It lags behind some rivals on the sampling front, but on the whole, the MC-707 is powerful, well-designed and a lot of fun. I’ll discuss this further in the next post, where we’ll be breaking down some real-world examples of unquantized grooves and looking at a few different approaches to notating microtime.Some firmware refinement is needed to justify its price, but there's a lot to like about this inspiring and intuitive standalone sampler. In theory, you could notate this microtime by using incredibly small subdivisions or though complicated tuplets, but in practice this just makes for very confusing looking music that provides little intuition about how a groove should sound or feel (see the 62% golden ratio swing approximation above). It’s a quality that’s difficult to discuss because there is no common, effective way to represent it in western standard notation. This is called microtime, and it is a large part of what people mean when they talk about “feel” and groove.
This style is commonly called “unquantized” or “off-the-grid”.īelow a certain level of subdivision, these rhythmic variations become too small to easily hear, but are still felt in their aggregate effect. Many others don’t use any particular subdivision, instead placing notes between subdivisions or slightly ahead of/behind the beat, changing the placement throughout a measure, and/or offsetting unison notes very slightly to create subtle flam effects. It has a rolling, moiré pattern-esque type feel where everything lines up on the beat, but within a beat the elements flam and rub against each other to make an indeterminately subdivided wash of rhythm. This creates a unique type of polyrhythm that I call “polysubdivision”. Some use multiple subdivisions simultaneously, as in the Slynk septuplet example above where the hi-hat is playing a septuplet swing, the kick is hitting on 32nd notes, and the synth is playing triplets. In the real world, most Dilla-feel groves don’t fit neatly into one subdivision. This corresponds to a swing ratio of 2:1, or 66.6% The first note has a length of two parts and the second swung note has a length of one part. Triplet swing refers to breaking the beat into three parts. Swing, used without qualifier, is synonymous with triplet swing. The benefit to this percentage system is that it allows us to easily quantify and discuss any swing ratio without having to relate it to western notational note values which, as we’ll see later, can quickly become cumbersome.
66.6% is a triplet swing where the first note is twice as long as the second. For example, 50% corresponds to perfectly straight time where both notes have an equal duration.
It describes the percentage of the beat that is taken up by the first note. The MPC swing system provides a good way to talk about different swing feels. Triplet swing is just one of many possible ways that subdivisions can be swung. The most common type of swing is a triplet swing in which the first note has twice the length of the second note. In jazz it’s typical for 8th notes to be swung and rock and hip-hop sometimes feature swung 16th notes. Swing refers to a type of rhythm where alternating subdivisions are given unequal durations, creating a long-short-long-short pattern.