RE: Keeping the pulse

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Aretium

Posts: 277
Joined: Oct. 23 2012

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to Ricardo)

quote:

onestly don't think McLaughlin understands the "down beat" Paco is feeling when they play Chiquito,

Jaco once said about mclaughlin, "motherfcker cant/wont swing"

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Oct. 2 2016 20:31:26

sissoko

Posts: 24
Joined: Apr. 12 2015

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to sim999)

Sim999 I chose my words you know ! I wrote : MOST WESTERN jazz players. Tigran is Armenian, Dhafer Youssef is Tunisian etc etc. And some western jazz players will get it but MOST won't !

And I totally agree with Ricardo, many musicians will know the maths, but understanding how melodies are constructed on the rythms is super complicated.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Oct. 3 2016 1:17:22

sim999

Posts: 73
Joined: Aug. 18 2011

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to sissoko)

quote:

ORIGINAL: sissoko

Sim999 I chose my words you know ! I wrote : MOST WESTERN jazz players.

I'm sorry you're right. What I'm saying it's NOT becauce they can't do it, it's because of their background, flamenco is not harder it is just different. Because let's be frank here most flamenco artists with their flamenco background will be equally lost. Throw tomatito with tigran and see what happens ? It will not make any sense, throw crazy changes at antonio rey and the poor guy will be all lost. And they will be lost not because they can't do it, they could obviously do it, they are insane players. They would certainly think of it from a different perspective. You just need the right "keys", the "codes" of the music, and we agree it is more than math. That's all.

From a technical point of view now. They are exellent percussionists in flamenco but if anyone think that what they are playing is super complicated in comparison to some of the drummers that I mentionned then youre crazy

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Oct. 3 2016 12:22:17

sissoko

Posts: 24
Joined: Apr. 12 2015

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to Aretium)

Of course the point is not complexity. The reason why I love flamenco is not its complexity, it's because it's true culture and I live in a country were culture doesn't exist anymore. (forms of collective art and communication created by the people for the people)

I'm not interested anymore in jazz harmony which I find very artificial, jazz improvisation which I find pointless (with a lot of exceptions of course).

Guys like Tigran are great because they bring a musicality that was being lost in a false tradition of whitened jazz. French jazz musicians were creepy and now new musicians are bringing fresh air because they don't care anymore about jazz.

But we are far from such a great cultural art as flamenco jondo, where players and listeners have to be very involved in the compas, ears and hearts wide open.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Oct. 3 2016 12:54:03

Piwin

Posts: 3521
Joined: Feb. 9 2016

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to sissoko)

Here's a silly little game on keeping the pulse. It's just a metronome beat that fades out and you have to try to stick to it.
https://www.concerthotels.com/got-rhythm
I can't get past 910...grrr... (yeah I was up in the middle of the night and got really bored...)

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Feb. 13 2017 5:52:11

Filip

Posts: 366
Joined: Apr. 23 2006
From: Paris

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to Aretium)

Feynman was doing an interesting exercise about the pulse when he was learning bongos. The idea was to try to count to 60 in exactly one minute, but he could not do it. And the point was that it is not actually important whether you can count to 60 in one minute or not, the point was that each time you count you should be on the same number when one minute timer runs out.

Anyway, he went on saying that counting was just not his thing, so he had to invent something that would work out for him and at the end he did it by just visualising the rhythm. There is a story that he could play 10 beats with one hand against 11 with other. People say it's hard, but I dunno, I cannot do it

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Feb. 13 2017 20:15:02

Piwin

Posts: 3521
Joined: Feb. 9 2016

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to Filip)

10 over 11 yikes! Though I guess anything's possible since some musicians have pulled off playing Nancorrow's music live. Though after a certain point it really becomes a game of approximation and how close you can get. I guess mathematically speaking, even playing simple triplets is a game of approximation.

I'll have to try Feynman's 60 second game. What he said sounds similar to the argument of relative vs. perfect pitch. Would be interesting to see if there is such a thing as "perfect pulse".

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"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Feb. 13 2017 21:21:12

Ricardo

Posts: 14414
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to Piwin)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Piwin

Here's a silly little game on keeping the pulse. It's just a metronome beat that fades out and you have to try to stick to it.
https://www.concerthotels.com/got-rhythm
I can't get past 910...grrr... (yeah I was up in the middle of the night and got really bored...)

Fun. Not sure how it's calibrated. I messed around trying to do things like the "e" or the "ah" and even the contra "&" and it would assign beats early or late but with a fairly high score. I did random tapping mess too to make sure I get a low score. I got my high score 874 and tried to beat it by "cheating" using another synchronized metronome, but the best cheating score I got was 866, which I found strange. I think it has to do with the precision you can actually hit precisely early so the software chain has time to read your attacks. For sure I can't get it to read more than 900.

