What makes rhythm human? Music technology has introduced machine rhythms, perfectly-calibrated to electronically-perfected grids, yet we know that natural playing is more organic. Or, that is, we know we have certain intuitive preferences. How do those preferences and rhythms really work? And what does that mean for music technology?

Fascinating new research investigates more deeply, using – you know, science!

Here’s the summary of the research itself:

Although human musical performances represent one of the most valuable achievements of mankind, the best musicians perform imperfectly. Musical rhythms are not entirely accurate and thus inevitably deviate from the ideal beat pattern. Nevertheless, computer generated perfect beat patterns are frequently devalued by listeners due to a perceived lack of human touch. Professional audio editing software therefore offers a humanizing feature which artificially generates rhythmic fluctuations. However, the built-in humanizing units are essentially random number generators producing only simple uncorrelated fluctuations. Here, for the first time, we establish long-range fluctuations as an inevitable natural companion of both simple and complex human rhythmic performances. Moreover, we demonstrate that listeners strongly prefer long-range correlated fluctuations in musical rhythms. Thus, the favorable fluctuation type for humanizing interbeat intervals coincides with the one generically inherent in human musical performances.

Hennig H, Fleischmann R, Fredebohm A, Hagmayer Y, Nagler J, et al. (2011) The Nature and Perception of Fluctuations in Human Musical Rhythms. [PLoS ONE 6(10): e26457]

Hear that? One of the most valuable achievements of mankind! (Uh, that makes me want to practice a bit more, as I’m not sure I’d necessarily describe my last gig that way!)

James Postlethwaite, who sends this in, accompanies his news tip with an articulate letter considering the value of the research, so I’ll include all of it here:

Whilst reading the latest issue of the journal Nature (No.7372, Vol.479) I was surprised to se a picture of a TR-808 in the Research Highlights section, featuring research of note in other journals.

The research was about the correlations of rhythmic imperfections in human drummers, which correlate over a longer time period than the random singular imperfections that are inserted by some computer programs. At least I think that’s what it was, as I’m not a mathematician.

I do note that the sample size used in the statistical analysis was only 39 subjects, though the results were of a decent significance. The audio files are available in the supporting files section, CDM has a large readership, t-tests are very simple to run… Just an idea.

It does though serve as a nice reminder that a lot of the tools that musicians use nowadays do have roots in academic research, going back to the days of the early synthesizer. It also reminds me of a comment from a friend who used to own a 909; that one of the charms of this machine was the unique imperfection in the rigidity of the sequencer.
I don’t know if this has been corroborated by other people.

Finally, the piece in Nature magazine seemingly wasn’t written by a fan of electronic music, as it starts: ‘If you have endured much 1980′s pop music, you might agree that drum machines steal the soul from the beat. Their cold regularity is sometimes ‘humanized’ in the recording studio…’. Possibility of bias?

“Endured” 80s pop music? Yes, I’d say that counts as a bit of bias (just on the part of Nature). Imagine reading a story on bee populations, which began “Yeah, Bees. F*** bees.”

But the research itself looks solid and intriguing – and James is asking a variety of other interesting questions, so I’m going to open it up to discussion. Hope this is something we can follow up on. (Academics, attack!)

By the way, a quick search of Nature reveals that the journal regularly publishes material of interest to sound and music – worth noting, as there was a time when that wasn’t true. (Max Mathews was one of the first to help computer music break into the scientific mainstream.)
My search results
And, for example: Rhythmic synchronization tapping to an audio–visual metronome in budgerigars [hint: think tap tempo meets birds]

Updated: Nature wrote a quick blurb: Doctoring the beats
…though it seems from the excerpt that they either didn’t understand or tried to oversimplify the role of rhythmic variation in digitally-sequenced music. The study is, to me, more interesting.

You’ve heard the gripes, and heard and seen the somewhat unscientific demos. Now it’s time to examine the over-compression of music with – science! Earl Vickers of STMicroelectronics examines the Loudness Wars in an academic paper, as noted to us by reader photohounds.

The Loudness War: Background,
Speculation and Recommendations [PDF Link, sfxmachine.com]

The paper comes from last November, but it’s as relevant as ever. It’s not just the usual take, either. Its history begins with Phil Spector and vinyl, considering the impact of broadcast TV and not just the music industry. It notes the evolution of compression technologies, particularly multiband technologies.

