IDM Mailing Archive

Sure, until someone comes along, copies "Thousand" to his/her hard disc, doubles the pitch/speed... Voila! 2000 BPM. Beat that. Um... yeah. While at this point, what has to qualify as a "beat"? I mean, technically a tone can be defined as an infinite number of "beats" (each being a bloop of a note) crushed into one big, flowing continuous sound -- which can also be interpreted as "no beats". Infinity = zero. Hmmmm, did I just create a wormhole and not know it? ======================================================================= Brian MacDonald <brianm@kuci.org> KUCI 88.9 fM in Irvine, CA -- Orange County ======================================================================= On Thu, 17 Aug 2000 SampAce4@aol.com wrote:

quoted 10 lines You guys think 357 bpm is crazy? Take a listen to teh track "Thousand" by

> You guys think 357 bpm is crazy? Take a listen to teh track "Thousand" by > Moby. It starts out at a usual bpm and then kicks it up to literally 1000 > bpm. If the info I have is right hes one of the worlds major record books > fro teh fastest song ever or something along those lines. Check it out > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org > For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org > >

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I don't want to seem anal -retentive here, but I was under the impression the the '357 bpm' (well 347 actually) thing by Aphex was a joke... same as when he said, "recording an ant walking on sand" OK OK... pedantic, I know.....I'll pull this stick out of my ass... d.kearley@home.com www.mp3.com/kearley Great Electronic Music from Kearley! ----- Original Message ----- From: <SampAce4@aol.com> To: <freqdafunk@flashmail.com>; <idm@hyperreal.org> Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2000 6:23 PM Subject: Re: [idm] Time Signature - Moby

quoted 10 lines You guys think 357 bpm is crazy? Take a listen to teh track "Thousand" by

> You guys think 357 bpm is crazy? Take a listen to teh track "Thousand" by > Moby. It starts out at a usual bpm and then kicks it up to literally 1000 > bpm. If the info I have is right hes one of the worlds major record books > fro teh fastest song ever or something along those lines. Check it out > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org > For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org > >

--------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org

quoted 3 lines You guys think 357 bpm is crazy? Take a listen to teh track

> You guys think 357 bpm is crazy? Take a listen to teh track > "Thousand" by Moby. It starts out at a usual bpm and then > kicks it up to literally 1000 bpm.

Although I'm sure one could turn a tempo knob up to 1000 bpm pretty easily (creating what would certainly sound like a high pitched beep), the concept itself is absurd (that is, it is nonsensical). A 'beat' is a term that directly relates to the human perception of rhythm - if you can't detect a rhythm of a given sound on some level, if you can't feel it pulsing, then I don't think it's helpful to refer to its increments as 'beats'. Sure, it may technically *be* 1000 bpm, and for the composer it may be important to have that many beats to work with within each minute, but no listener can detect a beat pattern that moves at a rate of around 17 beats per second. It's like listening to a sped up tape of someone talking - after a certain speed, the words lose meaning and become a blur of sound. At 1000 bpm, the beats (at least the ones that are hitting every 1/16 of a second) are meaningless. My guess is that the Moby track you mention has some other beat pattern that is moving much more slowly, for example, around 100 bpm. If you can listen to that song and tap your feet or nod your head to any aspect of the song, then the rate at which you are bobbing your head is probably what we should refer to as the song's effective tempo, not the 1000 bpm noise going on alongside it. Either that or Moby has moved into a new kind of music that has no detectable rhythm and simply explores the realm of sonic textures. Doesn't seem likely. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org