Add a comment isn't working today. Maybe you got tired of my rambling? A point not raised in the video is the increasing use of "randomisation" to add interest to a sequence, for which, to me at least, a big sign is needed "Less is more" I am sure that some listeners will find amazing personal inspiration in the more extreme use of these programmable variations, I just find that I have limitations in that regard. I learned recorder as a child but the dots defeated me and my teacher caught me out by putting music in front of me that I didn't know but I could memorise tunes and expression in any music and I was quick to distinguish one interpretation from another or no interpretation whatever. However, I couldn't tell what Mr. Mozart actually wrote down. Lastly, my point about artificial performance variation, as represented by drum machines and sequencers that offer "swing". I don't know how these algorithms are calculated and to be honest I don't care. To my ear they are an abomination and to those people who use them, I say, good luck! If swing were a thing then Buddy Rich, Bird Parker, Michael Brecker and Dave Gilmour to name but a tiny few, would all swing in a similar way. Everyone has a personal way with a melodic or rhythmic line. It's a basic human right. When we make music together, we adapt our personal take to concur or conflict with others which can be one of the greatest joys known to our species. P.S. Loved the jamming on a sequence. The breathing in the solo line is worth every moment of study and a testament to your inner neanderthal. Thank you.
One of the things I picked up in my classical education for cello is to try to have a clear sense of pulse in the biggest musical unit you can (of course with subdivisions being important as well!) - so if your piece is a fast 4, and you practiced it regularly with quarter notes being the metrenome, can you start feeling its pulse in 1/2 notes, or even whole notes, where quarter notes start being a subdivision within this pulse. This, for me, has made a natural breath more, well, natural, but has actually made it easier to ultimately feel rhythm more naturally. If I think the pulse too quickly, I end up overloading my simple brain with playing, being in tune, the right dynamic expression and a constant 1234 1234 1234!!! demanding the most of my limited attention. I think it also really helps tie longer lines into elements that are more rhythmically rigid, or glued to the grid - which as this video points out can be quite musically moving. Ultimately, this has helped me keep a healthy sense on the rubber band, or rubato as classical peoples know it as. Edit: forgot to say great video and thank you as always!
I also do not believe playing on grid kills music. Know who convinced me? ZZ Top. When interviewed in the 80s, one of the players (Gibbons?) noted how much better the band's sense of timing got after recording an album with a drum machine. Questlove changed his drumming style to be more like a drum machine to fit better in the genre he was pursuing. The grid isn't the problem. It's players not learning to play to the grid that is.
To be fair, Questlove also moved away from drumming like a drum machine basically the moment he learned about Dilla. Not the best example there, even though your point is a good one
Damn! I remember thinking how stiff and lifeless ZZ Top sounded compared to similar artists in that genre. I could never get into that band and couldn’t quite figure out why, it just clicked!
I remember in that Rick Beato vid, he left the click in when he quantized that Led Zeppelin beat. But turned it off when he gave the "off grid" example... like... leaving the click on makes it sound weird regardless of quantization! Since then I've written him off as another "old man yells at cloud" type. There are so many examples of both off grid and on grid recordings that all sound amazing. Shots fired 😜
This is a fantastic video with a lot of great advice! One thing I would add is that another element of musical expression is groove. Real groove isn't something you can get from turning up the "swing" control in your software. It's something that comes from a feeling that is expressed by pushing and pulling against the beat (grid) in a particular way. There's a huge breadth of expression and style just within how you do this. Everything from the gentle or hard swing in jazz to 70's funk to much of rock music and many other styles. They all keep an even tempo (they stick to the grid of the start of each bar) but none of them are on the grid within a bar. They push and forward or backward in time within the bar grid or within sub-divisions of the bar. There's a lot of emotion and expression in this area as well. I know you touch on this concept in the video, but I thought I'd elaborate on the idea of groove.
The Rubber Band analogy is good. In HS my theory teacher/band leader used 'sentences' as an analogous device - When you're reading something aloud, sentences have a defined start and end - you can alter how you get from A to B, but you need to do so in a way which makes sense for the context.
Always enjoy your videos as someone raised on classical music (horn player). I almost never quantize when I'm recording melodies, metronome on, but having a bit of rubato. Hold a note a bit long, then catch up. I'll record it multiple times till I get just the right feel and maybe adjust a few notes that were unintentionally off where I want them, but I find it makes melodies feel more emotionally satisfying. Another place I find adjusting things to be not too rigid is drum parts. Pushing a few notes slightly off the grid can make a positive effect on the groove and sound more real. One place I used this was this image I had in my head -- a little man with a hat strutting around a Little Prince type (tiny) planet.Very pleased with himself. Exaggerated perspective, his arms bouncing to the beat, but swinging in half time. Kinda herky-jerky. So the drum beat had this exaggerated double hit to make the last beat on the half at the end of the groove pushed closer to the downbeat. Just enough you hear it and it gave that herky-jerky feel to the last beat of groove. Everything else was on the grid, but taking inspiration from that drum groove. A slight filter sweep on 8th note triplets, melody lines for a flute-like synth patch weaving in and out with another higher pitched synth and a repeated refrain that changed the triplets to short phrases that ended with a accentuate downbeat -- what I imagined was him triumphantly punching the air. The off the grid drum hit accentuated his arrogance because he thinks he's just so great. It's slightly sloppy feeling, which is the point.
