@JM Coulon to be honest my area of expertise is composing using synths and sample libraries so for me it would be ideal to be able to have that level of control and precise instruction with a session musician if I needed it, but in practice people aren't really able to execute that, and it really isn't fun for them to try
a decent tactic that does sometimes work is to program a loop that has the microrythm, dynamics, and feel you want, and then say "do your best to match the feel of this" and give it to them in the headphones instead of a click.
Everything can be notated, but not always in a way that is purposeful for a musician to read. If your Dilla-groove is looking like a Ferneyhough piece something has gone wrong.
@@rzufig961 oh right that explains it. i was also like whoa, what just happened check out his screencaps (e.g. 8:55), turns out even his computer is in German.
Don't wanna jinx it, but I'm so thankful that traditional copyright laws don't include drum melodies or grooves, so we can analyze drum legends to our heart's content :)
Fun fact: dogs apparently have almost perfect sense on rhythm. Saw it on QI episode. They trained a dog like 118bpm means going for a walk, 120bpm means food. Now if I could only trained my dog to bark when the drummer strats in the wrong tempo! Animal metronome.
I hope you do a follow up on how this affects the "chemistry" between a drummer and a bass player. As a bass player I've played with a lot of drummers and sometimes it is easy to play together and sometimes it is really hard. Over time I've started to feel that this is mostly an issue of having or lacking a shared understanding of microtime. After all, if a beat is slightly behind the quantized position, this could mean two things: tempo modulation or microtime and both of these would imply a different time at which the next beat should occur. The same holds in reverse as well - I might play a note just slightly behind a bass drum hit as a microtime choice and the drummer might try to adjust for me dragging. Another possible follow up would be something on how to use quantized and unquantized grooves as a means to generate contrast.
Agreed. When a drummer/bass player finds their counterpart that they fit with, you just know. Can't put your finger on it, you just know the two of you got it.
Have a read into musical entrainment, there’s some academics doing pretty fascinating research on isochronous rhythms & dynamic systems. Some use the social/metaphorical application, beyond the standard “physics” parameters, such as how well the players know eachother etc. Always excited to see people exploring these changes in phase relationship
I believe the micro timing perception is likely going to be relative to the tempo in those tests. By increasing (or decreasing) the tempo, a fixed shift of the 5th note will represent a larger (or smaller) portion of the beat interval. This would be an interesting controlled variable to test.
Wow, that's a quite important control measure not thought of in this experiment. I guess the frequence/ pitch of the note also plays a role. Maybe a high-pitched "beep" that most metronoms give you will cause a better distinction - and headaches in all participants :D
Bro SAME! I think it's probably because you've been grinding specific timings at 60Hz for OoT speedrunning, because I've been grinding my Super Smash Bros Melee (you'd enjoy the process of getting good at melee, I think) timings, and I was thinking, "oh, that felt about a frame early" and it was right in that neighborhood. So fucking sick to realize that your brain is capable of processing timing windows that quickly. Anyway, you're dope, keep up the good work my man.
I get unreasonably excited every time Shawn uploads a video. Man, you do such a great job breaking these concepts done in such a way that it is a joy to learn.
True, that would be interesting. The hitwindow on higher difficulties can get pretty low. I don't know about other games but in osu! OD10 is +-19.5ms, so pretty much at the threshold that can be consistently perceived, according to Shawn's data here. Although you'd have to survey some really high level rhythm gamers for them to compete with drummers with 10+ years experience ^^
In Rock Band, there were some very fast notes that I couldn't hit until I turned the calibration to the nearest 5-10 milliseconds. Anything outside that threshold and the game wouldn't register it.
I'm a student musician that plays violin, viola, drumset, and marimba. Been playing for around 7 years. I got all correct up until 30 ms Got 1 wrong on 30 ms Got 5 wrong on 20 ms Got 6 wrong on 10 ms And then 4 wrong on 5 ms My overall score was 54/70, although luck was on my side for the last one :p
Percussion, haven't played in a few years (apartments, man), played for about 13 years basically consistently until I was ~21, always in a student context. All correct through 50, 2 wrong on 30, 8 wrong on 20, 9 on 10, and 4 on 5.
i've pretty much only ever used DAWs, but played a bit of keyboard in the past. i got all correct up to 3 ms 1 wrong on 30 ms 2 wrong on 20 ms 3 wrong on 10 ms but only 4 right on 5 ms my total score was 58/70 maybe listening to lots of speedcore (~ 300+ BPM) has something to do with it?
I have no musical experience apart from attempting to play the first "Smoke on the water" riff and singing in the shower. Got 57/70, made one mistake in 30ms and 20ms, half wrong in 10ms and 6 wrong in 5ms. I did re-listen and check it for 2-3 times though, not sure if it's considered cheating.
This would be interesting to have in a mobile app. Then you could see how your time awareness improves the more you work on it. I've actually been working on a mobile metronome app, which I could modify to do this.
I just tried it and got at least 9 out of 10 until 10ms with 6 and 5ms with 7. I was not expecting to do that well at all. I tapped along with it which might be why I did slightly better but I'm not sure.
Excellent stuff! I reckon Shawn has already read the famous Finnish study from 2015 analyzing Jeff Porcaro's timing: "Fluctuations of Hi-Hat Timing and Dynamics in a Virtuoso Drum Track of a Popular Music Recording".
As a self taught guitarist (15 years) and newbie bass player (4 months) I really expected to do terrible, but my scores were consistently 8 and 9 until 10ms. 10 and 5 were rough... this is all as fascinating as people's pitch perceptions. I love studies about this stuff, great video!
You should do a similar experiment with rhythm gamers. I was in school band class for 6 years, and have been playing rhythm-based games (DDR, Beatmania IIDX) for another 20. Quantized beats are literally the objective. I got 100% all the way through 30ms just like the professional drummers, as did a number of other rhythm game fans. I think you're definitely on to something with that range of perception being trainable.
Hey Shawn, I felt like the comparison of the "flat and lifeless" sound of the quantized version vs the original version of Steve Jordan's recording was really unfair to the sound of a quantized beat. Wouldn't a large part of that be the negative effects of attempting to quantize raw audio? I feel like in order to have a significantly more fair comparison we should have either two raw audio recordings where one is played with the 20ms delayed ghost notes and the other closer to being in the pocket/quantized; or perhaps using 2 digital drum tracks where we can control with much more accuracy exactly where each hit is placed. I loved the rest of the video and have been a fan for a long time! Keep it up!
I agree... not trying make a case against quantized beats (though I understand if people interpreted it that way). that segment was simply meant to be "check out this example of microrhythm!" anyway, I actually did the MIDI comparison at the time of the original experiment (didn't include in vid only because of time constraints). here are some examples you can check out: drive.google.com/drive/folders/1h7eQcaDVxBvRba2Z2--TlVjTB8Mo9vQO?usp=sharing
Played in a drumline in middle school for 3 years. Results: 9/10 for 30 ms 10/10 for 20 ms 5/10 for 10 ms 5/10 for 5 ms Quite happy with the results. Can I microrhythm? Apparently yes!
Maybe it was too obvious, but I really was disappointed that both the test and the video lacked this one sentence. WAS IT RUSHING, OR WAS IT DRAGGING?!?!?
