On clipping and rhythm in vidding
Aug. 3rd, 2004 01:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lierdumoaYesterday I was supposed to be writing RPS. But I got lazy. So instead I decided to read lots and lots of vid meta. I came across ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
laurashapiro's notes on her Creating Mood Panel.permetaform last night. The both of us are total beat nazis (or maybe beat whores is a better term). Our chat helped me to develop my argument against this set of vidding guidelines.
I'll start with a little background on me. I played piano all through childhood. I'm very conscious of rhythm and meter in music. If a song has a really interesting, really complex beat, it's the first thing I notice. If a song doesn't have drums, I will pick beats out of the melody. I did not learn to clip on beat. No one had to tell me to clip on beat. It was always completely automatic for me. The only vid I didn't clip on beat for is my very first one, and I cringe every time I look at it (although I think all vidders do that with their first vids).
Now my first objection -- danceable? Bouncy? The song itself is always on beat. That does not necessairily mean the song is danceable or bouncy. I don't see how clipping to the beat would make a vid danceable or bouncy. I vidded to Tori Amos's cover of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." The music itself has no drums -- only vocals and piano. The beat is more often understood than heard explicitly. All of my clipping for that vid is on beat. Certainly it wasn't the best vid in the world, but at no point did my vid come across as bouncy or danceable. I managed to maintain proper mood throughout and stay on beat.
Also, I noticed that even when beat did not coincide exactly with lyric, it was close enough that it felt like I was clipping on the lyric. My clips were positioned to accent the beat, but due to their context it seemed as if they were emphasizing the lyrics more than the beat. Clipping to the beat doesn't have to undermine your meaning as long as you don't do it badly. If a song is slow, you might want to make a scene last through two or three beats instead of one, because otherwise your visuals will be moving faster than your music. Of course, if your visuals move too fast for your music, your vid might come across as bouncy when it shouldn't. The problem isn't that you're on beat.
My second objection -- that by clipping to the lyric "vid...may have more flow, or feel more organic." I don't care what the music is -- it will never have more flow or feel more organic to me if a song is clipped offbeat. It will always feel slightly wrong. That's just how I, personally, experience music. I have to force myself not to notice when vids aren't clipped on beat. I don't know why it bothers me so much and not others. I strongly suspect it has something to do with the fact that the majority of fandom is made up of rhythmless white nerds (don't deny it).
My third objection to this set of guidelines is that I don't think it encourages a proper understanding of what beat is. Beats and lyrics are not mutually exclusive. A song beat is very complex. It has lots of intermediate beats. Grace notes and musical accents are not outside of the beat, but inside of it. Part of it. Lyrics themselves have beats. English is a language with a stress accent. Words have rhythm to them. I noticed this especially when I vidded rap. The words have a beat as much as the background music. A few of my clips in my Superman vid were matched up to lyrical beats -- to various stressed syllables. This was most noticeable, I think, at point 1:52 in the vid with the words "runway ho," and point 2:11 with the words "everybody knows."
ETA: If you're reading this and you haven't seen my vid, but want to, you can download it here.
On a somewhat related note, I think it would be interesting for someone to try to vid Tori Amos with lyrical beats in mind. I've seen a number of vids to her, and made a vid to her, but I don't think any of them quite do her justice. She has some of the most complex lyrical beats I've ever heard, in which she uses both pitch and stress to accent certain syllables.
In her song "Siren" off the Great Expectations soundtrack she pronounces the word "vanilla" as "vi-ni-ia-la-a." The word sounds like it has extra syllables because of the way she stretches a singular vowel sound across several different pitch ranges. In "Take To The Sky" she sings the lyrics "hold me in the dark" as to "ho-old me in the da-ark." She stresses syllables that don't necessarily exist in the webster's dictionary pronunciation guide. I think one extreme example is in "A Sorta Fairytale" when she sings "for me to take your word I had to steal it" as "for me to ta-ake you word I had to ste-e-e-eal it." The word "steal" goes through four different pitch changes. Pure. Aural. Sex.
She's the one of the few artists I've seen do this consistently. I've also noticed it in Boa's "Duvet" and the Cranberries' "Zombie" and, to a lesser extent, some of Jewel's and Alanis Morissette's music. Personally, I think it sounds more interesting the way Tori does it. Less yodel-y.
