105 min Tutorial on Music & Rhythm in Animation

[samuelvictorjones]

A couple of people asked me to make a tutorial video to further explain about reading music, understanding rhythm & how it applies to animation.

I'd hardly call myself an expert but this is all fairly basic stuff, hopefully enough to help those with little or no musical knowledge, or those not sure how rhythm applies to animation.

The video is just over 105 minutes, sorry for the length! I took the approach of a "lesson" similar to how Don teaches us, made a basic plan, then recorded it live. Originally it took nearly 3 hours to cover everything, but I editted it down by removing large sections of pointless waffling & by fast forwarding sections when drawing.

http://www.2shared.com/video/lGbwqyge/my_music_tutorial_full_length.html

NOTE as is standard with these kind of sites, they try & trick you to click adverts. Ignore the big "Download" buttons, these are ads. The actual file is the text link saying "Save file to your PC: click here". Its a Mov file, around 205mb. I tried to upload it to several sites, this is the only one that worked without crashing, so sorry its a download rather than streaming video.

Essentially the tutorial/lesson covers a basic piece of sheet music, "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", then simplifies it down to very easy to understand clapping patterns & a very basic rhythm annotation, as well as how the metronome speeds relate to the music. These methods should be simple enough for complete musical newcomers to understand. This easy annotation is then used real time to work out the rhythm pattern for "Somewhere Out There". Then we discuss how the understanding of rhythm is applied to walk cycles, a dance, lip syncing, then finally less obvious rhythms, such as those in everyday non looping actions.

3 "warnings" of such
1) if you can read music, & understand how rhythm applies to everyday movements, this tutorial will teach you nothing, its very simple. In fact you'll probably notice "mistakes" where I've oversimplified things down to a very basic level, inevitably taking a few shortcuts.
2) If you're hoping to see actual animation, there is none, this is all theory, with examples shown by basic puppetry or hand gestures to show how you would apply it to your own animations.
3) The audio quality isn't great. Seemingly either my mobile phone or mobile broadband caused some interference. Its easily good enough to understand though.

That said, I hope this video is of use to some people who might be struggling to learn these principles, or whose interest was peaked by Don's excellent brief covering of written music last Saturday & wants to recap or explore these ideas further. :cool:

[feliceworkshop]

Thank you Samuel for taking the time of putting together this very nice tutorial. I thought that it was pretty slick of you to employ boxes of different color to explain the concept of note length!..... Perhaps you should consider to do a series of these....

P.s.: I also think you did an amazing job with your pan background.

[Richard Willimot]

Thanks from me to Samuel :)

[Rodney]

Samuel,
I'm very interested in your video tutorial but the link isn't working for me.
It may be that it's been downloaded too many times today?

I'll try another browser and see if that makes a difference.

105 minute tutorials on Music and Rhythm in Animation? I'M MOST DEFINITELY INTERESTED.

Thanks for putting this together. Looking forward to it.


Edit: After returning later... it's downloading now! :)

[samuelvictorjones]

Oh cool I'm glad this was of help/interest to some people, I wasn't sure. yay.


Thanks from me to Samuel
No worries Richard!


Thank you Samuel for taking the time of putting together this very nice tutorial.
No problem :)


I thought that it was pretty slick of you to employ boxes of different color to explain the concept of note length!.....
Thanks. Well, its a very visual way that even small children seem to be able to understand, as it doesn't really take any learning of what different symbols stand for. With small kids I've done it with Lego blocks on a board. With older teens, basic video games with tetris style graphics.

I'm not a music teacher, but I own a recording studio & used to have people come around wanting to use it. Because of the hiphop/rap work I did with a few more famous names, I got lots of kids who wanted to do that style of music. They understood how to rhyme, but not how to time it with the music, or get the right amount of sylables into each line. So I developped this visual approach so they could pick it up quickly. Of course, once one understands rhythm & is used to "reading" it, it makes it a lot simpler to then learn to read "proper" music :cool:


Perhaps you should consider to do a series of these....
I might if people really needed them or found them useful, however I was slightly horrified at how long it took to plan, film, edit then upload this! In my mind I was thinking a couple of hours, but it kinda ran into all day :laughing:


P.s.: I also think you did an amazing job with your pan background.
Hey thanks man I appreciate that.


