How Jimi Hendrix invented his own timing
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- čas přidán 19. 07. 2020
- A video in which we take a look at Jimi Hendrix's timing, rhythm and groove. We learn about the grid, quantizing, and why perfect isn't always as perfect as it seems.
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Hi, my name is Paul Davids! I am a guitar player, teacher, producer, and overall music enthusiast from the Netherlands! I try to inspire people from all over the world with my videos, here on CZcams.
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Hendrix doesn’t go out of time. Time goes out of Hendrix.
time is space so
mind ...blown
@AndyBobMcKee .. Beautifully put !
Spot on. Hendrix didn't trip on lsd. LSD tripped on Hendrix.
Amen, from the "Gospel of Jimi!"
It's cool when Jimi does it but when I play in my own timing I get comments like "You're off beat" and "You're out of the band".
I know right? F em. Do your thing 😎
Haha 😂
Two suggestions: 1. Use a percussion sequencer (drum machine) so that you have something that sound appropriate to the song (rather that a generic 'bleep' from a click track) and program it with drums and percussion that leaves room for your drummer to play too - thus avoiding those distracting click tracks. 2. Without use any sequencer, metronome, or click track - have short jam sessions (i.e. no particular songs) - the only rule is that their is no such thing as a mistake - just play. At first, some may try to make a joke of it - however, it won't be long before you all start to take it seriously that IT IS A FREE FORM JAM; and players can us that opportunity to listen to each other more than they ever have. Your playing with and in a band will start to get better in every way including Tempos and Rhythms (...listen to some of the jamming '60 and '70 bands did, for example The Grateful Dead, and really any band from that era).
😂👌🏾✋🏽💯💥🔥
Your in the wrong band 🤣❤️👍
Playing slower and faster tempos throughout a song is a part of playing dynamics we don't speak enough about
Facts
Strictly speaking, rubato playing is a function of rhythm, not dynamics (volume). Like dynamics, it is an important expressive element of music.
4 Elements of Music
Pitch, Rhythm, Timbre, Dynamics
@@jeffcomas1 I’m not sure what all of that means but I feel like I would agree!
@@tigerstalons5118 Rubato is purposefully Increasing or decreasing the tempo for expressive affect.
@@jeffcomas1 thank you!
First you learn by following the rules, then you master by learning how to break the rules
Yeah well jimi never played by those rules in the first place imo, without restraint he communicates his soul through his guitar.
Learn the rules like a pro then you can break them like an artist, Pablo Picasso
@@KAIOabstrct pure poetry
@@KAIOabstrct He probably did when he was a member of the Army Band
Don’t record with a click - let the music breathe. Humans can never play perfectly in time with machine precision anyway - it’s a fallacy. Nobody ever did ha ha.
"The metronome is a powerful servant but a terrible master" - Sergei Rachmaninoff
That is true. That can entirely influence how your style of playing branches out to be completely different
I hate playing to a metronome. Totally takes away all emotions and feel of the music for me.
“I never fucking said that” - Rachmaninov
"I hate playing to a click" - Franz Liszt
Love this!
"Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist" - Picasso.
Love this. Beato has been railing on quantizing for ages now.
Really understanding how it's stealing the soul out of so much music.
I love this quote.
Quantization is simply a tool.
You can still quantize and have tempo modulations, as David demonstrated.
@@ErebosGR you can, but it is not frequently used in such a manner in pop and rock music.
@@yaboi-km2qn Only because most people are lazy.
@Nathaniel Birthurth he met Miles Davis in a recording studio and Miles invited him to play, and presented him with sheet music his band was working off of. Jimi was embarrassed to admit he didn't know how to read music. Miles Davis, surprisingly, assured him many great blues artists couldn't read music. But he still didn't let him play with his band. It would have been amazing to hear Hendrix get into "Fusion" with people like Davis. His later songs hint at that direction. We lost him far too soon!
Mitch Mitchell was the only drummer who could play behind Hendrix. For some, almost mystical, reason the two of them were in sync, and you can see Mitchell instinctively go wherever Hendrix took the tempo in just one beat. It's really pretty amazing when you pay attention to it.
I know next to nothing about drumming. What I do know is Mitches drumming sounded impressive even with Jimi.
just like all band members playing live and not overdubbing all the parts?
@@muchanadziko6378 I always say a real band sounds as good in the club as they do in the studio, a great band sounds even better in the club.
@@natfoote4967 King's X comes to mind (for bands with members that are still alive)
@@FeelingShred Grateful Dead and Motorhead were always better live, onstage.
yes, Hendrix controlled the beat. he did not let the beat control him
Hell yeah
Clear ! so clear
damn straight
I disaggree totally. He was capable of moving freely within the bars. Play certain notes early, others late. But he didn't control the beat.
Drums are supposed to keep the beat. But he plays around the beat to create the grooves.... IMHO
To me "Little Wing" is the best thing Hendrix ever made. Absolutely beautiful, with great drums as well.
