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Originally posted by Looney4Clooney it really takes a lifetime to develop your ear so that you can actually hear these small time differences. Like tap out quarter notes and record yourself. Probably feels in time but when you listen back, it sounds awful. It is something that takes about 20 years to get good at,

When you bang something out on a drum kit, does it playback exactly like you heard it while playing?

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Originally posted by dj_alfi change your avatar for fucks sake.

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Originally posted by vt100 something i always loved about live music was how easy groove seemed to happen. Its not even conscious but just the musicians playing off each other. Its kind of magic when its all just working. Something I have a hell of a time reproducing in my home computer music for sure.

You hit the nail on the head here.

I think groove is probably too much of an abstract notion to be applied effectively in something like EDM, which relies so heavily on precision and sequencing. Here's my perspective. As many of you know, I come from a pretty strong performance background and my main instrument is bass. I played in many funk and disco bands (way) back in the day and I played with some incredible drummers, horn players, guitarists, and keyboardists who really knew how to groove.

Groove is feel. Groove happens. It's dynamic and spontaneous. It's human. It's the space between the notes. It's knowing when and where to lay back and where to stand out. It's not random, but it relies heavily on imperfection. It isn't really taught or practiced, it's more like it's absorbed, and it isn't written, composed, or sequenced. It's also relative. By that, I mean that it depends on the parts that you're playing with (or against). Example - I could be sitting in my room playing a funky bass line to a drum part in my head and I'd be feeling the groove, but another person wouldn't feel it - they'd just hear bass notes playing in isolation. Bring in a drum loop, and the groove may start to appear, but I'd still be playing against a relatively static part. Bring in a real drummer who knows how to groove and the groove would then be evident.

Swing is not groove. It's static. It's repetitive. You might be using it to push notes off the beats or division, but that doesn't make it dynamic and doesn't give it feel. Yeah, in a general sense, we say that swing or shuffle adds groove, but it's not the sort of groove that L4C is trying to explain here. Making something less robotic/hard-quantized is not the same as grooving.

Humanization also isn't groove - it's just controlled randomness. It's not feel and it doesn't respond to everything else going on around it.

The bottom line is that the only way to get your groove on is to get your groove on. People don't sequence groove, because it happens in real time. It's not something that you pencil in.

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What's funny is that the more people try to define it, the less defined it becomes to the point where it still seems like there is no good way to describe it. There aren't any quantifiable elements or concepts, for that matter, which seem to be emblematic. 100 YouTubes could be posted which are perceived as groovy by pros and semi-pros but there is no definitive perception everyone can agree on.

As Richie defines it, groove is a spectrum, so linearly zooming in on elements and their attributes begins reducing the field of that spectrum. Such examples might be described as having an element of what might constitute a groove, such as swing, but it can't be said, definitively, swing, as such, is groovy. Performance phrasing is not groove. Temporal distortions don't create it. Even if you have a song with a hodgepodge of these things, concentrated so as to achieve some form of unity between them, you're not guaranteed to come up with one that is groovy.

The problem with this mental riddle is that groove only seems affirmed in cases where some nebulous quasi-psychic phenomena is taking place. Live performances seem to have a monopoly over the individual producer, in this respect. Not a single, current EDM track as been offered up as that which is agreeably groovy. Instead, it's an aspect of an ensemble performance where all the players have finessed their playing to adhere to a rhythmically concatenated rule whose dominion resides outside the graphically quantized metrics of music. Some ad-hoc, tacit quirk in the thinking of performers concentrating on their pieces makes it into its totality; its spectrum; its groove.

I still don't think I get it. I mean, I hear it all the time on the radio but I still think I'm missing something fundamental in the odd bits of calculus which remain nebulously imparted with anyone's verbal faculties. Honestly, it's kind of pissing me off a little, too.

/bitter lamentation

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Last edited by EddieZilker on Feb-08-2012 at 03:50

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Originally posted by Beatflux When you bang something out on a drum kit, does it playback exactly like you heard it while playing?

yup. Took a really long time. Isn't specific to drums tho. Just years of playing instruments, recording, listening back and developing a point of reference like say using a monitor. Out of the box, you have no idea how a monitor is until you listen to enough material and know how they sound.

my timing was always good but where as say you are playing and it sounds good, you don't know why. Took a really long time to really listen and understand what it is I was doing to get that effect,

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Originally posted by EddieZilker What's funny is that the more people try to define it, the less defined it becomes to the point where it still seems like there is no good way to describe it.

Dancing about architect?

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I don't know what you lot think, but at one point in my life, this beat was the be all and end all of groove, not according to me, according to loads of us, so although we all have a slightly different take on groove, thats not to say there aren't some markers and defining lines.

The drums here are loose yet highly syncopated.

I've tried to make snares / claps shuffle like this and never fully suceeded in the DAW, although I can play em on real drums. I've known people think they've managed to replicate the snare timing, but the haven't.

I suppose the timing here bares similarity with the Amen break.




And here is the Amen break - 1.20 into the vid

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the amen break really isn't that groovy i mean when you think about all the drummers that ever lived, a 3 /10 regardless of how popular. The only people that care about the amen groove are EDM people. THat should tell you something.



i mean this is so fat. The amen break is white boy trash.

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Last edited by Looney4Clooney on Feb-08-2012 at 15:28

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Originally posted by Looney4Clooney it really takes a lifetime to develop your ear so that you can actually hear these small time differences. Like tap out quarter notes and record yourself. Probably feels in time but when you listen back, it sounds awful. It is something that takes about 20 years to get good at,

wait, seriously? I can keep a steady rhythm without a problem, and I don't really play any rhythm instruments.. are some people just naturally better with rhythm or, what's the deal here? I'm honestly curious

you think you can. Record yourself playing simple quarter notes. Guarantee you it isn't. Even the prodigies. The one thing they always lack is just great time. Some have good time for their age but it is never really good. And it is a sense even more subtle than pitch and most people have this idea they can sing in tune. So ya. Maybe you can, i doubt it.

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Here's a blind test to try. Close your eyes and listen to these two songs in random order. No cheating - keep your f###ing eyes closed, dammit. Can you tell the two versions of this song apart? The difference is almost imperceptible, but if you listen enough times, you might be able to tell which one is oozing with groove and which one is oozing with nerdy white boys.

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Originally posted by Looney4Clooney Record yourself playing simple quarter notes.

I just did, it sounds like.. quarter notes. is this really considered difficult or are you just fucking with me?

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Originally posted by Kysora I just did, it sounds like.. quarter notes. is this really considered difficult or are you just fucking with me?

Are you playing it back against a metronome to hear how far off your timing is? Try it this way:

- fire up your metronome and pick a tempo (e.g., 120 BPM)
- start recording
- snap your fingers along with the metronome for 8 bars or so to establish the time, then stop the metronome, but keep snapping your fingers in time and keep recording (don't watch your DAW's timeline either)
- keep recording for the length of a typical pop song (3-4 minutes)
- play back the recording with the metronome and see how far off your timing is

Keep in mind that this is more of an exercise in timing than rhythm, though.

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