HOW WOULD JOHN BONHAM SOUND TODAY? (Quantized)
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- čas přidán 11. 05. 2019
- So how would John Bonham sound if Led Zeppelin came out in 2019? Would the Led Zeppelin sound be processed and quantized like all of the other contemporary rock music? Would there be the recognizable John Bonham drum sound and style? I try to answer that in this episode of Everything Music.
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I saw Bonham live in concert twice. Let me tell you he was an incredible force of nature behind the drum kit. You will never replace the passion and emotions of a live drummer with a computer.
Yesterday I saw a video about an AI generating art.. we are close to destruction anyway
"You will never replace the passion and emotions of a live drummer with a computer."
It will definitely happen at some point. Everything is quantifiable, especially motion and timing. Feed a bunch of live sessions to an AI and it will spit out something indistinguishable from the real thing.
That’s just boomer mentality. Use AI and you’ll realize you’re wrong
Or his scream n growling !
I totally agree with you on that!!!! 👍🏽👍🏽
Drummers: *pratices to a metronome for hundreds of hours trying to achieve the impossible task of perfect timekeeping*
Bonham: hold my 40 vodka and tonics
*climbs off ladder, puts down pallet of bricks, picks up drumsticks*
I literally just spit out my milk.... lol
Lmao
That guy could gulp such massive quantities of booze it was unreal. And still function!
@@fokeyjo Way I recall it? By the time I looked into things like that? Which was the late '80's onward? Bonham had been gulping down 'Screwdriver's( vodka& orange juice shots. I'm sure you've partook before) for 12 hours straight!
Imagine what quantizing would do to Ringo's slightly delayed fills.
@Michael Persico it drags because he layed back, being left handed wouldn't affect the rhythm, even on a right layout kit.
I imagine it would speed them up slightly.
What made Ringo so great was his slightly late timing pulling the groove back. The guitar solo and outro of Come Together come to mind. He’s so in the pocket that quantizing would completely ruin the soul and funk of his beat and fills
@@beatleszilla He says that came from being left handed on a right handed drum kit.
I had the same thought.
When it comes to drums there is this magical element called “groove” that all good drummers have. To me this video is scientific proof of the groove of John Bonham. Those slight variances off tempo are what give the song its feel. In other terms drummers choose based on the mood of a song to play slightly ahead of the beat or slightly behind the beat. Both clips are of the latter. And it’s those small human choices that lend to the feel of a groove or song. So good. Thanks for that experiment.
Could that also be described as, not super accurate at beat but great at meter ?
So very well said. Indeed those little variances truly make and define the groove.
I'm especially partial to hearing the snare get hit slightly behind beat. When it calls for it, of course, but there sure seems like many opportunities to pull that off now that we're shedding light on this cool little detail that many of us have certainly overlooked throughout the years - speaking of myself right now especially. :)
No that's just an excuse for bad drummers that are in famous bands so people won't admit they have poor timing, like Bonham.
Some imperfection can be good in drumming, yes, but only to a point...There are basic things like being able to accurately come down on the 1 of a bar that all professional musicians must be able to do without fail as it is fundamental to the very concepts of "tempo," "time signature," "structure." It just sounds very messy otherwise, like the garbage disposal
I could listen to isolated human Bonham all day. He makes drums sound lyrical
IKR?! I put some of his isolated tracks on while I work on the computer. Soooo soothing!
@@howtoteachscience Where can we access the isolated tracks from classic rock songs?
@@Mechanic618 There are a few on youtube
@@Mechanic618 Just search on CZcams with "bonham isolated track" :)
Mechanic Right here. Or buy thousands in editing software and diy.
The 11th Commandment: "Thou shalt not quantize John Bonham"
SomeGingerDude
You forgot
Bonham chapter 1, verse 2
It's not written, it's a feel.
God actually decided to make that one the first commandment. Moses was like who tf is John Bonham? And God said "me"
Should be first commandment.
@@TerryT304 ONLY!
😆
There was an organist I knew of back in the Nineties who longed to be able to hear Bach performed perfectly. When MIDI was available, he recorded some Bach organ pieces and quantized them. He was disappointed because it sucked all the life out of them. What he concluded was that, what love to hear is humans striving for perfection, but never achieving it.
Words of wisdom.. the perfection is in the music - how it was conceived. You have to play it just right... but never like a robot.
@@rdpmackie agreed
Not only that, you speed up some parts and slow down others to give it more feel.
You also play some beats harder than others to lay accents + your own conceived constant volume which makes none of the parts identical
I love how Bonham’s drumline in Fool in the Rain is so iconic that he didn’t even bother to tell us Zep Heads the name of the song lol
The moment it came in, my brain just filled in the piano riff almost as plain as I was just listening to the song.
I don’t think it’s fool in the rain, that song has way more fills and is much more recognizable, it may be a part I’m not thinking of but it’s definitely not the main riff
@@dylanharris9477 The second track used is Fool in the Rain. The first one, I believe was just a warm-up. They came from an audio clip of John Bonham's isolated drumming, which has been going around youtube a bit.
Yesss dat Purdee shuffle
@@dylanharris9477 it's definitely Fool in the Rain
Things you should never do: You don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't piss into the wind, you don't pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger and you don't quantize John Bonham.