Edit: I tried this time another "cheat" where I off set my metronome to the one in the game, by like a hair, and ignored their metronome and tapped with mine only and I got 904. That means that musically I was not with their thing at all, and I beat my high score, so that tells me the game is not calibrated right.

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CD's and transcriptions available here:
www.ricardomarlow.com

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Feb. 14 2017 12:35:12

Miguel de Maria

Posts: 3532
Joined: Oct. 20 2003
From: Phoenix, AZ

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to Ricardo)

Reminds me of when I was complaining about my iKeepTime seeming to not register my hits right, and you said I probably needed to practice!

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Feb. 14 2017 12:46:02

Ricardo

Posts: 14414
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to Miguel de Maria)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Miguel de Maria

Reminds me of when I was complaining about my iKeepTime seeming to not register my hits right, and you said I probably needed to practice!

You still need to practice, even though it was the robot's fault!

_____________________________

CD's and transcriptions available here:
www.ricardomarlow.com

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Feb. 14 2017 13:03:49

orsonw

Posts: 1877
Joined: Jul. 4 2009
From: London

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to Piwin)

quote:

Here's a silly little game on keeping the pulse. It's just a metronome beat that fades out and you have to try to stick to it.
https://www.concerthotels.com/got-rhythm
I can't get past 910...grrr... (yeah I was up in the middle of the night and got really bored...)

Yes, that was fun. I got 904 at first, then 907, then 898. Then I thought- 'I am going to stop now rather than waste half an hour trying (and highly probably failing) to score better than 910'

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Feb. 14 2017 14:08:55

Piwin

Posts: 3521
Joined: Feb. 9 2016

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to Ricardo)

I think it must be based on the duration between each tap which is then compared to the duration of the beat on their metronome. What I mean by that is that it doesn't actually have to be on the beat as long as you stick to the same duration (so you can get a high score doing all the offbeats as long as you stick to the offbeats).
It's a shame they don't give the time, like, if I'm late on a beat, I'd like to know by how much, and they don't even say if it's by a millisecond, centisecond or whatever. Coz if they're using nanoseconds, I'm fine with being a bit late or early.

They have a few more gimmicks on that site, under the "soundboard tab". Like a game where you have to figure out a song title and band from a picture. Passes the time when you're up at 3am with nothing else to do.

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"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Feb. 14 2017 14:54:12

Pgh_flamenco

Posts: 1506
Joined: Dec. 5 2007
From: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to Ricardo)

I saw this Concert Hotels website about a year and a half ago and could only get it to work using the space bar on my laptop. All of my touch screen devices were to slow for this site. I recall reading that some guy's girl friend scored a perfect 1,000 even though she had no musical training.

quote:

Fun. Not sure how it's calibrated. I messed around trying to do things like the "e" or the "ah" and even the contra "&" and it would assign beats early or late but with a fairly high score. I did random tapping mess too to make sure I get a low score. I got my high score 874 and tried to beat it by "cheating" using another synchronized metronome, but the best cheating score I got was 866, which I found strange. I think it has to do with the precision you can actually hit precisely early so the software chain has time to read your attacks. For sure I can't get it to read more than 900.

Edit: I tried this time another "cheat" where I off set my metronome to the one in the game, by like a hair, and ignored their metronome and tapped with mine only and I got 904. That means that musically I was not with their thing at all, and I beat my high score, so that tells me the game is not calibrated right.

_____________________________

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Feb. 14 2017 14:59:41

Mark2

Posts: 1837
Joined: Jul. 12 2004
From: San Francisco

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to Piwin)

882, 864, and then 907......that and a 1.00 will get me bus fare. Trying to think of a practical application of this skill. I'm pretty sure it has little to nothing to do with playing an instrument. I wonder if professional drummers do any better than average Joe's......

quote:

ORIGINAL: Piwin

Here's a silly little game on keeping the pulse. It's just a metronome beat that fades out and you have to try to stick to it.
https://www.concerthotels.com/got-rhythm
I can't get past 910...grrr... (yeah I was up in the middle of the night and got really bored...)

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Feb. 14 2017 16:41:52

Piwin

Posts: 3521
Joined: Feb. 9 2016

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to sim999)

This guy agrees with you sim999 on the rhythmic structure of Vardavar (after 5:20). I like the idea of changing the duration of the groupings but maintaining their relative relationship to one another (the whole "long-long-short-long-less short-long" thing), though in this specific case I'm kind of skeptical about that 2 1/3rd thing. I'm hearing a steady pulse so not sure how that would fit in there. If true, I also find it interesting that they play with a 4/4 click even when it's not explicit in the song itself.

