New Rhythms

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Are there ever 'new' rhythms, or are all rhythms given in – ooh - the structure of the universe?

― the pinefox, Wednesday, 1 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Specific example that prompts this: when BAGGY came along it dragged an insistent rhythm. You know what I mean - think 'Fool's Gold'. I wondered, is this rhythm new? Why have I never heard it before? Surely a rhythm can’t be new? So how old was it?

― the pinefox, Wednesday, 1 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Pinefox, the 'Baggy' rhythm is of course derived from a drum break played by Clyde Stubblefield on the 1970 James Brown track 'Funky Drummer' - it was a staple hip-hop sample ages before baggy. I presume that sampling technology has allowed for loads of new rhythms to be created - most drummers would be hard-pressed to physically replicate the drumming on happy hardcore tunes or whatever.

― Andrew L, Wednesday, 1 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Ziggy Modeliste.

― dave q, Wednesday, 1 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Rhythms being just math, they're all "out there" already. Some are still unheard, but not for too much longer.

― Mark, Wednesday, 1 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Anyone know what the human perceptual limits are on the lengths of time between beats?

― Josh, Wednesday, 1 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

*Snaps fingers*: that...

It's talked abt in the Stockhausen literature, which means I can look it up, if I remember.

― mark s, Wednesday, 1 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I disremember exactly, but am quite sure that the ears are more precepted than the most talented hands of the most talented drummer by at least three orders of magnitude.

― Sterling Clover, Wednesday, 1 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

That cannot be right. Given that a good drummer can manage a demi- semi-quaver at 60 bpm (ie beats at an interval of 1/8 of a second) and taking orders of magnitude to be factors of 10 that gives us the ability to distinguish between rhythms differing by only 1/800 of a second. Now, 800Hz is the pitch of a note almost an octave above A440, so if what you said above is the case we wouldn't hear most tones as continuous.

― Richard Tunnicliffe, Wednesday, 1 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Is there a gestalt effect involved with 'continuous' tones?

― Josh, Wednesday, 1 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

OK: this is Stockhausen. Between 8 pr second and 16 per second is the shift between playability (he's talking about piano) and potentially discernible pitch (tho it's more of a pitched buzz): 40/50 cycles is approx the lowest note on an ordinary piano. But neither a piano note nor a drum beat are pure, simple, dimensionless pocks: they take place in time (have attack, body and decay), and merge into one another. A "purer", shorter pock probably only begins to be clearly pitched round abt 100 cycles: before that you can make it out as a buzz not a note. Of course the single pock has to be long enough in itself to register. And we jhear pitch mouch better when our ears can catch hold of shaping overtones (very hard to discern the ROOT of a "pure" sinewave: we tend to hear first or even second overtone more immediately).

― mark s, Wednesday, 1 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

(Sorry that stops being Stockhausen after the first sentence, and becomes me glossing Arthur Benade's Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics.)

― mark s, Wednesday, 1 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

What I mean by the above -- take that "pitched buzz" and drop three beats from it, somewhere in the middle, perhaps even nonconsecutive. The ear will notice!

― Sterling Clover, Wednesday, 1 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Well, yes, we would probably hear the loss of a few peaks and troughs in our 800Hz signal, but it would be as distortions to the tone, not as specific beats.

― Richard Tunnicliffe, Wednesday, 1 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

*backpedaling furiously* also, I foolishly used orders of magnitude in my typical cs major sense, thinking powers of 2 not 10. Ah well, i still sound dumb.

― Sterling Clover, Wednesday, 1 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I know that in Jamaica there are beats and rhythms that get popular, are used for 100s of songs, and abandoned once a new "riddim" hits the scene. So as you might say about a comfy sweater from Domsey's, it's not new, but it's new to you.

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 2 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I'm not sure that the question of speed of a beat is the important one....lots of drum'n'bass music made use of ultra-fast beats, many too fast for a drummer to play ,but there was no new beat there, just a faster version of an old one. I remember, though the first time I heard a Timbaland-produced record, not 'getting' the beat at all, it feeling completely out of kilter and it being only after I'd heard it a few time that it all fell into place...I went from hating the beat to finding it totally addictive in the course of a few plays. I'm sure you could find precedents for his kind of stuff but it certainly felt like a 'new' rhythm to me. If there are to be new rhythms its probably through complexity that we''' find them

― Mat O, Thursday, 2 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Actually jungle wasn't just about speeding up the beat - it was as much about chopping, splicing, cross-mutating, constructing entirely new rhythms out of single beat samples. A lot of it's as syncopated as Timbaland, it's just that Timbaland's beats are at a slower tempo and therefore sound more off-kilter (this is also true for 2-step).

― Tim, Thursday, 2 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

But actually what's interesting about pinefox's question is not "could there just be arbitrary new beats" but which beats become *genres*.

You could say in dance at the moment we have

hip-hop (early 80s) hip-hop "funky drummer" hip-hop 90s house / techno / 4 on the floor jungle 2-step

are there any more beats which are almost genres in themsleves.

Anyone know a cool break on an obscure record they'd predict could become the defining beat of a genre, the way the Amen break did for junge?

― phil, Thursday, 2 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Actually this is generally true of dancehall, right - they tend to be programmed rhythms of course.

The thing with something like 2-step is that it's a style of rhythm as opposed to a single rhythm per se. The style has increased to insane levels of different syncopations these days, so much so that some of the more experimental tracks are almost impossible to dance to - very Photek-like, or Squarepusher if he really was trying to drill-ify 2-step. Generally though I don't think it's likely that in the future a single breakbeat will have the same influence as the amen did - the amen's explosion coincided with a new way of sampling beats, so it would require a radical new technology to happen again, methinks.

― Tim, Thursday, 2 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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