My oberservations of participatory discrepancies within three examples:
OOIOO – Polacca
Here we can here a discrepancy often when the vocals sing freely in the repeated phrase sounding like ‘mo’. It doesn’t exactly line up with the timing of the bass guitar and percussion, which play tightly together, however, it is this discrepancy which makes this recurring phrase of vocals have so much character. It is a release of a tension created by the energetic drums and bass. Later on in the song I observed another discrepancy in the guitars, which layered over each other. At one point, one guitar came in blatantly off time. Further, during a break in bass and percussion, the guitars played repeated phrases at a slower tempo, with the drum and bass reintroduction, a significantly faster tempo took place yet all the instruments moved together.
Sly and The Family Stone – Spaced Cowboy
Here I heard discrepancies in the way in that the vocal line interacts with the instruments around it. Sometimes the vocals come in low and seem mismatched with the instrumentation, however it is this quality that adds to the songs character. Another discrepancy could be between the drum machine and the drums, with slight variations in timing, there becomes a quality of looseness in an otherwise tight song.
Patato Y Totico – Agua que va a caer
In this piece we can hear a discrepancy early on with the vocals coming in loosely to the drum line. To me, this creates a dialogue interaction between the two lines, at a part of the song where they both stand alone. There is also a consistant discrepancy in the ‘clicking’ of some percussion instrument. It would seem to be tasked with keeping a steady time, however it plays at a fluid time and even changes its pattern throughout depending on the leading instrument it is interacting with.
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