Does anyone know of any actual research done into the nature of the Push we hear in good rythmical Irish playing? I’m using the word “push” to include emphasis (making some beats in the bar louder) and swing (making some beats in the bar longer). (I wonder if there are other determinants?)
I magine it wouldn’t be all that hard to do these days - just open a suitable solo recording on a Digital Audio Editor like Audacity (freely available on the web) and note down the start time of each beat and the maximum level achieved in that beat. You’d probably need to measure a few bars and average the result to average out variations.
It would be interesting to do a comparison of regional styles on this basis. But back to my question - has anyone already done it?
What are you looking for? A report on which notes are pushed and when, etc?
Just curious because I’m also interested in this. Seems to vary a great deal based player/style, but of course I’m sure you know much more about this than I.
I would be interested too. I have tried it a bit to help understand what I am hearing and people are talking about.
I think the variation in articulation as the melody moves from bar to bar, and the effect of pitch on the perception of the displayed levels, might make it trickier to do than Terry suggests. With a steady foot-tapping beat we can get, for example, the beat marked by a distinct pitch change and a level change much later and next bar a slight pitch change starting well before the beat but with a cut picking out the beat all at much the same level.
If these are some of the events that effect the sense of ‘push’ then would averaging over a few bars lose most of what matters ?
As a newbie to playing this music (but less of a newbie in a lab) I am still puzzled by much of what I hear and read but am having a lot of ‘aha’ moments while watching Audacity’s pitch representation (mind the time lag).
Probably hard enough for an interesting academic project.
I imagine there would be (in good and interesting playing) both a general trend and some variation about the general trend, some of which would be intentional and some accidental. I guess sample enough bars and do enough anaysis and you could sort out all of that. I’m interested in the general trend (at least in the first instance), hence my averaging suggestion. But graphing the raw data against bar numbers would be easy and I imagine very instructive.
I wonder if there is a piece of suitable music (solo unaccompanied so we are not confused by other instruments) available on the web, that exhibits a strong sense of push that we could all open in Audacity (freely available to us all) that we could then discuss in these terms? It wouldn’t have to be very long, so it might be a promotional snippet for a CD or something similar. Any suggestions?
All I know is that the music has to make you want to move a certain way.
You know how certain kinds of music make you want to move a certain way? For example, reggae music makes you want to bounce your whole self up and down. Rap makes you want to bob your head forward and back (or run screaming from the room, depending on if you can stand it).
This music also makes you want to move a certain way. Not sure exactly how to describe it, kind of side-to-side leading with your shoulder perhaps? I am not a dancer so I have no idea what I’m saying and I don’t even know what the dancing is supposed to look like. I’m not talking about the dancing anyway, but the movement the music inspires in you.
I believe that when you want to move that way you’re hearing “the Push”.
Does that make any sense? Can you even boil that down to some kind of scientific explanation?
Speaking as your fellow engineer, I can understand your use of the word determinant, as factor to an equation.
However, speaking as a musician, I am reminded of the saying, that, if it sounds good, then it is good. “Push” does exist, apparently, yet I suggest that push could be a more subtle quality, which ultimately could be quantified, but might thereby suffer.
In other words, perhaps some things were not meant to make sense.
from the listening i have done, there is no general trend! i have found every musician has a different sense of downbeat, a different sense of offbeat, as well as a different sent of push, AND note length. some players always accent the first beat of a measure, while some do the second, some do every downbeat, some do every offbeat, some mix it up…
that being said, it’s like saying everybody talks differently. they DO, but then again, there are measurable patterns and rules for accenting words and sentences, even though within the rules there is infinite variation.
every time i think i have it all figured out, i’ll pop in a recording by james kelly and my head gets turned upside down, as it seems at first he’s accenting (pushing) nothing at all. then i’ll pop in “kitty lie over” and i’ll wonder how they do it while they seem to push within the middle of each note but not on the attack. then you listen to matt molloy, and he seems to be accenting by pulling back and not by pushing!
I remember now that my friends complain how much of a pessimist I can be. So a more positive offering on Terry’s first post.
Last summer I hurt my hand and for a few weeks spent practice time messing with Audacity trying to get better at hearing the simple stuff like the amount of swing in a reel or lilt in a jig. With multiple instruments on a track it could take some time to isolate particular phrases. So to help find the ‘bar lines’ I lashed up a way of recording what I was hearing on one channel and tapping two to a bar with my fingers into the other.
That soon developed into drumming my fingers however felt right (as sbfluter suggests moving). There was usually something obvious in every couple of bars or so to check my timing, slowing it down a little helped my accuracy. The pattern of finger taps on the trace usually made the differences in swing on different recordings clear and gave enough info to put some fractional note lengths into an ABC file and see if the a MIDI came out on the right lines. I also tried it on the bodhran (with interesting but off-topic results).
