[LAU] Bpm detection/quantize

[Hartmut Noack]

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First: I think, I have to apologize to all those, who felt offended by
my quite speedy first post on this topic, after giving it some more
thinking, I cannot uphold my former condamnation of beat-detectors
anymore. Such tools can be used very well for making real music and they
are not a toy  by default.
But very often, such tools are being abused - the same as drumkits or
saxophones or guitars are....

Fons Adriaensen schrieb:
> On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 08:30:32PM +0100, Frank Barknecht wrote:
> 

> The first is the value of adding beats to music
> that wasn't meant to have them.

In 9/10 cases this leads to crap, true. But it does not need to yield
tasteless dance-versions of music, that is much better without such
additives.


> The second is why one would reduce the natural
> rythm of any piece of music to a regular beat.

1.: every music has a rhythmic structure, though many great pieces do
not work with a straight 4/4 beat. So, if a detection tool is able to
analyze the rhythmic essence of say: Wagners overture for the Rheingold,
it could help to produce a very interesting musical comment to this
piece of music without destroying its initial qualities.

2.: I can do *anything* I want to my own music. If I made a
demo-recording with a band, that has split up and I want to finish that
piece, I could use a rhythm-analyzer to get an adequate basis to use the
demo in a new context and thus to complete the piece without loosing the
original feel by using simple estimations of BPM-figures to add new
percussive sounds or bass using a sequencer.

Of course: 2.: can be achieved also by actually play new stuff to the
piece. But if somebody has get the impression, that I generally abhor
the usage of a sequencer, this impression is wrong: using sequencers to
make music is the same as using written notes or a guitar.
I abhor to make music or listen to music, that is constructed out of
pre-configured patterns, that you can buy to sound like everybody else
in the single-top-ten.

> Another reason - without wanting to comment
> on the OP's musical abilities which I don't
> know - is just incompetence - the inability
> to handle a piece of music unless it has a
> simple regular rythmic structure.

I don't know, if "incompetence" is really the exact term. I'd rather
say: "lack of artistic attitude" - if someone is really that numb to be
disappointed, if a good beat-detector does not find a way, to make
classical gamelan-music sound like 4/4 dance-music, then the problem is
not incompetence but lack of feeling for the worth of music.

And a good beat-detector would be one, that finds out, that classical
gamelan is neither 4/4 nor 140BPM but polyrhythmic and delicately
changing speed throughout the composition. And I would be disappointed,
if the detector would offer to add straight beat to a gamelan-piece....

> A drummer
> or percussionist worth the name can add beats
> to whatever is thrown at him, regular or not.

And so should a beat-detector...

best regards

HZN
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