Amen break and Golden Ratio

[CHAOTROPIC]

Incidentally, the idea of body movement being related to the structure of beats seems testable, so someone must've done it, surely. & you should be able to work backwards, converting the movements of dancers back into beats, with all this motion-capture, rotoscopic technological paraphenalia. Has this been done? It's a bit chicken & egg but it'd be interesting to see if the original beat & the motion-captured beat matched. Plus, you could feed that beat back to some more captive dancers (on a huge amount of speed), & then recapture their response & then feed THAT back, resampling & refining with each iteration, thousands & thousands of times ...

...by god, you could unleash THE AKIRA BEAT!!

 

[Chris]

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!!

I think it's kinda both... There's always that balance in arts/music/dance/well everything, between the rules and laws that define the parameters of a self-contained world*, and the areas where there's room for infinite variation. That balance of form and chaos. If these definitive rules are changed enough it becomes a new form. I guess the freedom is in the variables (you can't drive off the road but you can take it anywhere you want**...); or in saying "fuck it" and ignoring the more arbitrary laws, in effect setting new ones, (usually not always that much of a deviation from the last set.. unless that's the point), or trying to create new spaces with looser or no parameters (a worthy cause that I'm interested in, though I think the latter is likely impossible, and not necessarily a good idea... the distinctive "laws" that define and separate things, if not too strict or limited, can be what make them interesting, but getting stuck in, or conservative about them is boring)...

*some laws are unique to a form, others are almost Pythagorean laws that transcend genre/culture/etc, like say, in music; staying in time (everyone can't just play in different tempos, unless you're the Shaggs), being in tune (unless it's atonal or microtonal, but then that would still be the fact of, and therefore the rules and parameters of, that form), harmonic laws (unless it's a form that allows you to go "outside," like in some jazz, jungle, noise etc, or if it's modal, having no harmony save incidental moments when countermelodies or lines harmonize in passing), etc...

**or, related to your original statement, tho dancing to a set beat, there's freedom and infinite possibilities in your interpretation

 

[michael]

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).

A classic (50s) R&B / soul beat is snare on 1 2 3 4 and a kick on the off beat after 3.
kak - kak - kak doof kak

Likewise the classic roots reggae feel has the kicks on 2 and 4...

Both very, very dancey.

 

[mms]

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.

yes that’s right the ‘break’ ie the freeform bit in voodoo ritual when only the maman drum plays, as the others rest and is often where the loa takes over the person . That’s in the maya deren book ‘divine horsemen’.
obv the new orleans marching bands at the turn of the century which anticipated funk and later the meters maybe even james brown etc, would probably have been aware of it.

It’s arguable that alot of dance music from disco onwards has some influence from santiera, the original, there were loads of cuban immigrants involved in making the music and there is an obvious santieran influence etc, you know ‘jingo’ by candido obviously, tito puente etc.

Then you’ve got niyabingi in rasta, when the first track to use it ‘oh carolina’ was originally released, there was public outcry and the record was banned from the stations. Niyabingi had been banned under a witchcraft act in 1921 and had associations of course with maroons and organised resistance so it was a very naughty thing to do.

 

[Chris]

A classic (50s) R&B / soul beat is snare on 1 2 3 4 and a kick on the off beat after 3.
kak - kak - kak doof kak

Likewise the classic roots reggae feel has the kicks on 2 and 4...

Both very, very dancey.

True but doesn't that beat (that's also the Northern Soul beat isn't it?) usually also have a kick going under the snares at the same time (at the very least one kick boom marking off the first beat)? Hm, regardless, good point... and the Northern Soul does have a very light on it's toes, dancing-so-energetically-your-feet-barely-touch-the-ground feel, probably because of that higher frequency snare foundation (and likewise, a lot of Dub and Ska beats have a bouncy, jumpy feeling).

...I wonder why the snare/kick inversion would work on that Soul beat, but sounds awkward in House/Break/Rock beats... Maybe the most important factor for grounding the beat is in the beat on the One being sufficiently signified by the nature of the beat structure, in effect centering it (in this case that kick on the offbeat before the fourth signifies the ending of the bar and a looping around back to the one)? :slanted:

 

[Client Eastwood]

Dont know if you've seen this but its well worth reposted and reviewing in light of this disscusion.

 

[michael]

...I wonder why the snare/kick inversion would work on that Soul beat, but sounds awkward in House/Break/Rock beats... Maybe the most important factor for grounding the beat is in the beat on the One being sufficiently signified by the nature of the beat structure, in effect centering it (in this case that kick on the offbeat before the fourth signifies the ending of the bar and a looping around back to the one)? :slanted:

From what I gather of what you've written so far you've been looking at beats in isolation from other musical elements, but I think with both the examples I gave the one is almost always very strongly emphasised with bass notes, whether it's bass guitar or the lowest note of a piano / organ chord.

In my experience it's often arrangement and/or mixing (in a recorded environment) that determine whether something sounds right (in this context, dancey). Moves in modern recording have been towards not just clearer and clearer delineation of different instrumental parts in a mix, but also massive separation of the elements of a drum kit. I think that does really change how acceptable to your ear / brain that kind of rearrangement of roles sounds.

Still, I've tried doing a classic reggae feel with synthy / drum machine type sounds and so forth and found that although it still sounds a bit shit it starts to make heeeeaps more sense when you get the bass in there on the 1 and the offbeat skank on the chords... So maybe part of it is dissecting the elements too far and losing site of how the rhythm section functions.

Been pondering the whole primacy of the 1 - there are some great tracks where the loudest / bassiest bit is e.g. the 4, but there still has to be something on the 1 (and maybe a pause between the 4 and the 1) to stop your ear from not just hearing the strongest beat as the 1.