I’m definitely happy to be able to set tempo in fractions of a BPM, to find a sweet spot where everything feels right.
I don’t think there’s any one “right tempo” for a given piece of music, though, unless you’re trying to fit a particular dance style or score to picture. If you’re just making music for music’s sake, different tempos can work, although you may have to change the parts or their feel if you change the tempo.
My sense of tempo also varies with fatigue, alertness, and caffeine. The same tempo that seemed fast on Monday morning could feel slow on Saturday night.
Re swing—I’m a huge fan of negative swing, where you can pull the off-notes a little early. It’s actually a thing drummers do a lot in certain genres, but unfortunately this feature isn’t always available on sequencers and drum machines.
Also: ideally, a different swing amount should be settable for each track in a sequencer. It’s a big part of what made certain kinds of grooves (in roots reggae, early rock and roll, etc.) sound so cool; the bass player might be shuffling more or less than the drummer, etc…
I produce anywhere from 116 to 134 BPM. I think “slow” or “fast” depends on the other elements of the track. Some of my 128 BPM tracks feel very slow whereas some of my 124 BPM ones are almost like “techno”. It’s what sounds you choose, the key and what emotions you want to create I think determines the fast/slow perception.
i use bpm range from 105 to 150 with a step of 3 (105, 108, 111, 114 … 144, 147, 150).
mainly due to some old gear that did not have bpm sync so i have to input everything in ms/Hz, but that’s also my bpm sensitivity – ±3 bpm does feel different, ±1 doesn’t, ±2 still on the subtle side.
I’m quite sensitive to timing irregularities, to the point I have reported timing issues with gear after it was beta tested, and no one had apparently noticed until it was measured.
I also have a dislike for sloppy beats and bad swing/shuffle algorithms, and often to me tempos over about 145bpm rarely sound good, particularly hi hats which just sound like they can’t keep up. But I do like some faster tempos when everything fits together well.
I guess I have preferences of tempos which I like to work at, but not to the point of where I have to use a fractional bpm, for me the most important thing is how tight the timing is and the impact of tempo on the overall groove, so it very much depends on the sounds used and how they interact at a given tempo, rather than a specific fractional (or integer) bpm value.
All that said I do like off grid timing, human feel or even the idiosyncratic timing behaviours of certain machines, but it still has to maintain a sense of timing and anticipation or feel, if it sounds wrong it is wrong.
A pet peeve of mine is gear that does not sync properly, timing jitter and random start lag, not to a point of where it has to be atomic clock precise, but again when it sounds wrong it is wrong, beyond 3ms of jitter or start lag seems to be easily perceived when playing against a tighter clock.
If its a piece of music ive heard a lot before, I think I can notice ± 1-2 bpm difference.
If its something that Im working on, I get numb to tempo changes, and everything starts feels normal at any bpm after a while.
Maybe people who are sensative to decimal bmp changes are able to “tune” tempo of the song to its tonal contents, after all, you can think of bmp as an oscilator, if you speed it up enough, you get a tone. Perhaps that tone becomes in tune (or at any other harmony) at a decimal point.
I am listening (well reading anyway, and I usually read posts carefully).
I was specifically asking about this, the ‘magic’ of 100 or 134 that ‘creates natural rhythms you can dance to’.
Enquiring as to whether there was any science or reasoning behind it (I suspected not, but am open-minded and willing to learn from anyone).
Your reply:
Which makes no sense to me.
Neither does your next reply:
Which refers to 135 anyway. What happened to the magic of 134?
Also, no need to be rude. I wasn’t rude to you, I was genuinely interested in learning from you (which thankfully seems to be how most of the lovely people on Elektronauts operate).
My main sequencer (Hapax) seems to handle negative swing in a weird way.
According to the Hapax manual, negative swing pushes the on-beat notes later. This makes no sense to me. Surely the on-beat notes should stay where there are?
Maybe @darenager can chime in on this? You seem to have a wealth of experience with different devices!
Natural Speeds i guess. More Time. I guess im getting old. Im by no means an expert i have some dub cuts and scratch vinyls. 3/4 is 99.99 bpm 4/4 is 133.33 bpm 6/4 199.99 bpm maybe i missed op’s question by now. take care.
As swing is per-track on the Hapax, if some tracks have negative swing, and some positive (or neutral), then the down beats don’t all hit at the same time, ruining the feel.
I have it setup so I can control swing globally or per-track. The negative swing actually sounds fine if used globally.
I’m in communication with the Squarp team, but have yet to mention it (more pressing matters first!).
I quite feel the difference of 1 bpm even at faster tempos (around 150 bpm, obviously even more at slower like 70), but for the sake of simplicity stopped using decimal points long time ago. Even if at certain moment feels like it would be perfect to use 0.2 bpm faster tempo, after listening to a track for like a minute it starts to feel right anyway.
I’m not that sensitive to swing and would be just fine with 10% steps I do love good drunken hip hop beat, but need absolutely steady timing in stuff like techno and especially psytrance.
I do love good drunken hip hop beat, but need absolutely steady timing in stuff like techno and especially psytrance.