Chords make you a better musician? Like, the existence of chords?
Lyrics make you a better musician?
Heartbreak makes you a better person?
Practice makes you a better person? What if you're practicing your puppy-kicking technique?
IS THIS FIGURE PERHAPS BULLSHIT?
I think we need to have a talk about Venn diagrams, sweetie.
1/3 clapping is totally cool if it's a polka.
Second post on that link, talking about dance parties in South Africa:
White dancers on the other hand want to jump up and down on the 2/4 beats. Even when it comes to hand clapping to a song - I see whites clapping on 2/4 and blacks on 1/3.
Wait, what?
Sometimes people get hate for being percussive on all four, but enh, that works with some music.
2: am I somehow misinterpreting the diagram? Does practicing the flute make you a better person? Or is your point that Venn diagrams are always bullshit?
1/3 clapping is totally cool if it's a polka.
The explanation for the whiteness of metal?
I think you are! Lyrics and chords are outside the pink circle.
I think you are! Lyrics and chords are outside the pink circle.
Maybe you should re-read comment one.
It ought to be embarrassing, but I am impervious to shame. Nosflow has triumphed!
I understand not knowing which beat to clap on, but how is it that in a room full of people clapping on the same beat, there's always a couple people STILL doing it wrong? Talk about solipsism.
What beats are you supposed to clap on? I have no idea at all.
What if you're clapping for the wolfman?
Where does self-awareness fall on the diagram?
Best musical Venn diagram. (Posted here previously I believe.)
Isn't music like dancing in that where the strongest beat is depends on the type of music/dance? As above, the polka is 1-3, but salsa is 2-4, and the waltz is like 1?
But overall clapping to the beat is wrong* and annoying because no one ever knows when to stop.
*exception for Rocky Road to Dublin
Just try to clap on 2 & 4 with a waltz. Can't be done.
18: Sure it can. You could write out a waltz in 6/8 time, in which case clapping on 2 and 4 would be a little unorthodox (particularly the 2) but not impossible.
What beats are you supposed to clap on?
All of them.
There are songs where it sounds awesome when a bunch of people are clapping on the 2 and 4 and some other people are clapping on the 1 and 3.
I don't even hear beats.
I got knocked to the ground during the moshing at a Prodigy concert because I was out sync with everyone else. But maybe I was actually on 2/4 and the lame Germans were on 1/3¡
Venn diagrams are always bullshit
This is an Euler diagram, though. (and also it is bullshit but let's get our labels straight.)
Are Euler diagrams a subset of Venn diagrams?
11 is right. And how do you even know which beat is 1 if you didn't happen to be paying attention at the start.
Germans are in a superposition of clapping and not-clapping states.
Chuck Berry said "it's got a back beat, you can't lose it" but I guess white people do lose it.
But is the premise really true? At a Bob Seger concert, surely Bob and the overwhelmingly white audience is not clapping on the ones and threes to the whitest song known to man, "Old Time Rock and Roll." I can't play this with sound right now but maybe someone who can can check it.
Do people clap along to Meshuggah? I've never seen them live so I don't know, but that seems like it would be hard.
Pretty sure I once saw someone headbanging at a Ruins concert.
Does one bang their head on the 1 and 3?
I think no, it's generally on the 2 and 4, though sometimes the headbanging just follows the guitar riff. I'm trying to reconstruct from memory though.
35: If you still have memory, you weren't headbanging correctly.
28 was a serious question that I was hoping somebody could answer.
Damn you Wikihow.com! Your "how to headbang" tutorial did not answer this question.
Most humans have a deep level of beat recognition, although it's probably trained culturally. I'm pretty sure you could listen to at least any western music you don't know, start at some point in the middle, and find the beat.
Of course I can find the beat. I just watch when other people clap. But I'm wondering if there's something less socially constructed.
28, 37: I think musically-significant things like chord changes and the beginnings of melodic phrases tend to happen (not always, but more often) at the beginning of a measure, so on One. It's something you can usually feel more easily than you can specifically identify, ime.
I know there are actual musicians around who can add/correct as needed.
This is going to turn out to be one of those completely made up things like "love," isn't it.
I always clap at the beginning of love.
That's how I could tell you were white.