Most importantly, though – and I’ve spoken regularly to mastering engineers about this – the paper turns to the issue of listening fatigue. Here’s one whithering criticism of the industry on that: some engineers even believe that thoughtless over-compression could be to blame for the decline of the entire industry.

Mastering engineer Bob Ludwig stated, “People talk about downloads hurting record sales. I and some other people would submit that another thing that is hurting record sales these days is the fact that they are so compressed that the ear just gets tired of it. When you’re through listening to a whole album of this highly compressed music, your ear is fatigued. You may have enjoyed the music but you don’t really feel like going back and listening to it again.”

You’ve seen much of this before, but rarely in such well-annotated, comprehensive form.

Best of all? The conclusion applies lessons from Game Theory to work on making the loudness wars come to a conclusion.

Here’s another thought, too: with artists increasingly self-releasing or releasing through more specialized labels, greater access to music online, direct-to-consumer distribution, and online replacements for conventional terrestrial radio, many of the factors that produced some of the oddest hyper-compression at the top of the charts are fading into the background.

Pax Musica for the loudness wars, anyone?

If you’re interested in generative and algorithmic music – music that evolves organically rather than being pre-composed in start-to-finish linear fashion – you won’t want to miss this site. Nodal is a free (for non-commercial use) app for developing generative musical systems and transmitting MIDI. You’ll need a Mac (PowerPC/Intel) to run the software, but even if you’re on Windows or Linux, you’ll find a number of interesting research papers on the site. vinayk writes:

The program is called Nodal – osx only, BEAUTIFUL interface, and FREE, it does a bit more sophisticated things but I basically plugged the output into sculpture – and it sounded amazing… well worth a look! And if anyone can tell me how to sync this to live or logic then i’d be much obliged!

Since it sends MIDI, it’d also be interesting to use this hooked up to visuals or triggering clips in Ableton Live.

Nodal Project Page, Tutorials, Examples, Research [Monash University]

I’ll be giving this a try soon. If you know of other generative software and research we should be checking out, perhaps we can put together a full round-up.

See also Noatikl / Mixtikl, from Intermorphic – developers who built the ground-breaking Koan generative system for Brian Eno. And we’re getting close to the release of the game Spore, which will feature a new generative engine and Eno’s composition.

noatikl: New Generative Music Engine, So You Can Rock Out Like Eno

Generative iPod? Deep Modular, Generative Music System Bound for iPhone, Phones, Windows, Mac

(Note that we learned this week that Mixtikl is not coming to iPhone in the immediate future. It’s available on plenty of other platforms, however, and if you’ve got a Mac for both, let the generative music making commence!)

After 35 years immersed in the world of computer music, the composer Paul Lansky talks with wonder about the enormous capacities of primitive objects carved from trees or stamped from metal sheets: violins, cellos, trumpets, pianos.

"To create the sound of a violin – wow!" he said in a recent interview. "I can’t do that on a computer."

Paul Lansky: An electronic-music pioneer pulls the plug

The Times seems to want to spin this as the end of an era. But while it correctly argues that electronic music is out of the lab and onto the laptop, to me this is more about Lansky’s own personal reinvention. I like this quote:

“Here I am, 64, and I find myself at what feels like the beginning of a career.”

Whether you’re 64, 84, or 24, the ability to feel like you’re making music as if for the first time is truly invaluable. Whatever you have to do to achieve that, it’s worth it.

Lansky does reveal that some elements of electronic music and computer music no longer appeal to him. But we should be clear about how specific he’s being when referring generally to computer music. Of course, the world of computer music as embraced by many CDM readers is not only technologically different from traditional, academic acoustic music. It also represents a different approach to process. The Times’ Daniel Watkin says, “what drives many creators of computer music is the desire to have total mastery over how a piece of music sounds.” And that indeed seems to be true for an earlier generation of computer composers.

By contrast, the last decade or two, even in the academy, has been dominated by musicians interested in building interactive instruments and interfaces, “playing” electronic music live, introducing uncertainty into composition and sound, and – in conjunction with a much wider, non-academic underground of hackers – doing strange things with DIY electronics and hacked digital gadgets.  These to me are the electrically-powered equivalent of some of Lansky’s primitive devices. And many of these people also like playing things made from trees. Some of this exploration has much earlier roots in those same laboratories, but those experiments were often a minority, or limited by available technology.

