Time, groove, metronome, and the grid: a philosophical discussion

[MAJUSCULE]

Not really looking for a "right answer", moreso just looking for discussion...

 

Piggybacking somewhat off Tim's excellent recent thread, but this is something I've been mulling for a while. For this reason, I may ramble a bit. 😛

 

Something I hear a lot from people when criticizing modern music is that everything is tempo-gridded, which robs the music of its humanity. While I'm not necessarily arguing that, I'm mulling over the thought process behind that statement. What makes someone or something feel good/natural/human? How do we determine whether or not the musicians we're listening to have good time? Can top-level drum programmers get something to feel 100% human nowadays, and if not, how much is good enough? How much of all this is tied to listening only vs listening and watching?

 

I fondly remember our dearly departed D-Bon deploring ?uestlove "trying to sound more like a drum machine than a human drummer" (or something along those lines). I also remember reading about how Al Jackson Jr.'s internal clock was so solid that the Stax engineers could superimpose takes from 9 AM, 12 PM, and 5 PM and play them all at the same time, and they'd all line up, no need for a click. There may be some embellishment in that, but nevertheless. Watching the Victor Wooten Prosessions video in the other thread, his time is rock-solid. As he says, his goal is to use the metronome (a grid) to build his own time to be as strong internally as possible. Even on his hardest exercise, he notices as soon as he's off and locks back in right away.

 

Of course, in Tim's other excellent recent thread, we found ourselves admiring, among other things, the fabulous rhythm section of Louis Johnson and Jeff Porcaro. I mean, fabulous. I'd contend a large part of their magic is how consistent and confident they are in their time-feel. It's obviously not the only reason, a lot more goes into that elite level of playing, but it's often the foundation for it. No wonder it was sampled so successfully. Without meaning to disparage anyone, since I actually probably would have enjoyed the live version that was posted later in a live setting, as a direct comparison to the masters on the original recording, it simply didn't measure up. Again, I'd say a large part of that is very minor discrepancies in time resulting in a slightly more unsettled foundation. Again, no disrespect, but there are clearly levels to this kind of pocket playing.

 

Now, as usual, context is everything and there are many different pockets to live in. You can't tell me Prince and his Linndrum weren't funky, even if a lot of that funk is about what's going on around the metronomic backbeat he often used. Likewise, I'm pretty sure James Brown wanted his band to be about as locked in and "gridded" as he could get them (at the time). I've also seen and heard the great Zigaboo play and, well, his pocket is rather wide and seemingly, resides on a different plane than most drummers. Isolated, it might not always sound "right" to many ears, but it works perfectly for The Meters and the hookup they get. Which could and should lead us to discussing any of the multitudes of pockets that exist in different genres, eras, and all over the world.

 

Of course, drum programming has also taken many steps forward in recent years. I remember Chromeo talking about their drum programming how they assign different velocity values to their hi-hats with some amount of randomness while paying attention to where a real drummer might accent the hats to give them a more natural feel. One artist who I find is particularly good at making his largely programmed material sound quite human and natural is Bruno Mars. Although the Silk Sonic stuff has more live players, most of his solo material is very much in-the-box. Now, that doesn't mean he doesn't call a ringer in for certain things (Steve Jordan smacking the tubs in a large room on the chorus of "Gorilla", our guy Greg Phillinganes ripping the synth solo on "Versace on the Floor", etc), but for a guy who most non-musicians see as having a fairly organic sound, and many musicians thinking his stuff features a lot of live players, it really doesn't. A good example is "Chunky": to most people, the bass (and maybe more) sounds live, but upon closer listen it clearly isn't. Ok, I may be getting a little away from my point, but nonetheless, Bruno (and his Smeezingtons co-conspirators) seems to find a way to blur the lines between live and programmed to the point where the vast majority of audiences, and even musicians, are fooled.

 

To bring it back to Victor and his metronome, a tool most of us have used (and hopefully still do) to work on our time, if we don't want to feel "robotic" or "programmed" but we're trying to hold ourselves to the standard of the metronome and the level of the top musicians who so clearly feel a consistent pulse within the music, where's the line (or general grey area) on what we're trying to achieve, musically? How much human error creates the beauty and magic we're all constantly striving for when we create, and how much is too much, leading us to be distracted from the moment and the music?

 

I should probably cut off my ramble there... As I said, a philosophical discussion, lol. Hopefully there's something for someone else to catch on to in there and I didn't just dump a pile of crap in the KC town square. I did start a YouTube playlist of videos about time and groove that I'll probably share here and continue to add to. I honestly think this could be the basis for some kind of academic thesis if properly developed. As I said, it's something I've been thinking about for a while. Tim's thread about groove got very close to some of the things I've thought about over the years, but I felt like a new thread was warranted. In speaking with some of the folks on my gig this weekend, there's a lot to delve into, even if, as I said at the top, there isn't really a right answer.