I don't know *how* anyone could represent this in a vid, but I'd love it if someone tried. I'm going to be vidding "Spring Haze" to Butterfly Effect (the theater version), so I guess I could try my hand at it. The song has both complex drum beats and complex lyrical beats.
laurashapiro's notes on her Creating Mood Panel.Timing CutsNow my gut instinct after reading this was to think -- you're wrong. You should always cut on beat. But here was someone disagreeing with me. So I had to think about why my opinion on this point was so strong. I had a conversation with
To the Beat - simple, direct, "punchy", makes the vid danceable, hard-hitting, rhythmically satisfying
To the Lyric - emphasizes the words, cuts will sometimes be on the beat and sometimes not, vid has less bounciness but may have more flow, or feel more organic
Other - cutting to a grace note or other musical accent will tend to emphasize that element in the music, so the mood of that guitar solo or drum break more concretely affects the mood of your vid in that moment
permetaform last night. The both of us are total beat nazis (or maybe beat whores is a better term). Our chat helped me to develop my argument against this set of vidding guidelines. I'll start with a little background on me. I played piano all through childhood. I'm very conscious of rhythm and meter in music. If a song has a really interesting, really complex beat, it's the first thing I notice. If a song doesn't have drums, I will pick beats out of the melody. I did not learn to clip on beat. No one had to tell me to clip on beat. It was always completely automatic for me. The only vid I didn't clip on beat for is my very first one, and I cringe every time I look at it (although I think all vidders do that with their first vids).
Now my first objection -- danceable? Bouncy? The song itself is always on beat. That does not necessairily mean the song is danceable or bouncy. I don't see how clipping to the beat would make a vid danceable or bouncy. I vidded to Tori Amos's cover of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." The music itself has no drums -- only vocals and piano. The beat is more often understood than heard explicitly. All of my clipping for that vid is on beat. Certainly it wasn't the best vid in the world, but at no point did my vid come across as bouncy or danceable. I managed to maintain proper mood throughout and stay on beat.
Also, I noticed that even when beat did not coincide exactly with lyric, it was close enough that it felt like I was clipping on the lyric. My clips were positioned to accent the beat, but due to their context it seemed as if they were emphasizing the lyrics more than the beat. Clipping to the beat doesn't have to undermine your meaning as long as you don't do it badly. If a song is slow, you might want to make a scene last through two or three beats instead of one, because otherwise your visuals will be moving faster than your music. Of course, if your visuals move too fast for your music, your vid might come across as bouncy when it shouldn't. The problem isn't that you're on beat.
My second objection -- that by clipping to the lyric "vid...may have more flow, or feel more organic." I don't care what the music is -- it will never have more flow or feel more organic to me if a song is clipped offbeat. It will always feel slightly wrong. That's just how I, personally, experience music. I have to force myself not to notice when vids aren't clipped on beat. I don't know why it bothers me so much and not others. I strongly suspect it has something to do with the fact that the majority of fandom is made up of rhythmless white nerds (don't deny it).
My third objection to this set of guidelines is that I don't think it encourages a proper understanding of what beat is. Beats and lyrics are not mutually exclusive. A song beat is very complex. It has lots of intermediate beats. Grace notes and musical accents are not outside of the beat, but inside of it. Part of it. Lyrics themselves have beats. English is a language with a stress accent. Words have rhythm to them. I noticed this especially when I vidded rap. The words have a beat as much as the background music. A few of my clips in my Superman vid were matched up to lyrical beats -- to various stressed syllables. This was most noticeable, I think, at point 1:52 in the vid with the words "runway ho," and point 2:11 with the words "everybody knows."
ETA: If you're reading this and you haven't seen my vid, but want to, you can download it here.
On a somewhat related note, I think it would be interesting for someone to try to vid Tori Amos with lyrical beats in mind. I've seen a number of vids to her, and made a vid to her, but I don't think any of them quite do her justice. She has some of the most complex lyrical beats I've ever heard, in which she uses both pitch and stress to accent certain syllables.
