Re: learning to play perfectly to a click track

[Douglas Baldwin <coyotelk@optonline.net>]

Rick Walker and I have been tossing some e-mails cross-country off list, 
and
Rick suggested I post this explanation of how "rhythm is pitch slowed 
down."

Rick wrote:
> > explain to me how rhythm is pitch slowed down?   I don't follow you and
> I"m
> > also always open to understand a new paradigm.

And I replied:
>     Simple demonstration: A pulse wave at 1,000 cycles per second sounds
> like a pitch. Slow it down to around 30 c.p.s. and it sounds like a 
>motor.
> Around 20 c.p.s. it starts to sound like a cicada - dit-dit-dit-dit - and
by
> 10 c.p.s. it sounds like a rapid click. At three or four cycles per
second,
> it sounds like an even rhythm - click, click, click at 180 beats per
minute.
> Make the rhythm more complex - click-duh-dum, click-duh-dum,
click-duh-dum -
> and speed it up and it goes through the same transformation into pitch,
> except the complexity generates all sorts of buzzy overtones.
>     Sine waves can't be heard at low frequencies (below 20 c.p.s.), but
you
> can see them move a speaker cone in and out. And of course they can be
used
> to modulate a higher frequency, as in ring modulators or frequency
> modulation synthesis (Yamaha's FM synthesis as made popular on the DX-7
> keyboard.)
>     Two examples of this pitch-to-rhythm sound come to mind: Stockhausen
> used it in one of his big pee-owpieces - the name escapes me - where a
pitch
> drops and drops until it becomes a series of clicks. And Edgar Winter, in
> "Frankenstein," drops an oscillator down and down, then throws an 
>envelope
> follower on it for that pee-ow-pee-ow-pee-ow
bullet-through-a-tennis-racket
> sound, which gets slower and slower until the drums pick up on it, and it
> leads into the drum solo...

Brand new insert here, inspired by Rick's observation that he hears a
similar effect when he slows his Repeater way down (120 b.p.s. to 1 b.p.s.,
ferinstance): Digital sound slowed down creates a similar effect, but for a
different reason. In the digital world, the pitch remains the same, but it
st-tu-ut-stutters as bits of silence get inserted between bits of sound. 
The
bits of sound effectively become like pulse waves, but it's not the same as
slowing down an analog signal.

>     My take on all this is, we percieve certain cycles as "life cycles."
> Once around the sun, twelve moons around the Earth, 365 long naps. Other
> cycles feel like biological cycles. Coupla dumps and pisses every day,
three
> meals a day, a breath every few seconds, waves at the beach. Our 
>heartbeat
> roughly defines the limits of musical rhythm at about 60 to 180 beats per
> minute. We sense these slower rhythms in our bodies, then our sense 
>organs
> take over. Rhythm becomes pitch, which we sense with our ears. Beyond
sound,
> waves become the various spectra of light, one octave of which we see as
> visible light.
>     Hope this helps.
> Douglas Baldwin, coyote-at-large
> coyotelk@optonline.net