That’s not to say any one working style is better than another. I love going back to the tightly-controlled worlds created by people like Lansky. I likewise enjoy talking about electronic music with one of my teachers, David Olan, who was one of the punchcard-using composers – he has a perspective that I don’t have. In fact, I never cease to be struck by the way in which early electronic pieces seem to change over time – not because the piece itself has evolved, but because our ears have. And I find that lots of people inside and outside academia are likewise falling in love with tracks that, previously, they would have thought un-listenable.

I think it would be a real tragedy if the conventional wisdom that “everything’s been done” were allowed to apply to electronic music, when it remains very young. There are plenty of new sounds to discover in electronic realms, and they’re in no way mutually exclusive to working with acoustic sound. Acoustic instruments have a millenia-long head start. I hope we can approach electronic sound with the same freshness Lansky did – and now will bring to things made of wood.

Maintaining that freshness, though, does require occasionally unplugging. Personally, after months of electronic composition, I have a piece to work on for the rebec, which hasn’t been big since about the 16th Century. Now that’s retro.

If you want to check out some of Lansky’s music (plugged and unplug), plenty is available. Here’s where to start:

PAUL LANSKY – “Notjustmoreidlechatter” [paperthinwalls, with free stream by So Percussion]

Paul Lansky MP3s

Discography (many available via iTunes)

Thanks to Jacob Joaquin for the tip!

Takuro Maizuta Lippit, aka dj sniff, writes in thanks for the international outpouring of support for the STEIM music and art research center in Amsterdam, which faces potentially losing government funding. Some readers raised some questions about why STEIM is asking for support, and what the institution’s significance is — a reasonable question — and Taku provides some background here:

What makes STEIM an unique place is that it emphasizes on supporting independent artists with experimental and adventurous ideas in the live electronic art world. These artists tend to be young up-and-coming or outsiders to specific genres and established scenes. The projects may seem like "pet projects" to other people, but often the artists themselves believe these experiments will have significant merit to the future of artistic expression. History has showed us that often innovation comes from the outside rather than the inside.

Although the support for these artists is quite minimal (we only offer space and advise), STEIM is able to continue this because of structural funding from the government. If not, we would have to write grant proposals for larger projects that appeal to specific funders. This will change the whole character of STEIM and go against the basic philosophy of what it was founded upon.

I came to STEIM as a DJ/Turntablist who wanted to play improvised music using tools that i built with Max/MSP and physical computing. STEIM opened their doors to me and provided a safe ground where i can freely experiment and develop my methods and aesthetics. Even though there are not many DJ and turntablists that come to STEIM, I truly feel like I am part of a community of artists that believe technology and new tools, however much of a pain in the ass they maybe, do create new artistic expression.

We are very grateful to the domestic and international support that are being voiced. We are planning special events in the following weeks to show our stand and hope pull through this situation.

I have to say, I was having coffee with CDM contributor Mike Una yesterday and trying to think of other research centers for music and art around the world, and STEIM is on a very, very short list. We’ll keep in touch with them as the situation evolves. For what it’s worth, I agree that the Dutch government isn’t under any kind of obligation to support STEIM, but then, that’s not the point: it’d be a real disappointment if they didn’t continue their unique and brave support of a one-of-a-kind resource.

Previously:

Help Save STEIM, Dutch Music Research Center; Monday Deadline

Just a "niche", eh? I can’t think of a time in recent history during which creative technology research was as profoundly relevant to mainstream design as it is now. Tangible interfaces, sensor-rich environments and pervasive computing, multi-touch and gestural interfaces, rich media — virtually all of the trends now leading technology were pioneered by or deeply influenced by research by music and visual artists. So, you’d think one of the world’s leading centers for work in research and development for artists and performers, one that hosts theater, music, DJs, VJs, video artists, and the like, would be in good shape.

Instead, Amsterdam’s STEIM research center is under attack by a government board that claims it’s a niche. Fortunately, you can help.

Things are not well at STEIM. We are in the danger of losing our structural funding from the government, based on a review from the advisor board which called us ‘closed and only appealing to a niche audience’. The outlook isn’t exactly bleak, but at the moment our future is unclear.