LOVE the popup of mr beato, Bravo! so funny...I've tried shifting things slightly to humanize, but it often feels "off" on a subconscious level. This is fantastic, thank you!
I play with synth over drum machine loops primarily and all these points are valid to me. Having been in a band and even try to add in a drum machine is a skill in itself that the real drummer might not be ready to embrace but it can be rewarding like neil pert made it. Playing with a real drummer is a gift they can move up or down with other players but in my experience they are not a machine
So when I started out on my first DAW, it didn’t have a grid (and I don’t think it could record MIDI) but you could record to a metronome click. When I got Cubase, it definitely gave me a grid option and then some. But that’s beside the point =] I’ve done things strictly quantised and more loosely played and things in between. To me, it all depends on what I’m doing and what I am going for. For instance, if I want to play something more rubato and expressive, I want to record just that and not thinking about “what tempo it should be”. There may be one other part but I just play to that. And there are also times where certain parts are programmed/sequenced ahead whilst others are performed. As long as they are not out of alignment at key moments, it can work. And finally, there are cases where everything is programmed/sequenced and that can be fine too. There are tools that can introduce more “human” performances to programmed material and they are pretty good. What can be really telling is when you record your own performance of something and you see how “off” you are, either on the beat or with note durations. (This is why I don’t trust transcriptions =] ). But then again, that’s the charm of having a human perform something =].
I did 12 years of piano under an old Soviet teacher, Vladimir Babadzhan. Never played scales or anything at all using a metronome. I think a musician has to learn to get the rhythm right and consistent without it. It’s an important skill and I think relying on a metronome to provide you with internally consistent rhythm will hold you back from developing that sense. Imo feeling > counting.
Love your videos, they go into areas that many other videos about music don’t go into. I’m definitely use this in some of my music. Also, Idk why or if others had this experience but the first song you played made it hard to hear you. Everything after 0:50 sounded good though.
You might be the 21st century Vangelis, only better at least because you are accessible to guys like me, and take time to make presentations about music production like this. Obviously don't let this message puff you up, but i just want to say i appreciate what you are doing, and thank you.
Straight music is a groove unto itself. Intention, stability and movement are so important. I do love me a modulated clock though - shame most daws cant generate clocks on a track by track basis.
I have two pieces I composed, both made on my laptop. One has a German title, the other has a Japanese title. If you listen to both, you'll notice the second piece sounds more like it was played, while the other is more stuck on the grid. They're on my channel if you want to take a listen. I think the grid is better for electronic music, anyway.
If you pay attention to a well-tempered clavier, you will notice that, for example, preludes have their own sound time size. Within which the tempo can change, from accelerated to slow, which greatly affects the expressiveness. Of course, this was due, at the time of the creation of these works, to the lack of an instrument - the piano. But with modern interpretation, the internal score is often not taken into account in combination with the global sound time inherent in the work. Which just leads to the ...meat grinder...
As a former studio engineer, I think what Beato means is something that the grid represented in its time. I saw it too in the early 2000’s. It was producers trying to make perfect music for music that didn’t need to be perfect. Over time this mindset sucked the soul out of so much popular music, and we’re seeing the repercussions of that now. It became a focus on form over soul. It also allowed lousy musicians to be able to advance in the industry because the technology that “the grid” represents was able to cover up their poor musicianship and artistry. Trying to do electronic music without a grid or quantization is generally speaking not a very good idea. However, you shouldn’t need to perfectly grid and pitch correct most rock bands that come through a studio. In a lot of ways, it’s pretty antithetical to what rock, hard rock, punk, etc. should be. And I don’t mean to say you should never play to a click track. What I’m talking about was what became pretty much a universally accepted approach to music production and it sucked.
I really like that some drum machines (MPC) are intentionally off grid. I watched the video about comparing new Rolands (MC-s & TR-s) and MPC. While the Rolands are analytically precise, the MPC is kind of randomized (even if the 100% quantization is turned on). I personally can´t hear it, but I like it more than the rolands. The drummers are detecting it more effectively. Simply - Wabi Sabi 🙂 - the art of imperfection. But as the japanese ZEN masters say - to master the imperfection, you have to first understand the perfection and this is something what every young player hates 🙂
Interesting to have a perspective of a classical trained pianist. I think to lock certain notes to the grit is important and that doesn't kill the music. Playing all over the place is a real killer. But what is most important is velocity and note length, which should have variety. That's where a big part of a non static feel comes from.
Yeah and one thing is that if you repeat a phrase that uses a pitch bend, slightly editing the pitch bend to be a bit different on the second time, for that feeling of the "player" (really just a midi instrument) is kind of ad-libbing it a bit, it gives a lot of flavor to midi flutes to do that...