 

Thoughts?

[MAJUSCULE]

Also, fair to say that a large part of me over-thinking this is probably due to having my time called out by clinicians when I was in school lmao. But also feeling inadequate almost any time I hear a recording of myself playing anything that involves feel/improv/etc. It's always close but not quite good enough. And I know that'll never change and it's what makes the journey of a life in music beautiful, but hey, that fill that didn't quite come off right in the second verse or that fourth bar of the solo or that other little thing is still gonna bug me anyway.

[zephonic]

1 hour ago, MAJUSCULE said:

A good example is "Chunky": to most people, the bass (and maybe more) sounds live, but upon closer listen it clearly isn't. Ok, I may be getting a little away from my point, but nonetheless, Bruno (and his Smeezingtons co-conspirators) seems to find a way to blur the lines between live and programmed to the point where the vast majority of audiences, and even musicians, are fooled.

 

 

24K Magic album was not done by Smeezingtons. Bruno Mars and Philip Lawrence left Ari Levine and rebooted with Brody Brown as Shampoo Press & Curl, not kidding.

 

IMO, it was for the best. I love 24K Magic album, but never dug the older stuff.

 

P.S. the Stereotypes also did work on 24K Magic album.

[Tusker]

As long as we are keeping it philosophical, I may be able to contribute. If you want live examples, I am out of luck, lol. I think humans enjoy perfection but they also enjoy bending against perfection in pitch and time.

 

The polyrhythmic traditions typically subdivide time in more than one way. The tension between layers of groove creates the interest in a samba.

 

Deeply swung grooves from the swing era are displacing some instruments and the dotted/triplet stropes. Modern drum machines have a swing parameter for this. Alternatively you can extract grooves from human loops.

 

Modern hip hop utilizes the poly-rhythmic technique by layering different tuples against each other to create a drunken shuffle.

 

Nineteenth century European music employs rubato. One can play with this feel but one can also program it. The most commonly heard shape is as follows:

 

On a tempo map the tempo can be seen ascending gently through much of the phrase then descending sharply toward the very end of the phrase as though the player is catching his or her breath. Then there is a reset.

 

When playing “behind the beat” sometimes one beat is lazy, most typically the snare. Some players pull the beat subtly even in the hats in the middle of the bar.

 

i think all of these examples are merely methods of intentionally making music breathe. Intention matters. People can hear it. I am not a fan of random slop. If you come up with a new wrinkle and it’s tasteful, people will like it. You will need specific techniques for specific idioms. Some of these take a lifetime of immersion to master, but the broad principle of bending against perfection will give music life.

[JamPro]

I intentionally program rhythmic flaws (tempo fluctuations, rushing a hit, etc.) into my DAW projects to make them seem more human.  I intentionally play robotically (unchanging dynamics and tempo) on my piano to try and be more machine-like.

 

I think our human musical sensibilities can accommodate (accept as "good music") both the robotic and the rubatic (sic).  So I suggest the philosophic discussion needs to include a "time and place" factor: I would find a robotic rendition of Claude Debussey unsatisfying, and a rubato delivery of Baby's Got Back unsatisfying.  

[PianoMan51]

Great topic. There are a universe of feels and techniques to be explored in “time”. 
 

Since most everyone here is focusing on 20th and 21st century pop music, let me remind you of music where the tempo, at times, breathes. 
 

I spent about five years gigging at a local dinner theater, playing piano and synth in a small combo for Broadway musicals. My drummer had a masters in percussion from the New England Conservatory. While we would lock into a tempo in the 95% of the song where needed, we also had great fun in letting the tempo breathe. In an orchestra this requires a conductor.  In our case we watched each other and relied on our mutual sense of where the music needed to go. I’ve never played with another drummer who could do this.
 

Even today when playing solo gigs, or accompanying a singer, I look forward to being able to add tempo variations in musical ways that I can’t get with a modern combo.

[GovernorSilver]

This might be relevant.  Quite a few YT videos out now, in which somebody tries to analyze J Dilla's time feel.  On the one hand, he was known for working with machines like the Akai MPC line.  On other hand, he was known for unquantized beats that sound like a drunk 3-year-old played the beat.

 

 

The "drunk 3 year old" quote appears here too.  Might order a copy of the book

 

 

[MathOfInsects]

Interesting topic.