In her song "Siren" off the Great Expectations soundtrack she pronounces the word "vanilla" as "vi-ni-ia-la-a." The word sounds like it has extra syllables because of the way she stretches a singular vowel sound across several different pitch ranges. In "Take To The Sky" she sings the lyrics "hold me in the dark" as to "ho-old me in the da-ark." She stresses syllables that don't necessarily exist in the webster's dictionary pronunciation guide. I think one extreme example is in "A Sorta Fairytale" when she sings "for me to take your word I had to steal it" as "for me to ta-ake you word I had to ste-e-e-eal it." The word "steal" goes through four different pitch changes. Pure. Aural. Sex.
She's the one of the few artists I've seen do this consistently. I've also noticed it in Boa's "Duvet" and the Cranberries' "Zombie" and, to a lesser extent, some of Jewel's and Alanis Morissette's music. Personally, I think it sounds more interesting the way Tori does it. Less yodel-y.
I don't know *how* anyone could represent this in a vid, but I'd love it if someone tried. I'm going to be vidding "Spring Haze" to Butterfly Effect (the theater version), so I guess I could try my hand at it. The song has both complex drum beats and complex lyrical beats.
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no subject
Date: 2004-09-14 02:24 am (UTC)I'd also use more dissolves for something like that as well, which is just not doable on beat, or not as much.
Actually, dissolves look better when they break on the beat. Trust me on this. I learned it the hard way.
I don't see how clipping to the beat would make a vid danceable or bouncy.
It does to me. Very strongly. The bass line in your average dance number is very, very strongly emphasized, 60bpm, once a second.
I think you might be missing my point. Yes, if the song is danceable and bouncy, than clipping on the beat will emphasize that fact. If the song is not danceable or bouncy, then clipping on the beat will not make it seem so.
I don't know if you've ever seen
There was one significant point at which I cut on beat during my "Hornblower" vid, thinking I always had to mark the downbeat with a cut, and it ended up looking awful.
I think the main mistake here is thinking that cutting on beat means cutting on *every* beat. Not true.
You're allowed to skip a beat and have a clip last through two or three if that's what the music calls for. The key is pacing. Clipping on every single beat might mean your clips are going faster than the song. Pace is more important than beat. The first thing to learn when cutting to the beat is which beats are more important than others.
I've never seen your hornblower vid, so I can't really talk about it. I can only talk about my personal vidding experiences. If I make a cut, I put it on beat. That doesn't mean I cut on *every* beat. It just means that when I do cut, it's on beat. I choose which beats I emphasize more than others based on my instincts. My instincts haven't failed me yet.
All beats are absolutely not equivalent. Dance-tempo beats are very, very addictive and very strongly a part of the human body. Everything from the swing of a leg to the heartbeat is at an average of 60bpm.
I never said that all beats were equivalent. There's the basic backbeat -- one at the start of each measure. There are the intermediate beats that make up the notes and lyrics. Obviously all of these beats are not equal. They fit a ranking system based on emphasis.
No, all beats are not equally important. Yes, certain beats hit harder than others. But all beats do register on *some* level.
I never said you had to clip to every beat equally. All I said was that you shouldn't clip *offbeat.* Clipping offbeat will emphasize beat in the wrong way, by forcing the viewer to notice the disparity between what they're seeing and what they're hearing. The more attuned the viewer is to the beat, the more noticeable offbeat clipping becomes.
Cutting on beat is more important to a dance number.
Cutting on the beat is more important depending on how important the beat is to the song. That does not mean the song is necessairily a dance number.
Most hard rock music has a very prominent beat. Most of it is not dance music. Most songs by Vast and Nine Inch Nails, for example, have *very* prominent beats even though none of their songs are what could be considered dance numbers.
Typically dance numbers do have prominent beats. But then, many songs that aren't dance numbers do as well.
I'd say the best example I can think of is Gwen R's "Valentine Heart" vid. The song is slow and sad. It has no drums, only piano, violins, and vocals. Despite this, the rhythm of the song is very obvious. The piano music had a very simple, clear pattern to it. The vidder purposely clipped offbeat in parts in order to keep her viewers off balance. It worked. Seeing that song clipped off beat bugged me and her beta's.