(This question is about timing, while playing piano] help.

[CoreyJayzMusic]

I didn't read all the posts, so sorry if it has already been mentioned, but...
do you know that you can set any (audio) track to be the Master tempo guide ?

No didn't know that..

[Stromkraft]

Then he shoves down his view as being the only valid one (which it isn't). That's simply rude and an ego masturbation at the expense of the OP and the readers. Totally uncalled for.

What "view"? There was no view. I just followed up on what you were saying.…

The clearly implied view was that your analysis is the only correct one. Which it in this case wasn't. As I've already have said you made a valid comment and I thanked you for this. That's not the problem, it's your assumptions.

The thing is you stringtapper don't get to say what an idea someone else has is. If you hear it you may have an opinion on what it could be, but even if you do it's not you that decides what it is or what it is to become.

If I have an idea in my head it's my privilege to decide if it's an upbeat with or without a pause to a 4/4 or a first 5/4 or 9/8 bar of a longer sequence or bleedin' quintuplets or a cross-rhythmic component of a longer section or if it's going to switch meters at some point. All of those are possible and if they aren't the composer/creator of the musical idea can make it so. You stringtapper don't decide anything about this unless you're a part of the creative effort. Which you weren't in this case. You made a valid point and that's the end of it.

When a musical idea is being created in the moment it is not always clear for every composer where it wants to go or where the composer wants to take it, even if it might be crystal clear for some.

My 2 typical main choices is simply not to decide, but give the idea time to develop before I feel it's something or alternatively simply make a decision what it is. But it's the creator/writer that decides this. It's certainly not you stringtapper, except for yourself or the people you might work with.

Yes, I'm an advocate for music education. Sorry if that makes some people uncomfortable.

Give me a break. I don't mind that at all and it doesn't make me uncomfortable neither.

[stringtapper]

None of that stuff you just wrote has anything to do with any of my comments in this thread. It's like you've read something completely different from what I wrote.

My point was that a thorough understanding of meter and rhythm allows one to be much better equipped to have clarity in thinking about what they're writing—before, during, and after.

All that other shit you were talking about above is just arguing for the sake of arguing, and specifically arguing against a point that was never made (by me at least).

[jlgrimes]

A big thing is breaking complex stuff down into small pieces and practice from there.

I tend to learn songs bar by bar or even live quarter bar by quarter bar.

Mixing triplets with non triplets or even quintuplets is difficult but a lot of those cases is really about feel as well.

[Stromkraft]

None of that stuff you just wrote has anything to do with any of my comments in this thread. It's like you've read something completely different from what I wrote.

This is what you wrote:

But before you know that's what you hear in your head it can appear they don't.

Well, yeah. If one doesn't understand how subdivisions and triplet rhythms relate to and sound in simple meters and instead only goes by how things look in a piano roll then I guess they wouldn't appear to fit.

Condescending. Idiotic as you imply that in order to not "know that's what you hear in your head" you must not "understand how subdivisions and triplet rhythms relate to and sound in simple meters and instead only goes by how things look in a piano roll".

I just explained to you that this is not the whole story and that your perspective is not the only valid one and therefore I gave mine. You are just too egotistical and thick to understand this or the fact that you're not the center of the music universe.

[Stromkraft]

A big thing is breaking complex stuff down into small pieces and practice from there.
…

Mixing triplets with non triplets or even quintuplets is difficult but a lot of those cases is really about feel as well.

yeah, that's a good idea. Sometimes the triplets are really just a shuffle feel or some kind of swing or push/pull on the pulse. It's by analyzing your ideas rather than watering them down you gain insight on them.

One of my music partners think in straight beats/pulses only, more often than not, so lately I'm influenced to come up with more straight rhythms even though I make use of pull/push.
I want to improve that for melodies and chord progressions as well. Better get a proper keyboard for the latter. The Push is nice and all, but I find a good keyboard easier to work with for chords.

[stringtapper]

None of that stuff you just wrote has anything to do with any of my comments in this thread. It's like you've read something completely different from what I wrote.

