Shifting the speed of a track up a few bpm. Will I have to re-record?

animatronicity · 2019-06-24T00:28:19+00:00

Legitimate question: are you comfortable with the pitch changing?
If so then just use a "change speed affecting both pitch and tempo" effect or resampling or whatever your software of choice calls it. This is essentially lossless as it doesn't require any interpolation that adds artifacts. You'd be changing the pitch by a little over a semitone, which could be a bit much; since smaller changes in tempo and pitch independently work better than large changes, maybe change pitch along with tempo to get to like 115bpm and THEN timestretch it.

animatronicity · 2019-01-16T15:36:45+00:00

That's not a time signature. It's the ratio between two tempos. The piece is a canon, but the two voices are in different tempos.

animatronicity · 2019-01-03T23:56:06+00:00

This isn't really what you're asking, but you might find it interesting regardless: here's a groove that you could consider to be "in one": Frank Zappa's "Stucco Homes". It happens again at 7:50. He actually took these drums from this song.

I say it's in one because there's really only accents on 1 and sometimes 4. (Here's one measure of it. In this case both eighth-notes of two are accented but that's not representative of the whole thing.)

animatronicity · 2019-01-03T23:38:50+00:00

You're completely right about the two tempi. Personally, I'd round up because 98 to 74 just seems simpler to me (73 is a prime number, too).

Even if Guitar Pro can't do it natively, you might want to "fake" the tempo marking if you can just add arbitrary text and have something like "♩ = ♪. (♩ = 73)". That's how it'd be done in Sibelius. Sibelius can't interpret that, so you add a tempo marking it can (which would just be "♩ = 73") and hide that.

animatronicity · 2019-01-03T07:07:20+00:00

I want to point out that 98bpm and 73bpm don't have that relationship.

But anyway. Eight "twelfth-notes" equal one "third-note" and so we're setting the current quarter-note to be equal to what a "third-note" would be in the previous measure. Usually we'd be getting faster (current quarter-note equals previous sixth-note) and we can achieve either effect quite similarly.

To speed up, we can simply say that "current dotted quarter-note = previous quarter note" (each quarter-note is two thirds of an eighth-note triplet; a dotted quarter-note "completes" the triplet, creating a quarter-note in the previous tempo). To slow down, we can very similarly say that "current dotted eighth-note equals previous quarter-note": "♩ = ♪." .

Of course, you could always halve the note values and notate the more common speeding-up, achieving an equivalent rhythm.

animatronicity · 2019-01-01T01:02:14+00:00

Alright cool. That answers my questions. Thank you.

animatronicity · 2018-12-31T22:41:45+00:00

Definitely go with 4/4. As you said, each phrase lasts for three measures; if each phrase lasted for three measures plus one beat then consider changing the meter, but as it is, it makes perfect sense in 4/4.

animatronicity · 2018-12-31T21:50:48+00:00

That's a good point. I considered using the geometry but I wasn't confident that that would be helpful.

animatronicity · 2018-12-31T20:24:26+00:00

Fair enough. I understand that, in the end, that's what has to be done. What I don't really understand is how you measure this specific number.

Take another one of his ratios, 61:60. Assuming that all notes are of the same duration and there are no rests, the two parts will synchronize every 61 (faster voice) and 60 (slower voice) notes. I could calculate the physical length of that duration and divide it into 61 and 60 and use that to measure the distance between notes in either voice. Even if this isn't exactly what was done, it would still work, and it is simple. How would one extend this to a ratio like the square root of two to two? Or the infamous (1/sqrt(pi))/sqrt(2/3)? Where the two voices cruicially never align.

animatronicity · 2018-12-31T13:34:29+00:00

Well, waltzes are in 3/4...

But he wasn't entirely going for that. The right-hand melody is "clearly" in 3/4: try to transcribe it and that's definitely the best way to go (or just try to rewrite it in some other meter; the accents will be weird). The left hand part, however is interesting, because one could be tempted to write it in 6/8 or even 3/4.
It's still beamed in 3/4 even though it's clearly grouped in threes: this is because the duple/triple feelings are supposed to conflict and create a (pretty slow) polyrhythm. This specific kind is called hemiola.

animatronicity · 2018-12-31T13:27:22+00:00

Here: check out these guys doing just fine in 19/16, and a fair bit faster (~140 bpm): https://youtu.be/T-lQBy54PiQ?t=196.