…

What you can do is to send a letter of support, and make sure we receive it by May 26. We hope that these letters will show the variety and depth of the effect STEIM has in the real world. The contents are up to you, a few good lines will suffice. You could tell how you or someone you know benefited from their contact with STEIM: making or refining an instrument or an idea for a performance or meeting fellow artists, or what you feel would be lost if STEIM ceased to exist, or waxing aphoristic, just 12 words about STEIM.

STEIM needs your support!

Thanks to Tom and Music thing for the call to arms; Tom forwarded this to me, so please forward to people you know

STEIM’s work includes a vital series of workshops and residencies / hosted research with international reach. I expect a number of readers here have either worked their or know folks who have. In addition to writing that letter, it’d be great to hear, in one place, ways in which you’ve been connected to STEIM.

Add to comments by Monday morning the 26th, and I’ll send my own email with the CDM community’s thoughts then.

Cycling ’74 have updated Max 5′s pricing and streamlined a bit in the new release. (That means Max for MIDI and basic data crunching, MSP for audio, synthesis, and signal processing, and Jitter for video, 3D, and advanced data processing.) Since this impacts a number of our readers, it’s worth going over this.

Updated: The story now reflects a clarification from Cycling ’74 over which Jitter objects work in Max/MSP.

New academic pricing:

• US$250 per student
• US$59 for a 9-month authorization
• US$109.45 for a permanent upgrade from Max/MSP 4

Student discounts

See also education and teacher discounts; 1-4 licenses for either K-12/higher ed faculty or your institution are now US$475.20 for the full Max/MSP/Jitter

Academic pricing is now only for Max + MSP + Jitter — none of the tiered pricing from before for just Max/MSP, etc. And if you bought after October 1, the new version is free. Plus, if you own an academic license that didn’t include Jitter, you get it now with your upgrade.

I recommended the 9-month license for my students ($39 of it gets subtracted from your final order) when I was teaching Max at Brooklyn College, and people were really happy with it.

New full pricing

• US$699 for the full Max 5
• US$495 for Max/MSP + a limited, unsupported set of Jitter objects (see below)
• US$199 upgrade

Pricing details and Max 5 overview

Note that Max 5 at this time doesn’t yet include the ability to export patches as plug-ins via Pluggo. ReWire, etc., still work, but if your main application for Max is building plug-ins for other hosts, you may want to hold off.

This came up in comments, so I’ll say it again — we’re not covering Max because I think it’s the only alternative. On the contrary, Reaktor and Pd are also each cross-platform patching environments with their own unique strengths, to say nothing of other synth environments (ChucK, Csound, SuperCollider). Each of those can work in academic settings, as well. But there’s no question Max 5 is big news on this scene, a major update to the tool that first popularized visual patching as music software

How much Jitter do you get in Max/MSP?

Cycling ’74 revised their site; while Max/MSP does now include a limited set of Jitter objects, they’re officially unsupported if you haven’t bought Jitter. In other words, you can use them — and this means developers working on patches can share those patches with people who don’t have Jitter within the limited subset — you just don’t get support from C74. I think if you want to use Jitter objects, you should just buy Jitter, but this is still good to know (particularly for teaching environments, I might add). Here’s the list:

jit.alphablend
jit.fill
jit.fpsgui
jit.iter
jit.matrix
jit.op
jit.pack
jit.peek~
jit.poke~
jit.pwindow
jit.qt.movie
jit.spill
jit.unpack
jit.xfade

… Note this doesn’t include the important networking objects, so it’s just FYI.

If you’re traveling to town to attend NIME, to present at NIME, or if you happen to already be here in New York and are going to the NIME events or the concurrent New York Electronic Arts Festival (which seems itself to be perhaps a new creation in itself), let us know what you’re doing. Got a paper? Send us a link and some quick notes on what it’s about. Got a piece premiering? Tell us why it’s cool and link us to whatever documentation you’ve got. Taking photos? Send them to us via Flickr. Attending an event? Write up something, and we’ll run it. It’s one of those few times where I’m happy to post anything you send, provided you write a bit about it — so you’ve got instant publicity for yourself, in the process.

Too often, these huge conferences happen and only the people in attendance can keep up with what’s going on … and sometimes not even they can. I do appreciate your help, and will do my best to keep up here on CDM.

You can get in touch right here:

NIME/NYEAF Story Submission