Idk about your take on the 'feeling forced' thing, I got really good at manufacturing feeling - I will often start from a quantised arangement, then playback and adjust to get the pocket I'm after. Can be harder with some things than others.
I think the tendency to think melodically in terms of phrases is actually a benefit of learning on a wind instrument first. Those instruments require you to breathe to play them, and there tends to be a natural tendency to swell the volume in the middle of the phrase, and round out the ends, and to be conscious of how staccatto and legato styles and things like vibrato can really change the expression. Keyboards are basically percussive so expression mostly comes down to volume, sustain, and arrangement. Of course organs and synths (and harsichords) have some differences from piano. organs control volume through the pedal, but can also sustain indefinitely. With synths it depends on the patch, and the different envelopes. Some synth patches sustain or have a slow attack and you use those differently from fast percussive patches. Of course the mod wheels, aftertouch, pedals, and pitch wheel give you even more options on a synth.
I've invested in an 88-key controller and am slowly learning to play in motifs. I'm concerned about becoming overly pianistic though. I have this idea that many of the voice leading rules, particularly regarding leaps, originate more from the limitations of acoustic instruments than from some inherant sense of musicality. With synths and DAWs, we don't have these limits. In the back of my mind I sometimes wonder how to make musical sense out of large leaps.
I think a good example of taking too many liberties with expression is Leonard Bernstein conducting Hungarian Dances. Too many tempo changes such that it seems hard to imagine people dancing to it without stepping on each other’s feet.
I have lately fallen into a trend of playing everything rubato, attaching each rhytmical element to some inital human pulse, usually a freeform improvisation. If I want to change the timing between two pulses I change the tempo in my daw between these rather than move stuff on the timeline (and when I do this have noticed that I usually change two pulses, lenghtening one, shortening another, the rubber band). This means I usually start out with 100 bpm on my daw but hide the grid and don't use a click. The fluctuating tempo in these projects can best be though of as % of initial tempo rather than bpm. It's a slow process, as for instance it renders copy+pasting impossible, you just have to play stuff again by ear, but I retain the live feeling of the music that I want. Some day I'll probably figure out some more efficent way to do this.
Interesting stuff but I was hoping for a deeper discussion of the effects of micro-timing and accents. Maybe I missed a bit but was even basic stuff like swing mentioned?
“untethered meandering nonsense” is a description I must memorize. This is both what I want to avoid and my most frequent dissatisfaction with amateur electronic music.
Some of my favourite - and earliest favourite - artists made a lot of their music in a very theatrical way, and that always seems to mean very variable time keeping for a dramatic effect that you can’t get otherwise and lots of stretched pauses: Debussy, early Queen, Jeff Buckley, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Enekk, Pink Floyd, Metallica, Black Sabbath, Jethro Tull, Björk, Alanis Morisette, Rage Against the Machine, Portishead, Radiohead, some other head… that’s what I would listen to in my 90’s childhood, and that kind of dramatic aesthetic seems to be intrinsic to what I want out of the music I make. Yet here I am trying to create something I love on a fucking computer… …anyone wanna start a band?
Music evolves inside humans it ebbs and flows within and around us, we are part of it. The grid is an aspect, or a product of the music, like the marks of a river on sand. The grid is just the sand or maybe a rock in the river.
The problem with randomly changing the tempo is that's not how humans play music. DrumGizmo was, and still is, the only plugin which allows you to emulate that way of playing music. And it's incredibly effective. It will often start drifting out of time, then "notice" and overshoot slightly trying to catch up, then speedup and do the same. It doesn't do everything a human does when it comes to tempo, but it's the closest. Even those multi hundred dollar plugins with tens of GB of content don't do that. The way I do it is only one track is quantized to the grid, and sometimes not the percussion. Then that track is used as a metronome to other tracks. That often works better because you're not doing the "expressiveness tax" game, which is about as worse as the other "alternatives."
4:31 i refuse to think that's a "boomer take" you can write, comose, create music with a laptop, but it's still a tool not an instrument imo Btw, I think you use cubase and there's really amazing tempo syncing that goes the _other_ way (meaning you play it in freely and sync the GRID to the playing)
Yes I wasted a lot of time trying to humanize a programmed drum beat. Nudging little bars, thinking what it needed rather than zooming out and feeling it. 9/10 id want to change the beat anyway and all that microtiming humanization got deleted lol
I don’t think most people who say “QuaNtIzInG kIllED mUsIc” even really understand what they are hearing or what the grid even does. As Dilla demonstrated, being on or off the grid isn’t the thing that matters. It is the relationship between what is played, and what isn’t played, that matters. Sometimes being on the grid is good. Sometimes being on the grid is bad. Sometimes what you need is a swung grid. Other times you need a consistent grid that is just slightly in-front-of/behind the grid used for everything else. Sometimes having a part being entirely free from being on beat is what is needed.
