Electronic Dance Music

There is supposedly a 'controversy' over Deadmau5 saying that a 'live' show is pretty much

i just roll up with a laptop and a midi controller and “select” tracks n hit a spacebar

(That's taken from his blog, linked from this story in the LA Times.) He goes on to explain

you know what makes the EDM show the crazy amazing show that it is?  you guys do, the fans, the people who came to appreciate the music, the lights, all the other people who came, we just facilitate the means and the pretty lights and the draw of more awesome people like you by our studio productions. 

Let's have a little history of "electronic dance music", shall we? It is a kind of music developed for use in night clubs/dance clubs and a fundamental principle is a heavy, unvarying beat. To this end DJs ("disc jockeys") put together sets of tunes and synchronize them to a single beat. A sort of predecessor to this was the Donna Summer song "I Feel Love" from 1977.

As you can hear, apart from the voice, everything on the recording is electronic using synthesizers and drum machines, not acoustic instruments and musicians. This simplifies both production and consistency enormously. Plus, nobody has to put in any hours learning how to play an instrument. Or is that a plus? Electronica, or the replacement of acoustic instruments with electronic sequencing, continued to infiltrate the pop world. One group in the 1980s that was typical of this trend was the Eurhythmics. Here is one of their songs:

 Let's have a look at a Deadmau5 show:

OK, cool lights. It works, obviously. Everyone is having a good time and there is this mysterious figure up there, wearing the mouse head, mostly concealed behind some sort of console. Hitting the space bar on his laptop.

Now here's the funny thing: I decided to check if these tempi were as uniform as they seemed to be, so I opened up my music notation software (which also can play whatever I notate) and put in a bunch of measures of a simple bass drum beat in 4/4. The default tempo in the program is 120 beats per minute. So I just left it at that and went back to compare it with the songs. The Donna Summer tune is, oddly enough, 120 bpm. The Eurhythmics song is, oddly enough, 120 bpm. And the Deadmau5 song is, oddly enough, 120 bpm. I chose these songs, pretty much at random, before I checked the tempi.

It couldn't possibly be that everyone just uses the default tempo in their software, could it? Naaah, maybe the software defaults to 120 bpm because everyone uses that tempo just because it is the perfect tempo.

I have developed a bit of an allergy to all music that is thumping at me at 120 bpm, though. It's the musical equivalent to every commercial food product being loaded down with high-fructose corn syrup.

Crazy. Amazing.

Honestly, I can remember when music was in DIFFERENT tempos. Not all the same tempo. Some of those tempos were slow...

Read more »

The Tyranny of the Backbeat

People used to talk about the tyranny of the barline which came from the very useful invention of the barline to organize ensemble music. When the barline, or rather the beat associated with the downbeat, or first beat of the bar, became all-controlling, then it started to be called the "tyranny of the barline". A related complaint was directed against the indiscriminate use of the metronome leading to a rigid sense of the beat. One writer wrote:

A good performance is so full of these minute retardations and accelerations that hardly two measures will occupy exactly the same time. It is notorious that to play with the metronome is to play mechanically - the reason being, of course, that we are then playing by the measure, or rather by the beat, instead of by the phrase. A keen musical instinct revolts at playing even a single measure with the metronome: mathematical exactitude gives us a dead body in place of the living musical organism with its ebb and flow of rhythmical energy. It may therefore be suggested, in conclusion, that the use of the metronome, even to determine the average rate of speed, is dangerous.

— Daniel Gregory Mason; The Tyranny of the Bar-Line

Alas, it seems that skirmish, at least in some areas, is long lost... If you combine a little metronomic beat with the tyranny of the barline and add in a characteristic accentuation that comes from rock n' roll, then you get a structure that underlies an amazing amount of the music we hear every day. I call it the "tyranny of the backbeat". What's a backbeat? Nearly all popular music these days, certainly all that derives from rock, is in 4/4 meter, meaning that beats come in 4 beat packages. Normally the first beat is stressed, which helps to define the package. In rock, the 2nd and 4th beats are stressed instead. This is a kind of syncopation in that it places the accents in an unexpected place. But it is so ubiquitous now, that it is like a rigid Procrustean bed that all music is forced to lie on. Well, a lot of music at least! Here is the locus classicus:

Just let me hear some of that rock'n'roll music

Any old way you choose it

It's got a backbeat, you can't lose it

Any old time you use it

There are exceptions, but they are amazingly few. Here is a rock song where the stresses are reversed. The effect is to restore the feeling of syncopation! Neophyte drummers are so programmed to stress 2 and 4 that they sometimes have difficulty with this song:

Do you hear it? It sounds like the beat is oddly shifted--not because it is, 1 and 3 are stressed--but because the backbeat has become so ubiquitous that it is ingrained into us, at least with this type of music. Let's choose some random examples from YouTube to see how prevalent it is.