Agreed, and it’s way too short..the only song that I wish was 17 minutes long
Maybe i think there are a few others
@@dizzyrobbins3549 same but maybe its for the best always leave em wanting more lol
villanova junction blues , little wing , driftin...
the only thing I don't like about that masterpiece is that it is over so soon
"It is perfect.... in a visual way." Yes!!!! So many new producers produce music with their eyes not their ears because they only know music in the box.
i do everything in the box and i strictly mix and paly by ears and inner timings. i almost never use quantization. my midi data always looks like a mess, but as long is it grooves i dont edit aynthing. thats all you have to do.. the rest is the ear for the mix. but i never do any mastering. the problem isnt thze box, the problem is the one infront of the box. or the musicians :D
Doctor Too-Much totally agree, the program doesn’t make any choices the user does, still you are the exception. It’s because so many of the new producers don’t know any different, they have never played or piano so the concept of feel is alien. Nice job trusting the groove man
@@TenThumbsProductionsWhile i have to say, fair point, DAWs also give you a great way to gain insight into timings, and that visual way of looking at things helped me way more than looking at sheet music. For example, realizing a septuplet swing groove in a DAW can help you orient yourself as to what and when to play when going off the rails or just plainly playing it. You can still increase your timebase and go with microtiming. I mean, just look up what Donald Fagen did with the Wendel. He used his ears AND mind.
Yer quantize and then humanize
My first multitrack recording rig in the 90s was an 8-track reel-to-reel machine, I used it until around 2002 when I could afford a decent DAW. There was a lot wrong with that setup by today's standards, but it occurred to me a few years ago that music making had become so visual to me now. Back then there was nothing to look at but reels spinning around. I mixed with my eyes closed most of the time. Not gonna go back to tape, but I learned to listen with my eyes closed and stop worrying about where notes fell on the grid.
Jimi was all about the dirt, the soul, the pain, the blues. Computers got none of that.
Quantized drums suck for rock and metal. Imagine making drums boring and expressionless in a genre known for extremely powerful raw expression in its instruments!
Be realistic. One day A.I will say otherwise
@@georgesracingcar7701 imagine that for jazz and rhythm and blues! Would sound like sh.t!!! 😂😂😂
@@T.K.KIRKLAND. AI can’t have human experience. How can AI strike a chord with pain or sorrow? 🤔
@@astersarte1282 you clearly don't know much about A.I
The beat isn't a dot, it's a circle you should land in. Not my words (Bird or Coltrane, I think) but when I read that it shifted my perception of timing and feel.
Hendrix was not even in the circle lol😂
So this video still got blocked, but after my appeal it got released today, YAYY! 🎉🎉
Also: any other guitarists we should check out next? Names below! 👇
Now that you've started with Hendrix, do the other God of guitar, Eric Clapton.
Little bit unlike your style but I'd like your take on Polyphia.
Jimmy Page!
Allan Holdsworth
Billy Strings
"In the pocket" is often mistaken to mean "on a steady beat" - but really it's about finding that perfect rhythm for every part of a song. The speed-ups and slow-downs are as much a part of a song's dynamics as volume lifts and drops, moments of compression, key changes, etc.
Well said!
Saving this to show the youngsters
No wonder I enjoy Nirvanas music so much
@@benc4968 yes!
Very well said. Sabbath had that groove. That's why they sound heavier than wet carpet.
THANK YOU. As a producer, I've worked with hundreds (thousands?) of musicians at all different levels and it's amazing how many of them think that an engaging and emotionally-moving performance is the same as a technically correct one. It's not. It's about making the listener BELIEVE and FEEL what you're saying,
@HeathWatts man this is so inspiring as a young guitarist who is growing up on Hendrix up at 3 am and having a sensation. Thanks man nice story
Amen!
No different than classical composers using accelerando, ritardando, rubato, etc Jimi just brought that mindset to his music and absolutely killed it!
I was listening to this eating some food I. The kitchen and my mom goes “wow he has such a great voice” u just stole my moms bro
😂
Your moms bro is called your uncle
@@mysigt_ it's would be his uncle if he wrote "mom's bro" (notice the apostrophe between m and s). What he should've done if he wanted to say "moms" is put a comma before bro.
What DAW is Paul using?
Shane Jackson Ableton Live 10
I've been a Hendrix fan for much of my life. I remember lying in bed in high school listening to midnight to 2 AM broadcasts of his concert recordings on Montana NPR. He helped me head down my own path musically. When I play, each beat is "1". The tempo and rhythm are fluid. Although I make little money from my music, the freedom, which Hendrix helped me to learn, is priceless.
Lots of music has a rubato section, especially at the beginning of songs, where the tempo is free.
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rubato
I absolutely love how he picks out Joe B’s over produced, scripted and cold vibe to be the antithesis of Hendrix’ organic magic. Happiness
When people say my timing's bad I'll just send them over to this video. Thanks for this!