Philip Santillan so true haha. Life lessons right here
Completely agree....🤘🏼👍🏼
🎶And you don't mess around with Jim🎶
haha!
Could be the best comment on the internet ever👍
Played this for my girlfriend and she said the quantized version “sounds like Imagine Dragons” (not as a compliment) i think she nailed it
She’s right haha!
I had Imagine Dragons in open browser tabs for ages and just checked that out and, geez, tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock. (Ironically the title was "It's Time".)
Then checked out more songs and they all seem to have the same problem.
Are they giving blowjobs to metronomes? (I guess that's what you would call metrosexual.)
@@RickBeato Hahahahahahaha
Every time a musician is quantized, an innocent baby animal dies.
it DOES
Metronome-"I'm wrong John is right...sorry"
THIS! 💯
The metronome doesn't even truly understand why, it just understands it to be FACT. When drums are played properly the metronome sounds 'off'
is more like john is wrong in the right way
@@CyclesAreSingularities yea it gives a lot of fluidity to the groove
Right?....
Metronome- " whatever this dude does is correct"
Man he sounded so good. His feel and grooves made him my favorite drummer by far.
Yes, Bonham had incredible feel, computers have taken all that away from us. All in the name of saving money via speed and efficiency in the studio.
Makes sense, but now, music is less an art form and more a 'product'. But bands don't have to go this route. The Foo-Fighter made and album on 24 or 48 track tape machine. Not sure if they used click tracks. So, you can still record 'old school'.
I understand the advantages of using a click.. but man, i really like it when humans drum.
Hi Josh
Over production of music does seem to lose it's soul ( imperfect perfections if you will.)
That’s deep Man , love that 👍
Absolutely
JOSH!!!!! I'm writing this in December 2020, WHERE ARE YOU MAN!!?!?!?!?!?
That proves that the important thing is just to be in time with the band. Bonham and JPJ worked perfectly together not because they were human metronomes but because they were “sloppy” together, sacrificing a perfect tempo to obtain some nice groove. As long as the band is tight that’s all it matters
In my book is what I call 'expression', in 'classical' music it's called rubato, swing in jazz... lost in rock music many years ago
You’re exactly right.
I do agree with you. The reason why LZ and DP (Deep Purple) were so successful was the heavy beat both drummers were employing, with base drum and bass guitar driving everything that was happening at the moment.
However: there were bands at the time where drummers were more precise in holding their beat timing and it didn't hurt their music at all. One of the great examples would be Jerzy Piotrowski from Polish band SBB (late 70's) who by many accounts was "more accurate than metronome".
The band actually used his precision to their benefit as their music was heavily driven by use of multiple synths and keys. The emotion was never lost because the band used the dynamics of classical music which, btw, is also very precise with maintaining rhythm.
Of course no human or band can accomplish the perfection of computer quantizing - and that's only good.
I certainly hope musicians will eventually return to a classic way of recording when all the musicians within the band at least lay down their basic track playing together.
Everyone should strive for perfection in their music.
But they should use their own skills to achieve that. Not a computer
Groove has literally nothing to do with staying in time, it’s feel. Zeppelin had all the feel in the world.
Right!? The tempo of is the band is the tempo of the band. I know I'm not a metronome, but I do my best and will sometimes go off time on purpose just to give it something different. My band called me a jazz drummer because of it.... I'm in no way a jazz drummer.
I wish that I was THAT good.
I do LOVE to groove though.....
You practice with a metronome for the same reason you learn theory, to know when you can break the rules.
Perfectly said
I agree
It’s very much in line with Jazz as well
What's a metronome
That's perfect!
John Bonham could play just around the tempo but his micro timing was so good you wouldn’t notice. So many brilliant subtleties to his playing and musical instincts he made the kit sound beautifully human and hit HARD while making it musical
As a drummer, I agree with everything in this video. Nothing beats a real human playing a real instrument. Thank you Rick!!
Tell that pop musicans lol
Hey Rush(Neal fan)..Bonham wasn't human
It's just too bad that John disproves your theory because he wasn't hu....
oh somebody already did that one.
j freed no Bonham was an alien
Thanks to this video I finally get what it takes to be a drummer.
The second part of this equation is, if Bonham recorded today his hits would also be sound replaced or at least augmented with samples too. Making it even more cookie cutter and sterile. But to the point of quantizing, totally agree, a little fluctuation is a good thing, even if you are playing to a click. Playing to a click is great in the studio, it keeps the tempo consistent and it's pretty essential for most engineers who are gong to be doing plenty of edits for all the parts to have the grid to work with. But that doesn't mean you have to quantize on top of it. IMO that just sounds robotic. But the issue most drummers, bands and engineers have is they obsess over how the drums sound all by themselves with the click. Got news for you, if you record to a click and then listen to the drums isolated without the click, you will hear every slight imperfection and it can drive everyone nuts. You came in a shade late with that snare or kick, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Rush the fill just ever so slightly, it sounds like a train wreck. What bands and drummers today need to understand tho, is that nobody listens to your album or single with the drums isolated. Once you record the bass and guitar and vocals, all of those tiny imperfections get masked and error transforms into groove. ESPECIALLY if the bass and guitar records just to the drums, and turns the click off. Suddenly the laundry list of micro-errors disappears and you're left with...wait for it...human sounding music. It's the real studio magic, not telling the software to time align everything. Too many people today get obsessed with "fixing" what isn't truly broken because modern studio tech allows us to hear the smallest imperfection as well as SEE the transient spikes against a grid. Your eyes convince you it is worse than it is because you're staring at misalignment in the control room.
I really want to send you a friend request on Facebook. What you put down was spot on, yet so eloquently written. A layman, or a sound engineer could totally understand what you are saying. I'm also interested in hearing some more of your opinions on other songs.
If Bonham recorded today, neither he or his band mates (assuming it would be Zeppelin) would allow any of this nonsense
Good post but it goes without saying, to me at least, that by far the best way to get a great group performance is to learn the parts and record them altogether, vocals included. You can patch up any minor mistakes but the feel is always way better.
Agree, it takes away the unique sound and feel a human has which ends up becoming what the mainstream music industry is today.
Let it be human to quote Rick Beato.
Some good points in your post. Lot of truth.
Always seemed to me more often than not:
Over analysis =creative paralysis.
And...
Micro-manage causes band damage.
Bands atvthe very top... The Police , Cream, many more ...barely last 4- 5 years.
And this 2 reasons usually the cause .
Sound, look, etc..
Find that
Develop that.
Then find a drummer that fits,.
Song 1 , 8 bars in...youll know .
Then enter the storm .
Bassist I worked with told me once-
If Ringo Starr and Neil Peart (RIP. .)...
Switched bands for a day?
RUSH wouldn't work.
The Beatles wouldn't either.
Different styles, abilities, skills, sounds...personalities..
Both great at what they do.
In their respective bands .
Not each other's.
We are the Controllers if Space and Time.
The most important position in the band.
If it doesn't Groove, it doesn't work.
When he said, at the end, "quantizing John Bonham is..." (I instantly thought "sacrilegious") "... sacrilegious", as I'm sure most people did. I really love this channel.
It's so weird how much people value exact tempos today, when for so long a big part of music was slowing down and speeding up along with the conductor to try to get a certain feeling. I was in a rock and roll club at uni for a year, and that entire time, even when preparing for a concert, I don't think we even so much as looked at a metronome. We had a drummer and a bassist, what more do you need?
Try and imagine a song like Queen - Nevermore quantised. The tempo swells with the volume and creates a really nice flow. It just wouldn't work, it would lose so much of what makes it good
L.Z. broke up because God, wanted drum lessons!
Try quantizing Keith Moon next. Good luck with that.
Ringo or Charlie Watts. look out.
I quantized Moon's entire drum part on Won't Get Fooled Again, as I was doing my own rendition of the keyboard part to a click track. The interesting thing was that it should have already been quantized due to the synth part presumably being quantized. Big surprise: It wasn't! It didn't lose much feel though, since I only approximated it primarily on the 1 beat, and left the rest fairly loose, unless it drifted way off.
Flux Mulder John was a mightier machine no doubt.
@@louiscarrillo5873 No need to qauntize Ringo, he has perfect tempo.
Nobody makes fun of Ringo on my watch.
I spent my teenage years wishing, dreaming, pleading in my soul for LZ to get back together. i now spend my adult years with more understanding (with the help of videos such as this) that the remaining members were right, there was no going on without the incomparable John Bonham. His groove is still unmatched, to this very day.
I had the exact same progression of thought from teen to adult. They had truly special and unreplaceable. And kudos to Plant really for realizing that and sticking to his conviction. I'm glad they never reformed except for those one or 2 gigs (LiveAid, O2).
“That’s called being human.”
And what an amazing human Mr. Bonham was!! Awesome video.
Feel > Perfect
Feel = Perfect
The day Bonham died he thought he wasn't any good.
If only he knew 40 years later, we still use his tempo to analyze.
making it sound like he committed suicide or something! he simply died from an alcohol related incident.
@pyropulse Robert Plant describes John’s frame of mind as they drove to their last rehearsal together: “On the very last day of his life, as we drove to the rehearsal, he was not quite as happy as he could be. He said, “I’ve had it with playing drums. Everybody plays better than me.” We were driving in the car and he pulled off the sun visor and threw it out the window as he was talking. He said, “I’ll tell you what, when we get to the rehearsal, you play the drums and I’ll sing.” And that was our last rehearsal.”
@@christiandaelemans ?
Elios Electric Yes, my heart broke when I read that for the first time. It goes to show what alcohol can do to even such a great man as him if you have a problem with it.
@@Henry-uv9xu yes, alcohol has destroyed many talented people and i have seen first hand how it completely changes people from who they really are.
Like Ringo says "I'm the f**king click track"
Lol yeah but Ringo can actually keep time
@@Darko1077 Doesn't mean he is right. Ringo never needed pro tools. Stands the test of time.
Tom Acosta so did a lot of other Quincy Jones records that used a click. There’s no one right way.
Ringo was a unique drummer who took nothing away from classic Beatles songs, but added to them in a way only he could have. Rock steady..
In response to a question about a drum machine replacing (i think) his playing, Steve Ferrone said, “I AM the machine.”
I'm a guitarist not a Drummer but I found this fascinating. The key words I heard you say Rick was 'this drum part is played with feel'. 'Being human'. The way it should be. Brilliant.
It's like the Uncanny Valley effect.
Technically perfect robotic drumming sounds wrong to us.
CGI artists have the same problem making realistic human faces.
We do not live in a perfectly symmetric world. Our sight and hearing have evolved to prefer asymmetry and imperfection.
This is such a beautiful end quote here
You're right.
Quantized version is lack of something
The time lag in the original Bonham was probably due to Jimmy Page bending at the knees whilst thrusting his hips forward as he executed an exaggerated power chord windmill... and Bonham had to lag the time just a tad to compensate.
hahahahahaahah
@pyropulse agreed!
@pyropulse It's called "a joke" about Bonham watching Page gyrate to make sure he hits when Page does.
Lighten up. Damn.
@pyropulse Humour: (noun) the quality of being amusing or comic, especially as expressed in literature or speech.
Perhaps you should try it sometime.
Ninjas don't wear diapers!
I was lost at “open the software”
remember when "software" was those warm n fuzzy pjs your wife wore on cold nights?
I'm with you there. Real musicians are ARTISTS. Jimmy Page has been known to say there is always some variation between performances which you would expect from humans THEY ARE NOT ROBOTS. Where is the feel? The expectation? the GREAT performances as well as the okay or even crap ones?!
LOL!
Killer!
tmmsplace me and all
The real Bonham beat gives you stank face while the quantized drum pattern doesn't. That's my very technical explanation of the differences.
Please don’t ever use the word ‘stank’; no matter what the circumstances
@@endi3386 close the window you're lettin the stank out
Spot on!
YES!! Exactly!!
@@endi3386 Stank yo fo' clarificizin' dem rule'z
Bonham is like a elite swing dancer, syncopating behind and ahead of the beat and coming back to the beat. His drumming was down right orchestral in concert. I saw both LZ and the Who live. LZ was funky and powerful and the Who put me to sleep.
@@johnpeace971 I'm curious what kind of crap you have in your ears? It must be thick like your skull.
Thanks for bringing all this Quanitizing stuff to your channel. I had no idea how all of that was done. Always learn a lot from Ricks videos. Great teacher/ communicator.
Roger Taylor of Queen "There’s no one able to touch him in the rock world. He was the innovator of a particular drum style. He had the best drum sound, and he was the fastest player. Simply stated, he was the best. He’d do things with one bass drum that other drummers couldn’t do with three. He was also the most powerful drummer I’d ever seen. You had to be a drummer to realize how good John Bonham actually was. The average person on the street probably couldn’t really know the difference between John Bonham and the next flash heavy metal merchant, or whatever."
Back then Roger Taylor was nicknamed The Bulldozer.
@pagansforbreakfast He was an as alcoholic with some behavioral problems that are well documented. He is coincidentally the greatest drummer our planet has ever witnessed. Too bad Buddy Rich didn't catch on.
pagansforbreakfast he drank a lot because he was homesick :/
Fantastic Rick , this is what we drummers have been saying for years. Slight fluctuations in the groove are what create feel. 👌😎🥁
Tell that to the guitar player
That’s if he’s finished tuning his guitar before rehearsal is over
I'm a little late to the Beato party but am catching up. These videos are amazing. They really help me understand what the musicians are doing, and also what modern production techniques have done to music. Well done, sir.
Rick,
Thank you for taking the time to illustrate this. I’ve been trying to explain the magic of Bonham to some very young drummers who didn’t grow up listening to John Bonham and this succinctly illustrated what I couldn’t get across to them.
I showed them this video and they totally got it.
Thank you again for your hard work.
This video caused quite a stir in the Facebook drumming groups. Us old timers had to school the kids and tell them they’re focusing on the wrong skill. It’s called music, kids!
Bonzo would throw 'beat detective' off the roof of the RiotHouse...
Hahahaha!!!! That's a great comment!!!!
Messing with John Bonham's bashing is likely to get you beat, detective
Haha. Love it. He defo would.
First step would be to get the software plastered with Jack Daniels, then violate it with a mud shark, then toss it from the roof of the Sunset Hyatt.
I had a copy of beat detective. I saved a copy of Led Zep song on the same PC and like any other good guy beat detective uninstalled itself.
Our brain has an expection for beats to align with the metronome. It's the slight early or late arrival of sound from any instrument that pushes and pulls us. The rhythmic use of these variances is what moves us. Drums (and bass) are usually nearest the beat. Guitar and especially vocals are usually further off beat. Just listen to Amy Winehouse sing. It would not move us if it's ON the beat. There is urgency when it's early, there's gravitas and a feeling of open space when it late. The interplay of the perfect and slurred is a handy creation tool.
Hi Rick,
I enjoy your channel. Love your enthusiasm!
I'm 51 and my favorite band is led Zeppelin.
I would skip school and listen to Zeppelin records on my mom's really nice stereo and how wonderful that music is!
The best way I can explain it is, that music was and is ALIVE!
All 4 band members were/are masters of their craft!
Keep up the good work!
P.s. I live very close to Lou Gramm in rochester and met him in a local market.
He is very nice and soft spoken.
He loves his hot rods and racing!
Maybe we should quantize Lars Ulrich live for him to stay in beat
I almost spit out my drink 😂
@@PaulXPZ I snarfed
He once went to visit a friend but was found standing outside his door for hours because he didn’t know when to Come In...!
LMAO
5:00 "that's called being human" same thing with Lars
Bonzo's generation of rock drummers idolised the jazz greats hence they all played with so much swing. Quantise them and all the swing is removed making them lifeless.
A plus with Bonham was that he also idolized the great soul and funk pioneers.
you're both a little wrong... funk didnt quite exist during any of these guys formative years as young drummers (e.g. The Meters '65) Bonzo studied the Jazz greats for technique and groove but that swing comes from Motown, Bonzo loved motown.
@Foxbody Boogie I was referring the other gentlemen in the comment thread. I consider to Motown to be quite gymnastic and quite influential on Bonham, Baker and Moon.
@@gabrielm.4554 I was merely adding an aside - obviously Bonham started his musical career before funk, but he was a great lover of that music when it did hit the scene, and it shows. I *was* going to type soul/funk/R&B/Motown, but I was too lazy the first time around. ;)
Yeah because you can’t quantize drummers in Logic. Sure.
theyve massacred my boy
I’d be interested in hearing what this best sounds quantized to 85 bpm, instead of 170, thus leaving the shuffled bass hits intact. I disagree with most ppl on click tracks, a good drummer should be able to play to a click without hindering their feel, the problem is most drummers never practice to a click, so they are out of their element. if you don’t believe me, check out Tony royster jr, jojo mayer, Steve smith, Dennis chambers or any other session drummer who have no issues expressing themselves to a click track
Yeah drummers have been playing to a click forever, that has little to do with quantization.
Sometimes, metronome time works for the song and other times it doesn't. The drummer should practice often with a metronome to internalize good time....but not to become a clock. Drums are Love and Love is represented by the heart...your heart's tempo is always changing. If your music is from the heart, the tempo is going to be changing appropriately.
You should try that with Keith Moon.
Kevin Hamelin LoL, that might be impossible without any hi-hats to match time.
If you want to break that software app...
@@JulioLeonFandinho hahahaha!
OMG! The hard drive might die.
I was thinking that!!!
I'm just seeing this now (four years after it's debut), but the interesting thing here is Bonzo actually played to a click track on In Through the Out Door as John Paul Jones and Robert Plant, writing most of the material, had Jones playing kis keyboards to a click during the day and Bonham and Page coming in for the night session and adding their parts, hardly seeing Jones/Plant during recording. "Bonham was struggling with alcoholism and Page was battling heroin addiction. Jones later said, "there were two distinct camps by then, and we [Plant and I] were in the relatively clean one." Many of the songs were consequently put together by Plant and Jones during the day, with Page and Bonham adding their parts late at night."
Quantizing has its place. Some bands have a theme of technology and/or robots, so that ultra mechanical sound is what they want. It just depends on the project and the goal. I'm not a serial quantizer by any means. I record a lot of black metal and stoner music, and I never quantize anything, although I typically insist on a click just to keep things steady and make the whole process faster and cheaper for clients. Every play has their own natural swing which will never fully land on the click grid every time, and to me that's the best result. I don't think quantizing or samples are inherently bad. Sample replacing the whole kit when it's beat up and falling to bits is something I do now and again to get good quality and fast results, and quantizing is there if I need it too. It's all just tools, and they can be used sparingly or abused. It's the hand of the mix engineer that is at fault, not the tool itself.
This whole "To quantize or not to quantize" argument is rubbish imho. If it sounds good it sounds good, either way you pull it off. Most people can't even tell if a decent drummer has been quantized or not until they visually see it in their DAW, or it's shown to them in a video like this one.
The first beat quantized still sounded good. It's almost like if Bonham played with his feel TO a click, but wasn't quantized. Fool in the Rain definitely wasn't as good. The real interesting part is that my spellcheck does not know the word quantized. We shouldn't know it either.
I actually preferred the quantized version on the first one but not the second one
honestly it sounds like rick chose the wrong tempo. i think its prob more like 167 or something
Bonham still has stuff happening in between the downbeats that makes the quantized version sound great compared to some kid's drum machine beats. I thought the example in the "Computers Killed Rock Music" was much more convincing a case for Rick's argument, probably because that drummer didn't have the nuance Bonham has.
Hey, everybody, just fast-forward to 5:30 for the quantize-on / quantize-off part.
Christian Lee Trager not all heroes wear capes.👍
The quantized version sounds like a session musician who already got paid and just wants to finish
Hahaha
Great video. I really like that you mentioned the Purdie shuffle too. I teach music at the same location Ron Hurst of Steppenwolf teaches (when not quarantined). He was telling me that him and Bernard go way back.
To quantize, or not to quantize: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler to the ear to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous sameness, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?
Answer = "not to"
This comment is perfection.
“Outrageous sameness”
Nicely done! nikshmenga, you have just poked modern musical ennui in the eye with the Bard’s own ancient thumb!
/Bill Shakeastique
Answer = it's eventirely subjective. If you are John Bonham perfect then no, leave it alone. If you are making EDM or motoric krautrock stuff then yes, put it on 100%. If you are a very sloppy rock drummer like myself use some quantization to tighten it up a bit, all quantization tools allow you to specify a percentage, I find 50% to 75% gets me in the same ballpark as decent players without dehumanizing it. What Rick hasn't tried to do here, and which you must, is figure out how much swing is in the beat and dial that into the quantizer too. You can get a 50% swing by quantizing to triplets but the pocket might well be elsewhere so I find it's better to tune it manually.
Bonham was actually tight but Rick input the wrong tempo, it works fine at 169.5 it is really tight and didn't need quantizing at all.
@@benw7531 Exactly, wave quantization is not the way to go and clipping tracks to make it work just screws everything up. Poor excuse for content.
jelleepit I put Alex Van Halen and Tommy Aldridge in with the great power drummers
I'd guess it was slower than 170. I don't quantise because I'd need to know what I'm doing and the computer would too. Neither of those is true.
Exactly. The live track has human feel, but Bonham is still on tempo. He's not drifting that much. The error in this video was just getting the BPM "close" instead of exact. Still though, I agree with the basic point that quantization can suck the life out of a song.
@@soundxplorer YUP
Fun post as always! I find that once I separate the clips in Beat Detective using the snap to grid option (command +0) yields me a better result and less clips are incorrectly placed.
The four times I was blessed to see John Bonham and Led Zeppelin back in 71,72,73,and 1975 were just so far above and beyond anything iv heard or seen since and to still have three out of the four tickets stubs 48 years after the fact is just a great bonus.
As a drummer, I threw up in my mouth a little when I read the title. Watched, and my first impression was vindicated. Talk about real drumming made lifeless! Wow. Just... Wow.
And that my friend is part of what's wrong with Music today
You better not choke on that throw-up or else you might be the next Bonham
rick's original video on quantization has made me pay very close attention to see if a contemporary song has quantization or drum replacement, its ruined listening to modern music haha
6:20
Don't even gotta listen to it to know which drum groove you're talking about. Classic shuffle.
i love that shuffle. the way he makes that hihat sing
fool in the raaaain
@surfitlive 😔
@surfitlive I hope that's sarcasm.. in which case well played ;) if not go learn a LZ song
Him, Jeff Porcaro, and Bernard Purdie did variations of this shuffle. But Bonzo swings it hard...nobody like him
After a lifetime of recording live in the studio with my bands, circumstances demand that I now record at home - one trackbat a time. Learning to use a metronome was tricky; I had never even considered it before. I found, after about a year of experimenting, that I could use one beat for reference, and then do what I normally do on the other beats. Playing on the front of a beat or back of a beat while using a metronome gets easier with practice. Great video, Rick!
Thanks for posting this Rick. I had taken a little time to study Bonham and ran into your video. It is amazing that he would hold two or three different time signatures at once. And, I had never noticed that on songs like Kasmir, he is playing a different time signature than the band, to where they are hitting the down beat together only every few beats. He was a true master. I always believed that Bonham made Page the great guitar player that he was. He knew how to play with Page, even how to cover for him if Page was experimenting and screwing up. Bonham's focus was Page, (rather than the bass), and he truly accented the guitar. Your video really shows how different the human and machine really are.... just so much of a different feel to Bonham's playing.
In Fool in the Rain the effect wasn't as pronounced imo, because the shuffle itself is so great and quantizing didn't seem to remove it. The dynamics of onbeats and offbeats was preserved there nicely. Shows how great Bonham was, tbh.
Love the look on Rick’s face as he’s wrapping up at the end of the video
09:40 “....not only is it sacrilegious, but it sounds Horrendous!!!”
Fascinating video - thanks for posting. As a drummer who records and mixes, but these days uses electronic drums to trigger professional samples via MIDI (I currently use Superior Drummer), I have almost limitless opportunities to ‘correct’ any timing or other issues. I am currently in a rock band and we always start our tracks by recording the basic song (drums, guitar, bass and guide vocal): we use a click, but only to help with the mixing. We then record vocals, guitar doubles, solos, etc., on top of this base. On almost every track the drums are left as played, other than a few ‘tweaks’ to correct mis-triggers on the pads (usually volume issues). I have tried quantising, but the tracks end up sounding dead. If you look at the MIDI on our tracks, for example Innovator - Dogs of War, you will find hits vary before and after the beat. I did try quantisation on this track just to see what it was like - it sounded terrible!
I`ve been an obsessive Led Zeppelin fan for more than forty years, and it`s only now that I`ve come
to realise that it wasn`t just the unique power of John Bonham. It was also the EMOTION of his drumming
that gave it such dynamism. That is one of the great secrets of Led Zeppelins appeal : They created
75% of the power, and then it`s us, the audience, that creates the other 25%.
Amazing video Rick, thank you. You can't replace feel.
Man, you are really challenging those algorithms xd
100% agree. Nothing is more beautiful than the stochastic element of the human algorithm
love your breakdowns of great music and musicians!
Great comparison! If im not mistaken thats whats called swing (the timing differences/delay what makes the live beat sound like it sounds compared to the quantized one).
Great exercise, and great points here. I don't mean to be a dick, but this wouldn't be the best way to quantize a live beat. The tempo on the first one would be something close to 85, not 170 so the computer is "thinking" properly within the measure. Then you could analyze the beat, and do a flex quantization that isn't such a metronomic 100% lock like a metronome. It can split the difference between where the beats are to any percentage you choose so the quantization is much more subtle and retains the feel.
But the point is made. GROOV E is the point, and you don't groove by being metronomic.
I appreciate the effort, and I FULLY agree that John is best left alone. Not many drummers have mastered the art of push/pull time and pocket. Most drummers DO sound better. LOL But I have a couple of points with your method. I would have adjusted my tempo until it matched the 4 bars of original. even to decimal places. The comparison to click was negated by not actually playing the right tempo. Maybe John was exactly on at 170.4 Then, you are asking it to DO a lot less when it quantizes. I feel you would have heard the edits less. Of course, if it HAD to match a tempo I would do it just every measure or half maybe. Would keep him in tempo and keep a good bit of his feel. Thank you for this. It was very interesting and I never tire of hearing Bonham!
Thanks for spending the time to explain this! I was trying to put it into words why i wasn't sold on this method. Beato definitely has a point that there is "push and pull" but it was over represented by the click time not being correct... I think? It does seem that the two tracks start and end at the exact same point though, so it can't have been too far off.
Hi Rick, I had the amazing opportunity to interview Chad Smith for Modern Drummer and we mentioned you and this video. Just thought I’d share. Thanks for all you do!
Thank you Rick! As I’ve always loved Bonham’s groove and timing, it’s great to hear his push/pull in the isolated tracks! It makes me slightly less self-conscious that my timing isn’t “perfect” lol!
This is a great example of the music being able to breath. I can BARELY hear a difference but it definitely seems more open and fluid. I can't verbalize how I hear it but it's definitely happening
Like to hear a comparison competition between John Bonham and Bill Ward original drummer of Black Sabbath. Ie.The war pigs drum track is mind blowing.
2 of my favorite drummers
His solo on rat sallad, on the same album as war pigs, is my favoutite drum solo ever.
@@yerhing6406 I'm going to look it up and listen to it, I'm sure it's great 🍥
@@stevegardnermax Rat Salad is god's gift to mankind.
Don't leave out the wizard!
Back in the mid to late 90s I worked on a guys car who was a drummer ,and I am a guitar player self taught ( Not Famos) and at that time he was telling me how they was recording drums in DAT I have no clue what he meant haha . As time went on we became friends. I even traded with labor for him to produce some studio time . In Short I painted the silver surfer on a snare . I also did some famos guys guitar had some sort of VH logo and some kind of Number like 5150 to end this story I remember being in the studio ,And over heard comment with the engineer them saying they would on purpose miss aline the drum parts so it would sound more human . That day enhanced my experience but also changed how I heard music . Some good ,some bad. There's alot more to the story about the snare drum I'll save that for another day . Love your Channel Rick !
This was awesome, thanks for uploading it!
The fact that four master craftsmen made it into one band amazes me.
Me too, my good man. Me too
@surfitlive
He's talking about Led Zeppelin
Rup Tratin 🙄
In the late Sixties, word was a great new band coming to town ( Boston) . We drove into town, they were playing at an old shut down church on Berklee street, Boston. About 150 people attended. Everyone was smoking pot. I remember it like it was yesterday.
Things like that is why I believe we are all here for a reason of some sort. Change one member and you wouldn't have the same outcome.
Amazing. The quantized performances sound incredibly stiff...but what really amazes me was how they made me feel. I had an emotional reaction to hearing his original tracks. They "moved" me. The quantized versions made me tap along, but I had no emotional response. They affected me differently on a subconscious level. Interesting.
*TheVoxOfReason* hmmm m wow I agree and that is very interesting...
Here's the hard question: was it the emotion of hearing a familiar and loved track being straightened out?
I'd love to hear this same kind of study with a good live drummer on unknown beats.
@@sazaraki , that's indeed the question. I was wondering this: Was my subconscious "moved" when hearing the natural rhythm of another human and not when hearing an unnatural beat? Or was it moved by a fond memory? I'm not sure, but I'm interested to find out.
@@thevoxofreason8468 I'm not super familiar with Zeppelin so for me there isn't the personal element. And still, Bonham's version sound like someone playing from a place of passion and emotion where as the quantized track sounds like someone was paid to play the drums for the soundtrack of a D rate shooter video game or action movie that they didn't remotely care about or something like that 😂
Interesting...
6:52 - good god......
I don't know which is more beautiful: the drums, the recording/mixing or the technique... or all of the above. Bonham really was a once in a lifetime kind of drummer.
Great experiment. Eye opening. Shows exactly what we need to get back to. Thanks Rick.
The reason the human sounds better is simple: the natural world does nothing in perfect time (with the exception of a couple of celestial bodies). In other words 'perfect' sounds 'wrong' because we're just not used to hearing it. Ever
Beautiful said! It is quite possible that nothing in our universe vibrates at a consistent rate indefinitely.
@Bookhouse Boy precisely--we live in an analog world, and every sense we have evolved to experience it that way
the perfection exist in it's imperfection
Yeah… but unfortunately we live in an age where most of our lives are digital, and where everything can be altered and manipulated to look as perfect as possible. The younger generation is probably more used to the digital world than to the real world
Nothing in the natural world sounds like music. So, nature sounds have.more value than symphonies according to that logic.
The quantized versions sound like a marching band playing Zeppelin.
@guinness4life I was thinking it sounded like MIDI with really great drum samples.
I once had a trial version or recording software that gave MIDI drums a bit of human looseness or swing.
The difference between that and straight MIDI was really an eye opener.
Thank you Rick. You hit on a big part of why we all love. Bonzo. That delay/catch up flair with a bass stomp at the next measure is all spirit and flow. I have a hard time quantifying it but I know that I love it. You can feel his literal STOMP after a fill too. Never a more creative drummer.
It's so cool that two musicians who could really speak from their soul with an instrument were in the same band. Page , with his odd playing could really move people with his solos and he wrote things that were uncanny , like he was tapped into something supernatural. And Bonham was similarly able to seemingly make his drums speak to you in a way that was very human, very personal. It was him . Both were very unique musicians and they , together with the brilliant Jones and the obviously gifted Plant , made for a hell of a band. It's gotten to be cliche to talk about how mind-blowing Zeppelin were but it really can't be overstated in my opinion. They were spectacular
Thanks a lot, Rick. By quantizing Bonham, you have let loose the beasts of Armageddon. Been nice knowing you folks.
Hey Rick! Love Bonhams' rawness but curious how far Neil Peart in the same era would be from quantized. I appreciate both raw musicians and ones that strive for perfection.
Yeah, that would be interesting.
John Bonham listened to jazz and funk like James Brown so he's got the swing and funky feeling when he plays. I don't get into arguments typically over this one is better than that one but my own PERSONAL opinion was that Peart does not compare to Bonham. I watched a video of him demonstrating and he doesn't have the feeling and syncopation. When he tried to demonstrate jazz and swing it was almost embarrassing. He was good for his thing but he doesn't compare in my book.
Your right Perry when you say they don't compare to each other. Hopefully you were speaking technics and not who's better. I stated I love Bonhams work so calm down. That would be like picking the best guitarist. You would need categorize first and even then it's who likes who. Btw, Neil may have had jazz influence but he's not a "jazz" drummer. To imply that Neil was less than a superior drummer shows naivete.
I sooo agree with Rick. Through all the beautiful bells and whistles used in today’s music, the better they get at it, the deader it feels. These days I find myself listening to 40’s music and classical simply because I recognize the Sapien touch.
Thank for this!!! I am on my own path at the moment and this point helped me in a lot of ways!!!
Fool in the Rain drum track sounds so good .. I can enjoy listening to that on its own. Bonham was incredible, such a shame he left us so young.
I am a bass player, and the space allowed to play ahead, which is what JPJ did, is what makes the songs drive.
Nobody listens to the bass player. :) jk
Really good! Nice to see some people understand feel on drums.
Totally agree, im not even a musician but its like he holds the bass beat that just gives it that living groove (if that makes any sense)
This is so wrong. You might as well auto-tune Robert Plant and compress Jimmy Page while you’re at it.
Sacrilege.
@@martinpaddle The villagers would burn the castle down if that happened. :-D
Please do that, Rick
Actually, I'd kind of really love to hear that. It would be such a great example of how awful it all is when it's autotuned and 'corrected' to buggery.
WOW thats incredible to hear my kit sound like that. Very interesting
Tell Peart I said hi
HAHA!!
You should not have liked it . Should have said “stop wrecking my grooves, future boy”
What's up, John ???
Rick, I really appreciate this video and the earlier one in which you demonstrated the impact of quantization on music. I had been wondering for some time why modern pop music was sounding very mechanical. Several songs come to my mind that the moments when the song needed to breathe, that the "breath" seemed forced, not loose and natural. I wonder how long it is going to take us to move away from this mistaken need to perfect music.
I recall Ringo Starr responding to a producer wanting to put a tap track into the recording session and Ringo's response was, "I am the tap track!"
I like to do some gentle stretching to line up the top of a bar to the downbeat but preserve the feel between the beats. This makes it much easier to line up takes and integrate midi without being robotically quantized
"I'm gonna fix this" doesn't sound right even from Rick Beato when we are talking about John Bonham drum tracks. Awesome video!
I knew where this was going, but didn’t expect the Q’ing would literally suck the soul out of the groove like it did...
Much of Bonham's sound is created when he doesn't hit the drum(s). Where you don't hit the drum is as important as where you do hit the drum.. Sounds crazy,
but there is some truth to it. Quantizing does suck the life out it.
I learnt playing to Bonham, all my teenage years obsessed w his groove, dynamics, and sheer power. He was a fellow Gemini, and tho I'm not into horoscope fluff, there is indeed an aerial fluctuating quality to his playing. He makes the heaviest grooves sound light and agile, and there is NO substitute for that kind of talent and authentic connection with music.
So much info. All the best mate.