What is a groove?

[jancivil]

Surreal complexity is beside the point of groove, isn't it? Beyond this, I can't know what it actually does absent a proof of it. 'a drum machine was used'; did no one do anything better than that the whole track? I wasn't there. If this is true, I have to say my experience with making a machine give me a live result compared with a grid tells me I would not enjoy the same response.

Phil Collins used a drum machine for "In the Air Tonight" because he wanted a mechanical rhythm. Sometimes you want it loose and human, other times you want it absurdly robotic. When you say "was nothing better done?", better for whom? Grid based sequencing, whether the grid is equal in division, swung slightly, or based on a repeating one bar groove, has been a massive part of electronic music, some of which I enjoy for it's specific properties.

Well, my assessment of these comments is, you're moving the goalposts. I'm not making overarching statements about music or suggesting anyone comport oneself in one way or another in a larger sense musically, or that enjoying things I don't enjoy is wrong.

Was nothing better done in terms of timing than a drum machine? Objectively. I'm stating a position. I think that the algorithm of swing or randomization applied is definitely inferior to what an interesting drummer brings, by a long long ways. While I'm not worried by you liking the other thing, I think you could open yourself up to the thing I'm talking about instead of justifying that with this rhetoric. I think that would be growth and forward-thinking.

'Impossibly perfect'; yeah, quantization as 'perfection' doesn't do a thing for me as an idea and I have found it wanting in practice. Tick tock, tick tock, who cares? Experienced musicians bring intelligence and context, history, humor, a point of view; nuance and sensitivity, and magic. Why would one settle for a quantized execution? This is devolving.

Perfection isn't really my bag in music, I find it stifles creativity, but when it comes to timing, I just really enjoy well programmed music that hangs on the grid yet punches through or transcends it. It depends how it's done. To make a statement that all music with rigid timing is a step back, seems a bit closed minded and a bit of a "high road" mentality. What about a holistic look at it? Sure, you may not like it, but that's a matter of taste rather than evolution.

What about a holistic approach? I thought the topic was 'What is a groove?'
I'm fine with your accusation of 'high road' or snob, though. I think we're at an impasse as to what really grooves.
You're framing my statement conveniently for posing an argument against, but it isn't my meaning and I didn't say it. I am saying that a human groove is superior to a clock, for all kinds of reasons. I think in a culturo-historical sense it really is a devolvement. Cf. HG Wells The Time Machine.

Clearly we come from very different cultures, but I think where I am coming from must be more appropos to groove than growing up with computers. If that's snobbery, so be it, I'm not abashed by that. I abhor a one-bar loop, I don't think I can be moved from my position by any tricky argument, it's inferior to something which breathes and moves. It's right peculiar that people are not bored as I am with it. And I think the 'robotic' aesthetic is past played out. So you have a taste for it, I'm not driven to move you from it but as 'groove' is the criteria, I think my reasoning is hard to get rid of.

[Tricky-Loops]

Clocks from the Black Forest/Germany are making groovy music:

[jancivil]

Here's some grid-based music. Skip to 1:35 if you get bored of the intro.

Squarepusher

Does this have push and pull? Does it have a groove? Does it have "swing" (in the jazz sense of the word as in, a pleasing balance of proportion)? I'd be interested in what anyone else thinks, too.

I found after say four bars of it, which was initially attractive and might have suited your arguments well, that it's just completely stiff; the drum fills, that has to be 100% quantized to grid. I hate that, it's death, you're exposing me to cyanide.

The jazz sense of the word swing is more objective than that, it indicates at the eighth note level you're swaying the second of two basically later than center (or there can be 16th note-level swing).
It IS a quality of feeling that is not going to obey a clock or a probabilities way of thinking, though. Even if the drummer seeks to place that late or slightly rushed snare the same the next go-round, he's not going to do it as a machine. I'm sure the machine is the one that's not getting it right, though. Let me be perfectly clear, then.

So no, for me, that is not even a groove, it's a rut, it only bears out my position. If there would be a real opposite to grooving, swinging music here it is.

[ariston]

Groove is the movement of a woman's hips when she walks. 'nuff said.

[Tricky-Loops]

Groove is the movement of a woman's hips when she walks. 'nuff said.

Only if she has an artificial hip joint and you can hear it clicking...

[Sendy]

If I seem to be moving the goalposts, we're either at cross purposes on some of the finer points, or it's because I'm just not that good at these sorts of arguments. I just enjoy what I like, and find it interesting to get others' views, even if they're diametrically opposed to mine.

I don't hugely appreciate the moral element you seem fond of adding into discussions about music, where the person you disagree with is some kind of force for devolution (unless we're talking about cookie cutter EDM, in which case, I'm with you all the way), but on the other hand, I'd rather people be passionate than complacent, because having someone vigourously disagree with you can only really ever do you good, wheras complacency is a disease.

That's also why I don't hugely mind other people calling me a snob I just care, a lot, about creativity.

[lotus2035]

Some random thoughts (more like a rant) inspired by this thread not particularly directed at anyone.

Our perception of music is entirely subjective and usually it comes down to what you were exposed to growing up and how open-minded you are to new experiences later on.
If you could transport a musician from the year 1500 and let them hear a simple blues song from the 1950's they may very well think it was the sound of hell itself even though that track may be the pinnacle of warm human fuzziness to someone who grew up with it.

