Listen to these three pieces. Like the examples above, all of them exhibit aspects of “participatory discrepancy”: moments negotiated in performance where musical elements come together but that agreement is loose. These are often really exciting elements, often not lining up metronomically or lining up with precise intonation. In 300 words maximum, describe the participatory discrepancies in these recordings below.
In the first tune “Polacca” there are a few sections with discrepancies but my favourite was about two minutes in when everything got a little chaotic and there is lots of funky music and some random chanting of the vocals with space around it to breathe. The wavy synth that comes in sounds very intentionally out of sync. I think it was a smart move as if it was on the beat it would sound more like some other things I’ve heard (though the song is very unique, only referring to that section). The intro of the Space Cowboy song upon first listen sounds very clean like a typical rock groove however after a few times of hearing it I find that the instrumentation sounds pretty erratic and random (in the best way). There is a lot of ‘plucky’ sounds that make no sense to me rhythmically but totally work here. Something I find very cool about the groove in the final example is that the drums switch between the ethnic swingy percussion style that seems to suit the song perfectly into sections of very straight eighth and sixteenth note phrases and it really draws in the listener. Something I never would have thought would work until hearing it.