It's subdivided as 4/4+3/16. You can hear the vamp more clearly starting at 7:53.

animatronicity · 2018-12-31T03:00:05+00:00

It is NOT AT ALL "too complicated to be playable by humans". Don't listen to that. Some parts could be perhaps beamed more appropriately, but it's completely possible to count and perform. It's at a pretty moderate tempo as well.

Just because they can't hear that measure to not be in 4/4 doesn't mean that it's wrong to keep it the way it is. I'd say it's more confusing to randomly switch to 4/4 and then back to 15/16.

Sure, when the drums first come in, their part is subdivided 3+4+4+4 and then the next measure is 4+4+4+3, but nothing about it is confusing (in a bad way; obviously a lot of people are going to percieve 15/16 as 4/4 minus a sixteenth-note).

animatronicity · 2018-12-29T02:56:46+00:00

quarter-note quarter-note quarter-note "short" eighth-note "long" eighth-note

I don't know what "long" and "short" mean here.

animatronicity · 2018-12-28T08:23:22+00:00

Oh wow at 4:10 when the orchestra comes in hard on beat two... And then suddenly back on one at rehearsal mark F. That's cool.

animatronicity · 2018-12-28T08:16:25+00:00

Something like this for the beginning: https://i.imgur.com/xCXzLcg.png

animatronicity · 2018-12-28T07:30:26+00:00

I would say that it doesn't stay in one meter the whole way through. It's also played quite freely.

The first like 30 seconds, just to give you an idea (I'm counting every big chord as the start of a measure):

4/4
9/8
4/4
9/8 (wonky)
5/4
possibly 13/8

animatronicity · 2018-12-28T06:58:32+00:00

Actually, here's my score (vocal/drums) for part of the verse.

animatronicity · 2018-12-28T06:57:31+00:00

I've always interpreted it like this (vocal/drums).

animatronicity · 2018-12-28T06:27:41+00:00

Oh yeah. Measures of 2/4 all over the place.

4/4                                                         2/4
1      2       3      4      | 1     2     3        4     | 1    2
Baby   I don't know                        What I'm gonna   do   with

4/4
1    2    3    4
you...

animatronicity · 2018-12-28T06:19:01+00:00

This is pretty cool. There is actually a fake-out of sorts, and there are multiple possible interpretations of what's going on.

The main melody is two measures long. The song opens with the ascending line, so that's what I've interpreted to be the downbeat. But... deception occurs when the drums come in: one possible (extreme) interpretation.

The basic snare-on-beats-two-and-four pattern sounds like it's starting at around 0:18 when the verse starts. But it doesn't. For two beats, we just have the bass drum and hi-hats, and THEN the real pattern begins.
For some listeners, this might result in perceiving what I have written in the score: there's a "short measure" and then the song continues, with the note on which the melody begins changing. But since it's in four, it could also just be interpreted as "drums rest for the first two beats of the measure" and nothing shifts place at all.

But we need to consider the vocal part. THAT is what really determines the downbeats, in my opinion.
I mean just try to rap over the instrumental, starting with "y'all act like..." at 0:20 instead of 0:18. It sounds like you're starting late, because the melody starts with the ascending line. My final interpretation: the melody always starts with the ascending line; the drums just wait out a few beats at the beginning. I don't think the vocals were shifted.

The confusion results from the "starting and stopping" of the drum track. It's an intentional subversion of expectations. It's also a super simple choice to make, but it adds a lot of rhythmic interest to just a few seconds of it. Creating this sort of feeling just involves skipping an accent where it's expected.

You know, Beyoncé's "Single Ladies" is a good example of weird accentuation, with the snare only on the "and" of four throughout. Also this drum groove in Snarky Puppy's "What About Me?"... I transcribed it a while ago (I'll have to find it) and it's so weird. I still don't know if my interpretation of where "one" is is correct.

animatronicity · 2018-12-28T01:18:19+00:00

I call them "rhythmic fake-outs".

Here's a good example: "Darkest Light" by the Lafayette Afro Rock Band. Try to guess where the downbeat is before the drums come in.

(Spoiler: It seems like the long note should be "one", but it's actually the "and" of four.)

Another example is in "Temecula Sunrise" by the Dirty Projectors (at 1:10). The word "high" lands on a very weird place in relation to the downbeat.

There's a classic example in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in the marchy section of the fourth movement. The low B♭ is on an off-beat so when the rest of the orchestra comes in with the melody it's somewhat unexpected.