I was reared on rock, pop and Irish folk music in the 70's, 80's like just about everybody in Ireland and later listened to metal, I still value them all but what drew me and a lot of twenty something Irish people to electronic dance music in the early to mid 90s WAS it's computer like precision. A lot of European dance music for example, originating in Germany and other countries on the continent and the U.K. was more about power and driving precision which created an emotional response of excitement similar to how driving rock/metal does. It was a NEW TAKE on music and I understood it's appeal from day one despite my non-robotic background.

This brings up the very clichéd idea that precise computer music is listened to by robotic, emotionless, naive, freedom hatin' socialists who probably can't reproduce because they are so sterile whereas anyone who plays real instruments or builds their own blood-stained musical instruments from hand-made material are the pinnacle of warm fuzzy, heartfelt, salt o' the earth humanity. It's total horse shit and nothing but a form of elitism from one side (which may very well in some sense have its roots in the traditional hostility of the USA to disco, electronic music and all it's modern offshoots). "Nobody listens to techno!" said rapper Eminem in 2002 when EDM was bigger than ever in Europe, (Oh M&Ms where would hip-hop be today if it wasn't for those geeky Japanese electronics but that's another thread).

I've met people who scoffed at computer music who were completely heartless dead-eyed empty asswipes and also met people who listen to nothing but overtly precise electronic music who were the nicest people you will ever meet. Of course you get those who are vice versa but that's my point.
The connection between the music you create/listen to and your own capacity for compassion or warmth or whatever the f**k makes us more human are two entirely different things that have nothing to do with each other. It's an illusion but nevertheless the demeaning hyperbole thrown at electronic music will long continue. I personally don't care because I don't listen to much EDM anymore as is the case for much music I used to listen to although I respect it all.
Modern music may have hit a wall. Maybe the revolution started by the Beatles and the like has reached the end.

[MFXxx]

I've always coined the saying "In space there is no sound and here in lies the groove"

[ghettosynth]

If you tell me a clock is groovy, I just don't believe we mean the same thing. It doesn't work for me.

I know, you dislike music that conforms to a grid. Perhaps groovy isn't the right word, but I believe you can make a grid dance, by carefully considering the elements you place on it and their parameters. I am into "computer music", I grew up with chiptunes in the way some others may have grown up with folk music.

I know that someone brought up Wikipedia before, but, as a reminder:

Musicologists and other scholars began to analyze the concept of "groove" in the 1990s. They have argued that a "groove" is an "understanding of rhythmic patterning" or "feel" and "an intuitive sense" of "a cycle in motion" that emerges from "carefully aligned concurrent rhythmic patterns" that sets in motion dancing or foot-tapping on the part of listeners.

So, every rhythm has a groove. The rhythm is the definition of the notes in time, the groove is a repeating aligned modification of timing and strength that can be independent of the rhythm. Many drummers, for example, have a recognizable groove that impacts whatever they play. Even a drum machine, sans swing, has a groove. Arguably, we might say that it's a "straight" groove. That is, the straight groove is the groove that does not modify the pattern in any way.

Some patterns sound "groovy" without any particular modification. Perhaps this is because our brains process them as a modification of a simpler, less groovy, pattern? I'm just speculating here, I haven't researched this.

At any rate, the question of "what is groovy" is, in some sense, distinct from the question of "what is a groove." Groovy measures how we perceive a rhythm, adding a "groove" to a rhythm might make it more groovy, or less groovy. We can call any rhythm a groove, but we may not find every rhythm groovy.

Variations of swing are a groove, a shuffle is a groove, the absence of either is a groove, which sounds more groovy depends on how you define the mapping from groove space to "groovy." I'm not sure that there's a total order defined on that space for any one particular person, let alone across all people.

tl; dr: grooves don't have to be groovy.

[vurt]

whatever it is madonna wanted us in it.

[vurt]

Groove is the movement of a woman's hips when she walks. 'nuff said.

Only if she has an artificial hip joint and you can hear it clicking...

nope.
my hips click, was born with "clicking hips"
obviously didnt become apparent till i started crawling.
its actually quite common.

it does however mean i will be more than likely getting artificial ones sooner than if i didnt have them.

[foosnark]

To me, groove is a subjective, synergistic thing that comes from timing and dynamics, plus repetition. You feel it as a musician (and hopefully as a listener) and it pulls the music together almost gravitationally. Once you're in it, the path of least resistance is to stay in it (thus... a groove). I think the word I'm looking for is entrainment.

To me, even something like this has a definite groove, even though the time signature is unexpected. I feel it a bit more starting around 32 seconds:




In fact, I really like a "lopsided" groove. I think the discussion about space, ghost notes etc. was not too far off the mark because it makes the groove more compelling, but I also agree with Sendy that it doesn't necessarily have to be off the grid.

[Sendy]

Groove is the movement of a woman's hips when she walks. 'nuff said.

Only if she has an artificial hip joint and you can hear it clicking...

nope.
my hips click, was born with "clicking hips"
obviously didnt become apparent till i started crawling.
its actually quite common.

it does however mean i will be more than likely getting artificial ones sooner than if i didnt have them.

My knees do the same thing. It seems to wax and wane over the years, getting worse and better. Sometimes when I stand up my knee will make a loud popping sound that can startle nearby people

[jancivil]

[stringtapper]

I don't know if it's been said here already but anyone who has practiced an instrument with a metronome, and especially practiced jazz, will be aware of the phenomenon of "making" the metronome swing.

Put a metronome at 60bmp or so and then think of the click as being on beats 2 and 4 instead of being on all four beats (all in 4/4 time obviously). Without even playing anything with it you can get that swung feel merely by how you're listening to—or in fact, thinking about—the click.

But the metronome isn't changing! You're changing.