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"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Apr. 3 2019 6:25:55

Ricardo

Posts: 14414
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to Piwin)

quote:

If true, I also find it interesting that they play with a 4/4 click even when it's not explicit in the song itself.

Well learning and practicing this odd time stuff really benefits by the even click. Like the guardian angel video I clapped to.... its lots of 5 and 3 in different combos plus an odd 5, 4, and odd 7 tossed in.... but I discovered the underlying 3/4 throughout. That underlying feeling is not easy to maintain at first, however it quickly reveals how uneven your divisions are relative to each other. Humans aren’t machines so that “feeling” element must be present at all times or it falls apart.

About the 4/4 broken into odd groups... when I first learned odd meter proper from my drummer/ marimba playing friend in college, I discovered adding up 5/16+7+9, stop after 11.... it adds up to two bars of 4/4. So I composed a duet for guitar and marimba were phrases of 16ths 5,7,9,11 shuffle around in different combos and we groove on the 4/4 and even improv over some sections. The trickiest spots were when I would do poly rhythm phrases (marimba plays off set groups that add up the same against the guitar 57911 pattern). The fun spots were when we would do trade offs, where Guitar does 5 and 9, marimba fills in the 7 and 11 etc.

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CD's and transcriptions available here:
www.ricardomarlow.com

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Apr. 3 2019 12:17:31

flyeogh

Posts: 729
Joined: Oct. 13 2004

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to Aretium)

Using the online faded beat machine I noted that after a few beats I was generally early or always late.

However sometimes I was self-correcting. i.e I would get a bit late but then recover the original beat. Likewise early but recover.

Is that this feeling thing at a much simpler level?

Or am I actually spot on and the wobble between late and early is just down to how my foot taps on the mouse pad?

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nigel (el raton de Watford - now Puerto de Santa Maria, Cadiz)

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Apr. 3 2019 12:42:25

Ricardo

Posts: 14414
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to flyeogh)

quote:

ORIGINAL: flyeogh

Using the online faded beat machine I noted that after a few beats I was generally early or always late.

However sometimes I was self-correcting. i.e I would get a bit late but then recover the original beat. Likewise early but recover.

Is that this feeling thing at a much simpler level?

Or am I actually spot on and the wobble between late and early is just down to how my foot taps on the mouse pad?

Seems that thing was not calibrated right for touch sensitivity. I found I get higher scores by tapping early on purpose.

_____________________________

CD's and transcriptions available here:
www.ricardomarlow.com

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Apr. 3 2019 12:48:22

kitarist

Posts: 1683
Joined: Dec. 4 2012

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to Filip)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Filip

Feynman was doing an interesting exercise about the pulse when he was learning bongos. The idea was to try to count to 60 in exactly one minute, but he could not do it. And the point was that it is not actually important whether you can count to 60 in one minute or not, the point was that each time you count you should be on the same number when one minute timer runs out.

Anyway, he went on saying that counting was just not his thing, so he had to invent something that would work out for him and at the end he did it by just visualising the rhythm.

I missed this from 2017.

I read Feyman's biography by James Gleick ("Genius") ages ago and I could swear the stories were kind of the opposite. He was known for his ability to keep accurate time in his head - as in call precisely intervals of many seconds and even minutes.

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Konstantin

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Apr. 3 2019 17:40:29

kitarist

Posts: 1683
Joined: Dec. 4 2012

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to flyeogh)

quote:

ORIGINAL: flyeogh
how my foot taps on the mouse pad?

I found I had to fight against the sounds from the key pressings which are several different kinds and occur on the way down and a bit differently the way up but not necessarily in sync with the original pulse. I think I can do better than 870 or whatever it was if I can do it in complete silence after the beat fades.

The other thing is that some computers have large amounts of interrupts - Deferred Procedure Calls, or DPCs because some driver is misbehaving causing it. It causes audio dropouts if severe, but also general issue with audio syncing in real time - which would affect both the timing of when you hear the beat and when the website thinks you pressed.

The computer I just did this on has a really bad DPC latency right now. You can check it by installing, if on Windows, a little free program called DPC latency checker.

You run it and you get something like this if your computer has no DPC latency issues:

Or if it has serious latency issues like mine, you get something like this beauty:

Images are resized automatically to a maximum width of 800px

Attachment (2)

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Konstantin

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Apr. 3 2019 17:59:30

Piwin

Posts: 3521
Joined: Feb. 9 2016

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to kitarist)

That last chart looks an awful lot like my own brain activity.
If only I had "Device Manager" to "isolate the misbehaving driver".

