timing, dynamics. AS a drummer, you learn to play certain notes you don't even hear but feel. As a bass player, you learn to play either before or after the kick, just slightly. Musicians were side chaining before the technology existed. The skill required to consistently say play ahead of the drumbeat without making the drummer change his position. As a piano player, you learn to not play the bass note of the chord and you don't play every note but some rhythm that plays against the other rhythms.
timing, syncopation, dynamics.And this track just lacks it all.
Alot of this isn't really in any book but performance practice. There is a reason it takes people 20 years to be great at an instrument.
No go on youtube and watch say those ty youtubes where a rapper is pressing the hihat and can't even do that on time. pathetic. And that is the problem. They don't care because they just quantize it. In fact i doubt they could even tell. It takes years to train your ear to notice.
there are styles of music where this isn't so much the emphasis. Groove isn't really one thinks about in metal. But this is dance music. DANCE. if it doesn't groove, what the are you doing. I have hard trance tracks that groove more than this house track.
Looney4Clooney
here check this out
Bonham.
now you could drive a ing train thru that beat it is so phat. That isn't enginearing. That is just what musicians do.
This beat is extremely simple lacking ghost notes or dynamics that other funk drummers would do.
here is the same song , the drummer is adding ghost notes, but still , doesn't groove nearly as hard as the original. But recording had changed. Drummers played to click tracks, people were trying to sound perfect in a way trying to be quantized because you were trained to not change tempos or deviate and Iguess people just took it too far. But at least you had say a 2 bar pattern that altho quantized say every 2 bars had room in those 2 bars. But people are quantizing like 32 notes.
Here is an example of a drummer and bass player. All the little things that make a difference. Dennis played with P funk.
for so many years black musicians had all the jobs and i think the reason was that their culture involved listening to music. That is what they did. and by being surrounded by music , you just learn it thru osmosis.
There is a new generation tho of kids that have never heard unquantized music. They have no developed their ear and cannot groove because they don't know what it even is.
People think groove is a matter of adding swing
this grooves. It is straight. Swing has nothing to do with groove. Putting swing on your doesn't do . It is about tension. Things pushing against each other.
Groove usually is the word they use for pop but even with say classical music, there centuries of performance practice to make things sound organic and well i can't think of another word but groove. Conductors are very aware of the push and pull they exert on the orchestra.
To put it bluntly, half the on here sounds like midi versions of the real piece.
EddieZilker
That's what I'm talking about - and AC/DC is a perfect example of that - that even though the rhythmic cadence could be set to an atomic clock, there are dynamics within its arrangement that gives it a groove.
Looney4Clooney
thats the thing tho, that beat is way behind the pulse. That song is very far from quantized. If you quantized that beat, it just wouldn't feel the same. To the untrained ear it sounds like a metronome. I believe chopin was one of the first to put it on paper sort of the concept of groove. He had this thing called rubbato which was meant to mean borrowed time. If you don't know chopin, you would get this expansion and compression of time yet the point is that against the pulse , you are not speeding up or slowing down in terms of the actual say phrase.
EddieZilker
quote:
Originally posted by Looney4Clooney
To put it bluntly, half the on here sounds like midi versions of the real piece.
I think that's part of the mass-scale learning curve.
Seems like an artifact relating to a relatively new evolution in terms of music technology that has eclipsed the average ability for an increasing number of people taking music production up. Yes, it requires musicianship to pull it off well, but when people can deliver "adequate" results on much less, I suspect you're going to see certain areas of real estate completely neglected by the masses. As you said, there are also cultural influences and I think yesterday's technological limitations are probably yielding in today's low priorities.
EddieZilker
quote:
Originally posted by Looney4Clooney
thats the thing tho, that beat is way behind the pulse. That song is very far from quantized. If you quantized that beat, it just wouldn't feel the same. To the untrained ear it sounds like a metronome. I believe chopin was one of the first to put it on paper sort of the concept of groove. He had this thing called rubbato which was meant to mean borrowed time. If you don't know chopin, you would get this expansion and compression of time yet the point is that against the pulse , you are not speeding up or slowing down in terms of the actual say phrase.
I think I get what you're talking about regarding how it's not quantized. My perception of it is that the only real metronomic part of it is the kick during most of the verse, and to my ears, that seemed really steady. And maybe I misheard that. I heard the hi-hat coming in, shuffled somewhat behind the beat (it would have fallen on had the rhythm actually been quantized) and some acceleration in tempo when they change it up with kicks emphasizing the "back in black" lyric, for instance.
