Indeed. Biosphere is a master of that, and also of displacement of rhythms, to connect back to your Lefebvre quote. Rhythmical, but defying expectations, falling back on some kind of organic, natural way of listening for them. Just extremely floaty stuff. Makes you more attuned to the soundscapes in the progress, if you have the patience. Super vivid stuff.
2 Likes
want
I think i saw biosphere on roskilde a million years ago
1 BigUp
Albums worth to check out, not sorted in any specific way:
- N-Plants
- Substrata
- Shenzhou
- Dropsone
- The Petrified Forest
He’s got loads more stuff, the styles vary, but it’s basically all top notch. Almost always forgotten by people talking about Norway’s musical export, since ambient music is pretty fringe in the mainstream.
1 BigUp
im doing a bachelor project on rhythm/poetry (in loose terms)
Still on this Lefebvre biz, but from a metatext about the english translation of his french writing:
One can identify in (Lefebvres) writing a tension between on the one hand, a pre-Romantic or anti-Romantic rationalist concept of music, according to which music can be defined as a code (expressible in verbal or mathematical terms); and on the other hand, a Romantic concept, according to which music is an aesthetic activity whose rules exist only in an ideal sphere to which the rational mind has no reliable access – and perhaps not necessarily in sound. (And that is why you gotta glitch some in dance music and techno)
The Romantic musical tradition gives a privileged place to the listener. Since it denies the ability of the analyst or of verbal dis- course to determine the quality of music, that quality can only be determined in the act of listening to music.
Lefebvre_Henri_Rhythmanalysis_Space_Time_and_Everyday_Life.pdf (563.0 KB)
Rhythms_now_ONLINE Lefebvre Maritime Rhytms Søren Frank .pdf (4.0 MB)
2 Likes
You found this.
EQ ye.
So EQ and vinyl crackle sample then?
Only if you are using them to control levels instead of using them as tone shapers and transient designers like they should be
2 Likes
Gain staging, and level matching, is definitely more important. Then you can really start to listen to how different types of compressors shape/colour the sound.
This dude might be super hit or miss for you, but he’s got some good tips on how to listen. Also EXTREMELY clickbait titles and thumbnails all over his channel.
3 Likes
Absolutely, gain staging and level matching is super important when listening to compression and A/Bing. I was just pointing out that compression is much more a creative tool rather than just something to make things loud.
Greg Scott makes great videos and great products. He’s also a super chill dude, met him at the last AES I went to
2 Likes
I was just trying to bait someone with that comment tbh
1 BigUp
Baited 
I’m just a compression junky
I think it’s wise to create something then change it into something else for mastery sake.
2 Likes
I’ve watched his compression video so many times and I still don’t get it/hear it/cannot use it
sadface.jpg
I just use it to make things crunchy and gnarly 
Gotta upgrade your monitors bro.
1 BigUp
Yeah I know, I’m still on headphones.
House is half building site/storage facility so nowhere to set up an music station
More Lefebvre rhythm analysis:
After peregrinations (measure, writing and the aleatory), modern music finds itself back in the body; rhythm dominates, supplants melody and harmony (without suppressing them).
The triad melody–harmony–rhythm therefore envelops real contradictions, which translate themselves into the adventures of musical creation. A speculative triad? No: changing antagonistic relations, included within a vast becoming. For this reason, the triad does not lack interest. Its analysis is part of a vaster methodology, which it verifies.
In the sentence with ‘adventures of musical creation’ (the creative production phase/composing/loop monging) and the relation between ‘melody-harmony-rhythm’, he suggests without saying it straight up, that you can’t really get stuck in the process of making music in a creative sense - if you take that relation seriously. If you are stuck on a melody - you can fuck around with the rhythm the melody consists of, or if you are stuck on the notes in the melody - you can fuck around with the notes that are in harmony/ substitute/swap around notes that are already in harmonic relation to each other. No matter what part you are stuck in out of those three, they will always be in a relationship with each other - that can help you and help you ‘move on’ beyond being stuck.
Musical rhythm does not only sublimate the aesthetic and a rule of art: it has an ethical function. In its relation to the body, to time, to the work, it illustrates real (everyday) life. It purifies it in the acceptance of catharsis. Finally, and above all, it brings compensation for the miseries of everydayness, for its deficiencies and failures. Music integrates the functions, the values of Rhythm . . .
