Matters arising

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

1. Womanizer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGpZinB6odk
2. "The Promise" has a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSMosULG5GI
3. Best video of the year*: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTDXdqsZGjI

*I didn't say which year.

Comments

[koganbot]

"Womanizer" will take a while to sink in. I like her sticking to her dance guns but wonder if brightening up the toss-it-off dance feel of something like "Ooh Ooh Baby" actually undercuts the mood of hedonistic-crud that felt so powerful on Blackout.

Also, what's schaffel (that is, in comparison to everything else that builds its beats around triplets, which is a good hunk of American popular music of the last 100 years)?

(Kudos to Kat.)

Michael Mayer explains schaffel:

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Schaffel is still four to the floor," explains Mayer. "Formally, it’s not a waltz, a tango, or drum & bass — it’s still techno that you can play within a minimal set. But the accent on the beats is totally different, which makes you dance in a different way than you do with [traditional] techno." (http://www.exclaim.ca/articles/multiarticlesub.aspx?csid1=57&csid2=779&fid1=1829)

I can't find the link where he explains how to do the dance :(

Re: Michael Mayer explains schaffel:

[koganbot]

Well, the difference in the beats seems to be that they're playing the basic SWING rhythm of a lot of blues, jazz, western swing, boogie woogie, early rock 'n' roll, etc. (e.g., this) but with a heavy hand, so it's like a techno equivalent of the heavy metal or glitter bands of the early '70s when they went into boogie mode (e.g., this). And what the swing rhythm does is it uses the 4/4 beat but subdivides each of those beats into triplets, so if you subdivide further you get twelve of those subbeats to a measure rather than eighth notes or sixteenth notes.

Re: Michael Mayer explains schaffel:

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

This is all very technical! I think many poptimists would merely define it as music that involves bending your knees and flapping your arms about, a bit like what the badgers are doing here (http://www.badgerbadgerbadger.com/) (albeit not to schaffel music). Something like Superpitcher's Irre (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBnJogeix4M), perhaps?

Re: Michael Mayer explains schaffel:

[koganbot]

Yeah, it's this beat but played by different gizmos.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

FWIW, to my ears the Schaffel tracks that have appeared on Kompakt delay the third beat veeeeery slightly, to get a slightly more lopsided rhythm than yr average "dum-de dum-de dum-de dum-de" triplet or 6/8 rhythm.