Please note that choosing "in time" for all answers for 20ms, 10ms, and 5ms (which I did because I couldn't hear any error) gives you a score of 50%, 40%, and 40% on each of those, _not_ the 33% expected from a randomly chosen result, so the survey results should possibly be analyzed/interpreted differently. Also, as someone who scored 70% on 30ms and as noted couldn't hear 20ms of error, I *also* cannot hear any difference between the quantized and unquantized Steve Jordan performance, not even as a subconcious "just sounds better" sort of thing. (Ditto the Rick Beato video where he also quantized a drum performance.) I am curious to what degree this is true for others, and how that breaks down between professional musicians and non-. And if it is different between them, what this says about the process of music creation when the creators have aesthetic opinions the listeners do not.
So I find this in particular very interesting: there is a drop at around 30 ms and then a slight increase towards 20 ms.(Myself included, I also had a big difference between 30ms {6/10} and 20ms {8/10}) This had me thinking: would 30ms be somehow unnatural and guide our brains willingly into choosing the wrong option? So as that if one were to make music with 30ms beats one would be in a constant state of unsureness and distress which would make the music feel very off? :)
I love everything about this video 🤙🏻 Everything is well explained and I like how you even went into the ms necessary to identify a difference. Microrhythms are the key to studying the center of mass of rhythms and seeing what feelings are produced when those small shifts in timing happen. There's all sorts of fun stuff there. Great work!
Your research made me think about two interesting ideas that might explain the drop off around 20ms besides just the limit of human perception. 1) You should try to group your dataset by early/late samples. I have a hunch that early samples will be a lot harder to detect than late ones. I expect this from your choice of sample. While a very short sound, a snare hit is not a perfectly "point like" sound. It smears in time for at least 5ms. I think that even if you play it early (-20ms), since there is still noise at the moment we expect (0ms), we still perceive it as on time. 2) At the speed of sound in air ar 20C, 1ms is 34cm. I'm sure you know how people who hear themselves talking with a delay will have a tendency to slow down. What if this is what's happening in that last performance? You mentioned how the delay was more pronounced on the kick, it also happens to be the furthest away from your hear. This is a very subtle effect, and its generally known that under 5ms of latency in recording is not perceptible. But what if it is, only subconsciously? In this case, we're talking 2-3ms at best... what if we include nerve response time? Assuming that pain/reflexive reponses are the same speed as conscious programmed triggers (like when you try to follow a beat and you consciously know when you should move your arms to hit the next note at the right time), well, those are at about 15ms... together thats... awfully close to the 20ms delay we're seeing here. I feel like there's a lot of interesting questions to answer around this topic. More research is needed.
Funny enough, when I first pressed play, my computer audio was still getting routed through my bluetooth sound system, and the video and audio signals were about 50 ms delayed.
Hey ! Very interesting video as always ! Just being picky here but I've been trained to analyse statistical set like yours and I know it's not really important yet I'd like to precise a couple of things. When you plotted the accuracy compared to frequency you sure did obtain points and a curve but you cannot just by looking at this, as you did, tell whether or not what you see, in terms of differences, is significant. Maybe between two points the accuracy drops by 5% but is it really significant ? If for each point you show standard deviation bars, you will show for each point how much all the measurements scatters from the mean. Therefore by observing the overlap of standard deviations bars between points, you can say : - overlapping = "same thing" so no significant differences between the two accuracies for the two frequencies - non-overlapping = different groups, the variation of accuracy is significant . Hope I was clear :D
Yes, of course. Lots of flaws in the experiment. This was not a proper scientific study, though I'd love to see someone do one on this. Hundreds of people have taken the test since yesterday (soon to be thousands probably), maybe more data will help determine the amount of variation for a given measurement.
After a certain point since rhythm and pitch are just sound waves, wouldn't you at a certain point just hear pitch? So if you subdivide at fast enough tempo you would hear a pitch instead of a "groove"
One weird analysis I draw from this is the use of drummers even in the age of DAWs. Don't get me wrong. I started out with drums and am now a keyboardist and after watching tonnes of your and Adam's videos, have also increased my musicality and knowledge of theory and other things. The point is, like you said in the end that Jordan sir didn't consciously think before adding those milliseconds worth of delay, he just did it naturally, unconsciously. And that's what can happen naturally only. You can't program such a natural feel into DAWs. So no matter how better DAWs might get, Sungazer still needs you man! Just kidding, hope you get the point. Big fan sir!
THIS is what happens when you hear a drummer play a couple measures and realize he or she is a good drummer. Like you said "even if we can't consciously percieve them, we can feel that they are there". Sometimes can't tell exactly what makes a good drummer (or any musician), but I think microrhythm is an important spark added to it. Thanks for this! and please, do not erase the test, I would like to make a video about it, giving you the credit, of course!
Dude, props to your data interpretation. Most people who don't have a background in experimental sciences don't know how to properly interpret and - more importantly - criticise their data.
This is great that you bring this up. We producers usually play around with pushing some hits forward or backwards by samples. Basically very low ms. I had a test in production school where I had to listen to a test like this. We also analyzed songs that use this technique to make a song feel fast and jittery or dragged and relaxed. I had a kinda easy way to feel that 10ms faster note because it felt stressed to me. Deliberate dragging and rushing is extremely important to make a song have the right kind of feel like you showed. VERY overlooked sadly.. Max Martin is a MASTER production technique. Even with midi drums.
my score: 56/70 100% on 200ms down to 30ms; 8/10 on 20ms, 4/10 on 10ms-5ms pretty proud of this, since i'm mostly just a math nerd who dabbles in music theory but doesn't practice
I'm very happy with my results! 9/10 - 200ms 10/10 - 100ms 9/10 - 50ms 10/10 - 30ms 5/10 - 20ms 6/10 - 10ms 5/10 - 5ms After the 30ms I can't spot the diference. Can't tell I really heard (or even feel) if the beat was late or early. I'm 31 now, I had drums class when I was 14 and again with 16. Them I start playing acoustic guitar, had classes for 1 year and stoped. I still play, but only for fun and with no consistent what so ever. What I do is watch your channel and other channels related to music stuff and listen to music on a daily basis. I don't have a good ear for pitches, but I have a good ear for volumes, don't know if this help to understand my results. I really like this video and your channel! (I don't speak english but I tryed my best to type this)
I have very similar results and story... I am curious - do you drum with your hands on your legs, or desk, or anything a lot? I find it very difficult to keep still, and drum with my hands a lot like this and have done since I last played drums about 20 years ago. I wonder if this has helped my score?
Question Shawn...were the countoffs in your experiment always the same tempo? Because Weber’s Law would predict you could get increased accuracy at the 20ms threshold with an increase in countoff tempo. Great video 👍 Paul
On the production side, with regards to creating reverb, the old rule of thumb is that up to 20ms of time delta is perceived as reverb, after 20ms it is an echo. I also find it interesting that 20ms is roughly the maximum of input/output/roundtrip lag that any musician, professional or not, may find acceptable when playing their instrument - which is mostly of course a problem in the digital world only. And that's why we all will eventually use ASIO and external interfaces. I've also found that the more experienced I get, the more sensitive I am to being bothered by any such lag. When I was younger, I had no problem creating music with a keyboard/output roundtrip that definitely had closer to 30ms of lag. Now it is out of the question, even 10ms is only barely tolerable, momentarily, before I want to throw the PC out of the window. Also, for the results of your study, I think the actual distinction is people who routinely perform against a metronome and people who don't, rather than professional or non-professional musicians per se. But, of course, a professional is much more likely to have spent countless, hundreds and thousands of hours perfecting their ability to play against a click, otherwise they're probably not getting hired for anything. Anyway, cool vid!