I almost thought my brilliant theory was going to be undercut by the first clip, but no, around the 53 second mark it settles into a backbeat.

Yep, more backbeat. Oh, by the way, I am finding these by going to YouTube and typing in a single letter to see what comes up. I started with 'L'. Here's another:

Now that's a particularly aggressive example. The backbeat is bad enough, but when it is delivered by a drum machine, I like it even less. Another:

Yep, but at least this time it's a real drummer. I've done 'l', 'm', 'n', and 'o'. How about 'p'?

That's the first one with a slight divergence from the backbeat. While two is heavily stressed, they mess around with 4 a bit.

But I think you get my point. And my impression is that with the generic stuff you often hear out in public, in malls and restaurants, it is even worse. AAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have this vision of generations of impressionable young minds and ears growing up permanently infected with the backbeat, unable to feel and appreciate the subtle expression and rubato that we have enjoyed for centuries if not millennia.

Read more »

Music and Slow Time

I thought that my title was a quotation, but I can't seem to find it. In any case, it's appropriate. I'm going to talk about tempo--how fast music is played. One thing I noticed in my comparison of several different performances of a Bach gigue on violin was that many--most-- heck, all--of the performances seemed fast to me. Why was that? I think that a good tempo is one that allows the listener to absorb the musical texture: harmony, melody and rhythm. Bach's textures are often so rich that the listener can barely absorb them at the tempos we hear today.


How fast did Bach play and conduct his own music? We have no real evidence. Scholars have been arguing over this for a long time but unless someone invents a time machine, we are not likely to know. There are some general guidelines, but they give no specifics we can use for a particular piece. The metronome was invented by a fellow named Johann Maelzel in 1815 and was immediately latched onto by Beethoven and others to indicate exactly what tempo was desired. At the beginning of the score the exact number of beats per minute was indicated: ♪ = 60 for example. But the bloom was soon off the rose. Beethoven is reported to have said that the metronome marking is only good for the first four bars, after that you are on your own. Brahms said "I am of the opinion that metronome marks go for nothing. As far as I know, all composers have, as I, retracted their metronome marks in later years."


For Bach, who died in 1750, we have no metronome markings, of course. In the world of performance the temptation for virtuosos is always to just push the tempo a bit faster. It might just win the competition. But I doubt this does Bach or the audience any favors. I'm not the only one who thinks so. Here is a quote from composer Jan Swafford writing in Slate a few years ago:

We're seeing the Vivaldi-ization of Bach: gloom banished, minimal variety, implacably crisp, bouncy. And the slim 'n' speedy virus has infected good conductors. When the well-reviewed 1989 John Eliot Gardiner recording of Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" appeared, as a Gardiner fan I ran to get it. This time the great chorus of lamentation that begins the "Passion" was indeed an occasion of mourning: I'd blown 20 bucks. Gardiner takes the chorus of lamentation at near-gigue tempo. Jesus is crucified, his performance cries. Let's dance!

 I'm tempted to start a "slow music" movement analogous to the "slow food" movement. Get your tasty, all-natural, slow-simmered Bach right here!


Of all the different Bach performances I compared, the one that really stood out was by a Hungarian violinist named Kristóf Baráti. Click on the link to go to a Wikipedia article on him. Here he is playing the Siciliano from the G minor solo violin sonata:

Nothing too fast about that tempo! Good grief, why would anyone want to rush through music like this? Here's one:

But the real sins are committed with the fast movements. Here is the Presto from the same sonata played by Barati:

Pretty fast, but he has such control that it succeeds. Here is Grumiaux playing the same movement. The Presto starts at 2:25:

The problem I have with both of these is that there are some subtle rhythmic shifts going on that tend to just whistle by without the listener grasping them. I would really like to hear them. Here is Rachel Podger, the presto starts at 3:04:

That is a very credible performance, but even with some nice gestures, it still seems fast to me. This is a very complex piece and I doubt anyone in the audience is going to doze off if we just slow it down a bit. Do you? Let me end by going back to Kristof Barati. His performance of the Chaconne from the D minor Partita is just the kind of tempo I'm talking about. Unfortunately, Blogger refuses to find the clip so I can't embed it. But here are the links:
Barati, Chaconne, Part 1
Barati, Chaconne, Part 2

Read more »