Friends Don't Let Friends Clap on One and Three: A Backbeat Clapping Study | Hacker News Reader

Friends Don't Let Friends Clap on One and Three: A Backbeat Clapping Study

slideshare.net

158 pointsMunksgaard73 comments

Duke Ellington routinely gave his audiences a lesson in his inimitable style: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPcZ5ex2t-g

Harry Connick Jr. didn't bother educating his European audience with any explanation. He simply skips a beat, and then they're clapping on 2 and 4. It happens after the first sung chorus. You can see the drummer raise his hands in joy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yD3iaURppQw

And, of course, the great Slim Gaillard was so saturated in swing, his predominantly white 1950s television audience SPONTANEOUSLY clapped on the 2 and 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKdrnTTDTqo

Harry Connick Jr's beat switcheroo is masterful.

Goodness yes, I've listened to it a bunch of times and the pre-switch and after-switch difference is obvious, but the transition is like magic to me - I can't hear it, I can only realize that it happened.

It didn't catch the transition the first time around either, but a 2nd listen I heard it. Pure evil! Thanks for the vid, I didn't know that HCJ had such piano chops. I remember when he burst on the scene with his singing but it seems he disappeared a few years thereafter and I rarely hear of him. Great music.

To me it sounds like it's when "suddenly" the bassline matches the clapping but he hid it under the treble-only riff on the piano. Pure magic. It just flips like a switch.

How can you tell he skips a beat? Or for that matter the difference between beats 1 and 3 vs 2 and 4? Music is such a mystery to me. :/

You know how in every electronic song the beat is going: Boom CLAP Boom CLAP Boom CLAP? The idea is that you clap on the CLAP sound (snare drum), not the boom (bass drum). 1 (bass) 2 (snare) 3 (bass) 4 (snare). To skip a beat you'd probably play the rhythm for a bit normally, then leave out all the bass drum kicks so that the audience only hears the snares. Then that would be the only thing they could clap to. Then you put the Bass back in. Dunno if that helps!

>To skip a beat you'd probably play the rhythm for a bit normally, then leave out all the bass drum kicks so the audience only hears the snares....then put the bass back in

While this might get your audience to switch over, this is trying to get your audience to skip (or add) a beat, rather than skipping or adding a beat oneself. You never actually described skipping a beat.

The vast majority of music has what's known as a meter, which is a cyclical pattern. Just like we can think of time in terms of a neverending stream of occurrences, or choose to think in terms of a 7-day week, we simplify the understanding of musical events by counting in a regularly repeating meter.

This song's meter is in 4/4, which means you count 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4, etc. along with the very pulse you feel. Tap your foot. Count "1" when he says the word "Come [with me]". You'll find that they clap every time you say 1 and 3.

What he does is the equivalent of cutting out, say, Sunday from one week of the calendar, and so their regularly repeating clap now falls on a different day than it was falling on before. Does that help?

After reading your comment, I realized that I was counting at half the speed I was supposed to.

Only for common (4/4) time. That's the most popular one though. ;)

I like the days-of-the-week analogy, but in this case he adds a fifth beat to a bar, so it's like he's adding a fifth day to an otherwise four-day week, as follows:

  1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
  C - C - C - C - C - C - C - C - C

…so the claps (C) move from the 1 and 3 to the 2 and 4. That fifth beat occurs at the 40-second mark, and can be spotted because he stops playing with the left hand and the right hand simply repeats what it played in the previous beat.

You know how the rhythm to "We Will Rock You" by Queen goes

    Stomp Stomp Clap, Stomp Stomp Clap

The "Claps" are on 2 and 4, the first stomps of the pairs are on 1 and 3. Now imagine some boob wearing his sunglasses like a hat and a popped collar starts clapping on 1 and 3:

    Stomp Stomp Clap, Stomp Stomp Clap
    Clap              Clap

That'd be annoying. The looks on Harry Connick Jr.'s face before he fixes the clapping tell it all.

IMO, that's 3/4 time. Just because it's confusing.

no, it's clearly a duple meter. boom boom clap <rest> boom boom clap <rest>

No it's not, the "stomps" are halves.