I then started looking more closely at the timings of my finger or drum beats relative to the music and wondering exactly what part of the bump on the trace was supposed to line up with what parts of which bumps in the music. And also wondering what people meant by ‘playing on the front of the beat’ etc. Thats when I started seeing in the music trace all the things that make it hard to make detailed measurements - I guess some of the sorts of things that daiv is describing.
But it did make obvious one simple thing that elementary music books and instrument tutors never seem to make very clear (at least not clear enough for me) - the important of the small gaps between the notes.
I wonder what, say, the traces of a really tight banjo and flute duet on separate tracks would look like. But I guess that this is everyday stuff to recording engineers and MIDI programmers so it must be described somewhere. Are those determinants the things that are coded in MIDI files ?
Can any experts suggest solo recordings ‘typical’ of particular styles ? I am just looking at (and listening to !) a clip of Mike Rafferty playing Miss McLeod’s Reel that is given on http://www.theflow.org.uk/styles/styles_galway.htmlas an example of East Galway style flute. There is something very distinctive about the rhythm and the trace in Audacity looks fairly accessible.
Have to agree with that first bit. How often do you hear a tune and think, man, that melody’s familiar, but the rhythm’s so off what you normally play or hear, it’s almost a different tune and it takes awhile (or later that day, when its running through your head) for you to identify it.
Regarding regional styles, you’d almost have to start with regional tune selection first - styles often seem to follow (or lead?), tune selection - tunes played commonly in one place and not in another - and there’s less overlap than the average session might lead you to think. Since regional rhythmic swings vary so greatly, it accounts for different types of tunes being played (and causing some discomfort for a visitor not from around those parts…). Playing along with someone who likes to push in front of the beat, when you don’t, or vice-versa, is challenging (or annoying) as well. Takes a bit to lock in with someone sporting a different pulse…
American and English (or Wales, as the case may be) - two countries divided by a common language. Pulse to me is the rhythm (as in a blood pulse). What are you on about?
Pulses are also beans - anything from the pea and bean legume family, dried seeds thereof, culinary purposes for the use of… mung, red kidney, black eye, butter, continental lentils, red lentils, yellow split peas, etc. etc. In American English too, I think. No split there. Side effects of consumption well known…
Now at the risk of being accused of hijacking my own topic … (heh heh, sorry lads)
Just having a little play with the tune mentioned above by david_h (and it might not be best for the job) using Audacity. Try it, it’s very interesting.
Open the tune in Audacity, you will see the tune in the familiar waveform view. At the left of the track, you’ll see the file name with a pullpown menu. Click that, then select Pitch (EAC) and you’ll see the notes of the tune rather than the waveform. Pull down the bottom of the track for a better view, and zoom the horizontal scale. It becomes an easy matter to click your cursor at the start of each note. Having cluck your cursor, the location in time appears in the bottom toolbar. Note down all the start times, and we should be able to measure how much time the player spends on each note.
Unfortunately, the vertical scale isn’t calibrated, but if you highlight a bit of a note by dragging within it, and selecting Analyse/Plot Spectrum, another window opens. Select the left most (lowest frequency) peak, and the pitch of the note is given. Add that to the numbers and we have a way of working out where we are in the tune.
Also try the Spectrum option in that pull down. Now you can see where the player is putting most of the energy (usually the fundamental, but sometimes the second harmonic). The Plot spectrum option can put numbers on it if you want.
And try out the Volume (dB) option - it adds a dB scale to left of screen to enable level measurements.
So, Audacity seems to offer us a lot in terms of analysing what’s happening in time, level and spectrum (tone colour)! Not bad for the price! (Free.)
Incorrigible punster, yes, professional, alas no, though open to offers to become so!!! I tried to tap into what david_h was saying but I lacked the audacity to keep my finger on the pulse.
How much time that particular player spends on each of those notes, yes, technology can bring out a great deal of musical detail, but at the end of the day, in this instance all one really learns is what that particular player has done, perhaps to the exclusion of any individual interpretation by the listener. In other words, the technology could assist one in being a better clone of the original, but might even impede one’s progress, as then one must in effect forget what he has heard, in order for his own, individual interpretation of the music to come forward.
Oh, I like technology, too, but it also has a seductive, dark side.
Heh heh, I don’t think I’m actually proposing measuring the duration of each note in microseconds and then attempting to reproduce them faithfully in my own playing! It would be far easier to play along with it (which of course is how the traditional styles are promulgated and preserved).
I am interested in seeing if we can discern the generality of different styles for the purposes of informing and improving mechanistic devices such as ABC players and metronomes.
“We play both kinds of music here - East and West Clare”