Very informative and valuable, but in MY ears, drummers as George Kolias are NOT creating a Rhythmic FUNDAMENT/GROOVE, they are only creating a "SOUND SURFACE/SHEEt"! Producing as many as possible hits on a drum is neither GROOVY nor in any ways musical -sorry George! I wonder if Mr. Kolias is able to lay down a GROOVE at 40 bpm! The ability to play fast is just training like Olympic athletes train speed but has nothing to do with MUSIC and MUSICALITY!! Mr Kolias might be the fastest drummer on earth , but he is lightyears away from being a serious MUSICIAN! I imagine such "Wann-be" artists at an audition; In MY band he'll have to pack his gear even before we start a second song!!! MR KOLIAS SERIOUSLY MISSES HIS ROLE AS "GROOVE -MAKER"!
Very cool video and had a lot of fun taking the test! My scores: 200 ms : 10/10 100 ms: 10/10 50 ms: 9/10 (my cat came asking for food and i got a bit distracted, lol!! ) 30 ms: 9/10 20 ms: 9/10 10 ms: 5/10 5 ms: 2/10 54/70 Not a musician :)
Hi Shawn, I'm analyzing my precision on bass and I came across this video. I'm wondering: if I can't hear a difference of 10ms anymore, can I overcome this while playing? I've noticed my timing fluctuates around 10-15ms (i.e. 16th notes at 60bmp). How does a professional player (e.g. you) here?
Drumming ABSOLUTELY changed how I "felt" music as I played it. I'm totally unsurprised we're well represented in this niche music skillset.... and was surprised by how confidently I could see myself taking this test... until you brought up drummers 🤣
Hi bro, i realized one thing a while ago. When you listen only with your ears, and there is a limit to what you can perceive, that limit increases quite apparently and obviously when you are the one controlling the sound. 😄 - i noticed this a long time ago, certain things like barely adding reverb, or whatever effect or edit to a groove like adding some swing, You can adjust it with a physical knob, and are able to perceive even more minute variances since the tactile input is also basically being processed in your brain. Kind of letting you know that something is happening, and your audio sense is almost extrapolating the tiny change. it really is quite a strange thing to experience. and a very weird phenomena. Maybe you could do a video about that some time? That would be amazing! Basically manipulating your perception based on changing sensation inputs, sound, tactile, light.. Like the human is an instrument lol. And measure what we can perceive using different methods of input. And then there is also training vs. the human limit. Like if someone had more extensive training to be able to identify abnormally small variations normally people can not distinguish. like training an ai network. (which is literally what our brain is, and neural networks are modeled after lol) basically we are a computer just accepting input and synthesizing data inside our brain. xD
Good video, it's something I can show my band members 😁 I like the experiment, and I'm wondering if a drier sound would have changed the outcome. BTW, I'm sure mr Jordan would've made the same beat sound great even with straight 16ths.😊
Playing music by theory alone, is like rock climbing with shoes. They’ll get you to the rock but, make it tougher to climb if you can’t feel or get into a groove. Only after you abandon the shoes (theory) and bare your soles (feeling) can you reach the top!
I was about to say "how come the pro drummers with 15+ of experience didn't have a perfect score in 100ms, 50ms, and 30ms but have a perfect score at 200ms?" Maybe the data was rounded down from a 9.9 out of 10 to a 9 or that people lied about being a pro drummer or simply a misclick. 10 10 10 9 6 6 5
How good is 8/10 on 20ms? also I got 9/10 on 30ms and 10/10 on 50ms or anything above 50. Besides that I think that being able to detect micro rhythmic changes is relative to the BPM of what you're listening to. For example I can tell the difference if a beat is half the BPM no matter the bpm so when listen to Extratone sometimes (~ 2500+ BPM) I can definitely tell that difference even though the difference is probably just a fraction of a millisecond. I do however struggle to hear the difference if the beat is say 1/64 of the BPM so when I listen to a really slow song, unless I measure the amount of time between each beat in arbitrary units in my head, I can't tell the rhythmic change even if there's a gap as wide as 4 seconds between each beat.
Honestly I'm absolutely astonished I managed to nail 7 correctly in the 30ms set... :) And then it all went downhill.. Only 54/70 :(... (not a musician)
Extremely interesting experiment. 200ms, 100ms and 50ms maxed out, then it went downhill from there. Interesting fact - at 30 ms, I made 3 mistakes, all of which were assuming that something is in time when it wasn't. It took me an additional tier to start seeing ghosts. 10ms and 5ms are just pure random as expected. ps. primary music school (6 years) graduate on the clarinet. Nowadays musically active as a hobby.
When I studied neurology my lecturer mentioned a lot of experiments with squid axons and how fast an impulse travelled along a neuron. That's probably the limiting factor here in terms of what you can perceive. I remember when I used to use the awful DirectX audio drivers before ASIO that my playing was terrible because the latency was always over 20ms. Anything under 10ms, the latency is pretty much imperceptible. Between 10 and 20ms is bad but you can adjust to it.
Weird. First time on the 10ms-early clip, I subdivided and couldn't hear it. Second time, I just let it happen, and totally felt it. Did subdividing hurt my ability to hear it the first time? Did I trick myself into hearing it early having heard the answer? Has this just opened up another sinkhole of musical self-consciousness that threatens to keep me away from my instrument? Do I need to set my metronome to speak 32nd notes now? Is 11:30 AM too early to start drinking?
Just try to imagine how (or what) you would be like, if something used some quantization on whatever you do. Embrace the fact that people are humans, especially when you're not drumming. ;-)
New sub here, great video! Just worked through the test- 100% score until the 10/5ms rounds whereby my brain apparently switched off and I scored 1 and 4 points respectively.
It’s kinda of a big relief to hear that I’m not the only one consistently rushing or lagging by 10-20 ms. I’ve often manually quantized the feeling out of my jams. 😂
@Shawn Crowder something you should check out, WGI basslines. I suggest infinity 2020. These lines split notes at rates that probably come close to like 50 ms. I only know this because this is what i do to lol. but you should check it out to see if YOU can percieve their musical part, from what they play. Trust me, some of this stuff actually gets crazy lol.
Isn't it technically possible to notate these micro rhythms within our tenary or binary subdivision system tho? Couldn't you just zoom in all the way down to, like, 256th-notes to notate even the smallest of subdivisions? Not saying this would be anywhere near practical, readable or useful/necessary, but just for the sake of science...
Have you seen Anthony Vincent's video with Jonathan Moffett? ruclips.net/video/Bbl5fyD4EuM/видео.html I swear that Moffett is subtly adjusting micro rhythms between genres, but I'm not sure if that's just a perceptual illusion based on context. I'd be curious to hear your take on it.