It's less insulting than clapping at the end of love.
42: It's more like one of those made up things like "language."
eeeooooooeeeeeee ooooooooooooaoaaa rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhh
I always get the clap at the beginning of love.
FTFY.
So is "try do" an apposition, or what?
It's a deliberate attempt to troll neb and Yoda.
It's a pun on deux/dos/etc, leaving us to reflect on how we really should clap on the even numbers.
28: I believe this is a sincere question, and it's an interesting one to me. I'm in the middle of teaching syncopation to groups of 30-40 people many of whom have the same question. A few months ago someone asked if I would mind counting them in "4,3,2,1" (instead of "1,2,3,4") so that she would know when to begin. (I'm not going to do that, but the question got me curious about how they're thinking about rhythm.)
Anyway, I was wondering if you'd be willing to try something. What happens if you listen to a song and clap on every beat, somewhere no one's going to hear you and you're not worried about how you're heard. After a while, clap on every other beat, imagining that someone else is taking care of the ones you're not doing. After a good long while of that, see if you can switch places with the "other person".
If you can do this, I'm going to guess that your first alternating pattern was 1 and 3, and your second 2 and 4, but I'm not really after that yet, more wondering if you can find that switch. I know this doesn't answer you question *yet*, but if you let me know what happens I'll try to answer it. It is a good question.
I like to be helpful, but I got a lot going on what with work, looking for different work, Christmas, and the war on Christmas.
Ha! Okay then, no pressure.
It occurred to me right after I posted, even easier than the clapping thing might be hitting alternating beats on two different surfaces, like a table and a chair, making one hand really loud and the other one quiet, then reversing the volume. This might give a sense of how one feels different from the other.
Stanley?
I may have missed this, but how did the interview go?
One went well. I'll have others. There isn't time pressure.
3: 1/3 clapping is totally cool if it's a polka.
Hence why polka is Never Okay.
Friends don't let friends, people. Perhaps you know someone who's experimenting with going to Oktoberfest, drinking out of beer steins, pretending they just listen to Weird Al polkas for the jokes. It's a short but slippery slope! Next thing you know they're NAZIS. Don't let your friends turn into NAZIS. Increase the peace with 2/4 clapping.
If you draw a "things that make you a better data analyst" and "things that make you a better person" Venn diagram during the interview, I'm betting you'll be a sure thing for the position.
Speaking of interviewing, Witt, I thought I had your email, but maybe it was the wrong one. Then the odds of moving got confusing, so I forgot to follow-up.
Most humans have a deep level of beat recognition, although it's probably trained culturally.
It might be innate; maybe a product of our facility with vocal mimicry.
This is very odd: How To Clap Along To Music youtube video.
I'm not very good at that either. I can't do voices or anything.
Advanced lessons to include knowing where the pulse is, abd then just dragging the beat slightly?
Enforced Jo Jones/Freddie Green, etc
So is "try do" an apposition, or what?
Good ol' typo. We can't all by sauseglyes.
Also on Facebook, a bunch of my colleagues are doing "describe your favorite book in six words and let everyone guess it!" and I want to guess things like "Eat, Pray, Love" and the Bible but I guess I'll just comment over here instead.
"Commercial whaling voyage changed my life."
"My dead dad wants big payback."
"Geriatric founds interracial jewelry recycling program"
"Epic gallows comedy about fatal entertainments."
There's a hilarious youtubey video of some pop jazz dude whose name completely escapes me, jimmy something?, doing a concert in la belle france and the audience is clapping on 1 & 3 so he throws in a 5/4 bar et voilà! Zey are instahntly hippères!
"Pseudo stupid stammerer secretly super Caesar"
re: 72
Harry Connick, I think. I saw the video linked in a previous discussion of people clapping on the wrong beat.
"will ivan really return his ticket?"
"everyone is a phoney; also, ducks."
"It's recursion all the way down"
"Lots and lots of 70s hijackers"
This video. After he does it the drummer cheers. The audience seems to contain only very attractive people, possibly because it's in FRANCE?
Oh man, that video makes me happy. Didn't think I was a fan before but am now.
