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Here's another fun one with some measurement of different band member's beat placement
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09-30-2023 06:30 PM
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I once visited a class where the instructor (a Hawaiian who knew the tradition well) was teaching slack key guitar. The students were mainlanders, and they were having trouble getting the characteristic laid-back slack-key feel (which I hear as a kind of swing). There was one Hawaiian kid in the class, though, and the teacher asked her to walk the way she did on the beach at home. Her gait was indeed a laid-back saunter, partly affected by the flip-flops she was wearing. "Now play like she walks," said the teacher.
Peter Medeiros (a native player and composer who taught slack key at UH decades ago) broke down a lot of the slack-key rhythmic feel in his fine Hawaiian Slack Key: A Lifetime of Study, especially its connection to the drum patterns of the ipu--but that analytical-descriptive take is helped enormously by my recollection of that undergrad gal's walk across the classroom. (Also by watching hula and listening to loads of Raymond Kane and Sonny Chillingworth and fanny-dancing when I try to replicate their feel.)
There's something viscerally physical beyond what the fingers are doing when we manage to find and stay in the pocket. Just as there's something dancey about delivering a poem's lines. (At this point, I usually go off on a tangent about John Barton's way of approaching Shakespeare's lines and Edmund Epstein's rhetorical-prosodic-linguistic analysis of poetry, but I'll spare everyone.)
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My opinion is that using a metronome is possibly useful as a remedial aid when just starting one's first instrument, as in for the first few days, to get some basic sense of the rhythmic rudiments. Or maybe useful for a brief time later to examine a specific problem. Beyond that I think regular use promotes a dependent externalization more than developing an intrinsic internalization of "rhythmic feel", because what is meant to be felt is the relationship between pace and beat width - not just pace as the apparent beat which may be pushed or lagged by the drummer, for example a drummer who is footing the bass drum slightly behind the beat. If you use that lagged beat as your "metronome" to establish pace then your sense of registration within the true pace is off and will effect all your playing. Everyone in the band may seek a slightly different position within the beat width, but all must share the same registration of the pace. The metronome knows nothing of the relationship between beat width and pace registration and can't teach rhythmic feel because that relationship is rhythmic feel.
Last edited by pauln; 09-30-2023 at 09:17 PM.
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This Metronome-as-crutch thing is weird to me. Not sure what the opposition is all about. It’s a tool. You can use it as a crutch or you can use it creatively.
Again … one could just have the metronome click less, no?
Click once every four measures. See how the ole intuitive sense of time serves you then.
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Fuckin' A man
Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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In any music with a groove
(So not some Metal or Classical music)
I think the time feel is a dance
You need to feel the music and syncopations and
subdivisions in your body .....
(And for me at least it's good to move your whole body to it
To dance in fact ....)
In Rock n Roll
I always liked the Rolling Stones time feel
Keef said
He's more interested in the Roll than the Rock
Which says a lot I think ....
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I'm enjoying this thread, thanks everyone. Reading through, it evokes some memories and thoughts.
Back in the 1980s when I had a small recording studio, electronic musical instruments were gaining ground. The Yamaha DX7 was all the rage, and the Roland bass and drum machines were prevalent. The mechanized sound of those early drum machines soon led me to an article on the "feel factor" by Michael Stewart in the magazine Electronic Musician, for which he developed this "feel spectrum":
Stewart wasn't writing about jazz, he was more concerned with "humanizing" electronic music, and his main vocation was production. This was the 1980s, so this was early research into this question.
Stewart uses the same terms we use to describe jazz time feel (e.g. groove, in the pocket, etc.). That led me to research done by Charles Keil and a team from Europe, the US and Cuba. He developed this theory of good time feel, that was based on the concept "participatory discrepancies." In short, good time feel had to be slightly out of time, as many of us have noted and as Stewart found, too.