Hi! So as an autistic person who can hear microyrthyms, I have a few problems with this test. First off, not being able to pause the test is a big problem. Everyone's brains processes audio differently, and we each need different amounts of time to process that information, and by not allowing people to pause, you are stripping them from the chance to do so. Secondly, the audio at the start of each video is just problematic and unnecessary. It's way too complex and distracts from the task at hand. Thirdly (and this is the big one) the snare drum samples you use are just god awful. It is just way too complex, there is way too much unnecessary audio information to process, and combined with not being able to pause, it can lead to an overwhelming expiremence, especially for an autistic person like me. I actually tried to take the test two other times before completing it, leaving on the verge of a panic attack and tears at the 100/50 ms mark. The third time I broke the rules and I paused the video, and I was able to complete it ( Although I only went to 20ms before i didn't even listen to it and I just hit the same one) because of the various other issues the sample has. The attack is way too long, meaning that even if you can differentiate microrythm (as I can) you can't with this sample, because you cannot tell apart the timing of samples if the attack is longer than the difference in time. Timing accuracy is directly rated to the length of the attack, a shorter attack leads to a higher accuracy, and vise versa. The attack felt to me to be about 30-45ms, it should have been the lowest amound of seperation you are testing (5ms, in this case) or less. But again, the sample was still to complicated as a whole, too much reverb, to many different textures playing, and for this kind of application, it's not appropriate. And why in gods green earth did it change pitch? Having it change pitch as it did is very problematic and distracting. And for why the pitch changed, it could be because you changed the pitch (which I would advise against), the velocity changed (I would keep the velocity steady for consistency), or the timing of the notes is changing the perceptiom of the pitch. In any case, this is probably influenced by the texture and complexity of the sample as a whole. But that last one is especially bad, because if the perception of the pitch is changing because of timing, theoretically, you could figure out the awnser without actually listening to the rythms, and instead by just hearing the pitch (assuming a consistency between the change in pitch and the change in rythm. Overall, this test could use a lot of improvement to make it actually usable.
In the Pros Vs Not-Pros section, I find interesting to think that maybe the Pros have been trained to look out for and play 50-20 ms flams, but have next to zero training with anything above that, maybe you could say that they're also begginers in that area, and maybe with training they could hear it more consistently with time. But idk, just trowing some ideas around.
Huh, fascinating. I was perfect down to 50 ms, and then started missing late hits but I was perfect on detecting early hits down to 10 ms. (And that's not just post-facto random chance -- I was much more certain about hearing early hits than whether one was on time or late.)
By us watching your analysis before doing the survey, i think you might've created a confirmation bias towards worse perfomance in the low ms range. Wouldn't be suprised if the participants after this videos performed worse in the 20-5 ms range than those before. I would also be really curious if this turned out to be true ;)
Very interesting thing - just made the test. At least I'm proud to not be that wrong and mix "too early" with "too late", even not at 5ms. At the end I discovered (as a classical trained percussionist), "too early" does sound bad to me in every case. "In time" and "too late" from 20ms to 5ms were harder because "too late" can sound very good, kind of end phrasing
I want to play drums (more because I make rythms more interesting with more ease than harmony or melody, and I like to learn as many things as I can) however I don't have drums(just some humble bongos), space to put them if I had it, no recording equipment and no time to play without driving someone to absolute madness, so when I program drums I record me hitting the desk with my fingers (it's funny how many easily distinguishable pitches a wooden desk can make) and put the drum samples/synth over the the recording, so I (hope to) make the digital drums less mechanical in compensation; I know isn't good enough but I try to improve
I have to admit I didn't hear any difference between the quantized Jordan and original. But that is quite consistant with my test score. All was well at 50ms but I heard no difference at all at 30ms. Well, my main instrument is guitar after all 😄
While interesting, it seems irrelevant, since no one can play 100% on the beat, and no one can play 100% 10 ms late. In other words, everybody microrhythms.
3 года назад
Got 7/10 correct for the 5ms ones ....and 2/10 for the 10ms ones ^^'
Well when you're talking about the impact of concussive percussion single hits notes that don't have a length to them watch, it's much more difficult but when you have two notes that are playing simultaneously hearing those beats is much easier those small microbeads Donald Fagan is famous according to an article by Richard Nichols in recording engineering magazine and to the point of really bugging nickels that Fagan could hear one two three four millisecond differences as long as the notes were played at the same time he can tell when something was off like that but he could also tell rhythms and timing that might be off found it like 10 milliseconds according to the article that's pretty amazing. But Donald Fagan is an outlier in that regard obviously.
I was going to try to take the test but I found the format where the video has multiple phrases and I have to try to figure out which one goes with which multiple choice question (that aren't even numbered in the video OR in the answers!!) impossible. Who knows if I could hear the notes being late or early.
Is it possible to customize a bass-drum pedal with a "groove setting" that mechanically delays the kick, so a drummer can play in time, but the actual hit will be delayed?
This just came up in my feed and I remember taking the test when it came out. My thoughts this time is if hearing these different flams is teachable, the group to test would be snare players from the top drum corps and marching bands. One thing that dci produced during the golden years was methods for educating students. Certainly there are instructors out there with trucks for eliminating the flams between players.
everything can be notated, you just have to be ready to break out the 128ths and 96-tuplets
I know only all the 69-tuplets from EMCproduction :/
@JM Coulon I'm sure theres ways to do the same purposefully with modern software
@JM Coulon to be honest my area of expertise is composing using synths and sample libraries so for me it would be ideal to be able to have that level of control and precise instruction with a session musician if I needed it, but in practice people aren't really able to execute that, and it really isn't fun for them to try
a decent tactic that does sometimes work is to program a loop that has the microrythm, dynamics, and feel you want, and then say "do your best to match the feel of this" and give it to them in the headphones instead of a click.
Everything can be notated, but not always in a way that is purposeful for a musician to read. If your Dilla-groove is looking like a Ferneyhough piece something has gone wrong.
im glad this channel has turned into drummer adam neely, love it love it love it
I mean, they both get to use Sungazer in their videos 😏
aaaaand kiss
Subscribed after reading this
Repetition legitimizes.
His presentations have the same professionalism seen in Nahre Sol's work. The way they speak is very similar.
Really appreciate your pronunciation of Ernst Heinrich Weber.
@@rzufig961 did he ever live in NY?
@@quinreimer5906 pretty sure he did at some point
Yeah I thought so too
@@rzufig961 oh right that explains it. i was also like whoa, what just happened
check out his screencaps (e.g. 8:55), turns out even his computer is in German.
Don't wanna jinx it, but I'm so thankful that traditional copyright laws don't include drum melodies or grooves, so we can analyze drum legends to our heart's content :)
unfortunately it does. once i uploaded drum groove played by me, from song that has drums-only intro, and got claim
Fun fact: dogs apparently have almost perfect sense on rhythm. Saw it on QI episode. They trained a dog like 118bpm means going for a walk, 120bpm means food. Now if I could only trained my dog to bark when the drummer strats in the wrong tempo! Animal metronome.
drummer: *drags*
dog: not quite my tempo
Animals as (band) leaders?!
I hope you do a follow up on how this affects the "chemistry" between a drummer and a bass player. As a bass player I've played with a lot of drummers and sometimes it is easy to play together and sometimes it is really hard. Over time I've started to feel that this is mostly an issue of having or lacking a shared understanding of microtime. After all, if a beat is slightly behind the quantized position, this could mean two things: tempo modulation or microtime and both of these would imply a different time at which the next beat should occur. The same holds in reverse as well - I might play a note just slightly behind a bass drum hit as a microtime choice and the drummer might try to adjust for me dragging.
