around, and hard to miss, but I don't pay any attention to it. Perhaps my tastes show me up as an old fogy, but I really don't give a damn, my dear.
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I guess I don't even know what we are talking about then. Digital music... You mean like a 44100khz 16 bit CD, I can't tell the difference between that and analog anyways, so for me I'd guess it hasn't affected me at all.
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Let's first examine what some of these effects are... they come from the way the modern recording studio does things. Here are two...
Originally Posted by lammie200
Rhythm effects
All perception is slightly delayed due to processing in one's brain, so a drummer that wants to strike the bass drum at what he thinks is a particular point in time (the present in his own mind) is doing so some milliseconds late. In addition, the bass drum is low frequency which means that the development of a discriminate bass drum "boom" wavelength also takes a little time. There are some other more subtle additional delaying principles in play as well, but the overall result is that all bass drum sounds up until digital correction in recent years have been a little behind, and that has been the natural, normal, nominal sound of a bass drum.
When the engineer corrects this delay, you get the modern sound of popular music where the "boom, boom..." of the bass is centered exactly on the beat width of the metric... it sounds rushed because the leading edge is advanced in order to set the middle of the beat width dead center on the mark. This is the sound of the "fashion show walkway music" that makes unmusical people feel excited but just makes musical people irritated. I have been in the studio where the engineer searches the bass drum track to find the best individual "boom" sound, then copies that and pastes it to every bass drum "boom" throughout the whole track, then uses the time alignment tool to make each "boom" centered dead middle of each beat mark in the metric, each "boom" perfectly sounded and perfectly timed... and it sounds like rushed mechanical music.
Pitch effects
The use of auto-tune is its own discussion, but I will mention something else that few are aware of about studio guitar recording. This has to do with the proximity effect of using headphones as monitors when recording. If you have headphones you will have noticed that when music is playing through them, as you are putting them on as you bring them to your ears the music goes sharp - the proximity effect is that frequency is heard sharp when presented at the ear compared to the same frequency presented from a distance.
For a drummer, a keyboard player, a bass play, and any instruments for which no pitch bending is going on, this difference between the acoustic "room" vs monitored "ear" frequency is not a problem; it is as if the instrument were just tuned a bit sharp, but so were all the other sounds of everything else, so all matches and all is well. But, once the guitarist bends a note, he controls the bend excursion by what he hears (the heard note pitch sharper than the microphone recording of the room pitch of his note)... he will swear that his bent notes were all dead on target pitch but when playing back the recording his bends will all be over bent sharp. Haven't you ever wondered why so many songs seem to have a systematic over bending of guitar notes?
This same issue is a problem for studio singers that use headphones except it is for everything they sing and for the same reason as during the bend of a guitar note - because one is having to use their ear (hearing the sharp perceived monitored pitch through the head phones), the monitored pitch being sharper than the room pitch actually being mic'ed and recorded. Some studio singers used to wear their phones crooked to only place one earpiece over one ear to account for this, learning how to sing slightly flat to record in tune with the room... now days auto-tune and other tools.
The first time a singer uses in-ear monitors for stage performance they often express this same problem, and typically complain that what they are hearing is "not clear" or that they are having trouble "hearing themselves". What's happening is that their perceived singing pitch is not aligning to the acoustic pitch of the rest of the band.
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I thought the perceived frequency depebds on the speed of the sound source if it is moving, not the distance of a fixed source ? that explains the kind of noise one perceives when hearing a car approaching then leaving, same of an airplane flying over one's head
Maybe I'm wrong
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You're not wrong, pitch shift from relative motion is real (Doppler), but there are many other things that shift pitch, proximity to the ear being one of them.
If you have ever played with an audio oscillator you will find that doubling the frequency from 1000Hz to 2000Hz (an octave) makes the upper frequency sound a little flat, and continuing to 4KHz (about the highest note on the piano) it will sound terribly flat. Likewise, going down octaves the notes sound progressively sharp. This is why a piano can not be tuned directly to the doubling of frequencies but must be adjusted so the higher notes are progressively sharped and the lower notes are progressively flattened in order to sound in tune to the ear. This has been known for centuries, is called German tuning when applied to the piano, called "sweetened tuning" when applied to the guitar.
Sound level also changes perceived pitch; louder is sharper, softer is flatter. This means bands that play loud need to tune loud. Also means that in very dynamic music like classical orchestra the musicians learn to anticipate shift in pitch with changes in level, which usually works well. One situation where you still hear it uncontrolled is at the end of a movement when the last sound is loud - as the sound dies away for the next second or two it sounds like it goes flat.
