Groove Example
Violet Mcdow
The transcription methodology for these tunes was to pick a four bar section where the beat is clearly audible and align it to a beat grid in Ableton. I then recreated the grooves on separate tracks by looking at the waveform to determine where individual hits occurred. When the waveform was unclear, I placed a sample in the approximate location and then adjusted it until it no longer made an audible flam against the track. For some of the songs with sampled drums, I isolated the samples and aligned them via phase cancellation.
This post includes screenshots of the Ableton live sessions and standard notation for each tune. For the standard notation, I focused on creating intuitive and easily digestible summaries of the grooves rather than notate them literally. I experimented with a couple different approaches for notating subdivisions and microtime including written descriptions, approximating to the nearest subdivision, and using special symbols to mark when notes fall behind/ahead of the written beat.
I chose this tune to start because it shows off a lot of the classic Dilla elements. It has a really subtle, unquantized swing to it, partway in between straight and septuplet swing. The straight 8th notes in the kick on beat one contrasts against the slightly swung hi-hat note to create a characteristic Dilla flam. The snare and hi-hat are also slightly rushed on the backbeat (notated with tied grace notes), another Dilla trademark for creating that lop-sided, lilting feel.
Another Soulquarian, Erykah Badu was a close friend and collaborator of J Dilla. I was actually turned on to this tune by Slynk in his wonderful video on quintuplet swing. The idea here is that this is like a straight 8th beat, but the hi-hat/synth were shifted back a bit so the off-beat falls on the quintuplet swing and the on-beat just sounds really late, creating this kind of messed up, sloshy sounding time feel.
Chris Dave is one of the drummers largely credited with introducing Dilla to the world of modern jazz through his hip-hop/jazz crossover work with The Robert Glasper Experiment. This tune is from his later group Chris Dave and The Drumhedz, an experimental hip-hop/neo-soul/jazz collaboration. It features one of his signature polysubdivided grooves that has a straight 8th hi-hat line against an accented triplet swing note.
For this chart I tried using custom articulations (>) to mark where Chris Dave is playing notes ahead of or behind the beat by amounts less than a meaningful subdivision. I also broke the hi-hat out into its own staff for readability with the polysubdivided rhythms.
After reading the Acceptance vs. Tolerance groove, one of my clients asked me how it would apply to a real-life parenting challenge: getting his 3-year-old daughter to brush her teeth. Below is my response to him.
I know this probably sound really silly but remove sounds, usually the biggest thing for killing a groove is sounds, to many complex patterns or to much noise confusing the brain and cluttering the mix. the best thing for groove in dance music is silence thats one of the things what creates a groove (silence between the hits)
Silence is also great for creating impact and is probably one of the best effects in music
[quote]Jon_fisher (04/12/2010)[hr]I know this probably sound really silly but remove sounds, usually the biggest thing for killing a groove is sounds, to many complex patterns or to much noise confusing the brain and cluttering the mix. the best thing for groove in dance music is silence thats one of the things what creates a groove (silence between the hits)
Silence is also great for creating impact and is probably one of the best effects in music :)[/quote]
Waves do some great silence plug-ins. Spensive though, so I tend to sample mine.
[quote]bangthedj (04/12/2010)[hr][quote]Jon_fisher (04/12/2010)[hr]I know this probably sound really silly but remove sounds, usually the biggest thing for killing a groove is sounds, to many complex patterns or to much noise confusing the brain and cluttering the mix. the best thing for groove in dance music is silence thats one of the things what creates a groove (silence between the hits)
Silence is also great for creating impact and is probably one of the best effects in music :)[/quote]
Waves do some great silence plug-ins. Spensive though, so I tend to sample mine. :P[/quote]
hahahahahaha i was half expecting that reply or something very similar.
try to use a groove template . and start moving the hats and the claps few ms back. to create laid down Beats . for tension move few ms forward .
also trying to play your own hats, percussion with your midi . u can achieve better and cooler results than just using other people grooves. but if you cant try also over lay other loop samples and see if the swing would help for the percussion and hats .
