Right around the time I moved to Philly I had an interesting discussion with Storyville about Irrational Tempo.

In a nutshell its my little coined phrase to describe my theory about the way people really interpret tempo and time.

Case in point, if you count 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 to get an idea of a tempo then I've hypothesized that you are not really doing equal divisions between the counts, but rather what your mind interprets as equal divisions.

So in other words, the spaces between the beats are not equal.

This means then that what you are interpreting as a whole tempo for example

Mr. X's version of 95 bpm is truly the AVERAGE of those 4 beats equating to what Mr. X thinks 95 bpm is.

But seeing as how those spaces between the beats are not equal units then we are not truly hearing 95 bpm in this example. Rather we are hearing 95.XXXXX bpm. Seriously.

Now to make this apply to hip hop music and for that matter digital recording, a computer does not think like you and I think. If you tell it 95 bpm it will do EXACTLY 95 bpm or 95 bpm to the best possible outcome it can via its clocking sync.

However the computer is making 95 bpm in 4/4 time as equal units versus your not so equal units. Which means that its not quite getting your version of 95 bpm so in essence its rounding off the slop and the funk into a perfect 95 bpm. YUCK

But what about all those decimal points that you were using to get your feel? What happens when you get rid of them? Well you lose some groove, you lose some funk. And often in hip hop we WANT THE FUNK, GOTTA HAVE THE FUNK NOW!

So in hip hop we have several workarounds to avoid the stiff computer like tight quantized feel.

Some examples include:

Groove templates

Swing Quantize

Recording with Quantize off

Quantizing with low percentage

Not quantizing at all.

Offsetting our playing intentionally

Sound familiar? If not welcome to my world If it does then follow along

Here's my crazy ass idea.

The next time you decide to make a drum beat (which I'm sure we all do) try setting the tempo with a decimal point after the whole number.

For example make your track at 91 bpm.

Do your usual thing with the drums etc...

Now change the tempo to 91.485 or 91.975 or 91.695.

You will hear some pretty significant changes in feel. As well this is going to change the way your system quantizes the midi you play in.

I know in Reaper you can literally see the differences in the size of the divisions of the grid changing when you mess around with those decimal points. It is quite a sight to see how far apart your kick and snare can drift when you mess around with the decimal points. Cool stuff!

Here's another little bit of Eureka btw.

These musicians we're sampling off these old recordings were playing to each other's timing, so several irrational tempos would all lock to each other and form a master average to get what they called tempo. But no click track, no metronome, just each other.

You can listen to several records that are all classified as say 72 bpm and they won't line up. No way. There's a clue in there that the 72 was a general REFERENCE but not an absolute.

In summation,

using the standard whole number tempo method is the way computers think and we have to implement a bunch of different work arounds to combat that

using the irrational tempo method is closer but not exactly to the way humans interpret tempos and offers the opportunity to get much more natural grooves and swinging drums when we play to these irrational tempos without all the work arounds.

I have been doing this for the last year or so with Reaper and recall in the old MPC60 days that I used to see alot of 97.32 bpm and 94.5 bpm tracks but not so much anymore.

I really think that this theory applies ALSO to live musicians btw. I've noticed that drummers don't like these hard tempos that computer click tracks spit at them and would be much more comfortable with the irrational tempos. Yes I have worked with plenty of guys who can play to click tracks, but even a drummer with tight timing is not playing as absolute a tempo as a computer defines it to be.

This also applies to hip hop music because if you are playing to a click when you sequence drums (like playing pads on an MPC or a pad controller etc) then you are using that click to keep a general reference of time. So the irrational tempo applies at the beginning of the process as well as the middle and the end. Starting out at an irrational tempo is very eye opening because you can hear the differences in groove EARLY on in the process, even after you've moved onto bass and keys etc...

Final notes?

Next time you want to do a tempo, go one bpm below that and add a .950 or .975 to the tempo you enter.

So if you want 98 bpm do 97.950 there's a difference.

OR

If you want to speed up a beat but not by a whole lot, then add a .475 or a .675 to it.

So if you have 96 bpm then do 96.675 or 96.475 theres a difference.

Please go and try this out and let me know your findings

Peace
Illumination

Interesting stuff. I use the decimal points sometimes when trying to loop a break.

^breaks are almost never a "perfect bpm", at least in my experience..illacov nice post it was a good read. I'td be nice if you could post up some audio clips of drums in one bpm (let's say 95) and then again in 95.475 or whatever number. Just to show the difference you talk about.

if you're only changing the master tempo, the divisions between notes will remain identical with regard to each other - so i'm not sure i see the thrust.

as minutes are a man made construct, i don't think there is any more inherent rigidity with tempos divisible to whole numbered bpms compared to those that require decimals. if you're tapping out a beat to a click at 97.345 you're still dealing with the rigidity of perfectly equally divided clicks, just at a slightly faster tempo than say 97.

if there was some variance within the measure from one click to the next it would affect the feel, like a drummer speeding up/slowing down almost imperceptibly to create his or her groove.

