[HN Gopher] Daft Punk Easter Egg in the BPM Tempo of Harder, Bet...
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Daft Punk Easter Egg in the BPM Tempo of Harder, Better, Faster,
Stronger?
Author : simonw
Score : 731 points
Date : 2026-01-02 21:27 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.madebywindmill.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.madebywindmill.com)
| xvxvx wrote:
| Thinking back to when Aphex Twin encoded his face into a track:
| https://www.bastwood.com/?page_id=10
| styluss wrote:
| And Venetian Snares encoded his cat
| https://eeggs.com/items/46956.html
| tantalor wrote:
| And Benn encoded a bird into birdsong
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCQCP-5g5bo
| gaazoh wrote:
| And Disasterpeace encoded a puzzle in the Fez soundtrack:
| https://blog.krzyhau.pl/fez-spectrograms-adventure (and
| nobody has solved it in over a decade!)
|
| Also, C418 put a creeper face in Minecraft's soundtrack.
| afandian wrote:
| Thanks for the reminder of eeggs.com! It still has an Easter
| egg I found in my printer that I submitted 25 years ago. I
| wonder how many models of obsolete hardware that site
| documents...
| duskwuff wrote:
| Into the final track of an album titled "Songs About My
| Cats", titled "Look". :3
|
| There's a better visualization of the track here:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHup81lEjqo
| gregoryl wrote:
| It shouldn't be surprising to see people who know Venetian
| Snares on here!
|
| If you're up for it, trade a music rec?
|
| Try:
|
| Scorpion Mother - Thief
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A3113EQvLg
| wonger_ wrote:
| I found Venetian Snares last year and one of their songs
| made my year-in-review: https://wonger.dev/posts/2025#music
|
| Certain Indian music and metal seems to scratch a similar
| itch for me. And of course orchestra and drum n bass.
| egypturnash wrote:
| huh that's some pretty decent gothy noises
| jasongill wrote:
| it's worth noting that the parent commenter's link includes a
| good render of this easter egg in the article as well (it's
| the last one on the page)
| blauditore wrote:
| I did silly things like this as teenager too. Always thought it
| would be a nice way to hide secret messages on an open signal.
| possibleworlds wrote:
| Reminded me of this video covering his use of Metasynth and
| other obscure software in early tracks on yt
| https://youtu.be/5wIOBBodoic
| josefx wrote:
| Mick Gordon hid satanic symbols in the DOOM 2016 soundtrack.
| altairprime wrote:
| This is thematically amazing when you consider what the song is
| about -- the roboticization of the abducted band. (Music video:)
|
| https://youtu.be/gAjR4_CbPpQ
|
| 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.
|
| It makes _perfect_ 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!
|
| 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?
|
| Absolute genius.
|
| I had no idea. Thanks for posting this.
|
| EDIT: At 123.4567bpm, I think the track has precisely _0.2345_
| seconds of silence before the first 'beat' of the song and
| actually has _456_ beats total, which is either numerological
| nonsense or pure genius by Daft Punk. Math elsethread :)
| rightbyte wrote:
| It surely adds a nice flavor to one of their best songs. There
| wont be one time when the song is played from now on where I
| wont proclaim the this specific trivia.
| kaffekaka wrote:
| Oh dear lord.
| junon wrote:
| Hey! Some of us _like_ when people rattle off niche trivia
| like that in a club setting.
| manytimesaway wrote:
| The record was released way before the movie, so no this is not
| the song's theme.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| Urm, the release date of the movie is not actually an
| indicator wherever what he said was true or not.
|
| It's more then likely the backstory he outlined, which is I
| believe a minor subplot non-essential to the main story of
| the movie - has been added like this precisely because that
| was the theme of the song.
|
| Because this was actually made by humans, they frequently
| talk with each other when making art in collaboration
| manytimesaway wrote:
| This particular sequence in the movie (which is actually
| named Interstella 5555) is one of the most important ones
| in the plot.
|
| Discovery has been explained many times by DP to be about
| childhood, not having any specific "theme" besides mixing
| disco and rock. Hence the name "disco very" and the "pun"
| in Veridis Quo. (which also happens to be a major sequence
| in the movie. Although DP never cared to enter the details
| of that particular composition, most likely memory hole'd
| by the protagonists.)
|
| So no, this is definitely not the theme of the song. There
| are several years between the actual songwriting and the
| release of the movie. Heck, if you actually see the movie,
| the ending sequence kinda explains that this is "one" of
| many interpretations of the record...