Another possible follow up would be something on how to use quantized and unquantized grooves as a means to generate contrast.
Agreed. When a drummer/bass player finds their counterpart that they fit with, you just know. Can't put your finger on it, you just know the two of you got it.
Have a read into musical entrainment, there’s some academics doing pretty fascinating research on isochronous rhythms & dynamic systems. Some use the social/metaphorical application, beyond the standard “physics” parameters, such as how well the players know eachother etc. Always excited to see people exploring these changes in phase relationship
I believe the micro timing perception is likely going to be relative to the tempo in those tests. By increasing (or decreasing) the tempo, a fixed shift of the 5th note will represent a larger (or smaller) portion of the beat interval. This would be an interesting controlled variable to test.
Wow, that's a quite important control measure not thought of in this experiment. I guess the frequence/ pitch of the note also plays a role. Maybe a high-pitched "beep" that most metronoms give you will cause a better distinction - and headaches in all participants :D
Exactly. It's not the same to detect 200 ms differences in 0.5 seconds than in 5 seconds.
The fact that I was like "hmm feels like 10-15 ms early" on that last example makes me far more excited than it probably should.
I remember asking you about something related to this in chat not too long ago and I thought of you again when I saw this vid... and now youre here!
@@martinskrebergene :)
Same, editing my own bass playing for tracking has left me very hyper aware of my timing.
Excited enough to practice and try to incorporate this?
Bro SAME! I think it's probably because you've been grinding specific timings at 60Hz for OoT speedrunning, because I've been grinding my Super Smash Bros Melee (you'd enjoy the process of getting good at melee, I think) timings, and I was thinking, "oh, that felt about a frame early" and it was right in that neighborhood. So fucking sick to realize that your brain is capable of processing timing windows that quickly. Anyway, you're dope, keep up the good work my man.
I’m proud to call myself an unprofessional musician that can distinguish a difference of 30 msec groove
I get unreasonably excited every time Shawn uploads a video. Man, you do such a great job breaking these concepts done in such a way that it is a joy to learn.
100% agreed!
This is incredibly valuable for anyone who records themselves practicing, thank you so much!
7:22 The KidPix "oh no!"
Very neat study, I wonder what would happen if you performed this survey on rhythm game players as well?
True, that would be interesting. The hitwindow on higher difficulties can get pretty low. I don't know about other games but in osu! OD10 is +-19.5ms, so pretty much at the threshold that can be consistently perceived, according to Shawn's data here. Although you'd have to survey some really high level rhythm gamers for them to compete with drummers with 10+ years experience ^^
In Rock Band, there were some very fast notes that I couldn't hit until I turned the calibration to the nearest 5-10 milliseconds. Anything outside that threshold and the game wouldn't register it.
Yo what the fuck KidPix that’s a deep memory what the fuckkkk
I can feel my drummer brain expanding from this video
I'm a student musician that plays violin, viola, drumset, and marimba. Been playing for around 7 years.
I got all correct up until 30 ms
Got 1 wrong on 30 ms
Got 5 wrong on 20 ms
Got 6 wrong on 10 ms
And then 4 wrong on 5 ms
My overall score was 54/70, although luck was on my side for the last one :p
Percussion, haven't played in a few years (apartments, man), played for about 13 years basically consistently until I was ~21, always in a student context. All correct through 50, 2 wrong on 30, 8 wrong on 20, 9 on 10, and 4 on 5.
i've pretty much only ever used DAWs, but played a bit of keyboard in the past.
i got all correct up to 3 ms
1 wrong on 30 ms
2 wrong on 20 ms
3 wrong on 10 ms
but only 4 right on 5 ms
my total score was 58/70
maybe listening to lots of speedcore (~ 300+ BPM) has something to do with it?
I have no musical experience apart from attempting to play the first "Smoke on the water" riff and singing in the shower. Got 57/70, made one mistake in 30ms and 20ms, half wrong in 10ms and 6 wrong in 5ms. I did re-listen and check it for 2-3 times though, not sure if it's considered cheating.
This would be interesting to have in a mobile app. Then you could see how your time awareness improves the more you work on it.
I've actually been working on a mobile metronome app, which I could modify to do this.
I just tried it and got at least 9 out of 10 until 10ms with 6 and 5ms with 7. I was not expecting to do that well at all. I tapped along with it which might be why I did slightly better but I'm not sure.
Excellent stuff! I reckon Shawn has already read the famous Finnish study from 2015 analyzing Jeff Porcaro's timing: "Fluctuations of Hi-Hat Timing and Dynamics in a Virtuoso Drum Track of a Popular Music Recording".
As a self taught guitarist (15 years) and newbie bass player (4 months) I really expected to do terrible, but my scores were consistently 8 and 9 until 10ms. 10 and 5 were rough... this is all as fascinating as people's pitch perceptions. I love studies about this stuff, great video!
You should do a similar experiment with rhythm gamers. I was in school band class for 6 years, and have been playing rhythm-based games (DDR, Beatmania IIDX) for another 20. Quantized beats are literally the objective. I got 100% all the way through 30ms just like the professional drummers, as did a number of other rhythm game fans. I think you're definitely on to something with that range of perception being trainable.
Hey Shawn,
I felt like the comparison of the "flat and lifeless" sound of the quantized version vs the original version of Steve Jordan's recording was really unfair to the sound of a quantized beat. Wouldn't a large part of that be the negative effects of attempting to quantize raw audio? I feel like in order to have a significantly more fair comparison we should have either two raw audio recordings where one is played with the 20ms delayed ghost notes and the other closer to being in the pocket/quantized; or perhaps using 2 digital drum tracks where we can control with much more accuracy exactly where each hit is placed. I loved the rest of the video and have been a fan for a long time! Keep it up!
I agree... not trying make a case against quantized beats (though I understand if people interpreted it that way). that segment was simply meant to be "check out this example of microrhythm!" anyway, I actually did the MIDI comparison at the time of the original experiment (didn't include in vid only because of time constraints). here are some examples you can check out: drive.google.com/drive/folders/1h7eQcaDVxBvRba2Z2--TlVjTB8Mo9vQO?usp=sharing
It's quantized.. and then swinged! ;)
Played in a drumline in middle school for 3 years.
Results:
9/10 for 30 ms
10/10 for 20 ms
5/10 for 10 ms
5/10 for 5 ms
Quite happy with the results. Can I microrhythm? Apparently yes!
Maybe it was too obvious, but I really was disappointed that both the test and the video lacked this one sentence.
WAS IT RUSHING, OR WAS IT DRAGGING?!?!?
Please note that choosing "in time" for all answers for 20ms, 10ms, and 5ms (which I did because I couldn't hear any error) gives you a score of 50%, 40%, and 40% on each of those, _not_ the 33% expected from a randomly chosen result, so the survey results should possibly be analyzed/interpreted differently.
Also, as someone who scored 70% on 30ms and as noted couldn't hear 20ms of error, I *also* cannot hear any difference between the quantized and unquantized Steve Jordan performance, not even as a subconcious "just sounds better" sort of thing. (Ditto the Rick Beato video where he also quantized a drum performance.) I am curious to what degree this is true for others, and how that breaks down between professional musicians and non-. And if it is different between them, what this says about the process of music creation when the creators have aesthetic opinions the listeners do not.