There's a difference between playing to a beat, and being gated by a beat. One is clockwork, and the other isn't. There is a huge difference for me between listening to a piece that has been played by a person, and one which has purely mechanical timing. Does snapping to a grid kill the music? Does a sequencer kill the experience? Depends on the listener. For sequenced music, my mind starts focusing on the timing instead of the music, as if a jackhammer was operating. It's a completely different experience than when someone has played to a metronome. Consider James Brown "Make it Funky." It keeps a tight rhythm, and it isn't clockwork. Would you still consider it a funk groove if the performance was subsequently snapped to a grid? Would the performance be improved? I think that is Beato's point, that snapping a performance to a grid, instead of improving the band's timing, is what "kills" music.
"Save the moments when you want expressiveness for an impactful moment" Expresiveness shouldn't be confined to some peak point of the track.The whole track should be expressive. A band playing shouldn't keep rigit time (unlesss the genre calls for metronomic rigitity like techno), and in the past bands playing live and in the studio didn't keep rigit time... When it comes to classical musuc, conductors aren't metronomes either. Rather the opposite. You're more making a virtue out of necessity (people having to lock to some DAW's grid)
Is it me, or do these points not really address the arguments of how the grid has killed pop and rock music? Rock music is about emotional expressiveness, and playing to the grid eliminates the natural feel that a rhthym section can create. (Separately, over compression makes things worse by removing dynamic expression.) I have done experiments of forcing a rock song from the 70s onto the grid using a DAW, and the effect is discernible and--to my ears--negative. An interesting song becomes quite boring. I don't even think the logic presented here is self-consistent. The grid is the opposite of a rubber band. It has no stretchiness or play whatsoever.
Don’t quantise, it sounds inhuman and artificial. You are clearly an accomplished player, quantising just filters out your personality and any talent you have as a player. Or quantise your kicks and hats but leave the toms and snares.
In defense of un-quantized music against Debussy's quote, quantization didn't exist during Debussy's lifetime. His performers couldn't achieve the tighness of computers. There would be suble differences in timing. Debussy didn't know quantization as we know it.
The whole "but its the mistakes that make the music" is just god of the gaps fallacious reasoning for why peoples' music sucks...Give me a robotically perfect great, catchy song every day over some "oh so human warts and all" boring pretentious run on sentence of crappiocca
Its crazy how many people don't even try to play a real instrument or learn any theory and really enjoy clicking notes into the grid. The grid serves it's purpose, but how boring and lifeless.
I mean, yes, but also open your mind a bit. I've seen people make the most beautiful music that way becuase that IS their instrument, or they have a disability and it's the only way they can physically make music. Sticking to the grid is a choice, and if you know your instrument and how to play it because you've prqacticed it and understand it, you can choose to either stick to it or go outside it as a creative choice. Learning to make music that way is just another accessible route for people. And please don't take this the wrong way, it's not meant as an insult to your personally, but by saying what you are you're writing off entire genres of music that are just as valid and exciting to some people as performance based music is, it feels a bit elitest. Everyone has their own preferecnes, and that's fine, but your music is no more or less valid than someone elses. I agree learning to play a traditional instrument is a good thing but it absolutely sholdn't be a requirement.
I feel like a good example of someone learning to click notes in the grid as their instrument is nick mira The guy just ears stuff or whistles stuff and translates it to the grid at lightning speed because he's at a point where duplicating/editing/removing/repitching must be second nature to him Kinda like how people who write staff proficiently can write music without hearing it, but with the modern speed of copy paste lol
The composition concepts that have helped me the most for free➡bit.ly/FREEcompositionguide
Add a comment isn't working today. Maybe you got tired of my rambling?
A point not raised in the video is the increasing use of "randomisation" to add interest to a sequence, for which, to me at least, a big sign is needed "Less is more" I am sure that some listeners will find amazing personal inspiration in the more extreme use of these programmable variations, I just find that I have limitations in that regard.
I learned recorder as a child but the dots defeated me and my teacher caught me out by putting music in front of me that I didn't know but I could memorise tunes and expression in any music and I was quick to distinguish one interpretation from another or no interpretation whatever. However, I couldn't tell what Mr. Mozart actually wrote down.
Lastly, my point about artificial performance variation, as represented by drum machines and sequencers that offer "swing". I don't know how these algorithms are calculated and to be honest I don't care. To my ear they are an abomination and to those people who use them, I say, good luck! If swing were a thing then Buddy Rich, Bird Parker, Michael Brecker and Dave Gilmour to name but a tiny few, would all swing in a similar way. Everyone has a personal way with a melodic or rhythmic line. It's a basic human right. When we make music together, we adapt our personal take to concur or conflict with others which can be one of the greatest joys known to our species.
P.S. Loved the jamming on a sequence. The breathing in the solo line is worth every moment of study and a testament to your inner neanderthal. Thank you.
I didn't use quantize for a while. Then I found the button.