I want to say first that there might be a slight false dichotomy being set up between human and machine. When I was doing time in prison, aka working on my doctorate, one of the guys who came in the same cohort was (is) a well-established LA club DJ. He wrote his own program for the beats he made. His wrote variation into the subdivisions both because it sounded more interesting to him, and also because he liked the power the program gave him to create "impossible" spaces between the beats that would never occur live. So, more human than humans would do, if that makes sense. It wasn't random, it still hewed to a meta-grid. But he liked the tiny extra bits of space he could inject by coding instead of playing (he was also a drummer).

 

I think Deadmau5 talked about writing 8 bars or so of slowly fading polyrhythmic transition from 4 to 6, where it's never wrong, but also just isn't "right" until it lands in the new time. Live humans can do a version this, but it's another case where the better "worse" option is tech-aided.

 

So double-edged sword there with technology--it's not always about perfection, it's also about being able to be "even more imperfect" than people would be, for the ever so slightly disorienting effect it can have. 

I just did a session this week with a drummer who is often talked about for his "pocket." I asked him about it, and he thought for a long time and said he sincerely has never given a single thought to "pocket." He says he hears people use that term and it's never meant anything to him. 

 

Based on that conversation I asked a different drummer the same question, and he said, "I never think about that either. I had a drum teacher in college who said I should try to lay my snare back a little. That's the only thing I've ever thought about it."

Then someone in the conversation told a story about...maybe Earl Palmer? I can't remember who, but he was asked the same question about pocket and said, "I don't think I play behind the beat, I just keep time and the rhythm section makes it sound like it's in a pocket."

 

So I think maybe the answer is that whatever the drums do, 1) they have to create stable scaffolding for what everyone else does, and 2) everyone else has to have a solid enough relationship with that rhythm to make it sound like it's music and not sounds. Whether that scaffolding is human or tech or both, the ultimate arbiter is how people play together--or really, how sounds sound together. 

[ProfD]

25 minutes ago, MathOfInsects said:

Whether that scaffolding is human or tech or both, the ultimate arbiter is how people play together--or really, how sounds sound together. 

I was in the middle of typing the following post when this came through...

 

Long before there were machines, rhythm was based on human feel. 

 

The drums of Africa were not played to a mechanical clock. The drummers locked the rhythm and everything musically (vocals, noises, etc.) around them fell in on time.

 

Over time (no pun intended), musicians became more consumed with playing steady rhythms and tempos for repeatability and being able to play together in time. 

 

Whole styles of music were built on heavily quantized rhythms.  Non-swinging music works especially for people who do not dance.

 

Now we have electronically produced music in which folks try to program a human feel. 

 

OTOH, in certain styles of music, live drummers purposely try to play with the mechanical precision of the drum machines on which the music was built.

 

James Brown's band was a rhythm machine.  The Meters laid down the greasiest funk every recorded.  Common thread...musicians playing instruments together. 

 

Prince is a great example of a musician who would program a static rhythm on a drum machine but the funky sh8t he would play around it swings like a mf'er.

 

As mentioned, J. Dilla understood the importance of non-quantized drum programming.  The samples he would trigger and parts he played made the track sound more organic.

 

Solid musicians know to play around with time. It starts with musicians learning how to play with others before diving into machines. 

 

IMO, music played live in the studio and onstage always sounds better than heavily quantized music. 

 

Music that is played/performed has a push and pull that ultimately breathes better.😎

[SamuelBLupowitz]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and opening up this topic, @MAJUSCULE. I also have a tendency to get my back up and say "to hell with the click" and try to capture the feel of a band reading off of each other without trying to compensate for the introduction of an "external" pulse.

 

But I am definitely inclined to believe, as some have hinted at, that "to grid or not to grid" is not only a matter of taste and what a listener is used to, but a million variables of style, genre, players, instruments, and how they all interact. 

 

I remember watching an interview once with John Paul Jones, maybe from ten or so years ago, where he talked about the mistaken assumptions that he noticed with earlier drum machines and programming, that they would often have a "humanize" function that worked by randomizing some tempo fluctuation, at least in the internal divisions and subdivisions. JPJ's point was that good players DO sometimes speed up and/or slow down, but it's NOT random -- it's about musicians working together to create excitement, drama, and expression, even when it's not a conscious effort. Certainly JPJ's most famous band was capable of all kinds of tempo and feel shifts that would have been challenging to map to a grid, but I would never call Bonzo's time poor.

 

I also remember reading about the Red Hot Chili Peppers making Stadium Arcadium back in 2006, and how some big things they focused on were 1) the guitar solos, and having them fall deliberately outside the tight 16th-note tempo grid, and 2) having certain sections push or pull back tempo-wise within a few "clicks" of each other -- which requires you having a drummer like Chad Smith who can make those kind of subtle changes feel natural.