This is how classical and folk musicians have been playing for centuries. Agogics and rubato are essential interpretational tools, as they help to convey feelings in a more natural and organic way. Great subject and video!
When you play live music in ANY group of people without a drummer, you will move the tempo around. Sure it helps if you can all play at the same speed as one another, but hey, we all use our ears to listen to what everyone else us doing and also our eyes to see how people are moving. It's natural to push and pull timing. Play loud and you get faster, play soft and you get quieter. BUT sometimes you need to not do that, otherwise you just lose all the energy, or tension, or momentum. Bach wrote some of the greatest sets of notes ever. But the best thing about Bach is, you can play those notes in whatever timing feels right to you.
Totally. I was thinking the same thing.
Some of the beautiful things about metronomes in the creation of art? They taught us bad habits and rigidity. Jimi Hendrix Metronomic “mistakes” are exactly what made some of my most memorable songs of this master of guitar-ology! Meaning he created something beautiful.
Our hearts are not always beating the same amount of beats each minute they change. And that is ok. That is ok to create imperfect and beautiful things!
Mitch Mitchell Was One Of The Best Drummers Ever!
I thought you said Mitch McConnell lmao. What a hype beast
@@plkijnuhb9890 Wouldn't be surprised if that horrible gnome Mitch McConnell is a better drummer than Mitch Mitchell.
He is extremely underestimated. Huge part of Jimi's music
His jazz drumming complimented Hendrix
When you played the metornome against Jimi, to me it sounded as though the music was playing at the same speed all the time, and the metronome was slowing down and speeding up. I wonder if anyone else experienced that illusion?
That's a wonderful observation. Something about humanitys connection to music rather than absolute numbers.
Probably not an illusion, the metronome was lined up to the beginning of each measure, that means it would suddenly change from measure to measure, Jimi was gradually changing the tempo throughout each measure into the next, which makes it more organic and less noticeable...
you maybe hearing the density of the rhythm , hearing the track and the metronome as one , the other as part of the other and not two things in separate motion.
The squiggly line on the computer is "Automation" so the guy making the video is slowing and speeding up the metronome in the software to show you that the timing or (counts of 4 beats per bar of music) is actually changing speeds. So you are correct the metronome was in sync on purpose.
I just thought WTH something wrong with the nome. It's bad when the nome don't keep time wid you.
Jimi's timing:
Way ahead of everybody else.
Left too early.
Spot on!
I'm glad he left early, I wouldn't like to see his reaction to 2020 legendary people belong in legendary years
that's embarrassing!
@@T4IN0z Yeah, no. Just no.
Absolutely. Brilliantly expressed.
When Stephen Stills played with Jimi Hendrix he was reported as saying how he watched music just flow out of Hendrix in an effortless stream and I think that was a big part of Hendrix's genius and magic. Musicians who saw it were immediately aware that he was a special gift to the world.
Fantastic. As a multi instrumentalist, composer and producer I have focused on doing precisely what Mr Davids said. I use both drum machines that are metronomic for certain pieces, others using real drums and others using hand drums percussion. Precisely to create differing feels. For me daily practice over and over until you can play it blind folded and THEN bring in the improvisation for edge and atmosphere and to create a WHEN. I start with improv and jamming ideas. Find the gems. Then select them , grow them and arrange. Practice the perfect version until I know it and THEN improvise again this time with a plan. My friends say it makes the tunes a journey which to me is why I LOVE psychedelic music like Hendrix, Syd Barrett solo and with the Floyd, the Doors, the Beatles, late 60's to late 70's Grateful Dead and Led Zeppelin, the last two being the best Live acts I have ever seen and they change tempo on you as well all the time. See also Parliament Funkadelic and Santanas' Woodstock performance!! I also love more modern music like Depeche Mode who made electronic music human and breathing, Talking Heads, Eno, Radiohead and Opeth.
Hell yeah you have great taste
1967: People drop acid play music and expanding their minds
2020: People try to analyze what the stoners made back then
Fuck, be real bro, can't go wrong. Awesome comment
Totally agree! I took lsd and after the biggest high improvised a track on guitar. Check it out on my channel. Its called improvisation
@@jesterruth1238 like Boozoo Chavis said "If I'm wrong, you wrong too!"
Yeah, people dropped acid and played music, what's there to analyze? Live the experience and it will never be the same again.
I try to explain it like "There's another channel you could be watching. You might like it or might not like it, but you never go back to being the person who thinks there's only one channel to choose from."
I don’t think anyone could have paired with his free flowing style better than Mitch Mitchell. Super musical drumming.
Interesting considering he was chosen by a coin flip
@@Gramasz .... Dunbar is a great drummer but....... Mitch is/was the guy. Some things are meant to be......
@@Gramasz wow that's crazy. Yeah Mitch was one of a kind. They complimented each other really well
So..., Buddy Miles never existed, right?
@@skineyemin4276 ... You know Buddy only played with Jimi for 2 or 3 months, right? He was a great pocket drummer but Mitch was a totally different animal.
