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Comment by jrowen | Hacker News Reader

> It makes perfect sense that the BPM is 123.45 because that’s exactly the sort of thing you get when a manager (who’s shown at the end!) just enters some numbers on the keyboard into the bpm field. They don’t keysmash the numpad; they just hit 123456789 until the field is full!

This seems like quite an assumption. Why wouldn't they keysmash? Or make up a fake number? And why bother to add a decimal point? What is meant by "robotically beating at 123.45 bpm"? Any fixed tempo beats robotically.

Your theory could be correct but it feels like connecting too many dots to me. 123.45 is a bizarre (and kind of human in that way) tempo that strikes me as more of a cheeky easter egg than a deeper connection to themes of corporate mass-produced roboticism (if they even did intend that as the exact tempo).

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I have no counter argument prepared, but I thoroughly enjoyed exploring this all and making plausibly charming numbers. Most likely I’m wrong, of course; that’s an automatic likelihood for any numerology.

I’d say this whole thread is a counter argument. ;)

Couldn’t resist the dad joke. In any case I was enjoying you enjoying DP

> And why bother to add a decimal point?

Perhaps they wouldn't need to? iirc Modern MPC you can enter 12345 on the BPM touch entry field and it will fill that in as 123.45

TFA mentions that some sequencers at the time did not support generating at more than one decimal place

It's unlikely (but not impossible) that Logic would take 12345 input and insert the decimal automatically. The point was that adding the decimal point may not be necessary, especially in software with specific constraints; all sequencers I've come across have BPM ranges (typically 30-300) it's not too much of a stretch to think they could try to "intelligently" convert something that out of range rather than just clamping.

> What is meant by "robotically beating at 123.45 bpm"? Any fixed tempo beats robotically.

While a robot can keep beat at 123, most humans can’t keep 123.45. Art doesn’t have to make logical sense.

> While a robot can keep beat at 123, most humans can’t keep 123.45.

Isn’t it also true that while a robot can keep beat at 123.45, most humans can’t keep 123?

Apart from training, there isn’t anything that links human biology and psychology with the length of a second, is there?

Kinda ish. Healthy resting heartbeat is around 60bpm and comfortable exertion heart rate - like doing an indefinitely sustainable run, the kind of thing we evolved to do to run down prey - around double that. The most broadly popular styles of dance music tend to float around 120bpm. It just feels natural to humans. At a guess, some combination of biomechanics (muscle twitch speed, pendulum effect of limb sizes against their articulating joints), heart beat, what most people can manage in terms of sustained exercise (as mentioned above), and attention span linked to multiples of musical phrases.

Specifically about keeping tempo, human drummers don't really. They will move around a central tempo, slowing in verses and increasing tempo in choruses and as the song progresses. If you're hearing a fixed tempo in a song, it's because it was recorded with a click track in the drummer's ear. Super common these days because popular tastes for recorded music currently skew towards perfection.

how many times we saw the password "admin1234" or "1234" ?

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