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Reading more carefully, you never said frequency is changed, but frequency is heard flat or sharp, which means these effects are due to the way the human hearing system works.
Thanks for all these very interesting pieces of information. Being curious, I'll look into this deeper for my own education.
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I always think Ringo’s dragging lol Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
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As Paul McCartney used to say to Ringo "are you rushing or are you dragging??" Originally Posted by christianm77
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I agree with the beginning of your post, but I’ve never heard of a proximity effect changing perceived pitch, and I’m skeptical that is true. Do you have any scientific support for that claim? I’m aware of proximity effects changing frequency response, but not perceived pitch. Originally Posted by pauln
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I guess I could see how it’s theoretically possible that one could experience a Doppler effect as the source moves toward one’s ears, but I don’t think proximity itself causes any shift in pitch. Originally Posted by KirkP
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Well I agree the
Guitar parts should not be quantized if guitarist syncs well on his own .
But when you play to a metronome you are essentially playing to a Quantized Beat .
So IF you have good syncing and timing with a metronome you will also have good time against/ with quantized beats.
I don't know if any of you have experience programming pro tracks or playing on pro tracks .
But the reason classical and other musicians often have used a metronome as a reference is that it is precise.
This is simple.
Whether you practice or play to a metronome or a quantized Kick or Snare should make no difference .
Modern Pop , Modern R&B, smooth Jazz which has programmed Drums is generally much CLOSER to a metronome or a 'click' in the headphones .
So ,again if you can play to a metronome you can play to quantized tracks.
Simple.
100% quantize on all parts is rare anyway on Pro Tracks .
Also usually the Producer would be making decisions like shifting parts in time which take is the best one etc.Last edited by Robertkoa; 09-12-2018 at 11:56 AM.
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I've seen a few different engineers correct timing of performances, never have I seen "leading edge is advanced in order to set the middle of the beat width dead center on the mark". What I've seen is the leading edge put to or near the grid, but not in front of the grid. And I've heard the engineer say "don't rely on the visual wave forms, use your ears, if it sounds good you don't need to correct it". Originally Posted by pauln
Perhaps I'm not listening to the tracks you are referring to.
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Get some headphones Originally Posted by KirkP
Play some music through them
Put the on
Take them off
You will hear the shift in frequency...
Holding them about 6 inches from your ears they will sound flat compared to wearing them.
That is as scientific as it gets.
Perceived pitch goes sharp when the source is very close to your ear.
Has nothing to with the relative movement of the phones; you can hold them steady in both on and off the ear positions and compare. Originally Posted by ThatRhythmMan
Proximity does not cause a pitch shift due to a change in frequency in the air - the change is how it is heard; the ear perceives it as a pitch shift. This has been known since Von Helmholtz researched it about 150 years ago. The relationship between the physical frequency and the perceived pitch is not linear in multiple ways, including with reference to frequency itself (lower frequencies are heard sharper, higher are heard flatter), volume (louder is heard sharper), and proximity (closer is heard sharper).
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I just tried this out using a reference tone 440 hz both using headphones on and off as you suggest, and also by moving near to then away from a speaker, and I must admit I did not hear a change in pitch. Not to say there isn’t such an effect, just that I couldn’t detect it.
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Use music... needs to be loud enough you can hear it from the headset before you put it on.
You would need to just about touch your ear to the cone to this with a speaker.
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Yes I tried it with music first, and in exactly the way you describe with a headset held at a distance. Still don’t hear a change in pitch. Originally Posted by pauln
How is this effect measured? Is it just a subjective experience? The volume swell could be mistaken for a pitch change by non-musicians.
I’m not knocking the idea, it would be interesting to read the sources e.g. Helmholtz but I can’t find anything obvious online.
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I'm old and pretty much everything I like, musically, is old so I'm not bothered by or listen to anything with digital rhythm or autotune (terrible stuff, IMHO). I do mess with BIAB on occasion just to create a backing track that I need for practice. My duo uses backing tracks (oh, no!!) but they're mostly professionally created tracks with real musicians.
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I tried this experiment with music and the perceived pitch didn’t shift. I can find no mention of such an effect by Helmholtz or anyone else. Can you provide a reference from the scientific literature? Originally Posted by pauln
Here’s a translation of Helmholtz’s papers.
On the sensations of tone as a physiological basis for the theory of music : Helmholtz, Hermann von, 1821-1894 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
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