One of the things I picked up in my classical education for cello is to try to have a clear sense of pulse in the biggest musical unit you can (of course with subdivisions being important as well!) - so if your piece is a fast 4, and you practiced it regularly with quarter notes being the metrenome, can you start feeling its pulse in 1/2 notes, or even whole notes, where quarter notes start being a subdivision within this pulse.
This, for me, has made a natural breath more, well, natural, but has actually made it easier to ultimately feel rhythm more naturally. If I think the pulse too quickly, I end up overloading my simple brain with playing, being in tune, the right dynamic expression and a constant 1234 1234 1234!!! demanding the most of my limited attention.
I think it also really helps tie longer lines into elements that are more rhythmically rigid, or glued to the grid - which as this video points out can be quite musically moving.
Ultimately, this has helped me keep a healthy sense on the rubber band, or rubato as classical peoples know it as.
Edit: forgot to say great video and thank you as always!
Great points, Brice
This is so important! Also, your music examples are incredible. thx for another banger video!
I also do not believe playing on grid kills music. Know who convinced me? ZZ Top. When interviewed in the 80s, one of the players (Gibbons?) noted how much better the band's sense of timing got after recording an album with a drum machine. Questlove changed his drumming style to be more like a drum machine to fit better in the genre he was pursuing. The grid isn't the problem. It's players not learning to play to the grid that is.
To be fair, Questlove also moved away from drumming like a drum machine basically the moment he learned about Dilla. Not the best example there, even though your point is a good one
ZZ Top got progressive worse musically, and ended up with cliche 80s production, so not the best example
I don't think Billy`s rhythm and solo parts were quantized ;)
Damn! I remember thinking how stiff and lifeless ZZ Top sounded compared to similar artists in that genre. I could never get into that band and couldn’t quite figure out why, it just clicked!
@@MH-rt9ts "clicked". I see what you did there. With the click track.
I remember in that Rick Beato vid, he left the click in when he quantized that Led Zeppelin beat. But turned it off when he gave the "off grid" example... like... leaving the click on makes it sound weird regardless of quantization! Since then I've written him off as another "old man yells at cloud" type. There are so many examples of both off grid and on grid recordings that all sound amazing. Shots fired 😜
I'm standing hear, staring at rock legend, Rick Beato. And if Rick Beato says he wants less clicktrack, we should probably give him less clicktrack.
Great message. Good insight differentiating expressive flexibility versus simply chaotic avoidance of the grid.
This is a fantastic video with a lot of great advice! One thing I would add is that another element of musical expression is groove. Real groove isn't something you can get from turning up the "swing" control in your software. It's something that comes from a feeling that is expressed by pushing and pulling against the beat (grid) in a particular way. There's a huge breadth of expression and style just within how you do this. Everything from the gentle or hard swing in jazz to 70's funk to much of rock music and many other styles. They all keep an even tempo (they stick to the grid of the start of each bar) but none of them are on the grid within a bar. They push and forward or backward in time within the bar grid or within sub-divisions of the bar. There's a lot of emotion and expression in this area as well. I know you touch on this concept in the video, but I thought I'd elaborate on the idea of groove.
I like your stuff man, you're definetly one of the best music content creators for me right now. Keep up the good work😊
Thank you!
The Rubber Band analogy is good. In HS my theory teacher/band leader used 'sentences' as an analogous device - When you're reading something aloud, sentences have a defined start and end - you can alter how you get from A to B, but you need to do so in a way which makes sense for the context.
Always enjoy your videos as someone raised on classical music (horn player).
I almost never quantize when I'm recording melodies, metronome on, but having a bit of rubato. Hold a note a bit long, then catch up. I'll record it multiple times till I get just the right feel and maybe adjust a few notes that were unintentionally off where I want them, but I find it makes melodies feel more emotionally satisfying. Another place I find adjusting things to be not too rigid is drum parts. Pushing a few notes slightly off the grid can make a positive effect on the groove and sound more real.
One place I used this was this image I had in my head -- a little man with a hat strutting around a Little Prince type (tiny) planet.Very pleased with himself. Exaggerated perspective, his arms bouncing to the beat, but swinging in half time. Kinda herky-jerky. So the drum beat had this exaggerated double hit to make the last beat on the half at the end of the groove pushed closer to the downbeat. Just enough you hear it and it gave that herky-jerky feel to the last beat of groove. Everything else was on the grid, but taking inspiration from that drum groove. A slight filter sweep on 8th note triplets, melody lines for a flute-like synth patch weaving in and out with another higher pitched synth and a repeated refrain that changed the triplets to short phrases that ended with a accentuate downbeat -- what I imagined was him triumphantly punching the air. The off the grid drum hit accentuated his arrogance because he thinks he's just so great. It's slightly sloppy feeling, which is the point.
I like the Rhodes! I need one of those rubber bands.
LOVE the popup of mr beato, Bravo! so funny...I've tried shifting things slightly to humanize, but it often feels "off" on a subconscious level. This is fantastic, thank you!