This is what you wrote:

But before you know that's what you hear in your head it can appear they don't.

Well, yeah. If one doesn't understand how subdivisions and triplet rhythms relate to and sound in simple meters and instead only goes by how things look in a piano roll then I guess they wouldn't appear to fit.

Condescending. Idiotic as you imply that in order to not "know that's what you hear in your head" you must not "understand how subdivisions and triplet rhythms relate to and sound in simple meters and instead only goes by how things look in a piano roll".

I just explained to you that this is not the whole story and that your perspective is not the only valid one and therefore I gave mine. You are just too egotistical and thick to understand this or the fact that you're not the center of the music universe.

I think you may have a case of "don't even know enough to know what it is you don't know" when it comes to this subject.

Maybe time to put the internet down for a while?

[TomViolenz]

Well, yeah. If one doesn't understand how subdivisions and triplet rhythms relate to and sound in simple meters and instead only goes by how things look in a piano roll then I guess they wouldn't appear to fit.

If only everyone were as perfect as your lowliness…

This is what you responded to a slightly snarky comment, that was not even directed at you, but the OP.
And then you followed directly with this:

Only a true idiot can turn sharing of ideas and discovery to an ugly ego-contest. That's your choice, stringflapper.

So a.) you are getting bend out of shape over a little snark on the internet. (which I symphatize with, as I've been known to do that)

and b.) You follow directly with insults.
And that I at least find unreasonable.

It's not about that at all.
Please show me one post where I stick it to people how I know something they don't or when I criticize people when they thank me for pointing out some detail they wrote. Show me where I act as if my perception is the only possible one that all people must have.

I don't mind heated debate about something people feel passionate about. In this case Stringflapper simply lost all perspective. He pointed out something and I thanked him for it. Then he shoves down his view as being the only valid one (which it isn't). That's simply rude and an ego masturbation at the expense of the OP and the readers. Totally uncalled for.

And then you go on this rant
Remember we are still talking about that one post from Stringtapper I quoted above!

In my opinion you read into a little condecension, way tooooooooo much.
Further: yes, your posts often can be read as condecending. No, I don't think you mean them that way, but the way you explain things to noobs often comes across as lecturing from up high. I don't have a major problem with that as I am often wayyyy more guilty of that than you are, but I just wanted to give a note of caution to you to maybe step back and quell your over the top anger. It seems I failed

[stringtapper]

Stormkraft has just taken what little I've said in this thread way out of context and way too personally.

None of what I've said was meant as a personal jab to anyone. I advocate that understanding the basics of rhythm and meter as a way of freeing people during the writing process and expanding their awareness of what they're doing and how it all can fit together. If you look at it as problem solving, as Stormkraft seems to tend to, then having this fundamental musical knowledge is clear advantage. That's all I've ever been saying.

[Stromkraft]

I think you may have a case of "don't even know enough to know what it is you don't know" when it comes to this subject.

Maybe time to put the internet down for a while?

There you go again proving you're simply here to try to put people down. You don't bully me though. Go and try to scare someone else with your ugly mug.

I know exactly what I'm talking about in this case. It's true I don't know your intentions with being smug and pretending you know everything, but I know it's very tiresome as it is unnecessary.

I'm sure if you only gave people the stuff you know without over-correcting things you clearly do not understand, i e how people different from yourself think about music, then your advice would make other people grow instead of you putting them down.

[stringtapper]

I think you may have a case of "don't even know enough to know what it is you don't know" when it comes to this subject.

Maybe time to put the internet down for a while?

There you go again proving you're simply here to try to put people down. You don't bully me though. Go and try to scare someone else with your ugly mug.

I know exactly what I'm talking about in this case. It's true I don't know your intentions with being smug and pretending you know everything, but I know it's very tiresome as it is unnecessary.

I'm sure if you only gave people the stuff you know without over-correcting things you clearly do not understand, i e how people different from yourself think about music, then your advice would make other people grow instead of you putting them down.

I never put anyone down in this thread until you started hurling schoolyard insults ("idiot", etc.), and even then I didn't pay it much mind until you just wouldn't stop carrying on some argument that exists nowhere but in your own mind.