So I find this in particular very interesting: there is a drop at around 30 ms and then a slight increase towards 20 ms.(Myself included, I also had a big difference between 30ms {6/10} and 20ms {8/10}) This had me thinking: would 30ms be somehow unnatural and guide our brains willingly into choosing the wrong option? So as that if one were to make music with 30ms beats one would be in a constant state of unsureness and distress which would make the music feel very off? :)
Everyone go watch Anderson Paak’s NPR Tiny Desk Concert. The second and fourth songs feature him applying some microrhythmic style on the backbeats!
I looked at your background and then looked at you and thought, "Did Adam Neely shave his head?"
I love everything about this video 🤙🏻 Everything is well explained and I like how you even went into the ms necessary to identify a difference. Microrhythms are the key to studying the center of mass of rhythms and seeing what feelings are produced when those small shifts in timing happen. There's all sorts of fun stuff there. Great work!
the overlayed tracks sound like a flanger...a flamger hehe
Hey, great video!
Are you going to publish the results of the test?
I got perfect from 200 to 30ms (56 out of 70) but it was a crap shoot from 20ms and below. I noticed I can hear late notes more than early.
me too
Your research made me think about two interesting ideas that might explain the drop off around 20ms besides just the limit of human perception.
1) You should try to group your dataset by early/late samples. I have a hunch that early samples will be a lot harder to detect than late ones. I expect this from your choice of sample. While a very short sound, a snare hit is not a perfectly "point like" sound. It smears in time for at least 5ms. I think that even if you play it early (-20ms), since there is still noise at the moment we expect (0ms), we still perceive it as on time.
2) At the speed of sound in air ar 20C, 1ms is 34cm. I'm sure you know how people who hear themselves talking with a delay will have a tendency to slow down. What if this is what's happening in that last performance? You mentioned how the delay was more pronounced on the kick, it also happens to be the furthest away from your hear. This is a very subtle effect, and its generally known that under 5ms of latency in recording is not perceptible. But what if it is, only subconsciously? In this case, we're talking 2-3ms at best... what if we include nerve response time? Assuming that pain/reflexive reponses are the same speed as conscious programmed triggers (like when you try to follow a beat and you consciously know when you should move your arms to hit the next note at the right time), well, those are at about 15ms... together thats... awfully close to the 20ms delay we're seeing here.
I feel like there's a lot of interesting questions to answer around this topic. More research is needed.
I’m a composer that started on a non rhythmic instrument, and the fact that I now have an answer to “how do I write a groove” has made my month
Funny enough, when I first pressed play, my computer audio was still getting routed through my bluetooth sound system, and the video and audio signals were about 50 ms delayed.
Yes I microrhythm, but not in the good way
Man that was super interesting
I got 54/70.
i wonder if it has something to do with processing speech, i think being able to feel like the groove of the way a person talks is pretty important eh
Next time someone tells me I'm rushing or dragging, I'm gonna tell them it's micro rhythm
Would love to see producers taking this test
The unquantized beat at 14:00 made me bob my head while the quantized version did not. It's very subtle, but you do feel it.
Hey ! Very interesting video as always ! Just being picky here but I've been trained to analyse statistical set like yours and I know it's not really important yet I'd like to precise a couple of things. When you plotted the accuracy compared to frequency you sure did obtain points and a curve but you cannot just by looking at this, as you did, tell whether or not what you see, in terms of differences, is significant. Maybe between two points the accuracy drops by 5% but is it really significant ? If for each point you show standard deviation bars, you will show for each point how much all the measurements scatters from the mean. Therefore by observing the overlap of standard deviations bars between points, you can say : - overlapping = "same thing" so no significant differences between the two accuracies for the two frequencies - non-overlapping = different groups, the variation of accuracy is significant .
Hope I was clear :D
Yes, of course. Lots of flaws in the experiment. This was not a proper scientific study, though I'd love to see someone do one on this. Hundreds of people have taken the test since yesterday (soon to be thousands probably), maybe more data will help determine the amount of variation for a given measurement.
@@ShawnCrowder I'll be happy to help if you want :D
After a certain point since rhythm and pitch are just sound waves, wouldn't you at a certain point just hear pitch? So if you subdivide at fast enough tempo you would hear a pitch instead of a "groove"
yes and there's an adam neely video about it
In theory yes, the hard part is playing that fast :)
One weird analysis I draw from this is the use of drummers even in the age of DAWs. Don't get me wrong. I started out with drums and am now a keyboardist and after watching tonnes of your and Adam's videos, have also increased my musicality and knowledge of theory and other things. The point is, like you said in the end that Jordan sir didn't consciously think before adding those milliseconds worth of delay, he just did it naturally, unconsciously. And that's what can happen naturally only. You can't program such a natural feel into DAWs. So no matter how better DAWs might get, Sungazer still needs you man! Just kidding, hope you get the point.
Big fan sir!
Microrhythm is like macrotuning
THIS is what happens when you hear a drummer play a couple measures and realize he or she is a good drummer. Like you said "even if we can't consciously percieve them, we can feel that they are there". Sometimes can't tell exactly what makes a good drummer (or any musician), but I think microrhythm is an important spark added to it.
Thanks for this! and please, do not erase the test, I would like to make a video about it, giving you the credit, of course!
Dude, props to your data interpretation. Most people who don't have a background in experimental sciences don't know how to properly interpret and - more importantly - criticise their data.
This is great that you bring this up. We producers usually play around with pushing some hits forward or backwards by samples. Basically very low ms. I had a test in production school where I had to listen to a test like this. We also analyzed songs that use this technique to make a song feel fast and jittery or dragged and relaxed. I had a kinda easy way to feel that 10ms faster note because it felt stressed to me. Deliberate dragging and rushing is extremely important to make a song have the right kind of feel like you showed. VERY overlooked sadly.. Max Martin is a MASTER production technique. Even with midi drums.
get Jacob Collier to take the test lol
He has perfect pitch not perfect rhythm lol
my score: 56/70
100% on 200ms down to 30ms; 8/10 on 20ms, 4/10 on 10ms-5ms
pretty proud of this, since i'm mostly just a math nerd who dabbles in music theory but doesn't practice
I'm very happy with my results!
9/10 - 200ms
10/10 - 100ms
9/10 - 50ms
10/10 - 30ms
5/10 - 20ms
6/10 - 10ms
5/10 - 5ms
After the 30ms I can't spot the diference. Can't tell I really heard (or even feel) if the beat was late or early.
I'm 31 now, I had drums class when I was 14 and again with 16. Them I start playing acoustic guitar, had classes for 1 year and stoped. I still play, but only for fun and with no consistent what so ever. What I do is watch your channel and other channels related to music stuff and listen to music on a daily basis. I don't have a good ear for pitches, but I have a good ear for volumes, don't know if this help to understand my results.
I really like this video and your channel!
(I don't speak english but I tryed my best to type this)
I have very similar results and story... I am curious - do you drum with your hands on your legs, or desk, or anything a lot? I find it very difficult to keep still, and drum with my hands a lot like this and have done since I last played drums about 20 years ago. I wonder if this has helped my score?