As a drummer, I grew up jamming Hendrix with my dad on guitar because that's what he liked. Really expanded how I viewed making and playing music.
Paul Davids: "You don't have to quantize to sound good"
Me, with very poor feeling of rythm: "I'm the next Hendrix!!"
Good video Paul, really enjoyed it! :)
This is why I hate when people call Jimi's playing "sloppy"... like yeah his music sounds like it came from a soulful human and not a robot
Royer Maldonado I’ve literally seen this in the comment sections for many of his songs
Call Jimi "Sloppy" is sad to the point of almost being cute...
Jimmy was most definitely not sloppy at all. Why would so many of the greatest living guitarists out there claim Jimmy as an influence? Saying that doesn't even make sense.
Guitarists in comment sections are pathetic. Page was sloppy, objectively, and so was Jimi. The main argument for when these guys get called out is that it’s “feel” and that we probably couldn’t re create it. At the same time the people saying those things are the same that bash on guitar virtuosos. “They play too perfect” and it’ “sounds pretentious” and it bores me. Whats more pretentious playing clean or claiming the “feel” argument all of the time. With that said I love Paige, Hendrix, Frusciante, Clapton but I enjoy Petrucci, Vai, Friedman just as much. We need to stake a step back and realize how contradictory we can be as guitarists and how dumb we sound sometimes
@@FuriousGeorge_ Took the word right out of my mouth dude
Yes. Jimi's musical journey on this piece travels through tempo changes as he tells the story, same as the great classical composers did.
Good point. I just got into classical for inspiration and found the sudden tempo changes to be natural with the mood of the piece
after 50 years of drumming, i suddenly feel a whole lot better, thanks to you, Paul.
When we communicate with speech we have a natural rhythm which fluctuates according to what we are saying and the emotion and intent behind it. We naturally speak faster when we get excited, angry or passionate. On the other hand we speak more slowly when we want to emphasise an idea, express calm etc. Music as a language is no different. There is a place I'm sure for pure gridded music but I do believe that when music sounds most natural to us is when the tempo naturally fluctuates according to the emotions being expressed - just like in speech. GREAT VIDEO :)
Fluctuating rhythm is great, but like how you learn music theory so you can forget about the notes and get on with playing, you practice to a metronome so you can later forget about the beat and get on with playing. Also, besides making your ability to groove more powerful, practicing with a metronome will absolutely increase both your precision and speed. It does this by eliminating the guess work. That said, it's good to play without one often too.
Never played to a metronome in my life. Timing is something you need to learn by LISTENING to the music you want to play along to, not a beep.This is why shredders such as John Petrucci always sound so freaking sterile, compared to Yngwie Malmsteen for example.
Never used one either Love the old school way I learned playing to LPs
Like Victor Wooten said, "we need to learn theory well enough that we can be wrong with it"
@@Nghilifa It depends on what you want to do with music. If you're just starting out I'd recommend using a metronome at least until you get comfortable with your instrument and you develop your internal sense of rhythm.
czcams.com/video/KypuXisT38w/video.html Keep it human!
It’s rare that a person’s talent, skill and ability to teach or instruct are all at such high levels of utility. Always wonderful to hear from you, Paul.
Ive been trying to Record Guitar like Jimi For years since the beginning of my music Journey and I never could figure out why my Recordings where OFF TIME everytime I thought I was just incompetent. Thank you for making this video and showing me that its not just me
The push and pull of the groove is the soul of music. All the best artists do it instinctively and a quantizing is killing that soul. EVH was a master of that, as was Jimi and of course Keef and Charlie Watts! List could go for days. Great video as usual
In the 80s I wanted to be a producer. I studied to become a recording engineer and worked part time in a studio. But I quickly became disenchanted with it, and eventually fell out of it. I had this old school vision that a good record was made by recording a good band playing together in the room. I think when a band has a great song but they play their individual parts separately over a click, some of the magic of group performance is lost. While I know there is value in structuring recordings so that parts can be changed at will, there's also value in allowing bands to provide that special momentum to a performance that can only be achieved as a group, playing together.
Keeping it human! czcams.com/video/KypuXisT38w/video.html
There are two types of people that can't keep time. People like Jimmy Hendrix that makes it sound good, and there's me.
Me to the drummer: whatever you do, don't go with my flow, keep doing your thing, otherwise we'll be at double time by the end of the song.
Me too, I'm a Strat player like Hendrix, but without the prolific songwriting ability!
SleepWhenUrDead ! That’s why Ringo was so good. He was able to keep tempo and a solid rhythm throughout any of the Beatles songs
Swole Senzu
Don't get me wrong, Ringo was a good drummer with the Beatles... but don't be one of those imbeciles who says "dudes a beast, he keeps the beat steady!"... that's the bare minimum for a drummer. Listen to guys like John Bonham and Ginger Baker.