 

That strikes me because, like others have mentioned with Prince, it's about using the machine-aided ability to work with "perfect" time to help establish more complex, expressive ways or performing. I think most use cases fall in this camp of making the most out of the tools you have available. Not everything is to everyone's taste, but I think examples like this are just as common (if not more) than when people rely on one or the other as a crutch (we've all heard recordings that feel perfect but sterile, or messy beyond the point of "character," or the opposite of "these guys tried really hard to play to a click and it sounds like the first time they've ever done it, because they're all playing to the click and not each other"). I think everybody's tolerances for these things are different, though.

 

As I get older, I'm trying to step back a bit from my aesthetic preferences with music and examine exactly what it is I like and dislike about different ways of playing, practicing, recording. It's all just tools, and I try not to let my biases and usual preferences interfere with the opportunity to grow, or try something new.

[Docbop]

I say it's two things, the randomness of humans, even machines that have human factor programmed in still don't cut it.    That's why Swing, Groove, can't be notationed even trying would end up a black page of ink.   There is a flow to Swing, people take about the eights but there is a flow like a wave coming onto the beach then flowing back that is going on above all  that.   Second the great groove players not only have amazing time for the basic beat, but they have mastered placing things within a single beat.   

 

One of my all time favorite drummers is Jim Keltner and one artist I worked for and was good friends with was also good friends with Keltner.   Keltner sat in now and then and played on  the artist album so I got to be around Jim quite a few times.   In talking to Jim as a non drummer I asked he how he made such simple rock beats so dam FAT.   He said the bass drum is on top of the beat, the snare behind the beat and hihat dead center that makes the beat real fat.   Then Keltner was known for playing fills that sounded like he was falling behind the beat and couldn't get back, but he'd just drop back in on one perfectly in time.   Keltner since I like to play think in three's when playing in 4. three beats, three measures, people expect more and don't get it, it messes with them.   I remember when I worked at Sound City with Keith Olson who produced the Buckingham Nick album and Keltner played on that album.   Keith would pull this one track all the time to play for other where Keltner took one of his falling behind the beat fills but magically just drops back in time.   Keith would ask people did Keltner gets off on that and  drop in or was he in total control that whole time.   Make a lot of sense to me why Keltner and Porcaro were such good friends and admirers of each others playing.   Controlled Randomness only a human can do. 

[ProfD]

At one point in time, musicians were sought out specifically for their tone, feel and sense of time. 

 

IOW, beyond chops, a musician's contribution to the music and performance from a rhythmic perspective  is the key to hiring them.😎

[TommyRude]

Here's a related thread.  Following this discussion, thanks for getting it started Eric!

[Bill H.]

15 hours ago, MAJUSCULE said:

. 

Something I hear a lot from people when criticizing modern music is that everything is tempo-gridded, which robs the music of its humanity. While I'm not necessarily arguing that, I'm mulling over the thought process behind that statement. What makes someone or something feel good/natural/human?

While true that most of today's music is rigidly gridded, they're just backing tracks to the vocals - where the human element enters in. If the song doesn't connect, it won't make it. The connection may be to a 15 year old, but it has to be there. 

 

When you take what works today and apply it to music from the past, it's a bit of a different story. I've gridded literally hundreds of classic tracks in Ableton Live. Sometimes I think it actually helps. The timing of Stray Cat Strut for example is so sloppy that I thought tightening it up helped a lot. But there are other things... something like Heart Of Rock And Roll where the beat always comes out ahead after the pushes. When I drug the track back to the grid, it sounded really weird. 

 

Just a general comment about live drumming (and this is after gridding a bunch of tracks from the 70s and 80s): Practically all drummers come out slightly ahead of the beat after a fill. This is not rushing. If they're any good they're at tempo, but the the beat will be slightly ahead of where it was before the fill. When I would drag the track back to the beat, it often didn't sound as good. So it's a natural thing I guess. 

 

This doesn't really apply to today when there are no drum fills. Heck there's practically nothing that resembles drums. When even the #1 country song today (Morgan Wallen's Last Night) is done to a trap hip-hop loop, it's the end of that. 

[Cliffk]

6 hours ago, GovernorSilver said:

This might be relevant.  Quite a few YT videos out now, in which somebody tries to analyze J Dilla's time feel.  On the one hand, he was known for working with machines like the Akai MPC line.  On other hand, he was known for unquantized beats that sound like a drunk 3-year-old played the beat.