Two thoughts on this video - one, really good advice about playing expressively, and two, I miss my Rhodes.
Great advice as always.
I play with synth over drum machine loops primarily and all these points are valid to me. Having been in a band and even try to add in a drum machine is a skill in itself that the real drummer might not be ready to embrace but it can be rewarding like neil pert made it. Playing with a real drummer is a gift they can move up or down with other players but in my experience they are not a machine
"stepping on legos..." hahaha!! analogy duly noted. great vid. very helpful insights here. thangs much, nathan.
So when I started out on my first DAW, it didn’t have a grid (and I don’t think it could record MIDI) but you could record to a metronome click. When I got Cubase, it definitely gave me a grid option and then some. But that’s beside the point =]
I’ve done things strictly quantised and more loosely played and things in between. To me, it all depends on what I’m doing and what I am going for. For instance, if I want to play something more rubato and expressive, I want to record just that and not thinking about “what tempo it should be”. There may be one other part but I just play to that. And there are also times where certain parts are programmed/sequenced ahead whilst others are performed. As long as they are not out of alignment at key moments, it can work. And finally, there are cases where everything is programmed/sequenced and that can be fine too.
There are tools that can introduce more “human” performances to programmed material and they are pretty good.
What can be really telling is when you record your own performance of something and you see how “off” you are, either on the beat or with note durations. (This is why I don’t trust transcriptions =] ). But then again, that’s the charm of having a human perform something =].
Thanks👍
Thanks you for your help, and reminders✨
9:56 Hypnotic. I could watch and listen for a while.
Thanks Jay!
Good content brother thank you
I did 12 years of piano under an old Soviet teacher, Vladimir Babadzhan. Never played scales or anything at all using a metronome. I think a musician has to learn to get the rhythm right and consistent without it. It’s an important skill and I think relying on a metronome to provide you with internally consistent rhythm will hold you back from developing that sense. Imo feeling > counting.
Love your videos, they go into areas that many other videos about music don’t go into. I’m definitely use this in some of my music.
Also, Idk why or if others had this experience but the first song you played made it hard to hear you. Everything after 0:50 sounded good though.
I always enjoy your stuff...thanks!
I love the grid!
You might be the 21st century Vangelis, only better at least because you are accessible to guys like me, and take time to make presentations about music production like this.
Obviously don't let this message puff you up, but i just want to say i appreciate what you are doing, and thank you.
Straight music is a groove unto itself. Intention, stability and movement are so important. I do love me a modulated clock though - shame most daws cant generate clocks on a track by track basis.
Great video! Did you get rid of your prophet 12 and poly evolver? Also I see the Muse in the background, hope to see a vid on that from you!
Unavoidable when stepping on Lego. Especially when going to the bathroom in the middle of the night. And rubato is nice when performing
I have two pieces I composed, both made on my laptop. One has a German title, the other has a Japanese title. If you listen to both, you'll notice the second piece sounds more like it was played, while the other is more stuck on the grid. They're on my channel if you want to take a listen. I think the grid is better for electronic music, anyway.
If you pay attention to a well-tempered clavier, you will notice that, for example, preludes have their own sound time size. Within which the tempo can change, from accelerated to slow, which greatly affects the expressiveness. Of course, this was due, at the time of the creation of these works, to the lack of an instrument - the piano. But with modern interpretation, the internal score is often not taken into account in combination with the global sound time inherent in the work. Which just leads to the ...meat grinder...
As a former studio engineer, I think what Beato means is something that the grid represented in its time. I saw it too in the early 2000’s. It was producers trying to make perfect music for music that didn’t need to be perfect. Over time this mindset sucked the soul out of so much popular music, and we’re seeing the repercussions of that now. It became a focus on form over soul. It also allowed lousy musicians to be able to advance in the industry because the technology that “the grid” represents was able to cover up their poor musicianship and artistry. Trying to do electronic music without a grid or quantization is generally speaking not a very good idea. However, you shouldn’t need to perfectly grid and pitch correct most rock bands that come through a studio. In a lot of ways, it’s pretty antithetical to what rock, hard rock, punk, etc. should be. And I don’t mean to say you should never play to a click track. What I’m talking about was what became pretty much a universally accepted approach to music production and it sucked.
Rick Beato gonna be big mad
I miss the days before being big mad was his whole brand
I really like that some drum machines (MPC) are intentionally off grid. I watched the video about comparing new Rolands (MC-s & TR-s) and MPC. While the Rolands are analytically precise, the MPC is kind of randomized (even if the 100% quantization is turned on). I personally can´t hear it, but I like it more than the rolands. The drummers are detecting it more effectively. Simply - Wabi Sabi 🙂 - the art of imperfection. But as the japanese ZEN masters say - to master the imperfection, you have to first understand the perfection and this is something what every young player hates 🙂
Interesting to have a perspective of a classical trained pianist. I think to lock certain notes to the grit is important and that doesn't kill the music. Playing all over the place is a real killer. But what is most important is velocity and note length, which should have variety. That's where a big part of a non static feel comes from.