Samuel,
I'm very interested in your video tutorial but the link isn't working for me.
It may be that it's been downloaded too many times today?

I'll try another browser and see if that makes a difference.

105 minute tutorials on Music and Rhythm in Animation? I'M MOST DEFINITELY INTERESTED.

Thanks for putting this together. Looking forward to it.

Edit: After returning later... it's downloading now!

Hi Rodney. No worries, I'm glad its now working for you. I hope once its downloaded, after all that its of some use & not disapointing to you! lol

[Rodney]

Samuel,

The file downloaded fine and thus far I've had a chance to watch the first 15 or minutes. I enjoyed the information you covered. Some of it scratched away at faint memories of playing the piano when I was ten).

My task now is to set asides at least 130+ minutes to watch and review all the highlights of your video tutorial.

I know creating videos such as these are time consuming so please know that your time is much appreciated by me.

[samuelvictorjones]

Samuel,

The file downloaded fine and thus far I've had a chance to watch the first 15 or minutes. I enjoyed the information you covered. Some of it scratched away at faint memories of playing the piano when I was ten).

My task now is to set asides at least 130+ minutes to watch and review all the highlights of your video tutorial.

I know creating videos such as these are time consuming so please know that your time is much appreciated by me.

Hey no problem at all, glad its of use to people :)

Re-watching back the first 15 minutest to see where you'd got to I had a slight cringe - I look very self conscious in the introduction, & also like I hadn't slept in a week. This is probably accurate! lol. Also I noticed that its clear that the eraser I'm using is pink & heart shaped! I'm blaming this on the fact that I was recording these sections at the dining table & I just grabbed the eraser & pens from my daughter's drawing box :laughing:

I should also have warned everyone that I make several lame attempts at humour in the video. You are not required to laugh :p ("Twinkle Twinkle Little Don Bluth" is particularly bad. Not sure where that one came from!)

[Rodney]

Hehe... all that blackmail stuff.... I mean... cute stuff just makes the tutorials all the more interesting to watch. A cleaner and more sterilized video would teach the lesson but would lose a lot by not having your personality on screen.

I made time to watch the rest of the video and must say I really enjoyed it.
I confess my mind did drift of occasionally as I thought of how I could apply your methodology to what I know presently about animation.

Let me say this for the record, your video provides the best visuals representation for understanding of the breakdown of music I've ever seen. By tackling a rather complex song ('Somewhere Out There') you've extended that lesson even further for me.

I'm going to try to stick with the basics from earlier in your video rather than chase after the latter because when mixed with what I think I know already that may prove to be dangerous for me. ;)

Thanks again.

[samuelvictorjones]

Let me say this for the record, your video provides the best visuals representation for understanding of the breakdown of music I've ever seen. By tackling a rather complex song ('Somewhere Out There') you've extended that lesson even further for me.

Oh wow, thanks Rodney, that's praise indeed. I'm really glad you found it so useful. When making it I really wasn't sure how much people would get from it, or even if it would be seen as pointless or insulting to people.

The second part of the video coverring rhythm in animation is the kind of thing that 50% of people will be bored out their mind, as it'll seem to elementary, especially when just using potentially childish hand mime puppet motions. But I'm hoping that the other 50% of people won't have clicked the link between rhythm & motion, & these over simplified examples will be of use, & tip the balance from "not getting" to getting it. :cool:

[samuelvictorjones]

A slight side-note:

I showed the tutorial to a friend of mine who in a "muso" of such & she threw a hissy fit at the suggestion that a four count beats was the only one I coverred.

Of course, there are many other time signitures. However I argued that it was very unlikely that any of you would come accross one without a four count. (In my head I was thinking, "well waltzes are also fairly common, BUT ho many waltzes are there in the modern world"?). She of course raised the example of Waltzes and then some more complicated ones.

To prove my point though, I took out the latest compilation CD "Now 76". Now compilations have around 40 songs on each, all different popular styles, pop, rock, indie, hip-hop, rnb, dance, reggae, dnb. I proceeded to play each song, counting "1,2,3,4", rather smugly. There was only 1 track out of all 46-odd that wasn't in this time signiture, "Fyfe Dangerfield - She's Always a Woman", which was a waltz. So that''s around 98% of current chart music in all styles fitting to a 4/4 beat.

