Let's get personal... about tempo.

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Marketblandings
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21 Feb 2015

I need to know if there is something wrong in my head :-)

When working on a song, the tempo that is locked into the automation can seem to be different every time I work on it. By a lot!

There is sort of a pattern though. If I am working on a song in the morning (I am a 2nd shift guy for my real job), it can seem to be speeding along 4 or 5 bpm faster than I remember. Crazy fast. What-was-I-thinking fast.

Late at night, I can hardly get the thing to go fast enough for me.

But this can happen either way at other times, too.

This just me????? How will I ever know what tempo the song really should be at?????

Discuss.

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selig
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21 Feb 2015

For me it depends on what the intent of the song.

If there's a vocal, then the only thing that matters is if the vocal tempo is comfortable to sing. If it's a dance song, the only thing that matters is whether it makes you move or not. For an ambient track it's the balance between moving slow enough to relax you but not so slow as to bore you!

The "Mixing with your Mind" method is to hold a heavy object and toss it up and catch it to the beat. The lighter the object feels to you, the more right the tempo (hopefully I've written that correctly, it's been a long time since I've read that book and writing it out made it sound over simplified and made we wonder how it could possibly work for ALL tempos). 

But just like any creative decision, you really only learn how to make creative decision by making them (and comparing the results with what you expected, adjusting accordingly on the next attempt). That's how I learned how to judge just about everything in the music production process. When making this type of creative decision I'm always trying to imagine how I'll feel about it in the future to some degree, which for me represents a more likely representation of reality (for whatever reasons). 

In my earliest pro session experiences I watched as others made confident judgment calls about things like which take to use or song tempo as confidently as they made their lunch orders. My first real question after sitting in on my first "professional" session as an assistant was "how do they know which take was best (they all sounded great to me), and how are they all so confident about all this?". The answer was "because they've been doing this for a long time!". But this IS something you can learn and can be improved!

In your case, it sounds like you're already deciphering your tendencies - now you need to calibrate reality to your experience! In other words, if you know you'll create tempos that are 5 BPM too fast if you work at a certain time of day, you simply start re-calibrating your internal clock so it's 5 BPM slower at those times!

Mental Re-calibration:
For me, it was the experience of learning how to play drums to a click that first introduced me to the concept of mental re-calibration. In my first experiences in the studio I was ALWAYS ahead of the click. I finally got so frustrated one day that I decided to play the next take TOTALLY behind the click - it was physically difficult and a bit painful to do so, and I fully expected everyone in the room to laugh at how behind I was. But oddly enough, when I heard the playback what I heard was a drummer playing pretty much right with the click! How could that be, I wondered - it felt SO WRONG when I was doing it, but it felt TOTALLY RIGHT when I listened back. I then realized my internal clock was in dire need of a total re-calibration - "my" reality was not in sync the "the" reality! It took a while, but I eventually got rock solid with a click - but only because I recognized the problem and set about the mental re-calibration process, which was basically play behind the beat until it felt RIGHT and ahead of the beat felt WRONG (as it should be)!

Finally, be happy you're not recording to tape with a band, going back and forth over what the tempo should be (at great expense in studio hours). Modern technology has made some things MUCH easier than they used to be! ;)
Selig Audio, LLC

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Benedict
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21 Feb 2015

selig wrote:The "Mixing with your Mind" method is to hold a heavy object and toss it up and catch it to the beat. The lighter the object feels to you, the more right the tempo (hopefully I've written that correctly, it's been a long time since I've read that book and writing it out made it sound over simplified and made we wonder how it could possibly work for ALL tempos).
You are basically right. I just checked as I have the book on my desk. You forget that Stav isn't talking about a particular style of music but that music can lift you up when it flows right and bum you out when it is Coldplay. He calls it Gravity and a Brian Eno piece can lift you up just as well as a Bon Jovi song.

Mental Re-calibration: is definitely a valid thing and should be done every now and then or your brain will drag you into seeing the world in strange (and completely useless) ways.

I have a had a few instances where I have struggled with tempo (or other piece fundamentals) and in every case it has been because I have been trying to jam a piece into being something that it is not. Writing to the genre and not the idea. Think of the idea as being where the art is and genre as being where someone else's expectations are (normally a critic). If the two match then you have a winner. If not you are lost and making a mess.

:)
Benedict Roff-Marsh
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tibah
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21 Feb 2015

Interesting discussion.

I do that whole electronic, sometimes dance, music thing, but I mostly write with a simple patch, like a piano or so and I usually record myself without a click, just by the feel of it, and then go to figure out tempo and time signature later. If I start with drums it can be a lot different, like when the sounds and the whole groove feel right. Nowadays, I hardly pass 126 BPM for the housy stuff I do. I used to be at 144 BPM when I started out, but for every year I produce, there is also a 1 BPM decrease! :D  Then again, I don't really do or know much about DnB, beside sometimes listening to it, but I do have my 175 BPM+ moments as well.

I like the approach of taking a tempo that is open to be shifted up and down by 20 BPM or so, e.g. 110 BPM. Pretty much what Adam Fielding also mentioned in his MMM feature. :)  I shift ideas, elements and tempo around quite a lot in the creative / writing phase of a song, never sure what the final version actually going to be. 90 BPMish, sample-based electronica or 125 BPM vintage synthie house whatnot. Everything is very open for quite a while.