_____________________________

"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Apr. 3 2019 20:04:52

kitarist

Posts: 1683
Joined: Dec. 4 2012

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to Piwin)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Piwin

That last chart looks an awful lot like my own brain activity.
If only I had "Device Manager" to "isolate the misbehaving driver".

So you have an internal super-accurate 20 bpm metronome? Man, that's not bad at all - use it!

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Konstantin

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Apr. 3 2019 20:18:21

Piwin

Posts: 3521
Joined: Feb. 9 2016

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to kitarist)

It all started when I was a professional flamenco player in crime-ridden Detroit.
One day I heard some gang members saying that Rodrigo y Gabriela were flamenco. I had to jump in. The argument got heated. At one point, their leader said "Sabicas had no compas", to which I replied "Buddy, I think you're slime". They then riddled my body with bullets. On the brink of death, I was rushed to a secret Conde lab where they took the bits and pieces of my body that were still functional and fused them into a cyborg shell. My new orange body includes a hyper-accurate metronome, tuner, automatic nail filer and the entire series rito y geografia del cante uploaded into my brain. My friends call me Piwin. You can call me ... Roboito.

_____________________________

"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Apr. 3 2019 21:43:37

kitarist

Posts: 1683
Joined: Dec. 4 2012

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to Piwin)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Piwin

It all started when I was a professional flamenco player in crime-ridden Detroit.
One day I heard some gang members saying that Rodrigo y Gabriela were flamenco. I had to jump in. The argument got heated. At one point, their leader said "Sabicas had no compas", to which I replied "Buddy, I think you're slime". They then riddled my body with bullets. On the brink of death, I was rushed to a secret Conde lab where they took the bits and pieces of my body that were still functional and fused them into a cyborg shell. My new orange body includes a hyper-accurate metronome, tuner, automatic nail filer and the entire series rito y geografia del cante uploaded into my brain. My friends call me Piwin. You can call me ... Roboito.

Ahh.. makes sense. But since you confessed to having the entire Rito series, could you copy and upload the 3 missing videos plus the Sabicas one

Or at least whistle them to us or something....

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Konstantin

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Apr. 3 2019 22:23:11

Piwin

Posts: 3521
Joined: Feb. 9 2016

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to kitarist)

Sorry, you need clearance for those. Some knowledge is too dangerous to share.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Apr. 3 2019 22:29:37

Piwin

Posts: 3521
Joined: Feb. 9 2016

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to Piwin)

Pretty fun.

For some reason I remembered this piece the other day:

First thing I ever played on stage on the drums. Some music school festival or whatever. I was so nervous that during the count-off I knocked one of the sticks clean out of my hand. 1, 2. 1, 2, 3....crap....

The teacher had left spares within arms reach, but I completely forgot about them so had to get up and go fetch my stick a few meters away from the set. My ambitions to rise to musical stardom were foiled from the start

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date May 25 2020 12:13:03

sim999

Posts: 73
Joined: Aug. 18 2011

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to Piwin)

I remember when I started this thread a long time ago !
Nice One Piwin : you must know this one for insane konnakol I don't know what they are doing but it's cool ahah :

The same version with drums and electric guitar that I like :d cause Im a metalhead maybe Ricardo will it too :)

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date May 26 2020 23:39:30

Piwin

Posts: 3521
Joined: Feb. 9 2016

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to sim999)

Nice!

Have you tried following the score doing one-note picado? Probably a bad idea, but I'll give it a try today after work. I have a feeling I'm going to feel depressed pretty fast

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date May 27 2020 5:08:31

Ricardo

Posts: 14414
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to sim999)

Cool. But it’s worse than the elastic compas thing. He starts at one tempo (7/4, accents 1,2,4,6) and then she takes off daniginigum, daniginigum! It messed with my head the first couple listens cuz I was hard locked to his tempo...I thought they might be doing complex math equations there

. Then I realized around 1:18 she does pretty even 16ths and it’s 7 groups of 4 of em to repeat. But darn if that video isn’t also ahead of the sound a 16th note. Grrrrr. Once you get the 7 beat feel (don’t look at the video, just go by the sound) it’s just chasing their 16ths, it’s fun. She does some contras and he does a drag triplet phrase in there. The guitar guy was boring. Add some notes dude!

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CD's and transcriptions available here:
www.ricardomarlow.com

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date May 27 2020 7:20:05

Deniz

Posts: 91
Joined: Feb. 16 2020

RE: Keeping the pulse (in reply to Piwin)

quote:

My new orange body includes a hyper-accurate metronome, tuner, automatic nail filer and the entire series rito y geografia del cante uploaded into my brain. My friends call me Piwin. You can call me ... Roboito.

..but does it come in nitro finish?!

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date May 27 2020 8:37:27