Initially when I started playing around with having my rhythm setup
subdivide the beat I went with
a very simple division of four equal pieces. This works well for some
things, but it is also a very rigid sound. When I'm playing on the
mandolin I often stretch the beat a bit, pulling subbeats earlier and
pushing others later. This is something I learned to do by ear; I
just play it.
But what am I actually doing? I took a recording of myself playing
mandolin and measured exactly how far through the beat each of the
four subbeats fell. I measured three repetitions worth:
1
0.000
0.000
0.000
2
0.154
0.139
0.168
3
0.275
0.253
0.264
4
0.444
0.421
0.420
1
0.574
0.535
0.549
Converting these into percentages, and calculating an average:
1
00.0%
00.0%
00.0%
00.0%
2
26.9%
26.0%
30.6%
27.8%
3
47.9%
47.3%
48.1%
47.8%
4
77.4%
78.7%
76.5%
77.5%
Here's another way of looking at it:
strict
stretched
delta
2
25.0%
27.8%
11% late
3
50.0%
47.8%
9% early
4
75.0%
77.5%
10% late
Here's a video walking through how this sounds and how it fits into
the rest of my setup: youtube.
Initially when I started playing around with having my rhythm setup subdivide the beat I went with a very simple division of four equal pieces. This works well for some things, but it is also a very rigid sound. When I'm playing on the mandolin I often stretch the beat a bit, pulling subbeats earlier and pushing others later. This is something I learned to do by ear; I just play it.
But what am I actually doing? I took a recording of myself playing mandolin and measured exactly how far through the beat each of the four subbeats fell. I measured three repetitions worth:
Converting these into percentages, and calculating an average:
Here's another way of looking at it:
Here's a video walking through how this sounds and how it fits into the rest of my setup: youtube.
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