The timing flaws and imperfections are part of the beauty when it comes to real human flow. It's not about the timing mistakes but more about humanizing the feel. Human timing is not as demanding as mechanized ones. Metronomes and perfect timing can be at times too rigid or robotic. Sometimes it's "more" about the spaces, gaps, margins and silence in between the notes or beats that makes the music breath. But naturally, the notes and beats will get all the attention.
Amazing...I was watching a Hendrix concert this week end and I commented to my friends It must have been very hard to be a drummer for Hendrix and they had no idea what I was talking about. He had his own sense of timing and to me it was obvious.
For me this is one of the reason why I really don't like recording and playing separately.
It just kills the whole feel and vibe of the music.
Yes. I would rather play all together for the reference track, even if every instrument is ultimately replaced.
chris4072511 I saw a video of the recording of foo fighters that’s exactly what they did. Don’t know how common that is outside of “rock” type bands czcams.com/video/T7NCbmAdE60/video.html
It can definitely be done, the whole of superunknown by soundgarden was recorded seperately and it sounds and FEELS killer. But playing together is an easier way of getting there.
Sometimes, in rock music at least, you have to record separately. The art is, how to make it feel like a live take when you overdub.
When learning to use an EQ plugin, many professionals say something like, “Close your eyes and use your ears to adjust the EQ.”
You can do the same thing with the tempo track in your DAW. Go ahead and record the tracks “on the grid” because it’s easier and more efficient. Then close your eyes and adjust the tempo track to make the song fit in your pocket.
While working in PreSonus Studio One, I nearly always adjust the tempo track to create a better groove (e.g., slow during the intro, speed up a little during the verse, speed up again during the chorus, etc.). Doing this in Studio One is simple.
Give it try.
Studio one is one of the most underrated daws out there
@@JoaoSantos-vv5uf It certainly is the fastest developing DAW there are right now. And it is a good one.
yeah BUT manipulating the grid isn't the same as instinctively playing with time.
Agreed on StudioOne as excellent, but just as 'quantize' is a tool, Paul forgot 'Humanize'. Yes, You CAN 'adjust' to feel after a recording is assembled.
@@enchantederic3792 Personally I'm not a huge fan of the humanize feature. WHile quantize does work 100 percent because the target is absolutely clear humanzie is more of an idea that can work or can't. Don't get me wrong in most cases it's better to use humanzie and hope for a good result than not to use it. But it does not always work because it actually is random.
Dude I absolutely love that you use Questlove talking about J Dillas "feel" in this video. It perfectly describes hendrix tbh. It's all feel and only YOU can do your own "feel" style playing.
Your comment on Reddit nailed it. A great musician plays in his own pocket, not THE pocket… and when a full band, like Jimi Hendrix Experience can do it together, it is truly magical. It taps into our subconscious and emotions like no metronome or grid ever could. Which goes a long way to explaining why so much pop music today is so damn boring. Thank you so much for making this video, Paul. Us “old school” musicians are with you on this!!
3 things invigorated my playing & got me to reach a new level...
1. Neutral Milk Hotel made me pick up my furst guitar - acoustic
2. Hendrix playing the Star Spangled Banner made me get an electric.
3. Coronavirus made me actually practice and learn scales
~queck~
Now plug your guitar and you will reach level 4
Took 2020 for me to finally listen to my guitar teacher and grind that shit out.
I saw John Frusciante saying something similar.
On Stadium Arcadium he consistently tried to break free from the metronomic cage, by subtly slowing down and speeding up within measures.
I think mastering basic timing, with a metronome comes first, THEN you can play with the timing as you feel it.
I was mad cus Paul didn't mention JF even though he's a fan of him..
This is something we've been working on this last year. We used to hand-splice every drum in our mixes and line them up to the grid. It's killed some of our singles! It's both groovy and liberating to just let the song be what it wants to be (: Love this video. Sharing with musician friends.
This is a brilliant, ear-opening video that breaks down and explains what I’ve heard all my life but didn’t have the words or know-how to communicate. Thank you for this.
Meshuggah recorded their latest album live because they felt their previous two albums felt "too perfect" being more reliant on computers. They wanted the honest "push and pull" of people getting a bit behind or a bit ahead. Of course I think they still played almost perfectly in time because they are living machines.
Hahaha can you imagine they put the click track and it still aligns perfectly, and they go like "why did we even bother then?!?" **tableflip the mixing console**
Meshuggah is and will always be my #1.
Exactly ,the Stones also Charlie followed Keith thatscwhat gave them the "feel" that their music has .
@@dennisapplegate7553 Same in Led Zeppelin with Bonzo laying down a solid beat and the others pulling and pushing, it just feels so damn right.
I know Kreator did this a while back
I've been saying this forever. "Perfect" music isn't better. Bach knew that. Hendrix, the Stones, The Band, Frampton, you name it ... were at least partly better because of their imperfections.
And think about East European or Middle Eastern folk music; the tempo is really all over the place. It's very human.
I'm a mathematician. I love math. I *DON'T* love listening to math.
czcams.com/video/KypuXisT38w/video.html Keeping it human!