I find the golden rule with groove is, less is definately more. Ive heard really good solid danceabl grooves that consist of mabey 2-3 different sounds and nothing else. Also your bassline is a big player in how groovy your track is. You can mess around with swing templates but dont over do it! Theres a good tutorial here on SA that shows you how to extract the grooves from your favourite tracks and use it in your own. Also check out all your favourite producers and listen to the intros and outros of their track as this is usually where you can hear the groove best. Also remember that even though groove is a term to describe one thing, different genres have different grooves. Like for example in a house track everything is shifted of the beat here there and everywhere to give a more human feel where as in techno or hard dance everything sounds very on the beat and computery for a more pumpin aggressive sound.
Makes total sense, how can i take the boolean-ed surface seperely to add a differernt color for example?
Basically the groove inside to have an infill color different in another software like keyshot
When I first got into electronic music I used a sp404 & made tracks in resample mode only (no sequencer). This really taught me to use my ears & feel the rhythm. For the first few months I concentrated on drums /rhythm. I started by making simple beats (sample myself playing a simple rhythm with kick & snare, then looped it), then I played with delay settings on different kick & snare hits within the loop to come up with new rhythms & would also add hits here & there. As I progressed I added more percussion, I started combining different sounds (for example using 2 hi hats instead of 1, using 2 snares, 1 short & 1 long & using 2 kicks, smaller kicks for the ghost hits) & I got better at timing (finger drumming).
Essentially, as far as I see it, microtiming is for creating push and pull in your beat. Or expectation (longer pauses between beats) or a rushing sensation (shorter than expected gaps). So as others have expressed, just experiment. Keep it simple to start out. Move a hit hat forward in time slightly before a snare, or move a snare slightly later than your brain expects, or the other way round. Lots of dubstep back in the day (when it was still raw) used this push and pull nature of subtly slowing down and speeding up the beat between the main accents to create groove. Another useful resource is to apply different Ableton Live grooves then zoom into the midi notes to see how certain things are deliberately moved ahead or after the on-the-grid beats. When you find a groove you love, replicate it on your Elektrons
On the Digitakt I live record rythms in unquantized(other than hats) and then adjust any trigs that sound like they need it. If you are using anything longer than single cycles or short hits higher notes will play faster than lower ones so there is often a need to move those forward or backward a touch to compensate.
Interesting vid. I didnt realise the tempo fluctuations were so drastic In older songs. Gave me something to think about in regards to recording. Rick beato kinda grates on me though, he reminds me of an elitist working in a record shop talking about how the rock died.
Any instrument can define a groove, so long as its note onsets are distinct. For that reason, drums, electric bass and guitar work better than flute or violin. Guitar and bass grooves are interesting because the note endings are just as important rhythmic signifiers as their onsets. A good guitarist or bassist can strum or pluck with good time; an excellent one mutes those notes or chords in time as well.
4/4 time equals 16/16 time. So if we just add two 16th notes to the groove, we get 18/16 time. I added a snare and bass on the last 2 sixteenth notes. You can add a couple of toms instead, or whatever you choose.
Again, this is just a simple approach to odd time. If you want something really unusual, start moving things around. You can take the snare off the back beat and add it to a different 8th or 16th note to make things more funky. The math all stays the same though. So once you understand this basic approach to odd time, you can create whatever you want.
Music has always been a part of Marshunda Smith's life, so it is no surprise that it would become her vocation. Still, she says it surprises some new acquaintances to hear she is a cellist and symphony conductor. Smith lives and works in Boston, where she has conducted the North Shore Philharmonic Orchestra and co-founded the No-Name Orchestra.
Smith, 38, laughs a lot during a nearly 60-minute conversation. She has a friendly, outgoing personality and says she understands some of the stereotypes since she's been dealing with them most of her life. She points out that only about 5 percent of professional symphony conductors are female and even fewer are African-American, for example.
But symphonic music pulled her in from a young age. While other kids were listening exclusively to Usher or Beyonc, Smith and her best friend and fellow symphonic music lover Lauren Goss, a violinist, also made time for Bach and Beethoven.
c80f0f1006