@DavidBennettPiano
I think perhaps the ultimate example of western notation just not being able to represent something is SWING! Of course, you can try triplets, dotted eighth notes or other tuplets, but the best solution is just to notate the music as if it were straight, and just tell the performer “swing!”. In other words, if you micromanage the swing, the swing dies.
@Idefilms
That opening one-take is an incredibly effective intro, Adam. Crazy how the lack of a cut makes such a big subconscious difference in our attention.
@MLGaeming
To me it seems kind of like comparing 29.97fps to 30fps. Your eye can't tell the difference between the two and it generally doesn't matter which frame rate a video is in, but it becomes extremely important when combining and syncing audiovisual content. It is the same for music, an accurate bpm is sometimes very useful. If the source audio is at 100.25bpm and you add 100bpm audio to it, it gets out of sync and sounds absolutely awful. This is something that I occasionally come across when creating mashups and it is terrible to see people mark down the bpm incorrectly without the decimal point.
@DriaDerg
Weird fact: in rhythm heaven fever the music for the minigame air rally is played at 162 bpm, but when it returned in rhythm heaven megamix, it was sped up to 162.01 bpm
@kiwirawks5500
I DJ electronic music and I always told people and beginners, that you can easily change the tempo of a track by about 3 BPM without the crowd noticing and even 3-5 is ok. I never had any sientific base for that, it was just feel. But it makes total sense
@Ryan_gogaku
I loved this. As a linguist, I wanted to say "yes, in language, too!" to literally every section of this essay. Phonetic transcription is similarly lossy and sometimes overly detailed without being able to tell you the difference between whether it sounds like Steve Urkel or Darth Vader. The term for overspecificity changing the meaning of something is called "Gricean Maxim violation" in linguistics/pragmatics, and it might be interesting to look into more with respect to music.
@ballhawk387
"If it sounds right, it is right" - groundbreaking British recording engineer and producer Joe Meek. I wonder what the precise tempos (and how unsteady they are) of many of the most highly regarded songs are? That would be an interesting analysis.
@C4_Shaf
4:41 Adam: "It represents more concerns with being precise and right, rather than being musical." All Rhythm Game music composers: *sweating*
@andrewhuang
Absolutely agree with you regarding notation, but within the DAW I’m an ardent decimal points tempo person since I use tap tempo to “feel” where I’d like my recording to be. I’d also point out that if you’re only measuring the just noticeable difference of quarter notes, you overlook that we can perceive differences in durations of longer notes within that tempo :)
@RobertKnutzen
Theres one very good reason I sometimes use decimal points in BPMs. I hit the tap tempo button 4 times and it was 93.2 and I said "cool whatever"
@tracyh5751
2:58 A slight detail here: we can't actually say that the just noticeable threshold is at 30 bpm based on Shawn's experiment. His experiment asked participants to correctly indicate <how> the pulses were changed. This is finer information than just that the pulse was changed in some (perhaps unidentifiable) way, which is what the just noticeable threshold measures.
@NidusFormicarum
There is also the issue of consistency: How often do we actually play a piece in EXACTLY the same tempo from start to finish? I find that I often have to change the tempo on the playback from say 80 to 79 to 82 in another passage, but I see no point in writing it down that exactly. The thing is that the "right" tempo mgiht also depend on the performers and how they percieve the piece, accentuations, dynamics etc.
@jada90
In college composition class I used a tempo that wouldn't be found on a metronome marking, and my professor called it pretentious.
@Iamnemo1994
I think your recipe analogy is right on the money. I'm part of the chef team of a restaurant and we have discussions all the time about how much detail to put into our recipes. It seems intuitively obvious that the more detail you put in, the more consistent and accurate the final dish will be, but if you make the recipe too detailed it gets in the way of people using their experience, judgement, and ultimately taste. The feel of a decimal tempo is kinda the same as the feel of an exact number of grams of salt; I appreciate the effort but I'm mostly going to use this as a rough guide and adjust to make it the best I possibly can.
@Tawnos_
@8:35 "Man, this food analogy is going too far" - No, thank you for it. By making that analogy, you helped me link aspects of music (which I'm bad at) to cooking (which I'm good at). The examples you gave demonstrated playing by ear vs by practice vs by sight as ways we think about many things in life, and I appreciate the depth you put into the analogy :).
@scouting281
a few years ago when I first getting into music production, I made this melody that had a super wack temp like 135.27 or something like that. it happened after I accidentally messed with something and I was to inexperienced to know the difference. A year later I revist the project because I like the melody. Noticing the wack tempo, I go to fix it, and for some reason the synth sound I was using on the melody sounded super different and not nearly as good when I fixed the tempo. So somehow I have this melody that only sounds good at a wack tempo lol
@stnhndg
Sheet music never lies. I remember getting a sheet from another student (Rachmaninov Prelude), and there was a note made with a pencil: 'You can't play this' Guess what... they were right
@EndyHawk
I've missed video essays like this. I like your performance diaries and Q&A's, but these more esoteric topics are what really get me going.
@MaceTLOF
I once used a 160.1 tempo because I thought it'd be funny. It was until I forgot the bpm and had to find it all over again
@AdamNeely