I'm sorry that what I said in the beginning drove you to hurl personal, sophomoric insults at me. Can we give it a rest now?

[Stromkraft]

I advocate that understanding the basics of rhythm and meter as a way of freeing people during the writing process and expanding their awareness of what they're doing and how it all can fit together. If you look at it as problem solving, as Stormkraft seems to tend to, then having this fundamental musical knowledge is clear advantage. That's all I've ever been saying.

I support all that. I just don't support you implying people not thinking about music the way you do must lack knowledge. I have no idea then why were not discussing the subject of this thread instead of bickering in it.

In this case one matter that could be relevant for the OP and I'm sure many others are ways to capture musical ideas without making them into something they're not.

How to hold them in your mind, perceive them properly without distortion and play around with them without losing the main idea. And then apply musical knowledge to these ideas to evolve them.

For me it's very important to simply get my ideas down, with recording or humming or simply play the idea if that is simple. When I have a reference down I can play trough this idea and evolve it, with classic methods involving analysis or just listening to it and let the ideas for development come and take it from there.

[Stromkraft]

I never put anyone down in this thread until you started hurling schoolyard insults

It's just a habit you have. I never use insults otherwise, but you earned them.

[stringtapper]

I never put anyone down in this thread until you started hurling schoolyard insults

It's just a habit you have. I never use insults otherwise, but you earned them.

Nah, that's evidently just all you have to turn to when you take things too personally. My initial posts in this thread in no way garnered name calling.

How about addressing the specifics of what I said. You never did that, which makes me suspect you may not even know what I was talking about with regard to rhythm, meter, subdivisions, etc.

Its not about "making things something they're not." It's about being able to identify the things that you are hearing in order to organize them and understand how they fit in the context of a composition.

I never once said that anyone has to work or even think a certain way, even though you keep attributing that to me.

What I was saying is that if one understands how rhythm and meter work then the things they're hearing aren't going to be so mysterious and they can ultimately save time in writing process.

Of course this is all assuming one is writing within the context of traditional rhythm and meter in the first place (which seems like a good assumptions based on the OP's descriptions). If that's the case then there are established fundamentals of how rhythm works and how it can be organized. It doesn't have to be a mystery.

Simply being able to count beats within a melodic or harmonic phrase one has in mind is an invaluable tool to be able to determine what meter they're writing in. And that can be done before you've put down even a simple scratch track to record the idea. It can literally be thought through beforehand.

[Stromkraft]

What I was saying is that if one understands how rhythm and meter work then the things they're hearing aren't going to be so mysterious and they can ultimately save time in writing process.

That might very well be true and what you believe, but what I meant is that sometimes for some people it's not clear at the spur of the moment where the idea in question wants to go as it's not necessarily a complete idea. It may just be a phrase that needs to be evolved and possibly without being shackled by too much analysis too early. It's about expressing something. Analysis has its place. I usually do not apply that until I'm stuck.

When improvising — which is a great way to eveolve an idea — you may just play without analyzing what you do exactly. Even if you record that, different phrases can be applied in different ways depending on choices you make as a composer. Melodies can be offset even if the phrasing is the same and so on.

If I applied preconceived "knowledge" at that stage the very life of many musical ideas would have been killed already when conceiving them. Of course with time and experience you will hear better and faster, but maybe that's not as important as capturing the finer nuances and protecting their complexity from the assumptions from people that think they know how it should be played, when in fact they are full of their own false assumptions about music (barring they are real talents that understand your ideas better than you. ONly met one such multi-talented composer)). Enough of that.

It's very typical of you, as a really low person (by choice), to assume that people "don't know" because they don't agree with your way of describing things or because they prefer to work in another way. Stressing perceived deficiencies in others is a seemingly effective way to pretend you're in the know.

I know that all truly talented people within the musical field that I have met — quite a few too — are not like you. They don't need to expose their ego at the cost of other people. Rather they share their knowledge, if they choose to, without imposing. They may be full of themselves, but they don't have to put other people down.