 

 

The "drunk 3 year old" quote appears here too.  Might order a copy of the book

 

 

This guy’s time was deliberately ‘off’ and felt so sparse, but somehow the groove he created was rich and powerful. For my money, the best examples are on D’Angelo’s Voodoo album. 

[David R]

Working on Stanton Moore’s “in the cracks” exercise from Taking it to the Streets demonstrated the difference between time and feel. Irish bassist Ronan Guilfoyle has an entire podcast about rhythm, and one of his lectures years ago started to open my ears to these nuances. He played Trane’s “Giant Steps” and “So What” solos at half-speed, and said “don’t listen to the notes, listen to the rhythm.” Often what we feel as “swing” especially at fast tempos is not anything to do with the temporal placement of the note, but accents and articulation. Conversely, at slow tempos the quarter note can be a wide, greasy place to be.

 

The great drum programmers understand this. I’ve seen beatmakers nudge things 10 samples this way or that way to make it feel the way it should. A lot of the issue with “everything on the grid” music is twofold IMO: the transients are all hyper aligned as to cancel each other out; and when every single subdivision is on the grid, it becomes boring.

 

Last point: this tune feels amazing IMO, and the tempo changes happen so imperceptibly… I won’t spoil the ending. (Also good luck finding the 1 in the intro!)

 

 

[Tusker]

On 2/27/2023 at 2:49 AM, Tusker said:

On a tempo map the tempo can be seen ascending gently through much of the phrase then descending sharply toward the very end of the phrase as though the player is catching his or her breath. Then there is a reset.

 

A visual example would help illustrate this idea. I am not pretending to be the expert here but I think its helpful to have precise discussions about workflow and how to mitigate the curse of the grid. This is a tempo map ...

 

 

 

It’s two 8 measure phrases with gradually ascending tempo and a slow down (catching a breath) at the end of each phrase. This is a typical 19th century idiom (just like a drum fill every 8 measures is a typical rock idiom). It can be played or just constructed in a DAW.
 

Since I grew up in romantic traditions (think Chopin) I am likely to be overly sentimental and rubato-ey when I record myself. The tempo map allows you to reduce the romantic "feel" just a bit so that it’s still emotional but more direct and modern. 

 

 

 

 

[Tusker]

Sometimes the grid can help us. Here is an example of DAW based tuplet swing patterns. Humanization can be added later ...

 

 

 

[GovernorSilver]

A great song for studying time feel.  Granted I studied the guitar part mostly, but I'm sure playing the bass part on a keyboard, or some other part from this song, would be fun and educational.

 

 

[Theo Verelst]

In the great music most people like, IMO there is a lot hidden in the mixes, in the sense that there are all kinds of harmonic and rhythmic elements brewed or knit together. The negative effect could be chaos, or unclearness, but using special tools some built in rhythmic variations can be favored over others, so that there are hidden characters of music making. A much simpler example would be to play two rhythms at the same time, or the same rhythm with an added delay which varies slightly.

 

The point is usually acoustics or emotional response management, and all kinds of tempo changes bring together playing technicalities with musical meaning. A lot of standard,digital processing isn't very strong in that sense, for intelligent people it's necessary to climb a lot higher in the musical element meaning tree to get interesting thoughts through music.

 

 

[AROIOS]

On 2/26/2023 at 10:00 PM, MAJUSCULE said:

...to most people, the bass (and maybe more) sounds live, but upon closer listen it clearly isn't...Bruno (and his Smeezingtons co-conspirators) seems to find a way to blur the lines between live and programmed to the point where the vast majority of audiences, and even musicians, are fooled....

 

Thoughts?

They didn't "find a way" per se. That 80's E-Funk Boogie sound and groove has been around since, well, early 80's. They simply made it trendy again.
 

The rhythm section is a textbook swinging Funk pattern that stick firmly "to the grid". The "human" element you hear is mostly from the funky drum machine pattern, the sound programming, the mixing, and the harmony. It has little to do with the tiny "human" time variations that make drummers like Jeff Porcaro sound great.
 

Speaking of sound programming, the bass you thought "sounds live to most people" would actually sound programmed (not in the bad meaning of that word) to folks familiar with 80's E-Funk. Layering of analog/FM synth bass was commonplace, as was mixing analog bass with electric ones. The particular electric bass layer in "Chunky" doesn't even sound like it was played by humans, it was most likely just cleverly midi-triggered samples.
 

Back to your question. There's nothing inherently good or bad between sticking to the grid vs. "humanizing" the groove. It depends on the genre and the mood the arranger tries to create. "Chunky"s arrangement wouldn't work for The Carpenters, and Keith Jarrett's "My Song" would be awkward to dance to.