You named it. The Band! Which group had a feel for timing slower and faster like they had? E.g. listen to King Harvest... on the Brown Album.
People that listen to math rock: 😐
i always come back to this video, it pleases me so much the way you talk about this, maybe one of the best videos about music in youtube, thank you so much again
Dear Paul, this video said everything I've been trying to tell our orchestra for months now. Thank you, I think I love you, or at least your great ideas.
Now that we quantized the whole music industry, we start to recognize that off tempo is cool, so we start playing off beat and invent programs that dequantize your music. Typical human.
Still though, the computer can also do things that a guitar can't. Both are just tools. I'd probably rather hear a techno track produced by Jimi Hendrix than a guitar solo played by Martin Garrix or some shit if you get what i'm saying.
Most drum software has stuff to "humanize it", which makes some beats slightly off tempo and with different volumes. Sure, it sounds like it's a bad thing but it also allows many musicians to play/create music when they don't have other people to play with or the money to go to a recording studio to record drums.
off tempo isn't cool, it's what makes music sound good, it's absolutely necessary... call it rubato, swing, duende, whatever. And of course, there's no way a machine can duplicate that
@@JulioLeonFandinho yeah but the person behind the machine can programme it with some groove or swing too it. Lol, you really think house music doesn't have groove. House and techno both originated from funk music. You haven't explored much electronic music..
@@denver-gi7ot I've listened electronic music, from Stockhausen to Throbbing Gristle... the electronic music you're talking about doesn't groove. You cannot program dynamics, for instance, at least not as subtle and precise as the dynamics made by humans playing with their hands, which, by the way, many times are improvised. Besides, electronic instruments doesn't have harmonics as rich as the rest of instruments. Electronic music is much poorer in those terms. Of course, you can do other things, but it's different
“Stretching or compressing time” is exactly the phrase Frusciante spoke of in regards to his playing on Stadium Arcadium.
Stretching, compressing or stopping time is exactly what music is supposed to do
He was talking about those blues players, namely Hendrix, yes. Inspired by that feel. But for that to swing and dance a guitarist has to play with solid rythm drum and bass players, that don't simply follow you, the guitar. You must have the freedom to paint grooves inside the groove, on and off.
Never thought about it this way, where time is just another variable that and artist can tweak to express something.. brilliant!
I really enjoyed your appreciation of Jimi's unique style and sense of timing. The "feel" he put into his songs was remarkably refreshing. Thank you for explaining another facet of what made him such a great musician.
Great Video, I would know this as 'Rubato' as known in classical music to allow expressive musical interpretation - but even Rubato starts from a place of being able to play within/to the beat - the fact that the band all play in the groove just highlights what great musicians they were. :)
I never listened to jimi hendrix but this was the perfect introduction to him.
So true. And what I really learned is, that all this is related to psychoaccoustics where the brain is able to pinpoint the 'distance' by the delay (microtiming). When adjusting the latency in my DAW, I had the impression when overdubbing my own recordings, that latencies of a few milliseconds made it sound good or bad. This had nothing to do with a grid, but with my idea where the tone was supposed to go and where it ended up.
I once programed a classical guitar tune, only to being able to play along in time... I ended up trying to program all the subtle tempo changes to make it sound natural, took 4 versions to get that natural feel into it... played it to my drummer, he thought the timing was perfect... you should have seen the skyline of that tempo track, it was weird... but it sounded super natural!
"I AM the click track!" - Ringo Starr
Goo goo g'joob
I am the egg man - John Lennon
Pedro Lopez actually lol’d
@@pedrolopez3493 "I am the Chinese egg man" - Yi Jian Mei
@@robotmeister009 "Yaaaiiiwooooooyaaahoooooo" - yoko ono
When I saw this, I thought about how blues guys like Robert Johnson dropped and added beats. But, tempo talk is even better. I remember a high school band exercise of starting a song slow and gradually speeding up to a furious pace and then gradually slowing it down to the slow start. Playing the tempo as a group. We should practice by click to discipline our timing, but play freely with a group to feel the groove. Rick Beato said the the computer killed music for the reason of the grid.
But electronic music can change tempo. People just aren't doing it much.
BRAVO..I can't think to say anything else that explains how important what he said is.
Buddy miles was describing working with Hendrix on "Rainy Day Dream Away" and "Stlii Raining Still Dreaming". He called it flirting with the time.
He also said that he considers working on those times to be one of the high points of his career.
Hendrix, Nirvana, The Clash, Howling Wolf, Keith Richards... my favorite music is chaotic and beautiful. Classical music too by the way, no chorus, no verse, constant tempo changes.
I was going to comment "Keith Richards." You did it for me. He's a master of this......all over the place.
When you have a good relationship with band members, its almost like a brotherhood, like family, that gives you complicity with the band, like bonham and JPJ in the song remain the same, its like telepathy. In that mood the tempo/time works in another level
You're right, metronome was not widely used back then as today. I had to learn Queen's You're My Best Friend, it fluctuated between 139 to 141 throughout the whole song. That was when I realized that good music back then didn't need a timer.