I have no idea what it means to clap on 1/3 or 2/4. It seems like the kind of thing a good youtube video could clear up in a minute (music, highlight appropriate number corresponding to beat) but I haven't found one.
Music people have always pissed me off by using words they seem to know and that other music people seem to know but that have no actual meaning they can express in a way that is comprehensible to people.
Even if they can provide a reasonable definition, you have to practically beat it out of them. Somehow "middle C" is supposed to be easier to understand than "261.6 Hertz."
82: Watch this (which explains the Harry Connick Jr. thing).
I thought you meant it would explain how Harry Connick Jr. has a career, but no.
I would tolerate any amount at 1/3 if audiences weren't liable to burst into clapping on the drop of a hat.
82 annotated bit from nosflows video should clear it up here
Anyway, the upshot is that almost all pop/rock/EDM/whatever music is in 4/4 time: 4 beats to a measure. If you listen to Seven Nation Army, hear how it starts out with a steady, constant drum and cymbal beat? Then around the 33-second mark, Meg White adds in a snare drum, but she doesn't hit it on every beat, only every other one. So then the beat becomes tom-snare-tom-snare. The tom beats are the 1st and 3rd beats of each measure, the snares are the 2nd and 4th.
Does that help?
Oh and once you've figured out what a measure is, if you pay attention you notice all sorts of patterns in popular music. Usually songs are broken up into blocks based on multiples of 4, so every 4 or 8 or 12 or 16 measures *something* will change, whether it's a rhythmic element or adding in a vocal or switching from a verse to the chorus. The easiest one to pick out is the instrumental intro at the start of almost all songs you hear on the radio.
I'm sure Stanley is cringing right now reading my explanations.
How does it work if Megan White isn't in the song?
Is the the first ever reference to her as "Megan White"?
The video linked in 63 isn't exactly good (it's way too long for one thing) but it is funny (sometimes unintentionally) and does explain quite a bit (and makes the same snare drum point that Josh makes in 89)
This is important. If somebody hands you a tambourine -- hand it back.
93: I have never met her and didn't want to presume.
At our church, each tambourine has its owner's name on it to encourage responsible, credentialed use. You don't want albeit catching the spirit and just grabbing a tambourine, though if happens.
The video in 63 is incredibly long and as of 1/6th through it hasn't actually given any useful information.
The video in 63 is incredibly long and as of 1/6th through it hasn't actually given any useful information.
Both of those things are true. The information (such as it is*) comes after the opening song.
* I thought there was useful information, but mostly I found the whole thing amusing because it's so strange.
The Seven Nation Army thing helps, because they're actually making a sound on the beat, so I can identify it. With the annotated Connick video, I'm like, clap whenever, it's all the same!
Which is to say, I'm hopeless, don't try to help me.
Learned helplessness is such a sad thing.
Ogged, what are you not understanding? A 4/4 beat is just one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, which is most pop and rock music. Listen to the beginning of the Harry Connick thing and you can hear it: one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four. In contrast, there's what's called a 3/4 beat: one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three -- think of a waltz, and envision people waltzing around, one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two, three. (I leave out stuff about why there's a 4 in 3/4.)
With a 4/4 beat, the emphasis is everything: it can be ONE-two-THREE-four, ONE-two-THREE-four, ONE-two-THREE-four, etc.
Or it can be one-TWO-three-FOUR, one-TWO-three-FOUR, one-TWO-three-FOUR, etc.
The clapping on 1/3 versus 2/4 changes the feel of the piece. I mean, it's all good, you can clap on whichever beat if you like, but you must at least see what's meant by clapping on 1/3 or 2/4?
I add: isn't one of your kids taking piano lessons? Does he have a metronome? I say, get him a metronome, and then ask him to teach you about beats (time signatures) and how to clap on different beats. It's fascinating, I tell you!
Maybe it'd help to listen to something that breaks the rules? Sometimes musicians get tricky and do stuff like 5/4 (for an entire song, not like what Connick did), which is usually 3/4 and 2/4 alternating--one two three one two / one two three one two. Like so, probably the most famous "odd" time signature song.
There should be a feeling of tension in that song: like there's too much going on, which gives it an instability that drives it forward. Try tapping it out. The most pronounced bass beat is on one, and in the main piano riff Duh DUH duh DUH / DUH DUH the last two are on four and five, with the first four hits unevenly dividing up the first three beats of the measure.