Wow I can't believe I read that whole thing. Anyway...

What's confusing me about that is, even if you set your tempo to an off the wall decimal (like 90.627), wouldn't the tempo still be "perfect"??? It's still just as steady as 90, isn't it? For it to be truly "humanized", wouldn't it have to constantly be changing slightly?

Lol ncoak you beat me to it.

Yes

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Yes, the suggestion is kinda cool, but the conclusion is completely off, sorry. No need to confuse BPM - tempo with time signature.
by doing 1-2-3-41-2-3-4 it just may mean that 4\4 signature remains, but 2,3,4th notes are shifted back (actually the time signature may be anywhat like 5\7 - you see it just like playing your 1-2-3-41-2-3-4 to another "player" - metronome playing 5 times where you play your 4 times). BPM with decimal points in a sequencer has NOTHING to do with the rythm, it`s just different rate, different TEMPO.
See how your suggested pattern will look within 4\4 signature bar of a piano roll. 3 bars are displayed, one grid step is 1\16

...........interesting topic.....to be honest I have done this a few times in the past.....I remember bringing a track I had sequenced at home to a studio and telling the engineer the tempo and he was like WTF!!. while I kind of understand where you're coming from Illacov, I think the reason I sometimes have less than "round" sequencer tempos is just that when I'm trying to sequence, that tempo might be closer to the tempo I'm looking for...I'm not entirely sure it effects the subdiisions within the beat as other posters said they will be just as exact but yeah sure when you count 90 bpm in your head it's always going to be a little different to what a computer thinks it is.

This is a good shout out. I hope we are on the same level in terms of desired end result. I tend to record loose and un restrained. The kicks and snare will be locked in though. I will also keep the groove running and nydge all of the components including the non critical (1\3/4) kicks snares until it al sounds peachy

aka don't quantize everything.

But 97.345 does not sound like 97 or 96 bpm, ncoak.

You're correct that the tempo would still be rigid HOWEVER, what I'm getting at is the fact that we interpret those imperfect divisions between the beats when we for example snap our fingers to make a beat as a PERFECT tempo.

Somebody says to you gimme a count you count 1 2 3 4, in both you're minds you're doing some pretty complex equations to make that into some perfect average of those beats to make a uniform tempo that you can use to STAY on beat.

I'm saying that we don't count (without the computer) a tempo thats a whole number but rather a number that's irrational.

Ya dig?

I've tried this with live musicians and it feels more natural to them to play to a click thats not right at 95 bpm but rather at 94.750 or 94.675 bpm.

Its not something you can just brush aside you have to try it for yourself.

To be honest you will hear the biggest difference if you start with the irrational tempo rather than switch to it.

So there are some points that I didn't completely touch on (trying to avoid a diary LOL) and you have to do a little experimenting but I will post some drum loops today to show you what I'm getting at.

BTW regarding the part of your quote that I bolded, you CAN accomplish this.

You would have to construct your OWN click track by using a midi pattern with intentional offsets on each bleep or bloop. Obviously the tempo can be set how you like it, absolute or irrational but the musician would hear the offset in a perfect 4. The thing is if you make it too sloppy the loop of the metronome might be funky, just sayin'.

ok I'm going to make some drum loop examples.

Peace
Illumination

Peace
Illumination

How is my conclusion off is all you did is prove the computer is dumber than we are?

The point I'm making is that you hear tempo different than the way a compute interprets it.

We for the most part in todays time's use computers to define what tempo is.

What I'm demonstrating here and what you helped me to do is show producers, vets and amateurs alike is that there is more variation within the way we tell a computer to define our tempo.

I don't agree with you about the rhythm part, what we use to define our master tempo in turn affects what we would do rhythmically. I would not play the same to 95 that I would to 94.759 simply because it feels different.

You've never sped up a beat too much and the feel is weird?

Any thoughts??

Peace
Illumination

Still don`t get what 94,465 is different from 95, it still remains stiff 4\4 whatever decimal digits you specify.
To sped up beat is not working because of the feel (+-1 BPM is still in the tolerance zone or DJs could not mix different BPM joints) plus in any syncopated genre it is very possible to have both RIGHT sound durations and RIGHT pauses, changing tempo too much just destroys the rhytmical balance (drum sounds stay the same but the silence between them changes), still 94,58 or 95 does not matter to me. Microshifts between different sound's parts and individual notes play a significant role though. Changing tempo in different sections too, but that has nothing to do with the leftsided tempo numbers coz metronome\computer\MPC plays stiff, be it 98 or 97.235376555557. I'd agree with you if you said "Play with no quantize - those inaccuracies and shifts make it funky". Not the BPM numbers...