@@jonzenrael Hey
Yes, I do, but I wouldn't say a lot. Never have a hard time trying to stop the drumming. I last played drums about 4 years ago
Very very nice. Did the test and found out I can hang with fellow professional drummers!
me too :p
Question Shawn...were the countoffs in your experiment always the same tempo? Because Weber’s Law would predict you could get increased accuracy at the 20ms threshold with an increase in countoff tempo. Great video 👍 Paul
On the production side, with regards to creating reverb, the old rule of thumb is that up to 20ms of time delta is perceived as reverb, after 20ms it is an echo.
I also find it interesting that 20ms is roughly the maximum of input/output/roundtrip lag that any musician, professional or not, may find acceptable when playing their instrument - which is mostly of course a problem in the digital world only. And that's why we all will eventually use ASIO and external interfaces.
I've also found that the more experienced I get, the more sensitive I am to being bothered by any such lag. When I was younger, I had no problem creating music with a keyboard/output roundtrip that definitely had closer to 30ms of lag. Now it is out of the question, even 10ms is only barely tolerable, momentarily, before I want to throw the PC out of the window.
Also, for the results of your study, I think the actual distinction is people who routinely perform against a metronome and people who don't, rather than professional or non-professional musicians per se.
But, of course, a professional is much more likely to have spent countless, hundreds and thousands of hours perfecting their ability to play against a click, otherwise they're probably not getting hired for anything.
Anyway, cool vid!
Very informative and valuable, but in MY ears, drummers as George Kolias are NOT creating a Rhythmic FUNDAMENT/GROOVE, they are only creating a "SOUND SURFACE/SHEEt"! Producing as many as possible hits on a drum is neither GROOVY nor in any ways musical -sorry George!
I wonder if Mr. Kolias is able to lay down a GROOVE at 40 bpm!
The ability to play fast is just training like Olympic athletes train speed but has nothing to do with MUSIC and MUSICALITY!!
Mr Kolias might be the fastest drummer on earth , but he is lightyears away from being a serious MUSICIAN!
I imagine such "Wann-be" artists at an audition; In MY band he'll have to pack his gear even before we start a second song!!!
MR KOLIAS SERIOUSLY MISSES HIS ROLE AS "GROOVE -MAKER"!
I need another curve, way under the others, that's for guitar players.
Classical accordionist, 15+ years experience, not particolarly good in rhythm. I've got (really unexpected)
200 10/10
100 10/10
50 9/10
30 9/10
20 3/10
10 5/10
Very cool video and had a lot of fun taking the test!
My scores:
200 ms : 10/10
100 ms: 10/10
50 ms: 9/10 (my cat came asking for food and i got a bit distracted, lol!! )
30 ms: 9/10
20 ms: 9/10
10 ms: 5/10
5 ms: 2/10
54/70
Not a musician :)
Incredible my guy. Thank you SO much. This is exactly the video I needed as I’m diving deep into groove
Hi Shawn, I'm analyzing my precision on bass and I came across this video. I'm wondering: if I can't hear a difference of 10ms anymore, can I overcome this while playing? I've noticed my timing fluctuates around 10-15ms (i.e. 16th notes at 60bmp). How does a professional player (e.g. you) here?
I have no musical experience, but i somehow managed to get 10/10 on 30ms. I don't hear the difference on 20, 10 and 5 tho
Drumming ABSOLUTELY changed how I "felt" music as I played it. I'm totally unsurprised we're well represented in this niche music skillset.... and was surprised by how confidently I could see myself taking this test... until you brought up drummers 🤣
62! (10, 10, 10, 9, 9, 8, 6) One happy outlier, presumably not guided by chance at all.
Hi bro, i realized one thing a while ago. When you listen only with your ears, and there is a limit to what you can perceive, that limit increases quite apparently and obviously when you are the one controlling the sound. 😄
- i noticed this a long time ago, certain things like barely adding reverb, or whatever effect or edit to a groove like adding some swing, You can adjust it with a physical knob, and are able to perceive even more minute variances since the tactile input is also basically being processed in your brain. Kind of letting you know that something is happening, and your audio sense is almost extrapolating the tiny change. it really is quite a strange thing to experience. and a very weird phenomena. Maybe you could do a video about that some time? That would be amazing!
Basically manipulating your perception based on changing sensation inputs, sound, tactile, light.. Like the human is an instrument lol. And measure what we can perceive using different methods of input. And then there is also training vs. the human limit. Like if someone had more extensive training to be able to identify abnormally small variations normally people can not distinguish. like training an ai network. (which is literally what our brain is, and neural networks are modeled after lol) basically we are a computer just accepting input and synthesizing data inside our brain. xD
Good video, it's something I can show my band members 😁
I like the experiment, and I'm wondering if a drier sound would have changed the outcome.
BTW, I'm sure mr Jordan would've made the same beat sound great even with straight 16ths.😊
Playing music by theory alone, is like rock climbing with shoes. They’ll get you to the rock but, make it tougher to climb if you can’t feel or get into a groove.
Only after you abandon the shoes (theory) and bare your soles (feeling) can you reach the top!
I was about to say "how come the pro drummers with 15+ of experience didn't have a perfect score in 100ms, 50ms, and 30ms but have a perfect score at 200ms?" Maybe the data was rounded down from a 9.9 out of 10 to a 9 or that people lied about being a pro drummer or simply a misclick. 10 10 10 9 6 6 5
Mine was like 10/10 for the first 3 categories, a sharp drop to 4 or 5/10 from categories 4-6, and 2/10 on the last one
How good is 8/10 on 20ms? also I got 9/10 on 30ms and 10/10 on 50ms or anything above 50.
Besides that I think that being able to detect micro rhythmic changes is relative to the BPM of what you're listening to. For example I can tell the difference if a beat is half the BPM no matter the bpm so when listen to Extratone sometimes (~ 2500+ BPM) I can definitely tell that difference even though the difference is probably just a fraction of a millisecond. I do however struggle to hear the difference if the beat is say 1/64 of the BPM so when I listen to a really slow song, unless I measure the amount of time between each beat in arbitrary units in my head, I can't tell the rhythmic change even if there's a gap as wide as 4 seconds between each beat.
Honestly I'm absolutely astonished I managed to nail 7 correctly in the 30ms set... :) And then it all went downhill.. Only 54/70 :(... (not a musician)
I swear the babymetal, Distortion (live at download 2018) video I was watching yesterday may have faster drumming than your examples.
Extremely interesting experiment.
200ms, 100ms and 50ms maxed out, then it went downhill from there. Interesting fact - at 30 ms, I made 3 mistakes, all of which were assuming that something is in time when it wasn't. It took me an additional tier to start seeing ghosts.
10ms and 5ms are just pure random as expected.
ps. primary music school (6 years) graduate on the clarinet. Nowadays musically active as a hobby.
When I studied neurology my lecturer mentioned a lot of experiments with squid axons and how fast an impulse travelled along a neuron. That's probably the limiting factor here in terms of what you can perceive. I remember when I used to use the awful DirectX audio drivers before ASIO that my playing was terrible because the latency was always over 20ms. Anything under 10ms, the latency is pretty much imperceptible. Between 10 and 20ms is bad but you can adjust to it.
Weird. First time on the 10ms-early clip, I subdivided and couldn't hear it. Second time, I just let it happen, and totally felt it. Did subdividing hurt my ability to hear it the first time? Did I trick myself into hearing it early having heard the answer? Has this just opened up another sinkhole of musical self-consciousness that threatens to keep me away from my instrument? Do I need to set my metronome to speak 32nd notes now? Is 11:30 AM too early to start drinking?
