This is thematically amazing when you consider what the song is about — the roboticization of the abducted band. (Music video:)<p><a href="https://youtu.be/gAjR4_CbPpQ" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/gAjR4_CbPpQ</a><p>In this song, which is also chapter four of the movie Interstella 5000 movie (spoilers from here!), the knocked-out singers are scanned, parameterized, brainwashed, uploaded into The Matrix, and then used in the following songs of the movie-album to robotically mass produce music.<p>It makes <i>perfect</i> sense that the BPM is 123.45 because that’s exactly the sort of thing you get when a manager (who’s shown at the end!) just enters some numbers on the keyboard into the bpm field. They don’t keysmash the numpad; they just hit 123456789 until the field is full!<p>So not only does the song itself convey what some boss thinks is music, robotically beating at 123.45 bpm, but it is itself about being endlessly-rotating brainwashed-boring cogs in a pop music production industrial machine. I’m pretty sure the movie scene cuts and animations are timed specifically to the beats of the song, but knowing that they’re timed to a machine-specific bpm that a human would never select at random with a metronome?<p>Absolute genius.<p>I had no idea. Thanks for posting this.<p>EDIT: At 123.4567bpm, I think the track has precisely <i>0.2345</i> seconds of silence before the first 'beat' of the song and actually has <i>456</i> beats total, which is either numerological nonsense or pure genius by Daft Punk. Math elsethread :)
Just tried this in Reaper. It's actually much closer to 123.47<p>Anyway that album, Discovery, is full of funny bits. Track #11 Veridis Quo sounds like "very disco". Turn those two words around, and you got the album's title.
<i>Almost all electronic music is synced to a sequencer and so obviously is going to have a very steady tempo.</i><p>Haha if only<p>Well the tempo is steady by human standards, but latency and jitter on timing signals are recurring issues in electronic music. Some devices put out very steady timing but don't like being slaved to another device, bugs can creep in at loop points or pattern switching (even on Roland's latest flagship drum machine, which costs most of $3000), things can get messy if there is too much note/controller data and so on.
Thinking back to when Aphex Twin encoded his face into a track: <a href="https://www.bastwood.com/?page_id=10" rel="nofollow">https://www.bastwood.com/?page_id=10</a>
Is the tempo continuous? It's also possible the tempo just shifts between 123.4 and 123.5 to average out to 123.45
There's a minor issue with the calculations. It should be:<p><pre><code> 60 * 445 / 216.276 = 123.453365145
60 * 445 / 216.282 = 123.449940356
</code></pre>
Not the other way around. And since the timing is only given with millisecond accuracy, the bpm should be rounded to the same number of significant digits:<p><pre><code> 60 * 445 / 216.276 = 123.453
60 * 445 / 216.282 = 123.450
</code></pre>
So, it's the YouTube version that's 123.45 bpm to within the rounding error.
Huh. Get out your red string and pushpins because this inspired a <i>theory</i>.<p>So if the correct pair of values there ends up being 445 / 216.27000197, then it'll be:<p>60 * 445 / 216.27000197 = 123.456789<p>Or, since one of those programs had four decimals:<p>60 * 445 / 216.27015788 = 123.4567<p>Or, if it's 444/446 rather than 445:<p>60 * 444 / 215.78415752 = 123.4567<p>60 * 446 / 216.75615823 = 123.4567<p>But I see that they cut the "whooshing intro" at the front, which I imagine <i>is</i> part of the beat — they're in the hands of the machine now, after all! — so if we retroactively construct 123.4567 bpm into the silence (which, they estimate, is 5.58s):<p>5.58s * (123.4567bpm / 60s) = 11.4814731 beats<p>Assuming that the half a beat of slop silence there has to do with format / process limitations with CD track-seeking rather than specific artistic intent, we get:<p>+11 intervals @ 123.4567 bpm = 5.346s<p>Which, when added to the original calculation, shows:<p>60 * (445 + 11) / (3:41.85 - (0.5.58s - 0:5.346s)) = 123.4567 bpm<p>And so we end up with a duration of 221.616 seconds between the calculated 'first' beat, a third of a second into the song, and the measured 'last' beat from the post:<p>60 * 456 / 221.616 = 123.4567 bpm<p>Or if we use the rounded 123.45 form:<p>60 * 456 / 221.628 = 123.45 bpm<p>And while that 22+1.628 is-that-a-golden-ratio duration is <i>interesting</i> and all, the most <i>important</i> part here is that, with <i>123.4567bpm</i>, I think it's got precisely <i>0.2345</i> seconds of silence before the first 'beat' of the song (the math checks out^^ to three digits compared against the first 'musical beat' at 5.58s!), <i>and</i> so I think there's actually <i>456 beats</i> in the robotic <i>123.45 song</i>!<p>:D<p>^^ the math, because who <i>doesn't</i> love a parenthetical with a <i>footnote</i> in a <i>red-string</i> diagram (cackles maniacally)<p>5.58s - (60 * 11/123.4567) = 0.2339961 ~= 0.234<p>5.58057179s = 0.23456789 + (60 * 11/123.4567)
Daft Punk continues to awe us, even after their retirement.<p>Can't believe it's been almost 20 years since Alive 2007!
My supplemental question would be: what BPM is Cola Bottle Baby?
For those not familiar "Cola Bottle Baby" is the Edwin Birdsong tune [1] that Daft Punk sampled for "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger". I heard the sample first but think I prefer the original at this point (despite the songs being different genres). Lots of interesting stuff going on with the bass guitar and chorus that's missing in the Daft Punk cut.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiD39jo5Yo4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiD39jo5Yo4</a>
Daft Punk are totally of the smart sort to do this kind of easteregg. They're just a clever band, another fun Daft Punk easter egg, they were in a band with Phoenix called Darlin'.
(Daft Punk got their name from a review of the Darlin' record)
Tell me when we can get realtime stem splitting!