Yeah and one thing is that if you repeat a phrase that uses a pitch bend, slightly editing the pitch bend to be a bit different on the second time, for that feeling of the "player" (really just a midi instrument) is kind of ad-libbing it a bit, it gives a lot of flavor to midi flutes to do that...
Idk about your take on the 'feeling forced' thing, I got really good at manufacturing feeling - I will often start from a quantised arangement, then playback and adjust to get the pocket I'm after. Can be harder with some things than others.
Just here to listen and learn, not judge or blow my own trumpet (on or off the grid).🙂
I think the tendency to think melodically in terms of phrases is actually a benefit of learning on a wind instrument first. Those instruments require you to breathe to play them, and there tends to be a natural tendency to swell the volume in the middle of the phrase, and round out the ends, and to be conscious of how staccatto and legato styles and things like vibrato can really change the expression. Keyboards are basically percussive so expression mostly comes down to volume, sustain, and arrangement. Of course organs and synths (and harsichords) have some differences from piano. organs control volume through the pedal, but can also sustain indefinitely. With synths it depends on the patch, and the different envelopes. Some synth patches sustain or have a slow attack and you use those differently from fast percussive patches. Of course the mod wheels, aftertouch, pedals, and pitch wheel give you even more options on a synth.
I've invested in an 88-key controller and am slowly learning to play in motifs. I'm concerned about becoming overly pianistic though. I have this idea that many of the voice leading rules, particularly regarding leaps, originate more from the limitations of acoustic instruments than from some inherant sense of musicality.
With synths and DAWs, we don't have these limits. In the back of my mind I sometimes wonder how to make musical sense out of large leaps.
I think a good example of taking too many liberties with expression is Leonard Bernstein conducting Hungarian Dances. Too many tempo changes such that it seems hard to imagine people dancing to it without stepping on each other’s feet.
I have lately fallen into a trend of playing everything rubato, attaching each rhytmical element to some inital human pulse, usually a freeform improvisation. If I want to change the timing between two pulses I change the tempo in my daw between these rather than move stuff on the timeline (and when I do this have noticed that I usually change two pulses, lenghtening one, shortening another, the rubber band). This means I usually start out with 100 bpm on my daw but hide the grid and don't use a click. The fluctuating tempo in these projects can best be though of as % of initial tempo rather than bpm. It's a slow process, as for instance it renders copy+pasting impossible, you just have to play stuff again by ear, but I retain the live feeling of the music that I want. Some day I'll probably figure out some more efficent way to do this.
Interesting stuff but I was hoping for a deeper discussion of the effects of micro-timing and accents. Maybe I missed a bit but was even basic stuff like swing mentioned?
“untethered meandering nonsense” is a description I must memorize. This is both what I want to avoid and my most frequent dissatisfaction with amateur electronic music.
Some of my favourite - and earliest favourite - artists made a lot of their music in a very theatrical way, and that always seems to mean very variable time keeping for a dramatic effect that you can’t get otherwise and lots of stretched pauses: Debussy, early Queen, Jeff Buckley, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Enekk, Pink Floyd, Metallica, Black Sabbath, Jethro Tull, Björk, Alanis Morisette, Rage Against the Machine, Portishead, Radiohead, some other head… that’s what I would listen to in my 90’s childhood, and that kind of dramatic aesthetic seems to be intrinsic to what I want out of the music I make. Yet here I am trying to create something I love on a fucking computer…
…anyone wanna start a band?
8:18 begging for a full version of this
Music evolves inside humans it ebbs and flows within and around us, we are part of it. The grid is an aspect, or a product of the music, like the marks of a river on sand. The grid is just the sand or maybe a rock in the river.
👍🏾
The problem with randomly changing the tempo is that's not how humans play music. DrumGizmo was, and still is, the only plugin which allows you to emulate that way of playing music. And it's incredibly effective. It will often start drifting out of time, then "notice" and overshoot slightly trying to catch up, then speedup and do the same. It doesn't do everything a human does when it comes to tempo, but it's the closest. Even those multi hundred dollar plugins with tens of GB of content don't do that. The way I do it is only one track is quantized to the grid, and sometimes not the percussion. Then that track is used as a metronome to other tracks. That often works better because you're not doing the "expressiveness tax" game, which is about as worse as the other "alternatives."
And this is why AI will never succeed in replacing human input.
Sorry off topic but I didn't know there was a full keyboard poly evolver,m wow that thing must be cool
Lol is that an Iridium 👀
4:31 i refuse to think that's a "boomer take" you can write, comose, create music with a laptop, but it's still a tool not an instrument imo
Btw, I think you use cubase and there's really amazing tempo syncing that goes the _other_ way (meaning you play it in freely and sync the GRID to the playing)
A naive question: What are all these equipments around you? It would be a good idea for a video that you explain their usage and why you have them.
what’s the name for the outro soundtrack?
It has a name, but hasn't been released yet :) coming soon
What's the track at 9:54?