Just try to imagine how (or what) you would be like, if something used some quantization on whatever you do. Embrace the fact that people are humans, especially when you're not drumming.
;-)
OT: it's noticeable that you took the challenge of pronouncing Ernst Heinrich Weber seriously. That's awesome!
New sub here, great video! Just worked through the test- 100% score until the 10/5ms rounds whereby my brain apparently switched off and I scored 1 and 4 points respectively.
It’s kinda of a big relief to hear that I’m not the only one consistently rushing or lagging by 10-20 ms. I’ve often manually quantized the feeling out of my jams. 😂
@Shawn Crowder something you should check out, WGI basslines. I suggest infinity 2020. These lines split notes at rates that probably come close to like 50 ms. I only know this because this is what i do to lol. but you should check it out to see if YOU can percieve their musical part, from what they play. Trust me, some of this stuff actually gets crazy lol.
Isn't it technically possible to notate these micro rhythms within our tenary or binary subdivision system tho? Couldn't you just zoom in all the way down to, like, 256th-notes to notate even the smallest of subdivisions?
Not saying this would be anywhere near practical, readable or useful/necessary, but just for the sake of science...
Have you seen Anthony Vincent's video with Jonathan Moffett?
ruclips.net/video/Bbl5fyD4EuM/видео.html
I swear that Moffett is subtly adjusting micro rhythms between genres, but I'm not sure if that's just a perceptual illusion based on context. I'd be curious to hear your take on it.
I'm amazed I pulled off 59/70 on this, getting near perfect until 10ms, where it dropped to a solid 60% 😎
Hi! So as an autistic person who can hear microyrthyms, I have a few problems with this test. First off, not being able to pause the test is a big problem. Everyone's brains processes audio differently, and we each need different amounts of time to process that information, and by not allowing people to pause, you are stripping them from the chance to do so. Secondly, the audio at the start of each video is just problematic and unnecessary. It's way too complex and distracts from the task at hand. Thirdly (and this is the big one) the snare drum samples you use are just god awful. It is just way too complex, there is way too much unnecessary audio information to process, and combined with not being able to pause, it can lead to an overwhelming expiremence, especially for an autistic person like me. I actually tried to take the test two other times before completing it, leaving on the verge of a panic attack and tears at the 100/50 ms mark. The third time I broke the rules and I paused the video, and I was able to complete it ( Although I only went to 20ms before i didn't even listen to it and I just hit the same one) because of the various other issues the sample has. The attack is way too long, meaning that even if you can differentiate microrythm (as I can) you can't with this sample, because you cannot tell apart the timing of samples if the attack is longer than the difference in time. Timing accuracy is directly rated to the length of the attack, a shorter attack leads to a higher accuracy, and vise versa. The attack felt to me to be about 30-45ms, it should have been the lowest amound of seperation you are testing (5ms, in this case) or less. But again, the sample was still to complicated as a whole, too much reverb, to many different textures playing, and for this kind of application, it's not appropriate. And why in gods green earth did it change pitch? Having it change pitch as it did is very problematic and distracting. And for why the pitch changed, it could be because you changed the pitch (which I would advise against), the velocity changed (I would keep the velocity steady for consistency), or the timing of the notes is changing the perceptiom of the pitch. In any case, this is probably influenced by the texture and complexity of the sample as a whole. But that last one is especially bad, because if the perception of the pitch is changing because of timing, theoretically, you could figure out the awnser without actually listening to the rythms, and instead by just hearing the pitch (assuming a consistency between the change in pitch and the change in rythm. Overall, this test could use a lot of improvement to make it actually usable.
In the Pros Vs Not-Pros section, I find interesting to think that maybe the Pros have been trained to look out for and play 50-20 ms flams, but have next to zero training with anything above that, maybe you could say that they're also begginers in that area, and maybe with training they could hear it more consistently with time.
But idk, just trowing some ideas around.
Huh, fascinating. I was perfect down to 50 ms, and then started missing late hits but I was perfect on detecting early hits down to 10 ms. (And that's not just post-facto random chance -- I was much more certain about hearing early hits than whether one was on time or late.)
By us watching your analysis before doing the survey, i think you might've created a confirmation bias towards worse perfomance in the low ms range. Wouldn't be suprised if the participants after this videos performed worse in the 20-5 ms range than those before.
I would also be really curious if this turned out to be true ;)
Very interesting thing - just made the test. At least I'm proud to not be that wrong and mix "too early" with "too late", even not at 5ms. At the end I discovered (as a classical trained percussionist), "too early" does sound bad to me in every case. "In time" and "too late" from 20ms to 5ms were harder because "too late" can sound very good, kind of end phrasing
I want to play drums (more because I make rythms more interesting with more ease than harmony or melody, and I like to learn as many things as I can) however I don't have drums(just some humble bongos), space to put them if I had it, no recording equipment and no time to play without driving someone to absolute madness, so when I program drums I record me hitting the desk with my fingers (it's funny how many easily distinguishable pitches a wooden desk can make) and put the drum samples/synth over the the recording, so I (hope to) make the digital drums less mechanical in compensation; I know isn't good enough but I try to improve
Hmm.. I quite clearly heard the 10ms example at the beginning. Am I a genius??
I have to admit I didn't hear any difference between the quantized Jordan and original. But that is quite consistant with my test score. All was well at 50ms but I heard no difference at all at 30ms. Well, my main instrument is guitar after all 😄
- Hey, Your tempo is horrible!!
- I got Feelings , you don't !!
While interesting, it seems irrelevant, since no one can play 100% on the beat, and no one can play 100% 10 ms late. In other words, everybody microrhythms.
Got 7/10 correct for the 5ms ones ....and 2/10 for the 10ms ones ^^'
daru jones is amazing on subtle offbeat rhythms. got 53/70 on the test myself :)
Well when you're talking about the impact of concussive percussion single hits notes that don't have a length to them watch, it's much more difficult but when you have two notes that are playing simultaneously hearing those beats is much easier those small microbeads Donald Fagan is famous according to an article by Richard Nichols in recording engineering magazine and to the point of really bugging nickels that Fagan could hear one two three four millisecond differences as long as the notes were played at the same time he can tell when something was off like that but he could also tell rhythms and timing that might be off found it like 10 milliseconds according to the article that's pretty amazing. But Donald Fagan is an outlier in that regard obviously.
I was going to try to take the test but I found the format where the video has multiple phrases and I have to try to figure out which one goes with which multiple choice question (that aren't even numbered in the video OR in the answers!!) impossible. Who knows if I could hear the notes being late or early.
OMG I thought I was OK at rhythm but I got almost perfect results until 10ms. I feel good with myself.
Is it possible to customize a bass-drum pedal with a "groove setting" that mechanically delays the kick, so a drummer can play in time, but the actual hit will be delayed?
This just came up in my feed and I remember taking the test when it came out. My thoughts this time is if hearing these different flams is teachable, the group to test would be snare players from the top drum corps and marching bands. One thing that dci produced during the golden years was methods for educating students. Certainly there are instructors out there with trucks for eliminating the flams between players.
Conclusion is obvious: microfeeling age is calculated in drummer’s years.
Yes, i do microrhythm. I write metal music with this kind of idea in mind. Really cool video man!