My friend protested that music nowadays was boring & over simplified & this hadn't always been the case. So I grabbed 3 more comilations in the series to try: The very first Now comilation, from 1983, Now 30 from 1995, & Now 60 from 2005. I felt these were fair intervals. We then preceeded through them all, with similar results.

In 1983, ALL the tracks could fit to a 4 count, as could ALL the tracks in 1995 (save for the keyboard in the brief introduction sequence to "Set You Free" by "N-Trance", which is at odds with the singer, until the beats comes in, & the keyboard sample is warped digitally to move it to a 4/4 timing remix).

In 2005, again, nearly all the tracks fitted the four count, with only one exception, "Joss Stone - Spoiled".

So in nearly 100 contempory songs from 1983 to the present, only 2 weren't 4/4, and these 2 were 3/4 waltzes. I knew that waltzes were the second most common, but had no idea that they'd be quite so rare, and that any ther time signiture would be entirely non-existant in this time period.

So lets cover the Waltz, lest you feel left out. Carry on at the same speed set by the metronome for the same as you were counting "1,2,3,4-1,2,3,4", but instead count "1,2,3-1,2,3-1,2,3". Simple right? Well, you've now got it! Of course the emphasis is still on beat 1 in every bar, so aim your extremes or key poses to these in most cases.

Of course, the emphasius isn't always on the first (& often third) beat of every bar. In Reggae music, and much with a carribean dance halld influence, as well as some hip-hop, rap, & RnB its a still a four count, but the emphasis is put on the second & third beats, called an "off beat" flow. When growing up in Gloucester, an area with as many black people as whites, I was told by a black friend that I was dancing like a "white person" by nodding my head to the wrong beats in rap music, my head bobbing down when theirs was up, and vice versa. I soon sorted that out so I could fit in! ;)

Anyway, back in the present day, I then breifly skipped through compilations of "Best of" 50s, 60s, & 70s with pretty similar results.

One track that stood out as particularly interesting was "Golden Brown" by the Stranglers. The instrumental introduction counts "1,2,3 - 1,2,3 - 1,2,3 - 1,2,3,4" and repeats, however by the time the signer starts, we're back to the normal four count.

Its notable that before the advent of drum machines or programmable synths, timing was far looser. Singers as varied as Elvis, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, Louis Armstrong & Bing Crosby all sing songs where you can count "1,2,3,4", but you'll notice they will subtley speed up & slow down when they want to to add emphasis. This also happens in orchestral or band music when the speeding up & slowing down is directed by a conductor.

It would be impossible to set a metronome to these tracks as the speed varies at will. However, when animating to them, you can still count "1,2,3,4" and work out your timing via the bar charts I recomended using for visualisation.

It is only really "classical" style music (Including newly composed orchestral music for soundtracks & the like) that will "show off" by having more complicated signitures, however the ones you are likely to encounter having to animate to will still most likey have a four count, for the simple reason that to a Western audience at least, the four count is the easiest to listen to, & therefore when the song is meant to be noticeable (for example in a musical & the chractares sing) it will be easy to dance or sing along to, or when the music is incidental & in the background, an unusual time signiture would make it sound un-natural & be distracting to the audience.

So to sum up, I was right, she was wrong :laughing: but at least now you know about animating to 3 count beats & off beat reggae style rhythms too!

[Rodney]

Samuel,

Please thank your friend for me.
We are the beneficiaries of your debate!

It's particularly interesting how you managed to hook the waltz into this. That makes a lot of sense.

One thing I wonder is whether the cyclic nature of beats might effect how we percieve all of this. It's that old theme of least common denominator I'm thinking of with 3/4, 4/4 beats etc. all syncing in with our penchant to frame imagery in series of 24 frames a second. They can fit nicely into 12 frame and therefore 24 frame sequences.

Ouch... for a second there I was doing math.

Thanks for the inspiration Samuel!

[samuelvictorjones]

lol no worries :) Glad my ramblings are interesting (ish!)

Yes you're right they fit well with 24fps film, I've noticed that whilst video editting!

I wonder perhaps now the Workshop is over if this thread should be moved to general forums? Others may find it useful, perhaps :cool: