This BPM is trash, and here's why
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- čas přidán 31. 05. 2024
- Exploring the perceptual limits of tempo | Watch this video ad-free on Nebula!
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0:00 Intro
1:19 Part 1 - Perception of Time
4:55 Part 2 - Why decimal points in tempos might be useful
7:51 Part 3 - What is notation?
13:03 Part 4 - Problems with notation
links -
Shawn Crowder - Do You Even Microrhythm?
• Do you microrhythm?
Just noticeable difference for Tempos
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Decimal point tempos also might be necessary for calculating/programming metric modulations, (polyriddim, lol) but honestly, you could round up or down and nobody would notice.
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From a different perspective you could say it's similar to the increasing complexity of Cooking, Baking, Gastronomy... or wood floor, cement floor and linoleum... there's always good reasons for increased complexity, but yes... if it doesn't create a noticeable change then you have to ask Why you're doing it.
All systems need 3 base components 2:1. Water H2O 2:1 electricity current resistance voltage. All this knowledge yet you still can't see how it relates to you?
Sun earth moon???
Ever noticed when you take all letters of the alpha that rhythm with 3 you get a symmetry? BCDE-G-PTVZ
If Sungazer were playing on a space ship, an interstellar Titanic, who instead of crashing into an iceberg collided with a black hole: as time itself slowed to a stop, would you steadily increase your tempo to preserve the audience's experience or maintain tempo and allow the song to slow to a stop, drawing attention to the strange environmental physics?
I think perhaps the ultimate example of western notation just not being able to represent something is SWING! Of course, you can try triplets, dotted eighth notes or other tuplets, but the best solution is just to notate the music as if it were straight, and just tell the performer “swing!”.
In other words, if you micromanage the swing, the swing dies.
Should we direct the swing percentage at the start of the piece? (Genuine Q) if the feel is a component of your intention for the performer
My way of notating that is to denote the entire piece as 12/8, which is convenient because sheet music software will play it correctly (sometimes the recipe isn't for a Human)
I sing with choirs professionally and you get the same thing when more traditional white choirs try and do gospel or spirituals. They read it instead of feeling it and just doesn’t grove right. Sometimes they even screw up otherwise really easy syncopated sections because they are reading the notes, but they should just be feeling the rhythm.
It's even better to write it straight and tell the musicians to swing than trying to accurately describe it in notation. That way they can use their ears to find the ration that better suits the piece and even vary it across its duration.
Also, I'm not from a black community or even American, but I'd consider the second option to be disrespectful and ignorant about the nature of swing itself, it's a result of the embodiment of rhythm and movement derived from African traditions and not suitable for a fundamentally European form of notation.
The amount of swing is always improvised depending on the player/group. Same way tempo is a suggestion and the conductor will follow their own beat note to note.
In college composition class I used a tempo that wouldn't be found on a metronome marking, and my professor called it pretentious.
He was right.
Sounds similar to my experience intentionally overusing tritones.
I wouldn't even know what markings are on a real metronome, I've never seen one in person. I didn't know they 'skipped' numbers til this video. When I make music I just start in a ballpark BPM number and maybe adjust a few up or down from there over the course of making the music. Rigidly adhering to the specific numbers on a centuries old device seems far more pretentious to me.
Literally the same thing happened to me a few weeks ago, I marked it at 90 and was called out for it. Wild
@@robinlydian4452 Personally, I could understand decimal points drawing remarks or possibly odd numbers such as 91, but being called out for something like 90 to me as a failure to accept and adapt to modern sensibility. Electronic music is often written in multiples of 5 (not always obviously) and thus I would argue is common practice, just not traditional practice
ima produce a song in 114.57 bpm just to prove you wrong
Subscribed to your channel. You better deliver!
@@cyrilio he better do! Btw I made an song, can you tell me if its good? (This sounds like an advertisement, but I just want to know if others think if its good)
I’m waiting
@@cyrilioyeah.
Please keep us updated
Weird fact: in rhythm heaven fever the music for the minigame air rally is played at 162 bpm, but when it returned in rhythm heaven megamix, it was sped up to 162.01 bpm
god… just that lil bit faster…
Sounds like the producer accidentally tapped their mouse wheel and exported the new mega mix all with that mistake 😂😂😂
there are also many instances of games being played originally at, for example 150 bpm and in megamix theyre at 149.999
floating point error maybe?
@@nappeywappey How does anyone even notice that kind of stuff? People just go around comparing versions?
That opening one-take is an incredibly effective intro, Adam. Crazy how the lack of a cut makes such a big subconscious difference in our attention.
agreed!! contrasting Charles Cornell, if you watch him, who makes cuts at almost every sentence
As a whole, the cuts in this video are very minimal and/or well hidden.
@@Allen-rv9jz I think this is in large part due to the structure of the videos themselves. Adam scripts these out, so he can read large chunks at a time, whereas Charles speak more off the cuff (especially in his reaction videos of course) so they have to edit it down to make it a usable video
@@kevinwells9751 that’s a good point. I guess I prefer a more thought out video then
Good one-takes always remind me of the show Good Eats
Theres one very good reason I sometimes use decimal points in BPMs. I hit the tap tempo button 4 times and it was 93.2 and I said "cool whatever"
at that point wouldnt you just round down to 93? .2 isnt much of a difference
@@cy-bernet-ix Maybe. Or you could just ignore it because "cool whatever". On the very off chance that I actually can feel that decimal point (almost never) then I'll probably prefer how I felt it to whatever changes I make. And in the reality that I probably didn't feel it, I won't be bothered to change it in my DAW because I won't notice a difference either way, so why do the extra step of manually changing the tempo? I already got it in like, two seconds, I'm not gonna add two more to erase then type in more numbers.
At least, that's my thought process if I'm recording something random and do the same thing. I'll often round up or down, but I imagine OP's thought process is the same as mine on the days where I don't even do that. Nobody will notice the difference anyway unless they're trying to record a cover at the exact same tempo or something. I could be wrong, but I vaguely remember hearing that Andrew Huang does something similar instead of deciding "this must be a whole number because Reasons".
In all other circumstances I definitely avoid the decimal point BPMs, though I had no thought process for that before this video beyond a vague sense of wrongness or whatever.
@@cy-bernet-ix exactly it's not a big difference so why bother pushing buttons and twisting knobs to turn it down?
@@RobertKnutzen so this is something i was actually thinking about in general during the vid. one reason you might make micro corrections is either youre "repitching" samples and trying to pitch / tempo match, or because the performer could not physically play the riff / melody etc at that tempo, IE shredder guitarists doing extremely fast sweeps etc. as a composer i totally agree with just rounding up or down to a whole digit, but tons of people definitely just hit the tap tempo and move on.
@@Irapotato this depends entirely whether you see yourself as a composer or a guy just playing with an MPC
4:41
Adam: "It represents more concerns with being precise and right, rather than being musical."
All Rhythm Game music composers: *_*sweating*_*
Kobaryo my beloved
Frums my beloved
@@HokoraYinphine Aegleseeker my beloved
@@RJVZBloxerYTXNOR XNOR XNOR my beloved
Sotarks my beloved
a few years ago when I first getting into music production, I made this melody that had a super wack temp like 135.27 or something like that. it happened after I accidentally messed with something and I was to inexperienced to know the difference. A year later I revist the project because I like the melody. Noticing the wack tempo, I go to fix it, and for some reason the synth sound I was using on the melody sounded super different and not nearly as good when I fixed the tempo. So somehow I have this melody that only sounds good at a wack tempo lol
Probably due to an LFO which is synced to the tempo.
It either 1. Is a mistake somehow or 2. You just got so used to it that you don’t like how it sounds. Once you listen to a song enough it can be impossible to be objective about it
@@melody3741Yes, exactly. I listen to my own stuff in the car, cuz I often get ideas for revisions or new songs there, and take it from me, if you want to listen to your own stuff regularly, you HAVE to be good at fighting this feeling. It's possible, but not easy sometimes lol
No tempo is whack it's the stuff u put in the track that's good or whack
To me it seems kind of like comparing 29.97fps to 30fps. Your eye can't tell the difference between the two and it generally doesn't matter which frame rate a video is in, but it becomes extremely important when combining and syncing audiovisual content.
It is the same for music, an accurate bpm is sometimes very useful. If the source audio is at 100.25bpm and you add 100bpm audio to it, it gets out of sync and sounds absolutely awful. This is something that I occasionally come across when creating mashups and it is terrible to see people mark down the bpm incorrectly without the decimal point.
the decimal in fps is actually standardized in cinema though because people do recognize the difference
@@budswayzeniger3473 You really can't tell that difference by eye. The reason that decimal exists is actually because of the color TV and the way it was implemented on top of black-and-white television.
@@MLGaeming standards are standards. it'd be the same if 30 was the standard.
@@budswayzeniger3473 Both 29.97fps and 30fps are standards and commonly used. Mixing them up can lead to issues, hence it is important to know which one a video clip is using in some technical contexts.
Yeah as a mashup artist at times the stems just go off beat when they are like tenth decimald off which makes things unnecessary hard
I DJ electronic music and I always told people and beginners, that you can easily change the tempo of a track by about 3 BPM without the crowd noticing and even 3-5 is ok. I never had any sientific base for that, it was just feel. But it makes total sense
You do need to be careful with sudden shifts, though. Especially with older tempo changing methods that would adjust the pitch as well. A semitone is a 6% change in note frequency (aka pitch), and so a sudden change of 1% is noticable, as that 1% is about twice the Just Noticable Difference in pitch (generally quoted as being betwen 6 and 10 cents).
I absolutely feel 5bpm - that's the number I go up when I'm practicing technique. 5bpm is a big jump when you're at the top of your level. But even without trying to play it, you can easily hear a 5bpm increase just listening to the metronome.
@@jada90 for musicians for sure I agree. Even 2-3 is noticeable if it's something you've spent time playing. But for the general audience that can't clap on 2 and 4, I'd argue you could push it abt 6 bpm lmao
Yep. 3 BPM increments will never be noticeable and you can change genres over the course of 6 or 7 songs due to this naturally
changing tempo in dj sets can actually be pretty cool if done right. it feels weird if you do a small amount (like 3 bpm) slowly, because the groove is lost. but if you cut the previous track entirely and then play the next track +/- 3 bpm, it sounds super dope. also it can be a good way to transition into slower/faster stuff when you dont have enough room on the pitch slider to beatmatch it with what youre currently playing
There is also the issue of consistency: How often do we actually play a piece in EXACTLY the same tempo from start to finish? I find that I often have to change the tempo on the playback from say 80 to 79 to 82 in another passage, but I see no point in writing it down that exactly. The thing is that the "right" tempo mgiht also depend on the performers and how they percieve the piece, accentuations, dynamics etc.
I don't think I even play a piece in the exact written tempo. I tend to approximate using the pulses of pieces I do know well that I also know the tempo for, and there are some large jumps in that list.
@@papercraftcynder5430 BPM is also a strange way of measuring, since the difference between each step becomes smaller the faster tempo we are dealing with. In a tempo of 190, a change to 191 is barely noticable if at all, but in a tempo of 22, a change to 23 is huge - it becomes a completely different piece.
"They're more like guidelines anyway!"
Yeah who cares about a metronome
@@NidusFormicarum This is actually true for all things sound related.
We measure it in frequencies, which tell us how many times it cycles per *second*. So a 20 Hz tone cycles 20 times per second. A 20,000 Hz tone cycles 20,000 times per second. That's our audible range (at birth and during childhood), and humans can be pretty good at hearing a difference between 20 Hz and 21 Hz. They just absolutely cannot tell any notable difference between 10,000 and 10,001 Hz though.
So we devolved scales that compress these into formats that match our perception better. The exact same thing is done with the amplitude (or "volume") of a sound. The dB scale gets wild, because 10dB is barely perceptible...but 100dB is quieter than a car horn...and is has 10 BILLION times more energy behind it. That isn't a typo.
So the BPM measurement is...fine.
I recently listened to a lecture given by Brian Eno, where he spoke of his collaboration with Italian tenor, Pavoratti. The first time that Pavoratti entered a studio with Brian Eno, Eno and the musicians present started to attempt to throw something together, to write something new using the studio techniques and equipment they had available. Each musician probably arrived with a few ideas that they had developed on their own, and the group started to try and see how they could get these ideas to gel together. Eno said he looked at Pavoratti, who had a look of surprise and incredulity on his face. He said something to Eno like “You are making this music right now?” He had never in his life experienced anything like that. A recording session to him was where you got together with a symphony orchestra, broke out some old warhorse, e.g. Bizet’s Carmen, and started to rehearse and record. He just never realized that it was possible to make music on the fly. And he was amazed, and Eno and Pavoratti began to have deep discussions on the topic.
Pavarotti, not PavOratti...
@@psykeeq …
Pavo is turkey in Spanish, and Pavorotti was a turkey whenever he attempted to lipsync a concert instead of rendering a live performance like the people were paying for…
Segovia had the same reaction upon witnessing Django play - 'You made it up off the top of your head'?
@@MichaelHarvill98 …
And was thinking “… and with only three fingers?”…
@@tribudeunotwo
I loved this. As a linguist, I wanted to say "yes, in language, too!" to literally every section of this essay. Phonetic transcription is similarly lossy and sometimes overly detailed without being able to tell you the difference between whether it sounds like Steve Urkel or Darth Vader. The term for overspecificity changing the meaning of something is called "Gricean Maxim violation" in linguistics/pragmatics, and it might be interesting to look into more with respect to music.
Had the same experience! Also how transcription is inherently interpretation
(There's a great video by Tom Scott on Grice's maxims, if anyone is curious)
Ryan, thank you so much for pointing out this term. I’ve been interested in the subject for about two years now, and haven’t heard that.
Yeah, that's true. The IPA is basically like music notation. Sure, it's possible to annotate how a vowel is lengthened or fronted or aspirated or nasalized, but that'd just be like saying you went to the party at 7:42. There's a reason for the lossiness; that's required of any system to model something.
@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 the IPA vowel notation already includes information about height, frontness and roundness though, without any additional diacritis and markings used, /i/ for instance is different from /o/ on the basis of these features, so they are not redundant and it's far from being similar to the 7:42 situation that Adam talks about
I'd agree with nasality and aspiration, but only as far as English goes, since there are languages that have minimal pairs where only nasality or aspiration changes (ancient greek for the latter, for example)
"If it *sounds* right, it *is* right" - groundbreaking British recording engineer and producer Joe Meek. I wonder what the *precise* tempos (and how unsteady they are) of many of the most highly regarded songs are? That would be an interesting analysis.
A long while back I did a remix of "Single Ladies" alongside "Liquidator" by the Harry J All Stars, and... that took a lot of tweaking. And there's nothing wrong with either track, but the one that was clearly recorded to a steady clicktrack was a lot easier to work with. This is where decimal tempos come into their own though - when you want to sync two tracks that aren't the same tempo, you need to find their precise bpm and then find a happy medium between them.
yes! I'd like to see an analysis of most heard or awarded songs tempo
@@gabrielv.4358 I made a spreadsheet for myself, of the 1100 most popular tracks in the past 20 years, all with precise BPMs specified. I won't share it cause... hey that's a lot of work xD But if you want I can give you averages or stuff, anything you wanna know?
Pantera used to sometimes tune their guitars to something that felt right. No tuners or nothing.
Dew it
As an admirer of the existential philosophy, I would say, this thought he is sharing is actually saving music from mechanical objectivity and justifying the randomness of human actions, like a slightly delayed note that brings all the beauty.
Yes! I'm actually now more inclined to produce music with decimal BPMs because (a) it's not noticable and (b) it will absolutely be felt. Taping a BPM in a DAW always made me dread the decimals but now I see it in a new light, I'm keeping the decimals in.
The food recipe analogy was so perfect, I absolutely love it. I think it’s so true that the notation is merely a recipe for us musicians to make the musical story come to life, and it is incomplete as well. And I completely agree that there are times when notation is not at all helpful, and it would be used as analysis or even something more trivial. However, I find myself so grateful for music notation and desiring to keep using it all the time, I love it so much. I don’t feel the need to rely on notation, but just the sight of a five-line staff, clefs, key signatures, time signatures, and notes on that staff bring me such a joy that I cannot describe. I love music notation, I just love it.
Sheet music never lies. I remember getting a sheet from another student (Rachmaninov Prelude), and there was a note made with a pencil: 'You can't play this'
Guess what... they were right
😂😂😂
To be fair, most people need to omit the top and/or bottom notes of Rachmaninoff's chords to even start playing his pieces
@@kurumi394 I've seen other scores that are not possible for people with less than six fingers on a hand, or look like they are reductions of a duet that were rendered sloppily as to what is actually possible.
Adam's channel, at this point, is an extended series convincing people that music is generally overanalyzed in all the wrong ways and underanalyzed in all the actual interesting ways.
That's a great point, TheDoffin.
…to him.
I love the channel and appreciate the insight, but you’re just describing what any (music theory) channel or podcast amounts to.
truuuue
Which is true.
@BOP I disagree. Many use the usual methods to draw their conclusions and do it very well.
This is the sort of stuff I addressed in my Grad Dip thesis, "The Communication of Type-Setting". I came up with:
"The purpose of typeset music is to let the reader recreate the composer’s intent under the worst performance conditions. Printed music is a set of instructions for the performer, not the composer. The printed document can be used in two distinctly different ways: either for slow time-relaxed consumption (such as for practice, memorisation or analysis), or for time-critical events, such as sight-reading or live performance. The music has to be able to meet both uses."
But. Maybe there's another purpose for written music - to record aural objects. But I think a sound recording would be better.
Thanks for the thought-provoking discussion.
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I was at a rehearsal this week and the drummer wondered why ♩=69 rather than ♩=70. We all agreed that while 69 was "nice", 70 would probably be simpler to comprehend. I thought it was either to do with gears in mechanical metronomes (numbers of teeth on cogs, etc) or to make simple ratios for changes between 2-based time and 3-based times, such as 3/4 to 6/8, or hemiolas. Now I know it's the minimum perceptual distance from the previous marking. I presume the datum is ♩=60, and the rest were derived - probably empirically - from there.
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I sometimes add stuff to amuse future-me. In my thesis, in the section on timbre:
"Timbre also seems to miss out in the typesetting world. This is paradoxically because there’s too little to say, or too much to say. It would be extremely difficult to get a clarinet quartet where:
· One clarinet should sound like the second flautist of the Berlin Radio Orchestra in 1963.
· One clarinet should sound as though it’s using a split number 1½ reed where the player is used to playing on a number 4.
· One clarinet should sound like it was invented on Neptune, at Easter.
· One clarinet should sound like it’s being played by a trombone player, who had to quickly borrow any instrument that was available, because his own instrument was stolen by a gang of fake portrait artists on a tram in Rio di Janeiro.
It would be impossible to get a second quartet to play the same music.
Although rather extreme, the example shows that timbre cannot be made too specific. Rather, “four clarinets” has to suffice."
i enjoyed reading this, thank you
One would have to approximate with terms like "sweet," "cronchy," and so forth. There are even some standard Italian musical terms for this. If you really want to capture a timbre, then find a way to record a sample of it.
04:30 you might want to visit Switzerland. Here every minute is important when telling the time. So if you ask someone what time is it hey mostly reply with the exact minute.
It also depends wich part in Switzerland. People living in the mountains usually round up time too because it is easier and they don’t need to do everything by the minute.
Why is every minute important?
@@Anonymous-df8it because time is money. If the train is a few minuted late then chances are high you won’t catch the next one. Here trains are very punctual and that’s why we have only small window to go from one track to another and it works very well, like a Clockwork.
@@Nanomaroni
😂 Okay. No. Switzerland is nowhere near Japan in it's punctuality and nowhere on the same planet as America in it's economic significance.
You don't NEED to tell the exact minute. It's far more likely a quirk of the language.
@@Kloppin4H0rses aint no way bro just corrected a swedish person about their own culture
Absolutely agree with you regarding notation, but within the DAW I’m an ardent decimal points tempo person since I use tap tempo to “feel” where I’d like my recording to be. I’d also point out that if you’re only measuring the just noticeable difference of quarter notes, you overlook that we can perceive differences in durations of longer notes within that tempo :)
i think thats the most popular usage of decimal point tempos yeah
I don't recall asking you Andrew.
I tap tempo, then round to the nearest even number because it musically makes no difference but I'm bothered by seeing decimals in the tempo slot.
@@connorseunninga2324 I don't recall asking you to ask Andrew
I love to see that other musicians/youtubers get things out of each others content. Also you guys should collab and make a sick jazz pop song
A perfectly detailed 1:1 terrain map would be totally unusable despite being correct.
The lack of unnecessary details is what gives notation meaning.
I disagree. What you're describing is a recreation. They create perfect 1:1 reproductions of terrain for the purpose of forensics, or military training. They're less common but sometimes you really need to re-create a sense of scale.
@@nathanjasper512 yeah but it wouldn't work as a map, that's the point Three Colored Squares was making
@@nathanjasper512 No you've missed the point as another user has pointed out. The point of sheet music is not to recreate, only to provide a useful abtraction of the music - much like how a map is an abtraction of an area; in the reduction of details comes the utility.
Sure, you can have a 1:1 reconstruction but that's is not what we are discussing today. You're disagreeing with the paticulars of Three Coloured Squares' analogy but not his point
The point of sheet music is to be able to hear your ideas from the playback function of the notation software before you go on to orally explain them to other musically illiterate musicians
The closest we have is a recording, which cannot be replicated by musicians - spectrogram sheet music doesn't sound fun to read...
I freaking love your videos. The preparation, the info, the delivery, the editing, the everything…it’s all so enjoyable and interesting every single time.
I once used a 160.1 tempo because I thought it'd be funny. It was until I forgot the bpm and had to find it all over again
Strange example of decimal BPM: Hurricane by Kanye West is 160 BPM on the dot, but its earlier leaked versions are all 157.61 BPM, since they all use the older Yandhi beat. Since Moon was initially created as an outro to those earlier versions, it, too, is 157.61 BPM, even though Hurricane isn't anymore.
The idea is that, although it can be played in decimal BPMs, when composing it's almost never that specifc, as that's pointless. Supposedly the only exception is for composing for films when audio/video synchonization is needed, but I personally doubt that justifies using decimal BPM either, as it's also possible to just mark down a few key notes that are required to be synced with the video, and everything else can shift a bit without getting noticed.
@@FTZPLTC Film scores are often recorded live I think, aka performing in real time along with the movie being played and the conductor can control the pace to meet those key points (or at least that's how I would imagine things to go). Alternatively it's also possible to stretch the audio in post to meet those key points.
And for live mixing, yes, exact BPM is important. But just relying on the BPM reading is not enough, you got to have a device to send the metronome across all devices, and then turn on BPM syncing for it to work, otherwise everything would still drift away from each other.
So in summary, although decimal BPM technically exists in recorded or played back tracks, they should be perceived as whole number BPM with a margin of error as well.
@@FlameRat_YehLon You're right that scores are sometimes recorded with the movie playing. I don't think it's super-common for music to be played to sync up precisely with the action though. Sometimes it's done, but if anything I'd say the metre of the music is more likely to be used to set the pace of the edit. It would be unusual for a film editor to just happen to making edits that formed a coherent pulse for the music, after all.
I'm rambling though, I find this subject really interesting. And, again, watch Cats to see this done fantastically badly and arse-about-face.
@@FTZPLTC Thus I said key points. Movies can be designed to have a few key points that are synced to specific notes on a piece of music, and every other notes can be played in a more flexible way, just to fill in the duration between key points.
Sup yikes do you prefer dogs or cats
I think your recipe analogy is right on the money. I'm part of the chef team of a restaurant and we have discussions all the time about how much detail to put into our recipes. It seems intuitively obvious that the more detail you put in, the more consistent and accurate the final dish will be, but if you make the recipe too detailed it gets in the way of people using their experience, judgement, and ultimately taste. The feel of a decimal tempo is kinda the same as the feel of an exact number of grams of salt; I appreciate the effort but I'm mostly going to use this as a rough guide and adjust to make it the best I possibly can.
I hope to some day own a restaurant and am studying at a cooking school atm, I agree that too many details get in the way of a personal touch and can even make it a bit bland
Also, got any tips for this field of work?
Yes exactly! I see the decimal notation things as goofy recipes that are intentionally outrageous. Like Allegra chicken. No one wants to make that, especially not via the recipe. But it's really entertaining to make jokes about it and write unusable recipes for it.
@@amora1246 This is going to sound really glib and shallow, but honestly just find a good chef and work for them. School is useful for teaching the general principles but nothing can really show you how those principles apply in the real world besides doing it in the real world under a chef that wants to see you grow. When it's time to move on, find another chef to learn from and work for them. And the whole time make sure you're making it worth their while to teach you. Best of luck!
Decimal point tempos is actually a really big problem for people who do mashups because for a little while it seems normal and then it becomes a mess…… #JusticeForMashupMakers
Also i love the music that comes before you talk about a topic, i want a full version please!
Lol hope this blows up
Hilarious 🤣
As someone who’s not that savvy with daws but likes making mashups now and again, I cannot stress how frustrating decimal bpms are. I speed up song A slightly so it syncs with song B. All is good for 3 bars, then I hear it. The de-sync. It only grows from there. Okay, I’ll go back and adjust the speed again. 1bpm faster. Nope, it’s definitely off best this time. I can’t adjust it that finely, so I just have to scrap it since I have such a sensitive ear. Sometimes I wish it wasn’t so I could just ignore the de-sync but alas. Ignorance is bliss.
you understand😭😭😭 I’ve had to struggle syncing drum breaks and hearing them desync a few seconds into the song too many times, just to realise it’s because of those decimal bpms just now
@@emmycheeto303fucking relatable
In fighting games it's common to have combos that require one or multiple 1 frame links, meaning you have a 1/60th of a second time window to hit the combo. Always found the rhythms of combos interesting especially when played on an arcade stick
And speedrunners on almost any game do that too
Have you seen the account that turns infinites into music? it's super satisfying
They can make an interesting rhythm, definitely. You can literally hear if somebody's combo will come out, based on the noise their button presses and stick make.
Unless it's SFV lol
@@pedroscoponi4905 whats the name of the account?
2:58 A slight detail here: we can't actually say that the just noticeable threshold is at 30 bpm based on Shawn's experiment. His experiment asked participants to correctly indicate the pulses were changed. This is finer information than just that the pulse was changed in some (perhaps unidentifiable) way, which is what the just noticeable threshold measures.
I haven’t watched Shawn’s video, so I can state this without bias:
That’s technically true if there is no control. But the distinction isn’t meaningful.
If people can’t tell 500 ms didn’t shift to 499 ms (the smallest “earlier” at this resolution) when it actually shifted to 530 ms, then the “actual” just noticeable threshold is 31ms.
You are describing something other than the just noticeable threshold, though. We want the pulse frequency where, when altered, 75% of participants can indicate that it has been changed.
Shawn's experiment had three responses: late, early, or on time. By misidentifying those who noticed a change but misidentified the type of change, you are introducing a systematic statistical bias and you will misidentify the just noticeable threshold.
Now for Shawn's purposes, this is fine because he wasn't looking for the just noticeable threshold, as explained in his video. But this does make the experiment unsuitable for Adam's purposes.
@@tracyh5751 It's easy to imagine that you're hearing a change if you're actively listening for it. I think a fourth response option would be better ("could hear change but not identify late or early"), than to rephrase the question to be just "Did you hear a change or not?", as that would introduce much more uncertainty into the study with only two responses "yes" or "no". Also, by adding a response option, you could measure at what point (average ms) did the fourth response option ("could hear change but not identify late or early") start to get used more and more frequently.
14:00 and the recipe analogy are things I really needed to hear lol
I’m someone who both because of my brain and because I so thoroughly learned percussion in band, struggle with “properly” learning music and wanting to play/make music because I’m so focused on playing notes “on time” at the precisely written time above all else. The few times I’ve messed with music (beyond percussion) so far, I did best when I just kinda felt it and played by ear, not worried about perfect timing and not (as) worried about all correct notes
The recipe analogy really made it click cause I’m someone who really likes cooking and constantly switches between following recipes to a T and throwing a bunch of my own stuff in there to see if that’ll make it better
This is just insanely good editing. Well formed and easy to understand. This man loves his job.
The issue here is known in statistics as "overprecision", or more fittingly, "drama digits". It is the misguiding use of precision that simply makes no sense in a specific context.
I haven't heard "drama digits" before, but I may have to find an excuse to use it now. (I do bioinformatics things, so tools giving incredibly fine grained results when you put in a handful of vague data points is basically standard.)
basically, funny. that's why
@@dnebdal haha, indeed, I like that word, too. I can well imagine that in your field you will have amble opportunity to tell people to drop the “drama digits”. Maybe at least sometimes opt for calling it something more scientific-sounding, like “spurious accuracy“, because … well, just because. ;-)
Yes, but 94.732% of the time, adding digits makes the statistic you are quoting sound more authentic to neophytes.
Also let's not forget physics. 30ms is the time that sound waves in air need to travel roughly ten meters. 5ms is the delay of a sound played 1.7m away.
Have you ever stood 1.7m away from your fellow musician (or your amplifier box) and felt the delay, or that you couldn't get the beat right? I haven't.
The first music I ever made were beats on an MPC 1000 in my high school because one of the interns was big into hip hop. He told me to ALWAYS set your bpm to a decimal number so that if a dj is using it in a set they have to work for it instead of just putting two songs together they know are the same. Of course, with bpm match on CDJs nowadays that doesn’t matter but I still do it just for fun!
This video is pure entertainment and learning combined.
Great video Adam!
@8:35 "Man, this food analogy is going too far" - No, thank you for it. By making that analogy, you helped me link aspects of music (which I'm bad at) to cooking (which I'm good at). The examples you gave demonstrated playing by ear vs by practice vs by sight as ways we think about many things in life, and I appreciate the depth you put into the analogy :).
@13:49 "Because it's inherently a lossy format" - Now you're speaking my kind of nerd-speak! Musical notation is like JPEG - our minds fill in the missing bits :)
@@Tawnos_ I'm surprised your mind jumped to JPEG instead of MP3 (or any other lossy audio compression format), but I had the same basic reaction. I was like "AHA! Now I understand!". 😆😆
Yes, in fact he kind of didn't go too far enough - there's a salient point about good cooking and good music that the recipe analogy highlights - one major advantage of the lack of precision is that it allows for interpretation - such as adjusting ingredient ratios or cooking temperature to get a unique taste/texture, or micro-variations in tempo or volume to highlight the feel of the music. Precision recipes/sheet music are great for mass production, but stifle the creative performance aspect.
@@Tawnos_ bmgj
bm 6
He wasn't saying the analogy was bad just that it had been going on too long
one piece of “transcription notation” that i love is just writing “laid back” or “rushed” instead of accurate notation as it allows for you to worry less about accuracy in notation and more about accuracy in performance
Same thing applies as when Adam speaks about BPM. Including the exact rhythm of rushed or pulled back notates is useless because it’s a pain in the ass to read and it’s not how the performer was hearing it. Whilst notating the exact rhythm is more ‘accurate’ - its useless and helps nobody
That's just "rit..." or "accel..." (if you mean gradual change) or "meno mosso" or "piu mosso" (if you mean sudden change), but using English because you want to look cool.
@@rosiefay7283 rit. or accel. implies the band underneath is changing tempo too which is why it's not used in this case
i like your perception of sheet music :) i think of sheet music as a story book, and me playing it is reading aloud. Eventually, i may no longer need the book to portray the story verbally anymore, and i can tell someone else the story and they can tell it after hearing me
For a song that I made long ago, the melody fit the best at 120.10 bpm and i left it that way
Same with me
Could you hear the difference in the melody between 120.10 and 120?
@@NZsaltz yes
@@apoorva_i Wow, you're a medical miracle! You should go get checked out by some researchers so we can disprove the current research on human hearing capabilities.
@@NZsaltz I'm not sure what the research is about , but like my original comment said,- it sounded better to me at 120.10 and i left it at that. Changing it didn't offer the same satisfaction
I've heard it said of scientific models that all models are wrong, but some models are useful. Maybe something similar applies here. All notation is wrong. Some notation is useful. And we can even take the parallel even further. Each scientific model has a certain regime under which it useful and outside of which it's not. Some notation is useful in one context, but not in others.
Bach seems pretty writable. I do feel Jesu Joy of ...as triplets, not as 12/9 or whatever it is written as
"I've heard it said of scientific models that all models are wrong, but some models are useful."
That's a quote often attributed to statistician George Box (though it predates him as a concept)! The more you know 🌈
Yes, it’s a common quote regarding statistics (which is a science). Statistical models provide best guesses with ranges of certainty.
@@danparish1344could apply to modeling in general though because all models are constructed based on summerising as many variables as can be accounted for in order to abstract, reflect or predict the shape or pattern of something. For intents and purpose, if we consider enough variables, we have a functionally usable model. But in order to stay consistent, it must be open to unforseen variables and adapt to new information. No model can be absolute; therefore all models are still "wrong", no matter how functional and useful they are at the time.
Regarding wrong models, that's probably true. Take for example all physics calculations: they all ignore extreme variables, like the inner flexibility of an object. There's a video about how long does it take for one end of a metallic bar to move after you push the other end. In plain physics it would be 0.
"You got to use your ears, to hear music" - Adam Neely 2022 😂
@Ke baX damnnnnnnnn
Beethoven and Helen Keller disagree.
@@EmpiricalPragmatist well... they dont hear music ....
@@SreenikethanI Depends on your definition of the word "hear". They could both perceive vibrations well enough to distinguish variations in both pitch and rhythm. Does that _have_ to be done using the ears to count as hearing?
@@EmpiricalPragmatist ah gotcha, I had the same thought in mind, just that I wasn't sure to consider that as "hearing"... maybe "perceive" is a better word here?
Adam. Incredible way of explaining notation so simply. It reminds of that quote written by who knows who that says, "If you can explain something simply, you understand." You humor and intellect are prime my friend.
I was faced with the dilemma you mentioned here when I was writing thousands of lead sheets for music publishers in the 1970's, mostly for copyright purposes. We were forced to fit contemporary musical performances into notation that was more suited to 1940's Tin Pan Alley, not to mention 18th Century convention. I often had to decide if I should notate the "laid back" feeling accurately or how it might best fit on paper, simplified. To do it accurately might mean an unnecessarily complex appearance but to write it in a simpler fashion meant I was second-guessing the composer's intention. 'Tis a puzzlement!
Talking about tempo and perception, it might be fun to look into the music genre "Extratone", where the BPM is so fast it becomes an, you guessed it, extra tone
this is called granulation. welcome to the club
Isnt that called weirdness?
Thats not why its called extratone. DJ Heinrich invented the term, from german words "extrahieren" (to extract) and tone which is the same in german.
@@rykehuss3435 I've never heard this before, interesting. I was just going about what was told to me before, I stand corrected
damn that's a lot of purple, tossing some yellow in here for some contrast
I've missed video essays like this. I like your performance diaries and Q&A's, but these more esoteric topics are what really get me going.
adam, I was watching this video from my recommended page. I was thoroughly enjoying the video, when suddenly, I realized I was hearing music I recognized in the background. a collection of albums from an artist I hadn't heard of before that I left on repeat over and over and over again all throughout 2019 & 2020. I was shocked and a little appalled that there wasn't a "music used," as so many other content creators do to pay respect to kickass artists like this one.
imagine my surprise when i saw your bandcamp link *was* sungazer. so cool
Das ist sehr interessant. Dankeschön und alles gute weiterhin ☀️
3:43 Adam is explaining the linguistic theory of Relevance. It's sometimes known as Grice's Maxim of Quantity. Always pleased when Adam sneaks some linguistics into music theory videos
Pragmatics!
Is this the concept Tom Scott talked about in that one video? He used an example like "asbestos-free cereal"
@@koifish528 Tom Scott is great! Didn't realize he had done a video on Grice's Maxims.
@@koifish528 Indeed it is.
Having worked in music scoring for film and TV for 15 years, I can say you don’t always need fractional tempo to match musical beats to picture, but sometimes you do. Especially for cartoons with a lot of action or comedic beats, or to hit picture cut, etc. And in those instances decimals are sometimes required. Without them the piece is simply incorrect and does not contain enough information to achieve its core purpose which is to match picture. But if you want to adapt that music for public performance, by all means strip off the decimal points and round it off because of course no one will perceive the difference.
I have to call you out for this. Especially with cartoons, they're originally close to 11 frames per second, so I can't see why you would need to have hundredth of a second precision with sound. Even when you have 1 minute long scene with one score using 120bpm vs 120.5bpm you have roughly .2 second drift. In one minute you have skipped literally one frame. Half a BPM I can somehow understand in very long scenes with very long scores, but going any more precise than that is just not very useful. Also, many composers just play watching the scene organically, like it was used to do before computers. People didn't use fractions of a BPM then and I hardly believe many does so today.
@@eliteextremophile8895 Yes but the viewer would easily notice a 200ms delay between the score and the animation.
amazingggg video - love love love your thoughtful and open minded POV about music and art in general
Fantastic video. Great job explaining some things I've thought were odd about notation!
0:13 nice
this is why i love this man
lmao
another time to use decimal points in bpms is when you have a tempo change that's fractional to the base tempo! like in a song i'm writing where quintuplets in 4/4 become 16th notes in 5/4. it goes from 94.4 bpm to a clean 118
That's technically true, but most of the time it's better to just notate what change happened instead of putting the exact tempos. Like, start the song in 95 bpm and at the transition put something that says quintuplet = 16th note. That way, it's obvious what you actually intend to happen instead of having to check the new tempo on an actual metronome.
you mean, like what Adam Neely did on Tuplets for Todlers? Yes, he finds that to be a legitimate use ^.^
The beginning could just be written as 20/16 time signature w 118 bpm no? The main pulse felt would change from every 5 16ths to every 4, but AAL do exact same thing in their song The Brain Dance. A lot easier to see the correlation between the 2 that way imo. I understand recording with a click would be trickier tho, could also use some midi instrument to make your own click emphasizing every 5 16ths.
a similar issue i had was trying to make a quintuplet swing groove 'last' for two more notes, (essentially as though it were 5/16 with occasional bars of 7/16, but i'd already established that it was quintuplets so didn't want to change the whole system). I found the fractional bpm thing way too technical for how easy it was to feel.
@@goatmagic5220 You could do that, but it would be a bit harder to read than quintuplets in 4/4. I think just writing it as metric modulation is nice, but either way works as long as you don't try to make someone read 94.4.
Fascinating video. Two things come to mind, the first being that I've read that people can sometimes detect ultrasonic frequencies because they cause interference patterns in the frequencies we can hear - so maybe those minor differences, for lack of a better word, flavor our perception somehow. The second thing that comes to mind is that, when presented with messy data, the first thing we do is smooth it out, as in statistical regression. Thanks again for a very interesting video.
2:35 no i got it it's too late
yeah me too
Another justification for a decimal BPM for a performer could be when that performer isn't human. Currently a machine can't feel a tune so precise notation is required for the "performer" to create the music as intended.
Otherwise it is a BPM of how things ended up lining up because a machine was running at such a speed
14:44 - "I like the sound of the push and the pull of different downbeats not lining up"
Oh boy, would you love listening to me practice then.
This is a perfect video. It's meta and clear and can apply to so many things. Thank you and nice work.
As someone who has both played traditional instruments and done some DJ stuff, I think appropriate level of precision definitely does depend on what kind of music you're making and what you're trying to do rhythmically. If I'm playing the piano or guitar, I want to let it flow naturally and let it be slightly imperfect. I don't want it to sound "inorganic." On the other hand, precision is much more important when I'm making a remix with a looping instrumental track, especially when I'm working with electronic genres, hip hop, etc. It's still creative and artistic, but it's more like building mechanical/kinetic art pieces than painting a scene with oil on canvas.
So there is something off...
On from minute 4:06 to 4:19, Adams says that he arrived at the Party at 6:42, but would say that he arrived at 6:45 to avoid seeming suspicious.
But from minute 15:01 to 15:09, he refers to arriving at the party at 7:42 or 7:45...
And this sounds suspcious, like a massive deception in need for an alibi!
omg
3:06 "69 bpm, nice"
This video essay really benefited from that, Adam.
He said it cause funneh
69 likes
That cooking analogy is really good, almost perfect, and makes me think of cooking differently. Thank you!
Great video. I also just wanted to say thanks for the warning about the flashing images. That's really rare, and I appreciate it.
"Everyone knows poly-rhythm's get the clicks!"
Couldn't say it better myself.
@Kevin L See also: metronomes
Microtonality is the BOMB
I was literally INVESTED in the tweet thread on this topic you were involved in, so it's great to have an actual video on it!
i saw it too lol
You were literally invested? You were traded in return for stock?
@@smergthedargon8974 For knowledge.
@@segmentsAndCurves What an unfortunate opinion.
@@noonehere0987 Yes, and?
Decimals are very useful in gradual changes in tempo. they are also useful in soundtracks when you want the music to go well with the scene. Also sampling something might be easier if you have decimals in your tempo
he makes these points in the video
For gradual changes in tempo, you're better off writing accelerando/rallentando and just marking the initial and final tempos. For your last point, he's not talking about the tempo you put in a DAW, he's talking about tempo in sheet music notation.
You don’t write out decimal tempos in soundtrack scores my guy.
How good is this guy’s content that despite talking deep musical topics to the point of making them almost philosophical he’s got 1’6 million subs. Hats off Mr. Neely, hats off
As a musician, I was glad, that you revealed, that the fifth note was slightly late. I "felt" it. It is like the ear trainings for pitch. I can tell if the next note played is 0,7 hz higher or lower. But I don't hear it anymore. It is just a feeling. But in the end, I am right. I love these challenges!
I think it's always connected to what you're doing and how often you do it. I didn't notice the change in tempo... but by zeus I'll see small dips in framerate where my buddies say "you're imagining things, looks fine to me"
I've been playing rhythm games for nearly 15 years now. When the difference between a perfect score and a "choke" can be as little as 10 milliseconds, the late note was heard loud and clear.
DJs heard it.
If he'd not told me, I'd have obsessed. I'm still not sure if I really noticed it, or I guessed.
@@oblivion2k490 I used to play mungyodance and osu shile back and I thought it was late, but I don't know if it was a wild guess.
The first thing that came to my mind when I saw the decimal points was synchronisation of different tracks. I quickly tested a 120 bpm with a 120.5 bpm and after about 5 seconds (or 10 beats) the asychronicity became noticeable to me, a few seconds later it was quite obvious. This kind of corresponds to visual perception, where fine differences in structures might be unnoticeable, but overlaying these structures makes the differences become easily visible (think of a Vernier scale or Moiré pattern).
An interesting and relaxed video as always. :)
I thought of such music structures which go in and out of sync periodically. However it's probably more convenient to use fractions rather than decimals so you could tell the pattern by looking at them (even if you're a mere human). Sadly DAWs don't usually support fraction tempo and we have to stick to decimals. And decimal values cannot be precisely represented using binary values. Game over :-D
@@AntonNidhoggr You mean beat, the interference phenomenon? Yeah, it's a good example. And I agree, fractions would often times be more convenient.
I guess that's where the just noticeable difference comes in. If you put the two against each other, sure, you can notice it, but seems like no one would ever really play anything like that.
@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 A friend who was DJ for electronic music for a few years explained to me that the problem can arise during a transition between two tracks. With a fading transition the two beats inevitably overlap for a few seconds and thus the bpm must match perfectly (at least good enough so the asynchronicity would become noticeable just after the transition).
The part about notations and how it legitimize the musical aspect of a sound really resonates with me and really speaks about the marvel of humanity in my opinion.
Like the quote if a tree falls into the forest, does it actually make a sound? We are surrounded by arts in everyday of our lives and simply by just opening our mind creatively, you'll find endless sources of inspirations.
You can be the one who legitimize arts from the most mundane or unexpected matter in this universe.
@AdamNeely Love your videos. Explanations without the condescension. Keep it up, man. (BTW: I was totally distracted @ 4:30 or so when you were walking past SEVERAL tags on the brick wall that said "ADAM". Lol.)
This kind of reminds me of this little "amazing facts" book I had in my childhood. It listed the height of Mt Everest down to the cm well before we had the technology to do stuff like that. Eventually I figured out they had simply taken the height in whole feet from the original edition and done a conversion that resulted in that false precision.
Significant Figures!
@@onyxv.o.4830 now we just need to include error bars in our music notation
@@janmelantu7490 I mean, that would work pretty well if you want precision but also replicability. "Play this music at 70±2 BPM."
If I remember it right, the original measured height of Mt. Everest was exactly 29,000 feet (to the nearest foot), but it was then declared 29,002 feet to prevent people from thinking "29,000 feet was just a rounded estimate".
I'm a classical composer, which means I almost always deal with live players and conductors and almost never with computers.
I always remember a thing one performer said to a classmate during a composition masterclass: people aren't metronomes. Unless you have a clicktrack in their ears with the precise 133 BPM you want, no performer is gonna perfectly adhere to that. In fact, since in most professional settings performers have very little time prepping for a piece, metronome markings will be practically pointless unless you specifically bring in a metronome.
Because of that, I always use words to convey tempo (adagio, presto etc.) and even if I add a tempo marking, it's always in brackets, always marked as approximate, and always rounded to the nearest multiple of 10 or 4.
Isn't the conductor a "metronome" that they can follow?
@@gyroninjamodder first of all, in chamber music it's rare to have a conductor
second, even if you have a conductor, they don't go on stage with a metronome or a click track, and so an exact metronome mark wouldn't be of use once again.
I sometimes put in an approximate metronome marking in case there's a soloist or a conductor who studies the piece in advance and can practice it with a metronome, but even then there's really no use for a mark like "131", as their actual performance will always be somewhere around that and not the exact value. so I write "~130" or "~84" etc, because the exact value really doesn't matter all that much.
Not at the level of precision of 132 vs. 130 bpm, but some conductors, such as Toscanini or more recently Benjamin Zander, made powerful arguments that Beethoven meant for performers to take his metronome notations seriously, and that the fashion for playing the symphonies at much slower tempi made them lugubrious and robbed them of the energy Beethoven intended for them to have. The point isn't to hit a specific tempo as though it were a click track, but that the metronome notation conveys very important information about how the piece should feel when it's played.
czcams.com/video/L_bd1J98jNQ/video.html
@@jonathangilligan6019 hard agree. I actually believe there's also pieces that didn't have a metronome marking initially that are misplayed, e.g. Moonlight Sonata mv. 1 (there's no way that when he wrote "adagio sostenuto" he meant the almost "grave" that people play nowadays)
Perfect rhythm does exist like perfect pitch, ya know?