What's good is of course subjective, as many here have also noted. So Keil went a step further and conducted research with jazz musicians in the Buffalo area, including the drummer Jimmy Gomes and the bass player Sabu Adeyola, and a number of others. He and his partners in Europe and Cuba were also intrigued by quantifying feel, and devised ways to measure it. A jazz musician himself, Keil also interviewed jazz musicians. This was at a time that Paul Berliner's magisterial Thinking in Jazz was on the cusp of publication. Keil was a peer reviewer for University of Chicago Press and was acquainted with that work. So there was already some emerging ethnographic data on this question, but Keil's research added the lesser pursued dimension of measuring the "gaps" between the notes.
The musicians Keil worked with had explanations of "good time feel," also using some of the same terms that Stewart used. Nothing new there. However, what Keil wanted to do was to quantify, like Stewart, the terms. He found, counterintuitively, that the measurements in milliseconds that he used for his research did not correspond with how the musicians talked about their playing. Or, that what one musician meant by "in the pocket" was different than another and in some cases those that had spoken of playing ahead of or behind the beat seemed to be playing the opposite of what they said they were doing. Some of this could be semantics and linguistics differences in meanings of speech. And, needless to say, it was controversial to pit seasoned musicians against time measurements.
That quantified line of inquiry didn't really go anywhere, and much of the post-Berliner research on jazz performance practice (e.g. Ingrid Monson, who was a peer reviewer of the article Keil published in Ethnomusicology, and Travis Jackson, and others) continues to use the ethnographic method to understand how jazz musicians perceive their performances. I suspect that the measurement line of inquiry, via Stewart, made its way into music production, but jazz scholars were not very interested.
Keil's work was published in a number of musicology journals. Early on, as a graduate student, he entered into a debate with the senior scholar Leonard Meyer. Meyer's important article "Emotion and Meaning in Music," was countered by Keil's insistence on "Motion and Feeling through Music," and it was from that debate the Keil developed the notion of "participatory discrepancies." Based on who gets cited, it seems that Meyer's view may have prevailed, but dissenting opinions can be interesting.
Keil did a book, Music Grooves, with Steve Feld in which they reflected on their earlier work. Keil's articles are republished there. Feld, also a jazz musician and whose book Jazz Cosmopolitanism was supported by a MacArther "genius grant," has also done some interesting work on time and feel. While studying correlations between bird song and weeping among the Kaluli in Papua New Guinea, Feld found that the Kaluli had a concept of musical feel that he translated roughly as "lift up over sounding," which has some intriguing relevance with jazz feel. But I guess that's another story.
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I just look at my watch.
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Drum machines have a swing function. I think it was Roger Linn who first implemented it with the Linn Drum, which was THE drum machine in the mid 80s. Prince used his on everything around Purple Rain and 1999.
The swing function usually goes from 50% (straight 16ths) to 66% (fully dotted 16th triplets), although if you go past 66% you can get into reverse swing. Straight techno is 50% swing while House Music is usually 53-54% swing. Those musics are all about "feel."
The main reason for using a metronome is to learn to keep the same tempo. Almost everyone naturally speeds up as they play. You have to teach yourself not to. If you play with someone who speeds up it sucks. Good musicians don't speed up.
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No they slow down haha Originally Posted by supersoul
Seriously a lot of absolutely classic jazz recordings have iffy tempo stability. It’s not a deal breaker! But there is a difference between a killing Oscar Peterson recording slowly edging up the tempo and rushing.
A lot of the old guys never went near a metronome. Barry harris never used one. Oscar tried it once but complained it dragged. A lot of perfectly grooving music from before the click track era has surprisingly large tempo fluctuations.
If it swings, all is forgivable. If.
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The OT’s topic can be read in two ways: having a good feel of time or having a good-time feel. A super-tight, metronomic drummer has a good feel of time but not necessarily good-time feel (no swing, no groove). To my ears, the most pleasing “good time feel” (referring to the OT’s topic) is when someone has the ability to be super-tight but chooses not to be (in the sense of subtly and skillfully deviating from what a click would do) and combines this with being somewhat behind the beat, again subtly and skillfully. So that’s one element. A second element is the somewhat cryptic, intangible notion what “good-time feel” is. To me, that comes down to what and when not to play (space). In principle these elements can be notated but good luck reading all that.