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Tincture
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21 Feb 2015

Cool topic! I find my moods judge my previous decisions too fast or too slow as well. It's very much mood driven for me. Caffeine will have me twitching at too low a bpm, whereas milky cocoa before bed may have me wincing at the whizz of another. The best I can do is play with the bpm until my foot is tapping. Then repeat once or twice on returns to the track. I have found that I have set preferences. 165bpm is too slow for my kind of dancing to drum n bass ;) 170-180 is the dogs for me. 120 is good for a lot of my electronic stuff but like Brent said once, I like to tweak a little either side. 124-128 is great for alt rock stuff. 132 for 4 to the floor. Blah blah blah.

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PSoames
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22 Feb 2015

Interesting thread.

I am constantly surprised by how our minds perceives music; what sounds good one day sounds awful the next. I've gone back to long abandoned projects, discarded because I deemed them too awful to continue with, only to find them in good health and actually quite enjoyable (and often closer to completion than originally thought.)

I guess they needed rest.

EDIT: Must get a copy of that mixing book, I've seen you chaps mention it before and am intrigued.

tibah
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22 Feb 2015

While we still at it and also because this topic shouldn't die that easy...

I recently played a lot more around with 3/4 and 6/8 time signatures and for the most part, some parts are way more often double tempo or half time than they used to be when I was working in 4/4, which also changes the whole aspect of "setting a BPM" quite a lot. Also very refreshing in a way. I have one song where it seems to be four-to-the-floor when it actually isn't, breaking down to the actual BPM and triplet feel later in the track.

Back in the days I knew someone that made speed core, which is some form of gabba / hard techno that runs at 1200 BPM (perhaps even faster, seen some weird numbers back then). Personally, it was just noise to me, but he showed me some pics of parties and events and it seemed there was a little scene for this very niche music. Anyway, he was using Reason as well and only could reach those BPM values by double time. I'm trying to remember if earlier versions of Reason had a BPM limit or if 999 BPM just wasn't enough. ;)

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selig
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22 Feb 2015

As an aside, I recently started work on a track that had a chorus at a different tempo than the verse. The writer/artist didn't even realize she had played them at different tempos and I built a track based on what I heard her play on her piano guide track. She didn't know how to respond to the track because she didn't realize she had altered tempo (she just played what felt right, which is always "right" in my book!). So I used Reason to take out the tempo change and she immediately knew what I was trying to say - both sections sounded wrong!

But in the mean time I collected examples of songs with tempo changes in them, and again she (an accomplished musician on her own, just not on piano) was again surprised to hear how many songs intentionally change tempo!

In other tempo related news, I'm working for another client who delivered me four piano/vocal guide tracks to which I was to build final production tracks. Three tracks were within 10 BPM of each other, so I've been having fun this week playing "re-invent the track" by finding a new/better tempo. It IS amazing how much the tempo of a track plays into the feel, but there are also other factors as well such as how the beat is emphasized to ether make a slower tempo feel fast or a faster tempo feel slow. 

One thing is clear - even with audio tracks, Reason's ability to quickly change tempo (and key!) is perfect for this sort of track production IMO, where you may have to change things as the track progresses (working with clients…). It's so easy to quickly listen to how a different tempo /groove can affect the feel of the track, which makes it easy to try many different approaches when the first one doesn't pan out!
:)
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guitfnky
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22 Feb 2015

selig wrote:As an aside, I recently started work on a track that had a chorus at a different tempo than the verse. The writer/artist didn't even realize she had played them at different tempos and I built a track based on what I heard her play on her piano guide track. She didn't know how to respond to the track because she didn't realize she had altered tempo (she just played what felt right, which is always "right" in my book!). So I used Reason to take out the tempo change and she immediately knew what I was trying to say - both sections sounded wrong!
It always strikes me how tempo and meter can cause so much 'trouble' for fairly well-seasoned musicians.  there's such a strong psychological component to it.  it's weird how difficult it can be for some to wrap their heads around an odd time signature like 7/8, for instance.  it's just 6/8 with an extra 8th note, but because it's not something everyone is exposed to regularly, it can be a real struggle for some.  

Similarly, trying to get that right tempo dialed in between parts when trying to get a band that's not used to playing to a click to do so is very illuminating.  I absolutely agree that whatever feels right IS right.  Going through the exercise of figuring that all out is also great feedback for those musicians.  Knowing that, 'hey, we're doing a few tempo changes in this song' can actually give someone confidence in the presence of other musicians, rather than having someone come up to them after a set and saying they thought the tempo changes were cool, while you're sort of sitting there half-flattered, but also half-embarrassed, since you hadn't been aware of it.
I write music for good people

https://slowrobot.bandcamp.com/

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Marketblandings
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23 Feb 2015

Thanks All for a really helpful discussion that I didn't have time to respond to right away.
The re-setting idea is a good one but I have to wonder if that applies to me.
My ipod (Creative Zen actually) is always on shuffle. Just through randomly brings up Ma Sicong (Chinese modern classical), Hoagy Carmichael (1920's jazz), Will Bradley (1940's Swing),
The Torquays (surf), Stereolab, XTC, Soft Machine, Cannonball Adderley, Spoon, Bob Wills Manu Dibango (african tuned percussion)and so on.
 
I am re-set with every new song! ;-)

The other thing is that my main drive is to combine music elements that don't usually go together. So, I am often trying to decide what tempo this unusual creature should run at with no template.

I do a lot of music that uses swing or shuffle beats and I think those are especially deceptive. Adding shuffle seems to make a song sound slower w/ no tempo change.

Also, the ugliest truth is that I tend to crank up the tempo when I see short-comings in what I have just done. Or don't have confidence in one of my new hybrid styles.

but... that weird perception shift from morning to night.... it's so organic feeling.
Hope I am not damaged! ;-)





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