Phrasing in electronic music and the curse of predictability

[t3toooo]

Producers test their tracks against audience response, that's the metric of interest.

I'm guessing by this that you're a top producer; perhaps you'd like to give us all a listen of your latest 3/4 floor burner?

yes,i'm working many years on this topic and it is exactly what i have in my mind.
i had no support from nobody and i do not need it anymore,since i learned to make everything by myself,it's sad that anything else beside 4/4 seems like a bad idea,something that is "against" something.

but it is not.

individuality seems something that become "dangerous".it seems individuality "can" exist only in a accepted frame.

i think it's very important to support unconventional ideas to prevent a hilarious mass market that will control everything like food industries,and to let exist something in between.


i was working a long time on my sound using just a computer,also i'm preparing to create my setup so that it can be played live.
(this is the real hard point)

that gave me a lot of frustration and isn't something you can archive in some months.
i'm glad to post something in the music cafe and i'm fad up about breaking my head about technical things.

personally,i think to go with my ideas and to avoid too many general conventions.
i'm not coming from edm,my goal is to play on stages not in clubs.

i hope i'll post something soon.

[jopy]

Why would a dance tune in 3/4 be so odd? There is a huge genre of waltz music that was extremely popular at one time. No reason it couldn't take off somehow again if there was more flexibility in the way people listened and moved to music.

[ghettosynth]

this thread is called "Phrasing in electronic music and the curse of predictability",so it could be a resource for interesting ideas,instead it is turning out that you must do 4/4,anything else wont be played.

Stop whining and offer your advice.

we can go forever about this but i guess it is rather sad that some people always bring their shit money in it.

That's very sweet.

[debra1rlo]

Why would a dance tune in 3/4 be so odd? There is a huge genre of waltz music that was extremely popular at one time. No reason it couldn't take off somehow again if there was more flexibility in the way people listened and moved to music.

*flies off to create teh dubwaltz genre*

[ghettosynth]

Why would a dance tune in 3/4 be so odd? There is a huge genre of waltz music that was extremely popular at one time. No reason it couldn't take off somehow again if there was more flexibility in the way people listened and moved to music.

That's a legitimate question, but I imagine that it has a lot to do with the asymmetry of the beat and human physicality. The tempo of most waltz's is quite slow. My point, however, was that 3/4 isn't popular, and it's not like it's a radical idea. It's a pretty obvious thing to think about, and reasonably conclude that it isn't likely to be a very good idea.

[jopy]

Why would a dance tune in 3/4 be so odd? There is a huge genre of waltz music that was extremely popular at one time. No reason it couldn't take off somehow again if there was more flexibility in the way people listened and moved to music.

That's a legitimate question, but I imagine that it has a lot to do with the asymmetry of the beat and human physicality. The tempo of most waltz's is quite slow. My point, however, was that 3/4 isn't popular, and it's not like it's a radical idea. It's a pretty obvious thing to think about, and reasonably conclude that it isn't likely to be a very good idea.

Do you reckon that it used to be easier for people to dance to back in the 1800's when they all had that extra leg?

Seriously though, that African music I posted is obviously dance music, but doesn't seem to require a rigid metric structure. I played African music for a while with a master drummer and he always insisted that people dance when we played, but he would also (gently) step on your foot if you tried to tap out the "beat" in a Western sense because that would interfere with understanding how the music actually fit together. What I am objecting to is not the idea that some music has a rigid symmetrical duple structure, but rather, the idea that to be danceable music MUST have a rigid structure.

[Tricky-Loops]

Why would a dance tune in 3/4 be so odd? There is a huge genre of waltz music that was extremely popular at one time. No reason it couldn't take off somehow again if there was more flexibility in the way people listened and moved to music.

*flies off to create teh dubwaltz genre*

I'm about to create Chillcore-Softout-Hardjump-Dancewaltz...please belt your ears...because it's in dangerous, life-threatening 4/4 time signature...

[ghettosynth]

Why would a dance tune in 3/4 be so odd? There is a huge genre of waltz music that was extremely popular at one time. No reason it couldn't take off somehow again if there was more flexibility in the way people listened and moved to music.

*flies off to create teh dubwaltz genre*

Yeah Dawg, Vienna Styleeee!

[ghettosynth]

What I am objecting to is not the idea that some music has a rigid symmetrical duple structure, but rather, the idea that to be danceable music MUST have a rigid structure.