To your point about Chopin - Would the Amen Break, with its sort of breathing give and take between measures, be a good example of that or is Chopin speaking to something larger?
Just for clarification:
Honestly, man, you should start a thread about this in the studio because it deserves a thread of its own and deserves more attention than it could get in a thread, here.
Beatflux
Wow, that track really doesn't groove.
Looney4Clooney
quote:
Originally posted by EddieZilker
I think I get what you're talking about regarding how it's not quantized. My perception of it is that the only real metronomic part of it is the kick during most of the verse, and to my ears, that seemed really steady. And maybe I misheard that. I heard the hi-hat coming in, shuffled somewhat behind the beat (it would have fallen on had the rhythm actually been quantized) and some acceleration in tempo when they change it up with kicks emphasizing the "back in black" lyric, for instance.
To your point about Chopin - Would the Amen Break, with its sort of breathing give and take between measures, be a good example of that or is Chopin speaking to something larger?
Just for clarification:
Honestly, man, you should start a thread about this in the studio because it deserves a thread of its own and deserves more attention than it could get in a thread, here.
drummers usually do 2 bar phrases. I wouldn't say it is really what chopin was doing. A different way to get something to sound human. One is created by tension. A hihat not quite being with the snare , in the case of the amen, everything doesn't quite line up. There is no hard swing on anything. The hihats would be written as straight 8ths but they are not all equal. The kick has a bit of swing. The snare as well but not the same as the kick given it that tension that creates the groove.
Chopin's thing was more large scale say over 8 bars. You still do micro things like drums when playing piano ie the left hand striking before the right or vice versa, but then you have that 8 bars to create a sense of motion. I don't think that works as well in dance music because you need a certain level of monotony or expectation and 8 bars is a long time. Even waltz back in the day had a very distinct push and pull on certain quarter notes. In fact french waltz and a german waltz would have a totally different feel.
it is actually pretty incredible how culture hears things that to us would sound weird. Cubans well maybe before globalization changed everything heard 8th notes differently, so did people from Brazil. Sort of like how jazz guys heard 8th notes swung. They didn't write them as triples but 8th notes. You were expected to swing it. How much depended on the drummer. Its weird, I tried finding examples of the cuban 8th note feel but all you get is ty white drummers playing it like a rock drummer. I would of thought by now , all that info would be easily accessible on the net.
I remember attending this drum clinic with a guy named Alex Acuna and he was a specialist in that area and he said that you could not get a cuban and a brazilian to play together. They just don't hear music the same way. Like different languages. Would not say it would apply now with radio tv and internet but there was a time where cultures were cut off and they developed unique traits in their music.
Music with no groove would work in Germany i think,
Evolve140
Sorry for being a dick, Sean. I was drunk and I love to argue when I drink. LOL All I have to say is that what you consider boring, might not be boring to someone else. You're an entitled kid and a skilled software user brat who gets pinched when no one reciprocates your feelings about how epic your newest production is. Thank god these peeps are schooling you so fiercely, this is truly epic.
EddieZilker
quote:
Originally posted by Evolve140
Sorry for being a dick, Sean. I was drunk and I love to argue when I drink. LOL All I have to say is that what you consider boring, might not be boring to someone else. You're an entitled kid and a skilled software user brat who gets pinched when no one reciprocates your feelings about how epic your newest production is. Thank god these peeps are schooling you so fiercely, this is truly epic.
Are you drunk, again? You just apologized and then passive-aggressively threw in a dig about how he's getting "schooled".
Seandroid
quote:
Originally posted by Evolve140
Sorry for being a dick, Sean. I was drunk and I love to argue when I drink. LOL All I have to say is that what you consider boring, might not be boring to someone else. You're an entitled kid and a skilled software user brat who gets pinched when no one reciprocates your feelings about how epic your newest production is. Thank god these peeps are schooling you so fiercely, this is truly epic.
What? I didn't even get upset anywhere in this thread. I didn't even get upset with you... and I don't think I'm entitled to anything. And nobody is really schooling me, the thread has just developed into an interesting discussion about what groove means to different people.
Beatflux
As for groove, I think a song either makes you want to dance or it doesn't.