All that should just feel weird, so if you go back to listening to just about any normal pop or rock song hopefully the stress on two and four seems more natural.
I understand the thing mathematically, but the clapping on the Connick song sounded off and then sounded right but I couldn't identify where it changed without that annotated video. I don't think I'd have noticed it at all if I'd been in the audience and hadn't been trying to listen for it.
I appreciate it, folks, but unless the drummer is actually hitting the drums right on what everyone is calling the beat, I have no idea where the beat is. Go back to your lives, citizens.
82 et seq. remind me of this classic thread.
All you need to understand the difference: find a video of The Radetzky March from any New Year's Day concert (whitest musical thing in the known universe) and then I don't know, Aretha Franklin doing Think. That should clear things up.
What's Michelle Shocked's preferred beat?
109: I have no idea where the beat is
You are being stubborn, babe, god love ya. If people are clapping on a particular beat, it's the equivalent of the drummer hitting on a particular beat.
You know what a putting an accent on a certain syllable in speaking is, don't you? I can say, for example, for the word "student", either "STU-dent" or "stu-DENT". So with musical emphasis or accent.
I'm telling you, ask your kid to teach you. It'll be a bonding experience, child teaches father.
Anyways laid up with a cold, but now amused by imagining ogged attempting to dance at weddings. Thanks ogged!
Re: 109
Did you do that time keeping test, where you get a beat, it stops, and you maintain the pulse?
When you are tapping, you are tapping the pulse.
Re: 109
Did you do that time keeping test, where you get a beat, it stops, and you maintain the pulse?
When you are tapping, you are tapping the pulse.
So what's the difference between the beat and the pulse? Beat implies that it's broken up into measures?
I wasn't using it as a term of art, but you might have a groove where the drummer is only playing beats on maybe one of those pulses, or even none if it's really syncopated but all of the musicians are still locked into the mental pulse even if none of them are playing notes on those beats.
113: Assumptions! I encountered someone in a poetry class who just did not get the concept of specific syllables being accented.
I passed the timekeeping test when listening to Laurie Anderson's "O Superman (for Massenet)".
Next level will be CSV Soundsystem; loser gets Skrillex.
119: Okay, but Ogged will have to say whether he allegedly suffers from that disability as well.
116: What's a good score on that? I have moderately shit rhythm and got an 843/100. (I know it's gauche to ask about scores, so please also report your income and which boarding school you went to.)
Also shit rhythm, also in the 800s.
Yeah, I got 836, so it must be that only 900 and above is decent. Actually, I tapped the table for about a minute before I realized that maybe I should be interacting with the computer, but that's not really a rhythm problem.
808 would be the shibboleth of scores.
886! I mean, in this situation, the beat is being marked by a sound, and I can follow that, but this notion that there are four beats and you can clap on 1,2,3 or 4 is completely mysterious.
It's more complex than that.
According to previous comments from ogged, Iranians don't like Indians for some reason, and Indian music is rhythmically intricate. Ogged refuses to let himself gain even a smattering of rhythmic sophistication, lest he come to understand those he hates.
I'm sure Stanley is cringing right now reading my explanations.
Nope, all that made sense to me. And I thought parsi's "ONE-two-THREE-four" vs. "one-TWO-three-FOUR" was also helpful. But then I remembered: ogged is beyond help on this topic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ORHVroiWHk
vs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsL9UL9qbv8
||
This Christmas mix from Lord Castock is still very good. And the download link still appears to work!
|>
I may know when to clap, but not where.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vc-Uvp3vwg
First scene of "White Christmas", two minutes in, there are 1-3 clappers and 2-4 clappers and it's what makes this country great.
The rest of the movie, well, the kind of thing you like if you like that kind of thing.
(I would link a youtube of the Grateful Dead playing The Eleven, which is 11/8, but the wifi where I am blocks youtube.)
Hi folks!--I've collected a bunch of opinions and explanations regarding the clapping thing, and others, at this link (click on my name). This is originally from my blog "That of Lowly Pwuth."