My favorite bit about the food analogy is that sometimes you might add more or less salt, or a little seasoning, or you might put it in the oven a couple seconds too late (or too early), but in the end you have something original, that may taste even better than the recipe. Signature guitar playing is like having a signature cooking style :)
I was able to notice that the note was late, but I also record a lot of voice overs for commercials, which have some TIGHT time constraints.
As a battle DJ, editing battle samples for performance is very useful, and one thing you can do is repeat a sample over multiple rotations of the record to get "skipless samples", so if your needle jumps, you land on the same sample and not get a skip.
Turntables spin at 33 1/3 RPM, so you can multiply this by integers to get a tempo at which you can place that number of beats into a revolution. The problem comes with the 1/3, or .333..., which makes fitting 3 samples at 99.99 BPM drift right as you go further into the record, and doing it at 100 BPM makes them drift left. It is a nightmare.
"As a battle DJ" might be one of the coolest introductions i've ever read
You made a great comment here because you were describing not just a theoretical need for decimal tempos, but a material, practical, demonstrable need for them, and not even just to the second place, but to many beyond that!
@@duon44 it really is a cool side of music manipulation. I recommend looking into the likes of Mix Master Mike, DJ Craze, the X-Ecutioners, or the many DMC and Threestyle champs for a good dive into it.
@@duon44 I've never heard of a battle DJ but just from reading it I can tell that's the coolest description.
When I make music on FL, I always put a set tempo that ends with .00 (like 140.00), but once I find a tempo I'm proud of, I like to spice it up and just flick the numbers up and down on the decimal points, cause I find it fun and interesting, and in the end, like you said, you won't even be able to notice it. I definitely do agree though, that tempos DO NOT need to be ridiculously accurate, unless the song was originally made like that. You can always just cut up the song to fit it to the tempo.
Just saw this video... Absolutely brilliant! I think I'm addition to the recipe concept there's also an interesting idea that a score can be a form of visual art intended to inspire structured improvisation.
When it comes to rhythm games, typically the size of the timing window to hit each note at the highest accuracy of judgement (e.g. hitting 'Perfects') is around 30 ms. The timing window for Dance Dance Revolution, however, is (crazily enough) half that at 15 ms! What is crazier still is that there are players out there who strive to clear songs hitting every note precisely to within that 15 ms window: the coveted "Marvelous Full Combo". In fact, top DDR player iamchris4life in particular is well-known within the rhythm dance game community for his quest to get Marvelous Full Combos on as many songs as he can.
This video does bring this premise of hitting notes super-precisely into another perspective for me, since having predetermined rhythmic challenges for players to attempt to exactly recreate while getting scored on their accuracy to such an insane degree feels almost robotic and absolute. Even swung notes are precisely laid out for the player to try to hit exactly, laid out in a way not too dissimilar to the precise transcriptions from these music social media posts.
I love the inherent contradiction in that. Can you groove/swing *exactly*.
Alright I suppose that’s also grooving/swinging *like someone else*, which is both what makes sounding exactly like other musicians hard, but is all the more impressive when someone can do that for multiple performers.
recommend replacing "however, is crazily enough" with "crazily enough, is". i understand "however" is a transition word which is used to express contrast, but "crazily enough" also serves more or less the same purpose. as it is now, it'd be drowning in commas as, like, "...Revolution, however, is, crazily enough, half that at 15 ms!". might be salvageable with parenthesis instead like "...Revolution, however, is (crazily enough) half that at 15 ms!" but to me it feels unnecessary for something to be however and also crazily enough.
anyway i agree with you
@@badmanjones179 haha thanks for the tip
I was actually low-key agonizing about the commas there myself while writing it
@@bitodd Tracks written for rhythm games seldom stray from EDM precisely because of that. Staying on beat is the whole game, and if, say, there's a song with a 6-6-7 hypertuplets, that would be the focus of the chart. Live music usually cause the "in-game BPM" to swing meaninglessly in a way that's frustrating to play. (For example, the song ってゐ！ in SDVX is marked 314-340 with 12 bpm changes that doesn't even feel like it's changing but might mess up the scroll speed.)
If there's one thing that seasoned rhythm gamers are definitely better than musicians with no rhythm game experience at, it would be hitting that swing within ±16ms every single time.
@@TheLaxOne But can you place the commas super-precisely to exactly recreate that sentence??
Was once told a story by a percussionist who was playing a piece written mainly on a computer. The percussion part was all over the place, no identifiable pulse, etc. So he asked the composer how it should go. Composer couldn't tell him. He'd essentially just clicked his mouse randomly into the software. So the next question was "would you notice if I got it wrong?" and the answer was "no".
precise notation doesn't always help convey what you want.
Very cool one! I'd love a video on how transcribers would do their job and what choices they make.
Love the video! It breaks down tempo quite well for many, all while still being musically deep.
Tempo is always interesting, and specific tempo markings are less effective for acoustic music. As I am not as involved with electronic music, there may be specific reasons there. However, I don't see many reasons!
Decimal points in BPM are good if you are scoring a film (the music needs to line up exactly), but the sheet won't show the decimal point.
Sure, but click tracks exist. 3rd trombone doesn't really need to know the tempo is exactly 114.57bpm as long as the conductor is locked in.
The problem I see with that is you only really need that specificity for live performance of scores, which is probably not how most scores are recorded now. If you need stuff to sync exactly to an onscreen cue, you probably just slide the notes or samples in your DAW until they line up with the footage. Plus we're already assuming that a film doesn't really follow normal music tempos, so how can you be sure your decimal point BPM will work for longer than one 3-5 second shot? At a certain point, you just have to learn the timing of the visuals themselves and not consider metronomic tempo - films, unlike scores, are typically written in Free Time.
That's done with time signature changes, not tempo. If the tempo needs to be adjusted it's in post-production, not while composing.
The way you described the inherent impossibility of perfectly complete and unbiased sheet music reminded me of something I've heard once about maps. It is impossible to fit all the detail of a perfect aerial view onto a map, and if there was a marker for every detail the map would literally be nothing but markers. So, it's up to the artist to decide what is important, what can be simplified, what details can be left out, and what should be marked. Thus, there are an infinite number of ways to make a map of the exact same plot of land, no matter how big or small, and each map is inextricably tied to the mind of the person that made it.
nicely done, Adam, as usual! I'm pretty fond of markings that match my old wooden metronome. If I do a metric modulation from one (regular) tempo i try to use whole numbers that work... occasionally though fractions result (in which case I have been known to write - for example 33&1/3bpm, to make it clear, but generally still prefer to go with the approximation of 33bpm - and assume the performer is smart enough to do the Math! (oh and I see I just saw that you pinned a related comment above!)
Excellent video and fascinating as heck.
15:45 "everybody knows that polyrhythms get the clicks"
best line of the video
Exactly!
A point that is implied is readability. Since the score is usually given to a performer (recipe analogy), a necessary tradeoff between readability and accuracy goes into a well made score.
Two points as a musician creating and recording my own music and doing these in parallel:
a) Decimal point tempos are trash playing and performing music. It really doesn't matter, even if it's own piece. Also, performing live without metronome tempo may anyway fluctuate. And it should.
b) Sometimes, just sometimes having 89.5 rather than 89 or 90 bpm can help create just the right atmosphere during that specific moment of creation process. I've created few songs that seemed to require .5 tempo, but it wasn't for the performance and arguably for the song (the transcription etc), but rather for setting just the right mood for the mediator-creator. There's not much difference between 89.4 and 89.5 thou.
I'm not saying it wasn't a shot in the dark, but I did guess the 5ms one was late, because it definitely didn't sound early.