The claps are half notes.

It would be 3/4 without the comma. It's:

    Stomp Stomp Clap <pause> Stomp Stomp Clap <pause>

Not:

    Stomp Stomp Clap Stomp Stomp Clap

Beats me. (pause)

I could hear no difference before or after the switch -- in fact I couldn't hear any beat other than the clapping.

I'm gonna try to explain this as best I can through text which is pretty difficult but we'll see how it goes.

We can identify beat 1 by listening to where Harry generally starts his vocal phrases. Right a the beginning he sings "Take me home, I'd love to be invited". The words "take" and "i'd" are both on beat 1. Now we have our reference. Count along while listening now if you'd like, it's fun!

The beat switch happens around 0:43 but if we listen to the solo section in general we can dissect it. He plays a repeating bass line with his left hand throughout. It is very audible from 0:50-0:53. He is doing some fancy work in the higher register but the bass line is anchoring it. There is a strong beat in this bass line. You can probably hear it naturally. It is the third note he plays in the sequence. This third note is again beat 1.

The bass line leads into beat 1 like so: "and-a-ONE". Sing along in your head. Now sing along with the bass line as he goes into his solo. You'll notice that right around 0:39 he stops playing the bass line for a moment. This is where he 'corrects' the audience. After this point the "and-a-ONE" of the bass line is no longing in unison with the clapping. If you kept your count going you'll find that it no longer matches the bass line. After he does this the clapping is now on the TWO and FOUR relative to the bass line.

Hope this helps some people. It's pretty damn cool what he did, and so smooth!

The Harry Connick Jr clip was the first thing that came to mind when I saw this thread - love it!

The switch happens around the 0:40 mark, for those who may have thought that they missed it (as I almost did)

I think he did it more towards 0:36, just after the verse.

Edit: after reading the comments it seems everyone agrees with you... for some reason I'm able to count the claps on 2 and 4 before then, though.

I was under the impression that it happens at 0:40, when he pulls the left hand off the stride pattern. When it comes back in, the beat is corrected.

I hear it clearly at 0:40.

You can even hear the audience falter on a clap when he switches

Wow, that Gaillard piece is awesome. My sense of time improved immeasurably when I switched the metronome from counting on 1 & 3 to 2 & 4. It's now one of the first pieces of advice I give to budding musicians. That, and learn everything you play in all 12 keys.

What do you play and who instructed you to set the metronome to 1 & 3? (I'm a percussionist who's always used a quarternote counting metronome)

actually the notion that european music is "harmonically rich and rhythmically unsophisticated" is incorrect; it's relatively modern phenomenon that the rhythms in european music were simplified. Traditional eastern european rhythms are incredibly complex and western european liturgical and vernacular music tended to have complex ryhthms until around the 16-17th century.

IIRC this was basically an effect of the church decided to try to monopolize music in the service of liturgy and "dumb down" the music so that everyone could participate in hymnals, etc.

This could also partially be a result of music printing; it's harder to notate complex rhythms - if you've ever sung medieval music that's pushed into modern notation, sometimes wierd things happen, like time signatures that don't quite line up with the all of the music lines because polyphony is going on; invasions of 3/4 measures in an otherwise 2/4 song, etc.

This sounds like how the early digital age of computers over-simplified analog processing of audio and video and PDEs (and what other complex phenomenon? Language AI?), and only later started to close the gap.

My circle of friends used to joke about the "Republican Test." You administer it like this: play the song "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," ideally the Marvin Gaye version, and ask the subject to "clap along with the music" however he or she feels.

Our unscientific observations showed a high correlation with 1/3 clapping and being old, square, uptight, or an alien from an unfunky and obsolete dying planet.

I bet Lee Atwater would have failed that test..

I didn't know this, which I assume is what you're referring to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Hq2VQ8P_9o

Maybe it's more accurate than it appears at first glance. I consider myself centrist. I just did your test fur fun and found myself regularly switching back and forth between 1/3 and 2/4, depending on the part of the song.

Conversely, how do you detect a Democrat?