Track 10: https://archive.org/details/gd75-09-28.sbd.fink.9392.sbeok.shnf
Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" is a pretty well-known song with an irregular time signature: five beats per measure, rather than four.
Music Thread winding down;time to troll with tonight's playlist
Grant McLennan;Magic Sam;Red Devils;Jimmy McCracklin;Marianne Faithfull;Sleepy John Estes;Fiona Boyes;Bach (Violin Partita);Judee Sill;Merle Haggard;Oscar/Peterson/Milt Jackson;Quicksilver Messenger Service;Linda Ronstadt;Talking Heads;The Moors;Jefferson Airplane;Roy Orbison;Pink Floyd;Chuck Berry;Al Basile;Rocketship;Acoustic Alchemy;Bobby Blue Bland;Tristania!;Dolly Parton;Lyle Lovett;Mollie O'Brien;Tchaikovsky;Mazzy Star;Django Reinhardt;Ben Webster....album tracks, not hits of course...Long night;started early;reading Yoichi Funabashi Examining Japan's Lost Decades;gonna watch, oh never mind y'all won't have heard of that either
Don't do Xmas anymore
Hm six word favorite novel. Abbreviating its own best line "no-one came because no-one ever does."
Scored badly on rhythm. Better at pitch-matching! Though not as good as some people.
FTFYprobably the most famous "odd" time signature song.
It took me probably a decade to get the title of O Superman.
Don't do Xmas anymore
I accidentally participated in the War on the War on Christmas. I thought I was just buying regular religious Christmas cards to send to family, but on the back they seem a bit combative about the holiday. And I bought them at church. Maybe last year they had people who were expecting the cards to say "Seasons Greetings" or name check Odin.
142: FWIW I didn't even know until just now that there was anything to get.
I saw the not-opera one with Charlton Heston.
137: AIMHMHB a friend of mine defined "Deadhead" as anyone who has more copies of The Eleven than you do. So anything under fifteen, no problem. You can take it or leave it alone. Not an alcoholic, just a heavy social drinker.
There is also Estimated Prophet, which is in something like 7/4
Bulgarian folk music has the most complex time signatures I've heard yet. You can tell that the beat must correspond to dance steps, like this tune, in 7/16, played by a band that usually plays Breton music, but in songs like this it's almost impossible to count.
I couldn't get above 680 on that beat test. Told you I was terrible.
Ivo Papasov and ... one other Bulgarian wedding music player whose name I can't recall are beloved of (parts of) the progressive rock community for just that reason. Wayside Music has some of Papasov's albums.
Yuri Yunakov is the person whose name I couldn't remember.
Nightmusic was kind of an amazing show.
That's sure true. I hadn't heard of it until I followed that link. Who knew that was on the air.
I'll never forget the performance of sacre du ptintemps on tour when the conductor was seriously the worse for wear after a long night presumably involving wine women song and he lost his place in the score. Lots of rehearsals paid off for sure!
Ha! The horn section was right in front of the timpanis and that dude was key to keeping everyone on track. It was a very intense experience.
Re: 150
Phone or computer? I score about 50 less on phone, presumably because of how touch screens work.
Bragging, though, I usually score around 910-920. With odd dips above or below.
My best skill as a musician is that my basic sense of time and ability to be in time (non-exotic time signatures, non-extreme tempos) is really quite good.
149: I've learned a few of the folk dances to those & similar Turkish tunes. Some of them run on a series of prime-number measures and you have to clap or shout at specific moments and it's obvious if you get it wrong or even are hesitant and there are teams, sometimes. Men vs women or two teams of each.
The Western equivalents have simple time signatures, usually 16 measures of 4/4 or 6/8, but the puzzle involves sudden changes of direction and if you make a mistake you crash into someone. ("Other left!")
Flamenco has similar rhythmic patterns. The clapping here, for example (chosen because the guitar playing is totally amazing, rhythmically):
The clappng and guitar accents come together and pull apart as the cycle moves.
Speaking of rhythm, this has a monster groove (great dancing, too) but if you try to pay attention to or count what the drummer(s) are doing, it's impossible:
Really recommended.
I watched that and, between watching the dancing and wondering about dry cleaning bills, I forgot to pay attention to the rhythm section. Very good.