I grew up on this and I’m glad I did:
Another piece where a good feel of time is central, one of my favourite pieces of music btw:
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I agree with all this. However don’t use it as an excuse not to work on time haha
as I may have done in the past
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Time is everything. Without it I might as well give up.
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I figured someone would point out examples of not steady tempo! As you mention, the click track changed things. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Personally, perhaps I'm too fussy about it, but some drummers just speed up all the time, and then I feel like I'm fighting it and trying to slow them back down. Usually to little avail. At one point I was so obsessed with not speeding up that I realized I was actually overcompensating and slowing down. Human beings, I tell ya!
Also, I've noticed that I now almost prefer music that has subtle shifts in tempo.
I always enjoyed Charles Mingus for his elastic tempos where it would intentionally speed up over time.
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Well just think how much better and more grooving music is now that everyone records with a click on a DAW. Literally everyone says that right? Originally Posted by supersoul
Right?
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well, you just find the two bars that are the most grooving and loop it over and over. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Why two bars? Why not one? Originally Posted by supersoul
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This popped up today
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Some people claim that older drum machines sound better because their tempo varies more than newer ones.
The TR808 is the Gibson L5 of the techno world.
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that's cool, feel is EVERYTHING Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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If time is tight it’s right.
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Classic recordings often varied up to about 10% according to experiments done by a drummer friend with a tap tempo metronome.
I don't think that recording to a click automatically spoils the groove. I think it can be fine.
Same thing for recording without one, even if the tempo isn't mathematically precise.
I prefer recording with a click because it facilitates editing.
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quantum mechanically - you can maybe focus on areas of 'time' to develop but relativistically - it's there or it isn't. Like life spirit. You can maybe iterate towards improving your ability to play in time, but I don't think you're affecting your 'time feel' in the slightest. Maybe knowledge and familiarity with specific rhythm, clave yes. But not 'time'.
Three short observations if I may:
I was concerned that I sped up across a piece a (long) while ago - I thought I had good 'time' - why was I getting faster? - until I measured a Charlie Parker quartet playing. The piece sped up by 16 bpm over its duration. I was shocked. Parker was always in the pocket and the increase in tempo was a direct function of the increase in energy coming from playing with, and listening to, others who were making music, not just 'doing' a chart.
I had the guitar chair in a college 'Jazz Orchestra' run by the erstwhile MD of the band that backed Bing Crosby, Bob Hope etc. when they came to the UK to perform for the BBC. It was supposed to be 'advanced'. The MD/conductor/tutor of the band would regale us with stories but also some real stuff. Like telling the trumpets to pitch sharp and flat on certain notes (out of even temperament). The time thing was his requiring us to play straighter swing quavers - the 2 to 1 triplet feel was 'old fashioned' and he liked more Maynard Ferguson 3 to 2 feel (my ratios). There was no division and counting - just playing and listening. I doubt it could have been explained and learned - we felt it until we grooved.
My biggest time problem was more prosaic - I COULD NOT follow the baton as he was often 'expressing' and pulling and pushing the feel, waving his b* hair around. I needed a strict metronome from the front. The more orchestral players were fine with that, but I lost all the cues and had to play by ear until I could find the bar, then promptly lose it again.
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Check out Mike Longo’s video series, and Hal Galper
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I had used the more modest TR-606 Drumatix in my small studio in the early 80s, paired with the TB-303 Bassline. They were lots of fun for putting together songs. I also used them on an independent film soundtrack, combining 12-tone serialism with a faux swing groove. Originally Posted by supersoul
In the 90s, when I quit music and sold all my gear to travel and study, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Bassline in particular was in demand.
I ended up selling them as a set, with the carry pouches and accessories, and was happy to pass them on to some one who could find their own joy with them. I noticed when pricing them out that users at that time would bedeck them with hand-painted art.
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