Yes I wasted a lot of time trying to humanize a programmed drum beat. Nudging little bars, thinking what it needed rather than zooming out and feeling it.
9/10 id want to change the beat anyway and all that microtiming humanization got deleted lol
I don’t think most people who say “QuaNtIzInG kIllED mUsIc” even really understand what they are hearing or what the grid even does.
As Dilla demonstrated, being on or off the grid isn’t the thing that matters. It is the relationship between what is played, and what isn’t played, that matters. Sometimes being on the grid is good. Sometimes being on the grid is bad. Sometimes what you need is a swung grid. Other times you need a consistent grid that is just slightly in-front-of/behind the grid used for everything else. Sometimes having a part being entirely free from being on beat is what is needed.
Bang a stick for 5 minutes them sync your DAW to it.
That grid is frustrating.
Just my opinion I am wasting time if I don't play to a click or quantizing notes on the way in.
Choose your resolution and go
There's a difference between playing to a beat, and being gated by a beat. One is clockwork, and the other isn't. There is a huge difference for me between listening to a piece that has been played by a person, and one which has purely mechanical timing. Does snapping to a grid kill the music? Does a sequencer kill the experience? Depends on the listener. For sequenced music, my mind starts focusing on the timing instead of the music, as if a jackhammer was operating. It's a completely different experience than when someone has played to a metronome.
Consider James Brown "Make it Funky." It keeps a tight rhythm, and it isn't clockwork. Would you still consider it a funk groove if the performance was subsequently snapped to a grid? Would the performance be improved? I think that is Beato's point, that snapping a performance to a grid, instead of improving the band's timing, is what "kills" music.
J Dilla
Hey, I like making untethered nonsense! :) Not always, though
Quantize is like autotune… for when you run out of skills…
"Save the moments when you want expressiveness for an impactful moment" Expresiveness shouldn't be confined to some peak point of the track.The whole track should be expressive. A band playing shouldn't keep rigit time (unlesss the genre calls for metronomic rigitity like techno), and in the past bands playing live and in the studio didn't keep rigit time... When it comes to classical musuc, conductors aren't metronomes either. Rather the opposite. You're more making a virtue out of necessity (people having to lock to some DAW's grid)
i do what i want
Is it me, or do these points not really address the arguments of how the grid has killed pop and rock music? Rock music is about emotional expressiveness, and playing to the grid eliminates the natural feel that a rhthym section can create. (Separately, over compression makes things worse by removing dynamic expression.) I have done experiments of forcing a rock song from the 70s onto the grid using a DAW, and the effect is discernible and--to my ears--negative. An interesting song becomes quite boring. I don't even think the logic presented here is self-consistent. The grid is the opposite of a rubber band. It has no stretchiness or play whatsoever.
Don’t quantise, it sounds inhuman and artificial. You are clearly an accomplished player, quantising just filters out your personality and any talent you have as a player. Or quantise your kicks and hats but leave the toms and snares.
I saw Untethered Meandering Nonsense open for Overwrought Linear Minutia at the Hollywood Bowl in '78. 🔥
In defense of un-quantized music against Debussy's quote, quantization didn't exist during Debussy's lifetime.
His performers couldn't achieve the tighness of computers. There would be suble differences in timing. Debussy didn't know quantization as we know it.
Do not quantize anything! That's an order.
Don't tell me what to do. You're not my dad!
Are you?
You never know.
Anyone else like to just let this guy talk in the background and leave the room?
Joker 2 looks awful
The whole "but its the mistakes that make the music" is just god of the gaps fallacious reasoning for why peoples' music sucks...Give me a robotically perfect great, catchy song every day over some "oh so human warts and all" boring pretentious run on sentence of crappiocca
Its crazy how many people don't even try to play a real instrument or learn any theory and really enjoy clicking notes into the grid. The grid serves it's purpose, but how boring and lifeless.
Yeah, people have fun in different ways than we do. what a shame.
I mean, yes, but also open your mind a bit.
I've seen people make the most beautiful music that way becuase that IS their instrument, or they have a disability and it's the only way they can physically make music.
Sticking to the grid is a choice, and if you know your instrument and how to play it because you've prqacticed it and understand it, you can choose to either stick to it or go outside it as a creative choice.
Learning to make music that way is just another accessible route for people.
And please don't take this the wrong way, it's not meant as an insult to your personally, but by saying what you are you're writing off entire genres of music that are just as valid and exciting to some people as performance based music is, it feels a bit elitest. Everyone has their own preferecnes, and that's fine, but your music is no more or less valid than someone elses.
I agree learning to play a traditional instrument is a good thing but it absolutely sholdn't be a requirement.
I feel like a good example of someone learning to click notes in the grid as their instrument is nick mira
The guy just ears stuff or whistles stuff and translates it to the grid at lightning speed because he's at a point where duplicating/editing/removing/repitching must be second nature to him
Kinda like how people who write staff proficiently can write music without hearing it, but with the modern speed of copy paste lol
please don’t