Rhythm sense

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Pestario

tell your friends
What determines how well someone can follow or catch a rhythm? What makes it easy for some people to nod along to grime but hard for others for example? Why can't some people even clap along to house?

This is a topic which has occupied my mind for a long time. My shallow dive into wikipedia has brought up this theory on the human appreciation of rhythm:

In his series How Music Works, Howard Goodall presents theories that rhythm recalls how we walk and the heartbeat we heard in the womb. However neither would seem to have any survival value in Man's evolution. More likely is that a simple pulse or di-dah beat recalls the footsteps of another person. Our sympathetic urge to dance is designed to boost our energy levels in order to cope with someone, or some animal chasing us -- a fight or flight response. It is possibly also rooted in courtship ritual
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This may explain the human 'need' for rhythm appreciation but doesn't explain why some people or groups of people (you know where I'm going with this) are better at it than others. Is it a result of genes or conditioning or both?

Anyone know more about it?
 
mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
My brother still can't tell drum and bass from techno/house/dubstep etc tempowise, even after having me pipe it directly into his lugholes for the last 15 years.
 
straight

straight

wings cru
my girlfriend played double bass to grade 8 and can't get her head round what tempo dubstep is. Its a funny thing though, ive friends who've Djd for years and cant keep time, it seems to vary greatly person to person. Ive always found that having an understanding of musical theory and tempo makes djin a piece of piss.
 
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S

sing_minimal

Well-known member
what makes it easier for some is the practice in my opinion. subconcious practice sort of.. your sense of rhythm is growing together with music you listen to..the thing is, majority of western music is very conservative rhythm wise and therefore you can't get that much of practice..unless you dig a little deeper and open ears to some rhytmically more challenging structures..and the reward is awesome..it's just dangerous it will make you appreciate the conservative music a bit less : )
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I dunno, some waltzes and pavanes and things like that are quite complicated, aren't they? Though of course they're scarcely 'popular' forms of music these days.

Meshuggah have some pretty crazy rhythms, it's just a shame I can't get over the death-y vocals.
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
Mr. Tea said:
Meshuggah have some pretty crazy rhythms, it's just a shame I can't get over the death-y vocals.
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Try Sunny Murray, Rashied Ali, Han Bennick, Hamid Drake, Ed Blackwell, etc, etc... Much crazier than Meshuggah, and without the death metal-esuqe vocals.
 
STN

STN

sou'wester
And what about Chris Corsano?

I always think of Miles's On The Corner as being totally comprised of rhythm.
 
Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Mr. Tea said:
I dunno, some waltzes and pavanes and things like that are quite complicated, aren't they? Though of course they're scarcely 'popular' forms of music these days.
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I've heard quite a bit of English and Scottish (not to mention Shetland and Hardanger) traditional music that's pretty wonky. And I don't know much about it, but Eastern European folk is supposed to be rhythmically fairly interesting. The whole thing about Western music all being rhythmically foursquare and aneamic seems to be a myth (or at least a serious overgeneralization) deriving mainly from the fact that the western classical tradition largely developed out religious choral chanty stuff and thus traditionally puts more emphasis on harmony / melody than rhythm, plus a bit of good old fashioned orientalism.
 
mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
Slothrop said:
IMO DnB needs more varied time signatures like it needed Courtney Pine collaborations.
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It seems a bit of a contradiction (in the current junglistic best case scenario) to have unpredictable, sweep-you-off-your-feet Remarc-style chopped beats sitting on top of a bog-standard undercarriage - it becomes too predictable after a while. I don't see why there can't be some more invention with time signatures whilst keeping things propulsive and coherent.
 
boombox

boombox

...
My brother still can't tell drum and bass from techno/house/dubstep etc tempowise, even after having me pipe it directly into his lugholes for the last 15 years.
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My brother still can't tell good music from execrable/abominable/woeful (read in Alan Green accent) etc. quality-wise, even after buying container-loads of random CDs for the last 5 years.
 
P

Pestario

tell your friends
I guess no one has a theory on how we develop our sense of rhythm? There doesn't seem to be much information out there (on the internet). So anyway my best guess is that it's a mixture of genes and conditioning eg. being exposed to complex rhythms at a very young age.


Anyway, to continue the discussion on rhythm in general...

There really does need to be more experimentation in time signatures in electronic music. I know of only a few tracks that are in anything but 4/4, mostly 3/4 stuff. There was a great Fanu track that was at dnb tempo but in 3/4 time so it sounded almost like a dubstep track. Forgot the name tho.

Someone needs to make an electronic version of 'Time Out' by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. That album was all about time signature experimentation (Blue Rondo a la Turk is still one of my all time faves, it's in 9/8 time). Speaking of which, in the liner notes to the most recent release of it, Dave Brubeck mentions that there is a jungle remix of 'Take Five'. I don't suppose anyone has this?
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
The tediously-titled but actually quite good The Far Out Son Of Lung and the Ramblings of a Madman (track 2 on ISDN) by FSOL is in triple time. It's sort of jazzy trip-hop, I guess.
 
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