Great Imperfections

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NekujaK
Posts: 631
Joined: 09 Oct 2016
Location: USA

04 Sep 2018

I'm part of a weekly jam group that's all acoustic guitars plus one bass. To keep things musically focused, we've compiled a book of favorite songs that we like to sing and play. For some songs, I've programmed drum accompaniment on a Kong, trying my best to mimic the exact drum parts of cover songs.

I was recently programming the drum part for "Rain" by the Beatles, but as I was making my way through it, I noticed the song's tempo was highly inconsistent. On closer examination, it seemed like the song was spliced together from different takes recorded at slightly different tempos. Further research revealed that not only did the Beatles record five separate takes of the backing track, they deliberately recorded it at a faster tempo and a key higher, then slowed down the tape when recording the vocals. This gave the backing track a different sonic quality than if it had simply been recorded at normal speed with no tape manipulation.

So between all the spliced takes and the slight imprecision of tape speed manipulation, it's no wonder I couldn't get "Rain" to fit nicely onto the sequencer grid! There's no particular point to this story, other than yet another vivid reminder that great music is not about perfection. Excellent songwriting and an inspired performance are what reaches and moves a listener every time.
wreaking havoc with :reason: since 2.5
:arrow: https://soundcloud.com/nekujak-donnay/sets

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