Thanks Paul! That was mind-opening!
Blues guitarists have been playing with tempo to match their moods like this, and even adding in extra beats or whole bars to match the lyrics they want to sing, since at least the 1930s. And Jimi was definitely aware of those guys. Which is not to denigrate him in any way, no doubt it took some courage for musicians like Hendrix to stand up to producers who insisted you play in perfect metronomic time. He actually *did* invent so many sounds, styles, etc., he doesn't need credit for "inventing" something that had been around for over 30 years.
He was probably the most influential with his style, Mozart didn't have an electric guitar. He brought it to rock and roll and he's still the best guitar player ever, In my opinion.
Robert johnson
He doesn't mean that he invented playing with wacky timing, he means he invented HIS own timing, like Page and Young, which is why it's so difficult to truly replicate.
To any fellow musicians: focus on finding your own unique voice so you don't have to worry about how close your cover songs are to the original. Better yet, try your hand at imitating as many people as you can, and I mean as MANY as humanly possible. Whatever genre or instrument, transcribe classical piano and jazzy sax solos. By failing miserably at sounding exactly like the giants, you will become a master at sounding exactly like yourself. :) Play music from the heart, have fun with it. Drugs help, but do your research and stay safe lest you be claimed at 27 as well.
Dylan constantly adds beats and measures in his stuff. No doubt he got it from the blues and folk musicians who influenced him.
Irregular bars, added beats and other timing weirdness used to be extremely common before the baroque era, as were irregular, hard-to-quantify rhythms. And even to this day some sheet music still comes with an explanation of a certain swing or slant or other regular rhythmic variation that would be inconvenient to write down in the bars. It requires a musician to read and play. In fact, most pre-baroque music can't be interpreted with historical accuracy, as usually the only part written down was the main melodic hook: The musicians were expected to know enough music that they could reconstruct the rest and play it in various regional styles, which were never written down and thus lost forever.
He's just bending the space-time continuum when he bends a note duh
Beedy beedy beedy beep
That is Special Relativity.... a cadenza where tempos fluctuate for expressive pause, legato, rubato at the whim of the performers moment as an artistic embellishment or pompous tribute to flamboyant expression.... standard shit for Segovia...
thats actually it
Duh !! We know magic when we hear it !
basic metaphysics....of course
This was brilliant, bravo!!! Excellent reflection, your good my friend.
Thank you for articulating so well that which i have been feeling for so long. Another excellent video
“A captured moment of spontaneous creativity is worth more than a thousand hours of computerised perfection”.
Sometimes. Lots of people trying to be spontaneous sound like garbage.
No Content
True but that’s what separates the amazing players from everyone else in my opinion.
This is what shitty musicians use to justify their ineptitude or laziness.
I think you can also be insanely creative using only a computer, the problem is limiting yourself to specific arbitrary rules like the grid, but seeking perfection or working for thousands of hours isn’t always worse than impromptu jamming. Otherwise what do you make of mbv’s Loveless?
You’re totally right about being creative using a computer. Roni Size for example worked on New Forms entirely within the grid and that’s an amazing record.
Eddie Kramer once said there were no rules when it came to recording Jimi.
Good point about My Bloody Valentine though. Great record that’s stood the test of time too.
I always loved this about Hendrix and loved every minute of it
This is one of your best videos so far.
I haven't watched any of your videos in awhile. I must say that you always made great videos, but this one seems very much in YOUR pocket. Thanks for this!
Is it driving anyone else crazy that he has to use a slightly higher pitch version of this song so the evil people that own jimi's music dont take the video?
What does playing it two steps up absolve one from it being taken down. Still the song. So annoying. Can't hear the song as it should be.
The bots look for an audio pattern, not the sound. A hired human, listens to the sound and determines if it matches ... the pitch is irrelevant. This is why bots can match content as soon as it's uploaded, but a human needs to listen first.
Cool. Thanks for that
Now Jimi sounds more like Corey Glover!
They can still take down the video manually and they probably will considering this is a big channel. I should save it
This applies to poetry, film, music, etc. Most art forms now suffer from this metronome plague.
this was everything I needed right now, thank you sm
Great video Paul. Amazing insight and very eye-opening. Cheers 🥂
Thanks Paul, i was wondering if it was just me that thought Hendrix has strange timing. Listen to steve ray vaughn playing the same songs and you will hear how it sounds more in the pocket but less groovy. Great video! Wondering how the drummer felt about Jimi’s timing
One thing Hendrix really understood intuitively was how dynamics can express emotion... We all know how you can use dynamics in pitch, attack, and volume to deliver this but the programmers that created DAWs just presumed that time as in physics is a constant that has to remain locked down .. If you think of a song as a snapshot of emotion... then think about human emotion and it's physical impact on the body then locking a song into a single metronomic progression is folly. That is why jazz blues and rock and modern music captured popular imagination ... They were a break away from more traditional locked down classical forms... full of sensuality and feeling.