Have you heard about how the brain syncs sounds to images, but only when they are late not early. Because the speed of sound being so much slower than speed of light it's an everyday task for the brain, it's why you don't hear sound being late up to from about 30 meters(or 100ft) away.
Also the reason why TV broadcast are(or at least used to be) purposefully a bit late with the audio, because if there is a minor desync and the sound is a little bit early it becomes incredibly irritating for the listener, but it being late there is a relatively long window before the listener notices anything.
Now I kind of want to compare the 5 note example to one that's 5ms early, should be much more noticeable in theory.
I love this video and I agree wholeheartedly with it... apart from one little caveat: When creating a video animation that moves to the beat, I compose a piece of music (or time-stretch an existing one) to match a beat to a whole number of frames. That means, at 25fps, if I want a beat every 12 frames, I need 125bpm, or for every 15 frames it's 100bpm. But if I want a beat every 14 frames, it's 107.142857bpm to stay in time. 16 is 93.75, 18 is 83.333333 (or 166.666666). 🎶
I feel that was mentioned (as one of the quoted reasons that wasn't further engaged with). For such purposes though, wouldn't it be more informative to write 25/14*60 bpm (or even 25/14 bps?), rather than 107.143?
I also would be that specific if I needed someone to record their part separately. However, I'd also be including a guide track, and the tempo is just in case they want to DAW it up themselves before they submit it.
As others have mentioned, fractions seem more useful in this scenario as they say where you got that tempo from, and are actually _more_ precise!
or you could use fbp (frames per beat)
@@adisander My DAW doesn't accept vulgar fractions, only decimal ones.
Score follower's work, to me, fits neatly into modern "effortposting", a phenomenon wherein people deliberately overdo the effort and/or precision of their work, as a joke, as a commentary on status and precision, or for any number of other reasons. You're right, they're going well beyond the limits of human perception, and that's the point, I don't think most people are confused about that.
Yeah, I'm with you. The fun is in the absurdity of the precision.
I think Adam has valuable and interesting things to say regarding value and use of precision or scoring in music to different people, but seemed to never really get into this point regarding these particular kinds of scores. In a way, this video ironically misses the point by focusing on the markings rather than the feel a hyperprecise score or maybe BPM might aim for. He's become the very thing he vowed to destroy 😔
Oh my god. I've been seeing this video on my recommended for months and I finally decided to watch it, this whole time I thought you were gonna say that 114 bpm specifically is bad and I've been avoiding it like the plague
Back in the late 80s early 90s, I was in a studio with Big George Webly and we had a track at 132 BPM. When we saved off the session, I noticed he went to the tempo and started adding decimal places to it. Curious about this I asked him why he replied, "...to stop people sampling the hell out of this track. Good luck to them matching the BPM..." Obviously, times have changed with accurate BPM counters and also my lesser successful older self would now be entirely happy with a major artist sampling my stuff. Thanks for the videos, Adam, always interesting information here.
Polyrhythms get the clicks - best description of “the algorithm” ever. Great video (from a DJ who started without software and decimal tempo displays).
On the rhythmic incompleteness of your bass solo transcription: That sort of "technically inaccurate" notation is fine if the performer can be reasonably expected to be familiar with stylistic conventions (or have access to an authoritative recording to supplement the notation). But part of composition is to innovate new styles (which wouldn't have established conventions) or incorporate influences from more obscure styles (which a performer should not be assumed to be familiar with). I imagine there are reasonable stylistic conventions which could simplify the notation of the opening of The Rite of Spring, for instance, but it's easier in a case like that to precisely notate than to communicate those conventions. If aimed at a performer who doesn't know the appropriate liberties to take, being explicit about landing on "e of 1" might have been more appropriate in your transcription. Similarly, lead sheets often have "quantized" versions of the melodies, the assumption being musicians familiar enough with the style to realize an accompaniment from a lead sheet will also be familiar enough to breathe life into the melody.
I am not sure if I am agreeing or disagreeing with you, but I would think that one would be better off notating music in the most basic form that fits the music and allowing performers to add their own stylistic feels and ornaments.
If taken to other examples, would you even precisely notate a swung rhythm? I would think not and adding a symbol for swing at the top better indicates how to play it, since the feel choice will not always be exact to how it could be notated, and it will also hinder attempts to play the same piece in other styles.
If I was playing Goldberg aria, seeing the mordents and trills notated is not helpful because you may not read it as that and instead see it as an exact thing to play, but I may play a trill with some rubato on some performances if it has the trill symbol and not precisely notated. The music would be so busy I would probably not bother to add any of my own ornaments and certainly would never cut down any written ornament.
Going by Adam's example of the semi-quaver rest, if I saw that notated I would expect that to indicate some sort of syncopation in the music or purposeful rhythmic choice to not land on one, rather than a laid back note.
Couldn't agree with you more. I think if Adam delayed the E by some very difficult to quantify rhythm (5/11ths of a beat for example), then I might understand not noting the rest. In this case however, he delayed it very clearly by a 16th, and so his explanation for why he didn't notate it is kind of a head scratcher. What's worse is that he has a similar pickup-into-long-note idea at the end of the solo, (see 10:35) but that note doesn't have a delay. Like you said, if you have a recording of the solo then it all makes sense, but I feel like the notation should be able to stand alone and get you as reasonably close to the music as you can get without needing a recording, or being a part of the same social circles as the performer. A 16th note rest is very well within the limits of music notation and is much, much simpler than any of the tik tok examples.
Then again, I'm not a working musician. Maybe it makes sense to other people.
I think your point ESSENTIALLY brings up a GREAT point not thoroughly addressed by Adam: there is a third, in-between, reason for transcription:
Adam's transcription makes PERFECT sense to people who are used to glancing at lead sheets for music that is often improvised in nature and going "oh yeah, make sure the end of the run lands thereabouts on the chord change."
But the "quantized" version is what is literally being played, whether Adam likes it or not. And, especially if learning originally improvised solos, the quantized version should be preferred if someone is learning or studying a solo. Is it busy to look at? Yes, but if I am trying to learn a piece of music (especially since I don't have a great ear) the literal/quantized version is so much more helpful...
Awhile ago I was learning Dogs by Pink Floyd, and, if you know what I am talking about, the first guitar solo's tone is engulfed with that deep chorusy, swirly Yamaha rotating speaker colour... To the point that many of the syncopated notes' attacks are distorted or washed away altogether to the point that it is hard to pinpoint what was originally played. It was only until I could find a transcription done by a college student that I was better able to figure out and wrap my head around the rhythm in that solo; up until that point, tabs (which are probably as equally useful as Adam's "c'mon, we know it is actually a LAID BACK half-note" notation) could not illustrate, to me at least, the NATURE of the syncopation. In this way, I would argue that super-accurate transcribing actually can become EDUCATIONAL and useful in teaching a style. For instance, today I learned that playing "laid back" bass is playing ends of quick runs that land on a chord change about a sixteenth or so behind the beat.
@@CHEWYCHEWYQQ I thought the same thing after watching that part! I am of the school and philosophy of using your ear and intuition to make music, but when notation is concerned, specificity is paramount. It's why myself and a lot of others feel that fake books are more or less useless... you're gonna have to listen to the tune anyways, so why even bother carrying around a pile of shoddy transcriptions?
@@mss11235 Agreed!
So I make these covers sometimes that as a concept can be perfectly overlaid onto the original songs, whether they used a clicktrack or not. To do this I obviously have to precisely tempomap the timeline, and it will go into the decimal point time as a rule that way. Even with a song like Prince's Erotic City, which uses a LinnDrum for the drum track, so you would think it's stable, but it is recorded to tape, so not entirely stable. While you may not be able to detect from a few clicks what is the difference, overall you can definitely hear the "feel" vs the "grid" that way.
I feel the same way a bout sound musicality! I swear when I explain how I see rhythms in every day life people look at like I’m crazy bro, but it definitely is what it is, sir! Excellent video, I also did detect .5ms difference.