This is basicly a recipe description for what rave music does. For those that don’t remember what catharsis is, its basically the build up and release of tension/ a way to mimic sex/ or a dramatic structure: as in tension of individual little events eventually turning into a happy or unhappy end(ing).
It also suggests that rhythms are subliminal - that other rhythms for example military rhythm or weather patterns can be explained by music or just inspire music.
Really pretentiously: -that’s how important rhythm is, in that it helps us understand what time is. So music is both something nice on it’s own, but it’s also a way to show how ugly or beautiful experience can be - it’s not just the other way where experiencing music is nice - it’s that music show you how to experience time and life or whatever. That chicks ass is HARMONIC. The way she sucks my dick is MELODIC.
Very serious music forum.
3 Likes
Keep it simple. 
78 Rhythmanalysis (Lefebvre continued)
For there to be rhythm, there must be repetition in a movement, but not just any repetition. The monotonous return of the same, self-identical, noise no more forms a rhythm than does some moving object on its trajectory, for example a falling stone; though our ears and without doubt our brains tend to introduce a rhythm into every repetition, even completely linear ones. For there to be rhythm, strong times and weak times, which return in accordance with a rule or law – long and short times, recurring in a recognisable way, stops, silences, blanks, resumptions and intervals in accordance with regularity, must appear in a movement. Rhythm therefore brings with it a differentiated time, a qualified duration. The same can be said of repetitions, ruptures and resumptions. Therefore a measure, but an internal measure, which distinguishes itself strongly though without separating itself from an external measure, with time t (the time of a clock or a metronome) consisting in only a quantitative and homogeneous parameter. In a reciprocal action, the external measure can and must superimpose itself on the internal measure, but they cannot be conflated. They have neither the same beginning, nor the same end or final cause. This double measure enters into the definition and quality of rhythm, irreducible to a simple determination, implying on the contrary complex (dialectical) relations. As such only a non-mechanical movement can have rhythm: this classes everything that emerges [relève] from the purely mechanical in the domain of the quantitative, abstractly detached from quality. However, it is necessary to formulate some reservations with regard to this claim. For example, there is a close relationship between rhythms and the wave movements studied in mathemat- ics and physics. Sounds, these elements of musical movement, with their properties and combinations (pitch, frequency, vibra- tion, placed on the scale of sounds, which is to say along the continuum from low to high, intensities and tones) result from complex vibrations, from wave movements that enter into chords and harmonies. We shall come back to this later, when further exploring the relationship of musicality and rhythm. For the moment, it is enough to note that rhythm presupposes:
a) Temporal elements that are thoroughly marked, accentu- ated, hence contrasting, even opposed like strong and weak times.
The Rhythmanalytical Project 79
b) An overall movement that takes with it all these elements (for example, the movement of a waltz, be it fast or slow). Through this double aspect, rhythm enters into a general con- struction of time, of movement and becoming. And consequently into its philosophical problematic: repetition and becoming, the relation of the Same to the Other. It is to be noted at this point that by including a measure, rhythm implies a certain memory. While mechanical repetition works by reproducing the instant that precedes it, rhythm preserves both the measure that initiates the process and the re-commencement of this process with mod- ifications, therefore with its multiplicity and plurality. Without repeating identically ‘the same’, but by subordinating the same to alterity and even alteration, which is to say, to difference.
To grasp rhythm and polyrhythmias in a sensible, preconcep- tual but vivid way, it is enough to look carefully at the surface of the sea. Waves come in succession: they take shape in the vicinity of the beach, the cliff, the banks. These waves have a rhythm, which depends on the season, the water and the winds, but also on the sea that carries them, that brings them. Each sea has its rhythm: that of the Mediterranean is not that of the oceans. But look closely at each wave. It changes ceaselessly. As it approaches the shore, it takes the shock of the backwash: it carries numerous wavelets, right down to the tiny quivers that it orientates, but which do not always go in its direction. Waves and waveforms are characterised by frequency, amplitude and displaced energy. Watching waves, you can easily observe what physicists call the superposition of small movements. Powerful waves crash upon one another, creating jets of spray; they disrupt one another noisily. Small undulations traverse each another, absorbing, fading, rather than crashing, into one another. Were there a current or a few solid objects animated by a movement of their own, you could have the intuition of what is a polyrhythmic field and even glimpse the relations between complex processes and trajectories, between bodies and waveforms, etc.
1 BigUp