Re: [microsound] AI & rhythm perception - 'groove' heuristics?

[Kyle Klipowicz <kyleklip@xxxxxxxxx>]

I'd argue that what makes a beat groovy are the imperfections and slips in
timing, not the accuracy of it.

Things like hemiola (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemiola), a sort of
rhythmic rubber band, and other techniques create tensions in the rhythm
against the straight mathematical grid existing in the Platonic universe.

When I program a beat using a grid, it can be intricate, but almost always
is cold sounding, due to the absolute precision of the grid.  When I instead
play the same beat on a drum pad or keyboard to input the notes, the tiny
(or HUGE) imperfections in my own timing cause a slight amount of
"grooviness."

I remember reading (but not where I read it) that a lot of Hip-Hop producers
will create groovy beats by tapping the bassline directly into the sequencer
using an MPC pad.  This supports how I (and a great deal of others) feel
about the matter.  Hell, even listen to early vs. later Kraftwerk.  At
first, they were playing all their instruments by hand and had an almost
jam-band Hippie feel to them.  After being turned on to the sequencer (was
it by Dolby?) they became the Man Machines that we all fondly remember them
to be.

In fact, lately I've been recording almost all of my sequences directly,
rather than programming them.  I enjoy the slop, especially when it's
computer sounds driven by human rhythmical imprecision.

~Kyle

On 11/21/06, Frank Barknecht <fbar@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Hallo,
> Paul Sanders hat gesagt: // Paul Sanders wrote:
>
> > On 21 Nov 2006, at 05:30, David Powers wrote:
> >
> > >Just think about the evolution of various styles of 20th century
> > >popular and urban musics - it's pretty easy to demonstrate that with
> > >each style there is a different idea of what a good groove is - and
> > >that's not even considering how much variation there might be within
> > >any given genre.
> >
> >
> > This lot are doing some interesting work:
> >
> > http://www.speech.kth.se/music/performance/performance_intro.html
>
> A seminal paper in this regard is Jeff A. Bilmes' "Techniques to
> Foster Drum Machine Expressivity" and his respective thesis "Timing is
> of the Essence" where he develops the concept of a Tatum.
>
> Start here and follow the references for lots of more:
> http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/bilmes93techniques.html
>
> Ciao
> --
> Frank Barknecht                 _ ______footils.org_ __goto10.org__
>
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