Fascinating discussion of the Amen break's replication of the Golden Ratio 
http://www.constructingtheuniverse.com/Amen Break and GR.html
http://www.constructingtheuniverse.com/Amen Break and GR.html
Amen break and Golden Ratio
- Thread starter dHarry
- Start date
mixed_biscuits
_________________________
"Culture is impossible without a rich public domain" - the judge's comments quoted at the end of this are very good.
Yeah, this makes sense, but as dj pimp was suggesting, wouldn't this be true of all other beats, in fact all music, built on even-numbered time signatures... in the sense that their structures subdivide into 2s, 4s, 8s, 16s etc... and with music becoming quantized, this fidelity to the ratio has become honed (almost to a fault)?
Maybe the amen break had a distinction of being one of the few organically made breaks that simultaniously had that combustible, human burst of energy, while conforming, in just the right places, to the parameters of the golden ratio. (tho again, wouldn't ALL music, even pre-digital, do this? My guess is it's the energy and character of that break that makes it special, not it's fitting into the golden ratio)
Maybe the amen break had a distinction of being one of the few organically made breaks that simultaniously had that combustible, human burst of energy, while conforming, in just the right places, to the parameters of the golden ratio. (tho again, wouldn't ALL music, even pre-digital, do this? My guess is it's the energy and character of that break that makes it special, not it's fitting into the golden ratio)
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I don't think this would give you the golden ratio though, would it? Phi is defined such that if you break it up into a big bit (equal to 1) and a small bit (Phi-1) then the ratio small bit: big bit is the same as big bit: Phi. You wouldn't get that just by dividing bars into two (equal) parts.
I don't know about all this golden ratio business, but the real joy of the amen and the main reason I think producers in jungle kept coming back to it is the way it was recorded and what that translates to in terms of sound when you compress and EQ it. Its like a magic box of frequencies waiting to be unpacked.
mistersloane
heavy heavy monster sound
I think you could argue that, in chopping it, you'd be adding to its fractal and magickal permutations rather than taking away from them; by creating gaps you not only muck with the a is to b as a is to a+b formula, but allow for more 'loa' to come through the gaps you've created. This if course might be seen as being bad ju-ju by some.
NB : I used to be a stonemason and I've seen, directly, people go absolutely stark raving, gibbering mad by concentrating too much on the golden section so don't think about it too much, lest the same fate happen.
Yeah, I figured my inititial reading of the guy's explanation of the ratio was a bit simplified (it came across like a smaller bit is equal in ratio to how the larger bit is proportioned to an even larger bit?..) esp considering he wasn't just attributing it to the timing, but the frequency peaks, which relates maybe to what Logos was saying. Got me curious and I've been look up peices that supposedly use the ratio.
I do like how the guy makes the connection between the golden ratio, as manifest in the breakbeat, to body proportions and movement. Reminds me of how the logic inherent in beat structures are in correspondence with body movement (the kick = feet, the snare = arms), how house, break, rock beats have this dance logic to them. I was talking to a friend recently about how these patterns are never inverted, how I have tried inverting them before (like say snare on the 1234, kick on the 2 & 4), but it doesn't work when you de-center the kick, because it betrays organic fractal structure/correspondance to body structure; having an un-grounding effect that's too off-putting for even just listening, and def wouldn't work for a dancefloor (or maybe it might eventually work but we're just not used to the feel).
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Nonesense, the proper term is "qi", not "loa." Not that I, cough, er, as you were...
mistersloane
heavy heavy monster sound
qi as in (chinese) life, breath, spirit, that type of thing? Yeah totally- I'd agree with you if you're thinking about that - I was kinda thinking though about that idea that the breaks in hiphop were used as a form of, literal, voodoo/santeria drum invocation, thus allowing the loa to come into people, hence them break-dancin. Can't remember who talked about that, might have been Kodwo Eshun. I always liked it as an idea and have always looked at breakbeats in that way since, but I can totally see how seeing them as breath would be good too.