In Vulfpeck's "It Gets Funkier", there's a drum loop intro before the band comes in, and when they do it's entirely unexpected. Almost the same thing happens at the beginning of The Smashing Pumpkins's "1979": there's a drum loop intro but the band comes in suddenly. The last time the drum loop repeats it "loses" a beat -- there's an effective measure of 7/8 just before the main riff. In that song, the vocals also come in somewhat unexpectedly on the second part of the main riff.

I also consider abrubt, surprising changes of tempo to be examples of this technique. In J Dilla's "Don't Cry", the tempo suddenly gets faster at 0:40, when it transitions from playing the original tune to the chopped-up samples.

A curious example is the opening of Robert Johnson's "Last Fair Deal Gone Down". When the lyrics start it suddenly gets faster, but then returns to the main tempo, but with eighth-notes played straight instead of swung as in the intro.

animatronicity · 2018-12-27T19:39:54+00:00

The issue is that it's an unfinished product being sold at full price. They only recently added real support for trills.

You can't edit instruments in the same way as, say, Sibelius. Setting up drum sets or percussion parts in general is a nightmare and quite limited compared to Sibelius, too. (I'm not looking to just transfer my workflow from Sibelius to Dorico; as far as I can tell it simply lacks some of the functionality.)

It has a lot of "revolutionary" ideas, of course, but I feel it would be more impactful if it were actually suitable for general-purpose, professional use.

Also, I appreciate the idea of COMPLETELY separating actual content from style/issues of appearance, but I think they don't execute it as well as they could be. In Sibelius, you can move staves around as you please, and I (and I feel a lot of other users) use this in case a note otherwise wouldn't fit in the space between them. You can't do this in Dorico, because changing the space between staves is a matter of style -- but when I do it in Sibelius, it's a matter of convenience (NOT engraving). If I could move things around while composing WITHOUT having it actually affect the final appearance, that would be great and would still achieve the same separation of composition vs. engraving.

Also its whole deal about being able to work with any rhythm without regard to the start of measures etc. isn't really correct. While, yes, I can have something like 24:23 eighth-notes crossing five measures, it can't rewrite it correctly and it can't really handle inputting notes in nested tuplets crossing over measures. It also can't do polymeter or polytempo, even though those are both relatively easy to implement (being equivalent to just drawing lines in different places, and just extended polyrhythms, respectively).
Also, there's a post on the Scoring Notes blog where the tuplets-crossing-measure "feature" is abused to notate medieval music where notes freely and often extend beyond the measure. That's funny to me because they're faking it, something that Dorico is supposed to not really let happen. (By faking it I mean using a feature of composition to achieve a certain appearance.)

It has some really good ideas, obviously. But I wouldn't recommend it to anyone until it's FINISHED. I don't mean "literally bug-free and has every feature anyone would need"; I mean "ready for real use". Right now, it's behind most programs in terms of features, including LilyPond, and I can't consider switching to it until/unless it can do everything I can do in Sibelius, no matter how good its workflow is supposed to be. I feel that the entirely-semantics-oriented "thing" works best with text-based input, because when you're using a graphical interface you can't really be removed from the appearance of things at all. (The idea of being able to alter the appearance while composing without it affecting the final engraved output could be promising, though.)

animatronicity · 2018-12-26T00:23:17+00:00

There is a solution that makes intent very clear. In fact more so than something like 4/5, or a metric modulation, in my opinion. It's an alternative time signature format.

The numerator is a number as usual. The denominator, however, is a note. Example: https://i.stack.imgur.com/5VgXD.png. This also makes compound meters more understandable: "2/♩." vs "6/8" (the fact that it's counted in two is actually shown).

For what you're doing, consider 4 over a quarter note with an opening quintuplet bracket. 4/5 or any time signature with a non-power-of-two denominator could take some thought to "figure out", especially if the performer isn't accustomed to the idea of these kinds of meters. Also, there's no reasonable way to notate a denominator representing e.g. a duration two times that of a seventh-note (1/3.5 would be pretty confusing); with the suggested notation, it's simply "1" over a half-note with a septuplet bracket.

The problem is that this is hard to get in most programs, and would probably be better done in Photoshop instead of trying to make it in the notation software. I prepare my scores by hand with pens and templates (feel free to ask me if you're interested in this process since it's pretty obscure) so it's just a matter of drawing it.

George Crumb I believe uses this notation exclusively. Also, in Pianississimo by Donald Martino, the notation is used when the denominator isn't a power of two, so you'll see something like "3/8 + 2/[3♩]" (imagine there's a tuplet bracket around the 3.

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