OK, I feel your thoughts on just being super picky on the BPM itself, but that just can be done on any sequncer providing TAP TEMPO and most people (including me) can not play a solid groove at even round BPMs so those super tuned BPMs are just even harder. Plus such tracks might be harder to process further (like tuning delays, synchro etc at the mix\remix stage). So in theory it's nice but...

I think I know what he may be talking about... When you got chopped loop which isn't really precisely sliced (I mean drum hits with little bits of silence before) changing BPM you are altering the feeling, swing, groove or whatever you name that.

I think there's more future with no quantizing or groove quantize... i also agree that i theory 98.5666326666bpm is just a tempo like 99bpm, and just as stiff.. your theory is a bit flawed because to our brain any number is abritary except for our own body rhythms (heartbeat/brain waves et cetera...)

I almost did major in Music Therapy and i would guess, with some precision, that those factors along with the listeners ISO (see link at theory and implementation) are the major factors playing here and not the exact tempo (unless it matches one of those internal human tempos)

specific tempos i have found to be very useful are 60bpm and 120bpm... also i have a special liking for 112 bpm (don't really know why, but i do a lot of music in 112-114 bpm) maybe i has to do with my own heart rates.)

I hope this has been useful!



I hope this is useful info...

Irrational is the wrong word. Those players you speak of that 'sync' to each other don't play 'irrationally'. It's very deliberate leaning on each other with tinier increments than 0.2 bpm in your sequencer. Purposefully.

In any case small differences make a big difference to groove, sure, but just coming away from even numbered bpm's is no more than excatly that. Why would the groove you're seeking be an even bpm anyway? If you really want to go looking I suggest play in unquantised and when you have the groove how you want it for a number of bars use this to MAKE a grid based on your playing. Then the computer will be your slave not the other way round.....

Interesting. Always fond of things around 70....must be my slow heartbeat.....heh

imo, the reason 90.437 sounds weird is because ppl today are so used to playing to these whole numbers like 88, 95, 83, etc, and they've probably played to every whole number between 60-120bpm a hundred times each if they're experienced. So they know the feel of each inherently, so then when you throw in a 90.437 that they've never played to, its just sounds weird at first, but not necessarily more realistic.

I personally never really use a metronome when recording, just when rehearsing my first track (usually drums) to get an approximation of the tempo I'm going to play at, just so it will loop properly when I do record. So even though it loops at 90bpm for example, everything in between is everchanging. So I can speed up and slow down my pace within a loop set to 90bpm, as long as I pick back up at the right spot by the end of the loop, so it loops properly. And then that live tempo of the first track becomes my "metronome" for the rest of the song. In effect, my "true" tempo likely is 90.xxx, and not exactly 90 bpm, but thats just where I loop it at.

In my experience, thats the best way to have a live feel/realistic tempo - make sure your first track is a live track and then use that unique tempo as your metronome for the rest of the song, and just play everything else to that groove. Use the metronome in your head and tap your foot to create the first track that set the tempo.

Then if playing is a little too sloppy in parts, I can push notes around in each track afterwards until everything sits together right. A lot of ppl like to quantize first, then nudge things around to add a live feel, but I prefer the opposite, record live first then nudge the notes around to better fit the pocket, if necessary.

Back in the day, if a dicso record wasn't 120bpm, no play.

if the playing is stiff @ 95bpm, it's gonna be stiff @ 95.47bpm... it's just gonna be .47bpm faster. So i either don't understand what you're saying, or what you're saying doesnt make any sense.

I don't see how MIDI sequences would sound differently in a DAW with decimals... Everything would be reorganized in time... Are you talking about offsetting the tempo of an audio loop instead?

As someone said, the bpm refers to minutes which refer to ... the speed at which to sun rotates..So the decimals themselves have no "musical meaning" right?

I'm not saying that if you're a stiff player you should use irrational tempos to improve your playing.

I'm saying that if you're a good player, then playing to a stiff tempo feels different than if you play on the inbetween aka irrational tempos. And its something you can feel and detect immediately. Usually to increase the speed of a track you go up to the next bpm so from 94 to 95. So why not 94.5? Or 94.3? That is technically faster, its not a negligible difference IMHO.