Don't worry, it's easy. They go around calling anyone who disagrees with them names, like "old, square, uptight, or alien."

Oh.

And we all just learned not to expect Republicans or Libertarians to understand the concept of..."joke".

You just confirmed the parent comment's point.

Democrats definitely think that Republicans are morally inferior to them, and vice versa. You can't really make jokes in a context like that because there is no distinction between a joke and an actual malignment. I definitely make jokes about Democrats, just not around Democrats, because there is just no point in maligning people to their face.

That should read culturally inferior, not morally.

Easy, bud. You're risking seeming uptight ;)

The alien thing is a reference to "Unfunky UFO," by Parliament. I recommend you listen to it. And don't clap on the 2s and 4s.

A YouTube link to the Taj Mahal concert mentioned:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HQOJQHJ8Sg

The following blog post provides examples of swung beats and clapping, as it pertains to dancing:

http://vixswingjazz.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/can-you-hear-th...

A few songs are missing from the page:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFtNC8BwKI0 (Dinah; NSFW)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YqDbd6pUC0 (Everything is Jumping)

To get a feel for clapping on the even beats:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_WZenJnT8M (Shout, Sister, Shout!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg_pi0r75mA (Lavender Coffin)

Harry Connick Jr. beat-shifts the audience from clapping on 1 & 3 to 2 & 4 (at 40 second mark):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yD3iaURppQw

Usually the Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdowns have live music, which induces the audience to clap:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfWA4ClPnxk

A tradition called a jam circle involves encircling dancers who steal the spotlight, with the audience clapping (on even beats) for encouragement:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTRNQAcXhJo

This tradition goes back a long way; see Hellzapoppin' (1941) and Keep Punching (1939):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSAOV6XEjXA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfgKMfexdPQ

I play the Lavender Coffin track. I listen to it carefully. I replay it and try to clap on the claps. I fail. I try again. I still fail. I listen to the song again. I replay the track, but this time try to tap my finger (which is easier than clapping) and I still fail.

Will it get easier or am I just "beatdeaf"? (Here I can clearly hear the 1 2 3 4, and the claps, but I just cannot match the claps on 2 and 4.)

Try these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REzz-My2PoI#t=100

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Joo90ZWrUkU#t=20

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Tiz6INF7I

It takes practice. Newer dancers clap on 1 & 3 until they learn. Sometimes all it takes is for someone to clap quite loudly (almost passively-aggressively so) on the 2 & 4 for the rest of the people to shift over.

Oh man, I once went to (unnamed city) and everyone was clapping on 1 & 3, so I aggressively clapped on 2 & 4. It wasn't enough.

Living in the rural midwest, the concept of clapping on 2 and 4 was a foreign concept to most people I knew growing up. I lucked out because my dad was a music teacher. He caught me clapping on 1 and 3 once and promptly fixed it. Thanks Dad!

Having been clasically trained, it took me about 6 months of swing dancing to be able to clap on 2 and 4. Part of the reason why you clap on 2 and 4 is that you're 'kicking' energy into the next measure. It helps to do 'something else' on 1 and 3, like make a vocal sound, or tap with your foot.

For those that didn't make it to slide 28:

Subject 5769, a tabla player only weakly familiar with Western or African music, clapped on displaced backbeats or using complex 16th note rhythms, that, if recorded, "would likely make an enjoyable work of art."

This presentation would much better as a youtube video with audible samples of the beats.

I agree, a presentation on music that does not contain any audible samples reveals a weakness of slideshare perhaps, unless perhaps there is a feature I am unaware of ?

In case you're not the only one looking for them:

Michael Jackson - Billie Jean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi_XLOBDo_Y#t=0

The Honey Drippers - Impeach The President: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqbEsS5kFb8#t=0

Bob James - Take Me to the Mardi Gras: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaoCsmFDLcY#t=0

James Brown - Funky Drummer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNP8tbDMZNE#t=332

The Winstons - Amen Brother: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxZuq57_bYM#t=84

So I watched an old documentary online about the Amen break which was phenomenal, but I've never heard of "Impeach the President" and "The Funky Drummer". And yet, I know those drums like the back of my hand. I love finding where stuff I've heard my whole life came from.