Think of how your body reacts to organic stimuli... how your heart rate increases and decreases from slow when relaxed to fast when excited ... and you are starting to get the picture.
With humans in a band, it is possible for the drummer to follow the guitar player and beat match him which is obviously what was going on with Hendrix... A computer is made up of logic circuits... a load of silicon switches that are either on or off... there is nothing in between the two ... no room for shade.
Good news is, that for the very same reason, no matter how advanced they get, computers will never be able to take over because they will never have the imagination to envision doing so. Only us humans are capable of that level of invention.
❤️👍👍
You understand the question, i.m.o. =)
Completely agree. Intuition and subjectivity will forever be the territory of the geniusses. All analysis will be beaten by AI soon, but it'll be devoid of life, heart and soul.
You realise computers don't make music right? People do, with computers. They can program the tempo to fluctuate in anyway they want to if they choose to do this.
Well spoken sir. Now I just wish the entire music industry would just watch this video and take it to heart.
Mitch talked about how he hated dat he tended 2 rush, n da studio, wit Jimi. Dat wuz actually, a BEAUTIFUL thang! LOVE ya Mitch!!!
Having the ability to add tension and allowing a song to breathe gives a song life.
When sped up, Jimi’s voice sounds like David Bowie
You never saw them in a room together either. Spooky...
@@StockportJambo that must be proof
holy shit its fookin true
Speaking of timing, if you listen to the songs on Bowie's Station To Station, they all speed up from the beginning to the end of each song. A drummer friend of mine figured that out. His theory was the mountains of cocaine in the studio.
On the excellent 'Sound City' documentary, Dave Grohl discusses the oppposite, which was when he was asked to play drums to a click track on the recording of Lithium (on Nevermind) and how it flet so slowed down compared to live performances of the same song. You definitely have to feel the music.
Loving your vids, keep 'em coming
I think this is why so many of those who dislike Hendrix in the guitar community say he's "sloppy". They're the ones who are on the click, probably playing far more technical stuff rather than groovy pocket stuff.
That's whats so funny to me ppl say jimi was sloppy and not technical but nobody can mimic his phrasing or anything properly. He did a lot of things players just dont do
@@timlackey3655 Yea its interesting how arbitrary the notion of technical prowness is. It must be basically like a computer apparently to be technical even though this video shows why there's something magical in how a person plays with time.
Also I read someone talk about how they were in awe of how every live recording he heard of Hendrix playing Red House was totally unique and he was always surprised by the direction he took it. Compare that to other greats and he said "You listen to SRV and you can hear the patterns emerging in their playing even with improvisation."
In the words of another guitar wizard, “loosely tight”.
Who can identify said wizard for 50 points?
This video feels like it was made for 16 year old me! As part of my GCSE music course, I was sent to a studio to record some stuff as part of the performance component of the course.
I ended up playing Little Wing and I thought I did a pretty good job... Except the producer/engineer who didn't know the song well kept getting annoyed with me, saying the timing was off - he was trying to add some computer generated instruments for the accompaniment (none of us played glockenspiel) and kept getting confused by the changes you describe in this video.
16 year old me is vindicated at last. 😄
Thank you so much, Paul. You're an awesome teacher.
Definitely the best idea I’ve ever saw come to life. Amazing job to say the least❤
Rick Beato has a video where he takes one of John Bonham's beats and fits it into a grid. It's quite amazing how the grid rips the soul out of it, especially hearing it just after the original beat.
Rick Beato does some cool things, I suggest checking his channel out!
Joe Wash said the exact same thing when he was on Daryl's House. Modern music has more in common with a math class than the music from the past.
In Classical music, it is referred to as 'legato' or the looser 'rubato'. It takes a good ear to play with other Classical players to hear the downbeats. It is another tool in your skill kit.
Joe who?? LOL
Another interesting well done video Paul! Thanks!
Love this, thanks, Paul!
But seriously folks... It actually depends on the interplay between the drummer and if he is following the bass player or the guitarist. 99% of bands the drummer & bass are locked in in pocket and the guitarist follows the groove. Players like Hendrix, Page, Beck, and Garcia are setting the time and the drummer locks into them and not the bass player. To be able to do this live is a real pain and all players need to be tight as hell otherwise the song will fall apart. A great example of this is Black Dog by Zeppelin. This song sounds super-loose but it is actually the band playing in two different time signatures with the drums slightly behind the guitar. This is the stuff that makes a band great.
Yes! I agree with you man. Is all about the drums and the bass, in general. Many would say that the good drumming is made by stick with the timming. Thats part true, but actually a good band is made by good timming even the drums change it.
Yes well put
@@dukethotness Sarcastic bastard!
@@Ndlanding timming is a great word and needs to be acknowledged. "By stick with the timming" is just icing on this fun cake
@@rockyevans1584 U be tell da true.