UFO over easy
online mahjong
Ah, ok, then I'd agree with you too. I'm not quite sure where I stand on the idea of Qi, in the sense that it's a psuedoscience (if even that, but I like exploring "wrong" or primitive belief systems, because sometimes I gain insight that logical trains of thought haven't had the boldness to embrace). But I do like the idea of Forms being dense Qi/energy, so matter is dense Qi on the physical level, while in the competitive realm of Ideas (ideosphere, to use a memetic term) Signs are dense thoughtforms that contain various clusters of rider ideas/connections/tradions/etc, which are given form through collective belief, and given fidelity to and longetivety in culture through re-invocation/repetition. The Drums Virus being an identification ritual tradition that seems to have a very powerful, physical spirituality to it, and seems to unleash powerful waves into civilized culture whenever it needs to be re-invoked. (think jazz, rnb, the Beat generation, the Beatles, James Brown, and then need I go on with disco/hiphop/house/techno/acid/rave/etc/etc)
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Slothrop
Tight but Polite
Hmmm, Qi is (on the current evidence) significantly worse than western science when it comes to making planes fly, making nuclear reactors, making moneys with five asses, producing antibiotics, all that sort of stuff but (in my experience) it does seem to be a good 'science' for understanding / teaching certain aspects of martial arts and general bodily feats - I mean, beyond the usual "witness my amazing no touch knockout that it's only safe to demonstrate on people who have been training with me for 15 years" sort of stuff, there are things that seem to be related to ways of using muscles synergetically (or something) to produce more modest effects that are, aiui, still beyond what western physiology can easily explain and which it'd be interesting to see tested and studied more thoroughly. And assuming those effects aren't bogus, at the moment a Qi paradigm seems to be the best way to teach people to recreate them.
The amen break / golden ratio stuff looks a bit balls, though. Note that your standard 2 step beat automatically comes out with a long bit - short bit ration of 1.67, where phi is 1.62. And that the illustrations of the ratio only roughly line up with the location of the drum hits. I dunno, maybe the golden ration is related to the effectiveness of two step in general but that could also be adequately explained by some first principles rhythmology thus: 1) snare on 2 and 4 sounds good 2) kick on 1 is important to emphasize the start of the bar 3) another kick on one of the quaver beats give the beat some more direction 4) kick on 3 would make it too symmetrical / not emphasize the speed as much.
fokse vektaire xeven
Arab Nazi
i liked it... It isn't presented as anything more than a different perspective on a musical "granted", a reading informed by personal interest. if he gets a bit carried away why not...
I think finding rigorous formal exceptions is missing the point.of course it's easy to chip away at the edges...
but this
is more interesting...
Yah I won't argue with any of that; and I waste a lot of time studying things like Qi and Li and what-have-ya. I just mean psuedoscience in that it's unexplainable as of yet (though useful, and that's all that matters). Personally I've been interested in Qi in relation to some of the principles of Feng Shui and applying that to other domains, like music or writing or visual art; unlocking various possibilities and aspects through different positionings and algorithms. ...but done as randomly as possible... "just throw junk into the aether and see what opens up". Most systems maintain how important it is to be PRECISE blablabla, but that's not always true. Effectiveness and discipline are important but the vehicle is arbitrary, you just need a basic understanding of the realm you're accessing and semiotics. A lot of belief memes have built-in crap about obeying the directions, but that's just a bluff that allows memes to replicate, through faithful, strict imitation. This was esp important for them before the digital age (in which they can now be copied perfectly), before this replicators had to rely on their vehicles adhering strictly to the rules (not to sound like memes are alive, they're blind and only exist through repitition, though some might be Platonic Signs or filters for Real things). But some of the best things come from chaos and accidents, which are the creative principle that allows mutation and freedom. K I'm drunk and rambling, I'll get off the internets.
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CHAOTROPIC
on account
Great image ... so dance is a kindof whole body version of Joe Cocker-esque spontaneous air guitar, the unconscious air-drumming of the body, literally embodying the beat. I dunno if that's a liberating or imprisoning idea ... a dancefloor of twitching marionettes!!
"Dance Dance Revolution" suddenly makes about 4,000 times more organic sense though.