Interestingly, the Schottische, a 19th-century dance which despite the name originates from Central Europe, has strong and fairly complex backbeats (if danced the traditional way): one-and-TWO, three-and-FOUR, one-AND-two-AND-three-AND-four-AND.

This dance has influenced blues dancing. (Which is a partner dance; African-American slaves had no tradition of partner dancing.)

Links to the songs discussed:

* Billie Jean - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi_XLOBDo_Y

* Impeach the President - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqbEsS5kFb8

* Take me to the Mardi Gras - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaoCsmFDLcY

* The Funky Drummer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNP8tbDMZNE

* Amen Brother - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxZuq57_bYM

If you get tired of 2 and 4, try this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVBoDx_1dTc

[The First Circle -- Metheny/Mays]

For the curious...

||: 12/8 -♪♪-♪-♪♪-♪-♪ | 10/8 -♪♪-♪♪-♪-♪ :||

(- being a 1/8th pause, for the lack of a proper unicode character in whatever font I currently use to type this)

from: http://www.stuartgreenbaum.com/downloads/files/%20First%20Ci...

Thanks for that. It took me a while, but over time I finally figured out the myriad time changes in that tune, at least for informal clapping purposes anyway. That said, they implemented at least one variation of the rhythm in some of their live concerts (see youtube) that still eludes me.

Pretty amazing that this one tune can result in a 50+ page analysis - your linked PDF. The composition is a masterpiece, quite possibly the one that the PMG will be most remembered for.

"Taj Mahal found it distressing when his audience clapped wrong because it felt like a failure to emotionally connect with them."

How do they know this? Did they ask him or is this their assumption based on their expectations. It is annoying enough when researchers impute motive and thought to inanimate things. But people actually have them so it is all the more frustrating if they are assuming they know what he's feeling.

The beat you emphasize has a great effect on the feel of the rhythm. Instead of "feeling like he failed to connect on emotionally," it could just be that he wanted them to hear the song as he intended to play it and without altering it's rhythmic nature.

"We can determine the “metric salience” of each event in a rhythmic pattern by“recursively breaking down a musical pattern (with an initially speciﬁed length)into subpatterns of equal length.” The more subdivisions it takes to reach a given event, the lower its metrical salience. In 4/4 time, the downbeat is themost salient position, followed by beat three. It would seem natural to clap onthe strongest, most salient beat."

Anybody know what this quote is trying to say? What is a "given event"?

Roughly, a sound that happens during some measure of music, or an arbitrary point during that duration.

Imagine folding a strip of paper exactly in half. Now you have a crease at the middle of it. If you fold it again, you have a couple more creases at the 1/4 and 3/4 points. The above quote is talking about the same thing, but with a length of time instead of a strip of paper. The more folds you have to make in order to put a crease at a certain point (event), the less salient it is.

Hope that's helpful.

An event is the start of a note or drum strike.

I'm genuinely grateful for this article, because I'm going to show it to my wife as an explanation why I dance the way I do. (dnb and classical Indian music fan)

Here is an excellent 18 minute piece on the Amen Break, mentioned in TFA:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

The rhythm tengoku series of games will teach you about stuff like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMe-j0Lg5w8

Barry Harris tells it like it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjnX_PkDwWs#t=2992

And then there's bluegrass clogging...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs2j8f7H2WY

Nitpick: The slide author correctly spells "zwei" but deliberately misspells "schwartz" and "vier".

Why do you say "deliberately"?

Then a nitpick to your nitpick: "schwarze" (no 't')

Touché!

Well both are wrong. You don't clap on two and four; you click your fingers. I thought everyone knew that...

slide 28 (tabla player gets in the groove..) is fascinating.

I would like to hear his "complicated sixteenth note patterns."

The spoken introduction in this album walks you through some basics of indian classical music. http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Indian-Music-Album-Versio...

he walks you through the 16 beat cycle and counts things off.

he also make a very interest comment about jazz.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com