Examples of out-of-time drumming

haha i don't think there's a single track on their compilation cd in which the drumming is in time

best band ever

the drum machine is programmed into a completely different time signature than the guitars, so the fills come in all unexpected-like.

Brian Eno's 'Here Come the Warm Jets' - where the drums come in; because of the strange delay it's put through. I guess it's intentional though, and it sounds good.

Well, it sounds as if the drums have absolutely no correlation to the song at all. Sounds out enough to me.

In "Sister Ray", Moe Tucker briefly interrupts her own metronomic backbeat to tap the rims and simulate the sound of someone "knocking on my chamber door", but she mistakenly adds an extra beat, resulting in her drumming being 180-degrees out of sync. Resulting in the loss of the backbeat for much of the remainder of the song.

I was under the impression that they didn't so much sequence drums as much as they quantised live drumming...

I'm like literally interested in finding examples of really bad (not boring, but BAD) drumming that made it onto a recording. and not like some underground punk or metal release that like 23 people heard, either. something that had a degree of popularity (even if underground or in indie circuits).

I know very little about drum recording, was very surprised when my friend's band (who have a very capable, technically skilled drummer) went the 'sample' route on the recording and just programmed it all. this is a band with not a lot of money, I have to imagine this happens more often now than ever, so we're probably not going to be hearing as much inane shit like the drumming on early Sodom albums anymore.

so ....what are some examples of bad/laughable/off-tempo/"are you kidding me" drumming that made it onto an album? Youtubes welcome but make sure to name the track cos of future dedlinx

Maybe “honky tonk women?” Tempo at the end is almost double that in the beginning

There’s a bunch of examples of drummers speeding up: the Isley Brothers’ “Fight The Power,” Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition,” the long version of “We Are Family” (that one’s pretty subtle, though), and others that aren’t immediately springing to mind.

Louie Louie would seem the obvious - and glorious - example.

The one I always noticed was how late the drum fill comes in after the breakdown on Modern English's "I Melt with You". It's like 'oh crap we are starting again, I got to catch up'.

re The Stones, that track of theirs "I'm Free" sounds like it was recorded while Charlie Watts was taking a nap.

The Flying Lizards' version of "Money." But it was a hit single so you can't argue with their choices there.

Max Weinberg sounds late here at 2:22, after “tie your hair back,” and it always bugged me. It feels like you’re coming to the top of the stairs, and you think there’s one more stair, but there isn’t, and you do a big awkward step.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DXlOHUSnAw

If it sounds good, speeding up in the middle of a recording is fine. Especially in Al Green's "Your Love is Like the Morning Sun".
If you're Albert Goldman, you think Ringo ruined "Strawberry Fields Forever" with his "bricklayer hands".
A friend of a friend made a record where the hired drummer played an out-of-time tom fill in the second bar of the song. The friend and I used to play the opening five seconds of this song over and over for laughs.

This same hired drummer was then brought in to play a show where I was the bass player. He had us determine BPM for every song in the set and programmed it into his visual metronome.
When we started the first song, he was playing it about 2/3 of the proper speed. The guitarist and I just looked at one another and played at this funereal tempo. Our punchy three minute set opener was now a five and a half minute dirge. I think we persuaded him to let us count him in for the rest of the set.

Yeah. Some of Steve Miller Band's 70's hits (like "Take the Money and Run" or "Rockin me") are shockingly sloppy for recordings with that amount of airplay, and not just the drums. I wouldn't say BAD, you know, grooves for days. I'm not saying they're "loose" tracks, I'm saying Pastels level shambolic at times.

Bill Berry, "Losing My Religion"

Bill Berry, "Losing My Religion"

― pplains, Monday, June 14, 2021 9:35 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

(sorry/not sorry.)

― pplains, Monday, June 14, 2021 9:35 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think gygax! got to this first, but I still lol'd.

I mean, his post was from 17 years ago, but you're right.

Guess that makes me ...

...Automatic for the People

This thread makes me realise I don’t know what ‘out of time drumming’ means.

Possessed 'Seven Churches' LP is renowned in metal for having some really sloppy drumming but still being highly regarded. The first track 'The Exorcist' seems to come loose at every fill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YfOGtXz4wg

haha when I heard the songs live (with basically all diff band members from that album other than Becerra" I almost didn't recognize them cos the drumming was proper.

Ouch! Mike Sus' ears will be burning ( in hell!)

Really love the Japanese band Citrus, but their drummer...oof.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XRgHlxVAWA

There are many recordings when a drummer's clock is right on point, but the bassist or rhythm players are not so great at staying on top of the beat which makes the drums sound like they're falling out of time.

There are also many instances when it's pretty obvious that a drummer is struggling while playing to a click, when they'll suddenly start playing a little slower after a bunch of 16th fills.