It feels more fluid to me to have 97.485 as a count than 97. In a way I like having the option of using 97 as a "feel," rather than as a standard.

If you do tap tempos do they always give you an irrational number? Or do you get a rounded number?

I go tap tap tap tap and get 98. Or tap tap tap tap and get 112. I don't get 94.8 bpm or 78.7 bpm.

BTW the whole "sounds weird," thing is what I'm getting at, if it affects your perception of it, its also going to affect the way you approach and play to it.


I can totally vouch for recording a drum pattern with a certain feel (midi drum pattern) at a certain tempo and then if I change the tempo it sounds wrong.

PS we can always go back to arguing over which MPC emulation is the best

Peace
Illumination

There is no difference between the "feel" of 90 and the "feel" of 90.437, as far as a click track or metronome are concerned. Differences in feel are determined by the rhythm and tempo changes in the music.

As myself and other have pointed out here, just changing your master tempo to a random decimal doesn't change ANYTHING about the feel or rhythm.

Make me think about the "word" bpm.
Beats per minute.
Lets stay at the 95 bpm
A electronic device will count near perfect (depends how it is designed and the tolerance of every single part included in timing) All the 95 beats will have near exact the same distance to eachother. Result is a 95 bpm tempo

As we all know humans are not like that. You can count the 95 beats in one minute but every beat will differ in distance to the next. But it is still 95 bpm.

Or isn't it? What need to happen to change the 95 beats per minute? Does the last count ( beat 95) have the greatest power to change the bpm? Cause if the counting person has just a little lag by counting the 95, the bpm value will dramaticly change.

So the first and the last beat in the minute are very important. The beats in between can vary

Just a thought



oh and the probability that the counting person hit exactly the 95 in exact timing is the same as for 95,23 or whatever. So exactly 95 bpm should not feel "weird"
peace

Ok I think I see what your point is now. Your simply saying ... why don't more ppl use tempos in between whole numbers when they're trying to determine what tempo they want. At first it seemed more like you were trying to basically say that "90.459 is a more human feel than 90."

So you have ppl pointing out that 90.459 is just a "stiff" as 90.

But there's definitely a noticeable diff in speed between 90 and 90.459.

illacov



The premise of your argument is that in grooves the brain averages the tiny tempo shifts in beats and that average is never a perfect number like 90, but instead something like 90.1232.

You then conclude that a similar effect can be had by making the master tempo 90.1232.

Unfortunately, your argument is flawed.

The brain may not necessarily average out 4 beats, but even if it did there's no reason to believe that its what gives a groove its groove.
The term "Swing" does not originate from hip-hop or MPC or whoever. It refers to purposeful manipulation of time by Jazz players in the early 1900's. This effect has to do with feel, not tempo. If you wanted to replicate this, you would need to manipulate time signatures, notation, etc.

EX
In musical terms, two swung eight notes are similar to a triplet with the first two notes tied played in the straight manner.

Surprised nobody has suggested this - you could creating a tempo track that varies constantly within boundaries, like, for example, 71 and 72 bpm. So you would constantly be playing with a slightly different metronome.

Karloff makes a good point as well, you can do a take, primarily to get the appropriate rhythmic feel, then create a tempo track/grid based upon that take.

Either of these approaches should give you the benefit of having a grid without the metronomic feel.

Your misconstruing my use of the word "feel". I didnt mean feel in terms of the "feel" of a song, rhythmically, I meant the feel ppl have for different tempos. You feel each tempo differently. 120bpms feels different than 60 bpm - its faster, your heart races more, you get up and dance, etc.. You feel 91 bpm a little differently than 90bpm. Thus, 90.437 is going to feel slightly different than 91 bpm as well. To say you dont "feel" tempo is just plain wrong. When you hear a fast song, it makes you feel different than when you hear a slow song. Period. Thats what I meant be "feel".

Remember this is more so about an approach to workflow than completely reinventing the wheel, even though it feels like that.

As far as groove, swing, slop, funk etc...I can totally agree that you can't completely synthesize those, however what I'm trying to point out here is that I'm getting at tempos that are more in tune with what we naturally reason out subconsciously as tempo in the first place.

I'm more than happy to discuss this at length with anyone but its more so philosophical and a logical argument for this than a "check your MPC's software," discussion.

A few of the producers that I have discussed this with in person have either gotten this right away or haven't tried it. The one's who agreed have said that its something they did back in the MPC days when they wanted more of a human feel.

I'm kind of enthused that this has brought out some detractors and supporters alike. I wasn't expecting to be praised but rather to start a discourse about this topic with the hip hop production folks.

Again tempo IMHO has as much to do with feel as it does with timing.

Peace
Illumination