Fair point, perhaps I wasn't clear over the course of the discussion. Music clearly DOES NOT need a rigid structure to simply be danceable. This is clearly true by observation. Some people will dance to anything, some people prefer dancing to quirky things, some people have odd definitions of what constitutes dancing.

There are, however, degrees of dancebility and a rigid structure aids a certain type of dancing. Tempo comes into play as well. This is what the baroque dance specialist was discussing in the article, tempo was mentioned at several points.

When I played in cover bands, we'd play fifties tunes to get the audience dancing. It wasn't just the familiarity, because even newer tunes that had that feel, e.g. crodocile rock, would also get them on the dance floor.

There's a big difference between that and how people dance to EDM where the beat is non-stop and music must be made to be mixed in, even played only partially.

Finally, it's not that it has to be rigid, it's that rigid is what some audiences expect in the style and there are a lot of styles like this which drives the distribution that you observe.

[dusted william]

I don't know about anyone else, but to me I fell in love with Acid House in the late 80's, and have been chasing that high ever since.

I think many types of dance music are very listenable. I love all the delicate tweaks of synths, inner rhymths within the 4/4 structure. All the awesome breakdowns and build ups. Not to mention the incredible production.

I love the structure of it, I love the rules, and what you can do within those constraints.


The most recent band I was in played quite a bit in odd time sig's, and I liked it, it was a challenge. But I still wanted to keep the 2-4-8-or 16 bar structure even if we were in odd time sig's.. I guess that just seems natural to me.

If we were going to were going to use a weird number of bars, I would still prefer if they ended up in even amounts...

dw

[ghettosynth]

Why would a dance tune in 3/4 be so odd? There is a huge genre of waltz music that was extremely popular at one time. No reason it couldn't take off somehow again if there was more flexibility in the way people listened and moved to music.

That's a legitimate question, but I imagine that it has a lot to do with the asymmetry of the beat and human physicality. The tempo of most waltz's is quite slow. My point, however, was that 3/4 isn't popular, and it's not like it's a radical idea. It's a pretty obvious thing to think about, and reasonably conclude that it isn't likely to be a very good idea.

Do you reckon that it used to be easier for people to dance to back in the 1800's when they all had that extra leg?

The waltz is not static, it has a very different physicality than dancing in place in front of a DJ booth.

The Viennese Waltz is a rotary dance where the dancers are constantly turning either toward the leader's right (natural) or toward the leader's left (reverse), interspersed with non-rotating change steps to switch between the direction of rotation. A true Viennese waltz consists only of turns and change steps.

So, now, if you want to launch your 3/4 house variant, you're going to need a new dance to go with it.

Like I said, I think that it has to do with the physicality. It's probably as much cultural as anything else, people associate 3/4 time with music their grandma liked. Give it another 100 years.

[t3toooo]

people associate 3/4 time with music their grandma liked. Give it another 100 years.

oh boy,you're so completely wrong.

it seems you have absolutely no clue about music but it's ok,i'm not going to argue with you.
did you notice you're dominating this dead thread not stopping to write bullshit.

peace,

good luck,

[GeckoYamori]

3/4 is not uncommon in psytrance.

[jancivil]

jancivil you're the conservative as you cannot tolerate new definitions even on a hypothetical level...

reactionary stupidity out of sheer ignorance ['you can't do that': "formal innovation is a revolting child"] is not new.

again, a tu quoque from you when you can't actually manage an argument.

[jancivil]

Why would a dance tune in 3/4 be so odd? There is a huge genre of waltz music that was extremely popular at one time. No reason it couldn't take off somehow again if there was more flexibility in the way people listened and moved to music.

That's a legitimate question, but I imagine that it has a lot to do with the asymmetry of the beat and human physicality. The tempo of most waltz's is quite slow. My point, however, was that 3/4 isn't popular, and it's not like it's a radical idea. It's a pretty obvious thing to think about, and reasonably conclude that it isn't likely to be a very good idea.

in the medieval times three in rhythm was called perfect. 'perfect prolation'.

you have more than once presented a ridiculous opinion as a reasonable conclusion. you have specious language at all points. 'assymetrical'. three expressed geometrically: a triangle. is that necessarily 'assymetrical'?
Conducting 3/4, describes a symmetrical triangle in the air.

'Human physicality', yeah people just couldn't manage a waltz. you can 'play your body like an instrument' to the extent you know a mistake at the 32nd note resolution, but 'people's physicality is going to stumble at three to the bar.

You have no idea what you're talking about, you're a serial bullshitter and you're not any good even at bullshitting. Your intellectual dishonesty is a marvel to observe.