XP - OL great call! Have you seen this?

https://neojaponisme.com/2008/05/21/podcast-on-citrus-and-emori-takeaki/

when i opened this thread i thought it was going to be about drumming in the style of greg saunier (deerhoof) or questlove on d'angelo albums, for example

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D22mR8pBZek

FFS that didn't work as expected, ah well, starts at 45'01"

the d'angelo beats are examples of what jordan was talking about upthread, re: purposefully playing on and off and around the quarter note in order to give it a swing or a stutter. d'angelo rules because he thinks like a drummer - on black messiah there are some songs where the drums are just slightly "off", but also there are songs where the drums are "right" and the bass is behind or ahead. his whole band grooves like hell; they all do that

greg saunier's "out of time" is very very different. sometimes he goes on a journey and come back right in time, but other times he completely does not, and it is glorious. he is still my favorite drummer

xp

there are lots of examples here, but like 2 minutes into this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i66_U30MoBE

Are you really out of time if you’re consciously out of time 🤔

Not actually out of time but:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URCXvz-xQTw

Long version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hOhKUI0mB8

i suppose it should be noted that playing out of time like that at any sort of length requires the band to be in on it too, heh

Minor threat ? A given for the genre?

XP - OL great call! Have you seen this?

https://neojaponisme.com/2008/05/21/podcast-on-citrus-and-emori-takeaki/

― Maresn3st, Friday, June 18, 2021 11:49 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Oooooh, thanks for that, looks right up my alley!

someone who can do bpm research effectively: in "untitled (how does it feel)", is questlove varying his tempo, or is he playing it straight? he's a bit ahead of the rest of the band/vox, and it's hard to tell what causes it (and it rules)

I'm pretty certain the Questlove is right on the click, and the tempo at the beginning and the end are exactly the same. I think what creates the illusion is that the other instruments are super laid back behind him, especially in the first half.

it's like that on 'Africa', too. I always wonder if they do some editing after the fact to shift back the rest of the band just a tick or 2 more

I wouldn't be surprised...I know they worked on actually playing like that a lot, but I've also heard stories of endless Pro Tools nudging to get the perfect wrong/right groove.

“Hey nineteen” has that feel too

Re: Questlove on Black Messiah, I'm not sure how else they could achieve that effect besides recording a separate take of isolated bass delay and then removing the original.

And it sounds like the vocals are delayed the same amount, so they probably did the same thing with the vocal tracks. I'm guessing but it seems right.

I think it was a lot of both...playing really behind the beat, which those guys can totally do live, and some additional waveform moving to make it extra uncanny.

Run dmc - it’s tricky

I remember reading (in Whiney's book?) that since the samples on those early PE albums were limited to something like 8 seconds, a lot of the tracks feature the Bomb Squad triggering the samples in real time, and that human factor nudges a lot of the songs in and out of perfect quantized sound, with cool results. The thing about any band that plays well together is that the time doesn't have to be absolutely perfect, per se, since a good band can adjust on the fly to make just about about anything sound good. Like, I doubt Fugazi is ever perfectly in time, but that band is about as tight as it gets. For that matter, being perfectly in time ironically is not always ideal. I watched one of those Rick Beato videos about why so much pop music grates on old people, and one answer is that everything is perfectly pegged down to a grid, and our ears sometimes bristle at hearing something so unnaturally perfect.

Tl/dr

PE. Fugazi. Grid. Rick Beato.

so you think my drumming's out of time?
it don't make me money

You’re a drummer ?

Listening to Joy of a Toy today and Robert Wyatt's drumming on Song For Insane Times is pretty wayward, especially at the start.

I can't help but notice two bad edits in the Stranglers' Walk on By at 1:31 and 3:27. They give the false impression of sloppy playing particularly from JB.

Stan Lynch’s unpredictable drumming on the early Tom Petty albums are easily among the most exciting parts of them and a lot was lost when management/Jeff Lynne/Petty booted him from the band.

"Walk a Thin Line" by Fleetwood Mac. Lindsey played drums on it.

I've always thought the drum part in "Dreams" was odd (or hard to follow), but it's an eight-bar loop.

Sepultura - "Morbid Visions"

I saw the pseudo-Shaggs in 2016 or so opening for Neutral Milk Hotel, scared my friends how excited I was about that. But I remember thinking it was kind of amazing "normal" musicians could learn to play in the polynontime the real sisters played in naturally. About as amazing to me as that humans can play "Piano Phase" live.

At one of the Jandek shows in LA, the Rep got on the drums and I was kinda stunned at how distinct his drumming is and how resistant to change it is even after 30 years. Years of low-fi Staring At The Cellophane and here it is right in front of you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7jvYSmoh7M

lol at thread pun.

You want out of time, I was learning how to play "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey" on guitar, and there's a blatant cut/edit at the beginning that shifts Ringo's timing into something literally impossible to exactly replicate. Around the 8 second mark:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyV3zCq1OHM

Lol yeah, the edit makes the last bar of the intro 7/8, and then going into a slightly different tempo. Like, it's possible to play that live, but there's no reason to.

I'm not sure! Like, as a drummer, maybe, but as a band it might be too hard to keep together. Same with, say, "Black Dog," which really can't be played as recorded, not easily. Or, I guess, as you say, reasonably, lol.

huh?

Yeah I don't really understand that one either (Black Dog).

I just meant that the musical payoff to recreate that spliced in intro would be beside the point, but plenty of prog/math/metal/jazz etc bands can pull off a group tempo shift. My band does it live when transitioning between tunes sometimes (it's not always pretty, but we have a sense memory for the general range of a given groove, and ideally can pull something together between beats 1 & 2, at least 2 & 3).

sorry. i was referring to "everybody..." -- it's not out of time. the first kick you hear is the 1 and all the snare hits are on the & of 2

Ohhh