Maths and music have long been interconnected conceptually. Whilst I understand this, it’s not at the forefront of my mind and it is more of a “feel” thing. That said, I was really struck by how this maths concept became obvious whilst working on a mix for an album recently.
Symmetry Disturbed
The chorus section of the song has a beautiful space in it because of the tempo. (You can read more on tempo and space in the Horror Vacui post). The drum beat the artist had chosen didn’t have a strong back-beat but was working – sort of.
I decided to help matters a little by flying in some claps from later in the song. It was a clap loop which I’d added some nice length too by adding a reverb “spray” with Raum. The claps were a standard 2 and 4 beat pattern. It was good but it was too much and started to detract from the beauty of the chorus.
2 & 4 Minus The 2
This is when I thought, let’s remove the clap on 2 beats and see how that sounds. Viola! Sonic symmetry was restored. What do I mean?
When I had the clap on the 2 beats the transition from the verse to chorus felt like it was off. The clap was coming in too soon and disrupting the emotion of the chorus. The vocal is singing long legato notes. The bass has less movement and the sound changes to a more expansive synth sound.
With the claps (lengthened by reverb) on the 2 & 4, it did the job but it was unsophisticated and was messing with the emotions of the song. It was a little crass.
Do The Math
This got me thinking about how a simple subtraction can make all the difference (see the Horror Vacui post). The ideas of patterns, ratios and proportion in music become second nature when you’ve been writing and mixing music for as long as I have. That said, I think it’s actually something I need to take more notice of.
If you’ve ever sequenced a beat (not to be confused with beat making) it is wild how shifting a snare hit or hi hat hit a 16th can change the feel. This is addition and subtraction in time. Lowering the volume of a hit to half the previous hit is addition and subtraction in volume. This is how drummers create amazing feel and groove. They do the math.
The Takeaway: Thinking about the maths in music shouldn’t be uncreative. It should actually give you a conceptual tool to both create and solve problems with when writing songs, arranging them and adding production elements or even in mixing. Take note of how math affects your creative decisions as you work. Note the patterns, ratios etc and use it to help diagnose issues but also offer creative solutions.
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