|
| Taking a look at past interviews, it is more likely that
| 5555 is about what surrounded the actual release of
| Discovery (hugely anticipated sequel to a magnum opus that
| was wildly different from expectations) rather than an idea
| that was here from the start; see also Human After All for
| a continuation on this theme.
| altairprime wrote:
| Aw :(
| maest wrote:
| > the "pun" in Veridis Quo
|
| I can't believe I've only just learned about this
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Are you sure about that? The music video was the scenes from
| the movie.
|
| The impression I got as a Daft Punk fan in the 90s was that
| the movie was commissioned alongside the production of the
| album and not an afterthought.
|
| The album was released after a couple of singles (iirc) but
| that's very typical for artists to do. So it would make sense
| for the movie to also be released after the singles, even
| though it was already (mostly) completed.
|
| Edit: seems my memory is largely correct. The movie was
| always a planned part of the album.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstella_5555:_The_5tory_of.
| ..
| jrowen wrote:
| > It makes perfect 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!
|
| This seems like quite an assumption. Why wouldn't they
| keysmash? Or make up a fake number? And why bother to add a
| decimal point? What is meant by "robotically beating at 123.45
| bpm"? Any fixed tempo beats robotically.
|
| Your theory could be correct but it feels like connecting too
| many dots to me. 123.45 is a bizarre (and kind of human in that
| way) tempo that strikes me as more of a cheeky easter egg than
| a deeper connection to themes of corporate mass-produced
| roboticism (if they even did intend that as the exact tempo).
| altairprime wrote:
| I have no counter argument prepared, but I thoroughly enjoyed
| exploring this all and making plausibly charming numbers.
| Most likely I'm wrong, of course; that's an automatic
| likelihood for _any_ numerology.
| iambateman wrote:
| I'd say this whole thread is a counter argument. ;)
|
| Couldn't resist the dad joke. In any case I was enjoying
| you enjoying DP
| troll_v_bridge wrote:
| > What is meant by "robotically beating at 123.45 bpm"? Any
| fixed tempo beats robotically.
|
| While a robot can keep beat at 123, most humans can't keep
| 123.45. Art doesn't have to make logical sense.
| Someone wrote:
| > While a robot can keep beat at 123, most humans can't
| keep 123.45.
|
| Isn't it also true that while a robot can keep beat at
| 123.45, most humans can't keep 123?
|
| Apart from training, there isn't anything that links human
| biology and psychology with the length of a second, is
| there?
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| how many times we saw the password "admin1234" or "1234" ?
| richrichardsson wrote:
| > And why bother to add a decimal point?
|
| Perhaps they wouldn't need to? iirc Modern MPC you can enter
| 12345 on the BPM touch entry field and it will fill that in
| as 123.45
| yujzgzc wrote:
| TFA mentions that some sequencers at the time did not
| support generating at more than one decimal place
| richrichardsson wrote:
| It's unlikely (but not impossible) that Logic would take
| 12345 input and insert the decimal automatically. The
| point was that adding the decimal point may not be
| necessary, especially in software with specific
| constraints; all sequencers I've come across have BPM
| ranges (typically 30-300) it's not too much of a stretch
| to think they could try to "intelligently" convert
| something that out of range rather than just clamping.
| larodi wrote:
| how about the track was 123 and they squeezed it to be within
| certain length, which defnitely would bring the BPM a little
| higher?
| nkmnz wrote:
| And they accidentally made it 1.003713731707 times faster?
| They chose a number that contains only the digits 0, 1, 3,
| and 7? C'mon, this cannot be a coincidence!!!
| monster_truck wrote:
| It's a good thing we're jumping to conclusions instead of
| exhaustively evaluating all of the places values exactly
| like this one appear when dealing with swing and
| quantization on, and especially when mixing 8, 12, 16 bit
| samplers and sequencers. Nevermind all of the little nudges
| from byte window mismatches when reading, playing back, or
| manipulating samples at varying bit depths and sample
| rates.
| lwhi wrote:
| The whole song is effectively a remix of "Cola Bottle Baby" by
| Edwin Birdsong.
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| Compared to Cola Bottle Baby it's harder, better, faster, and
| some would even say stronger.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| Tell me when we can get realtime stem splitting!
| shermantanktop wrote:
| You already have a hardware-accelerated pair attached to your
| head!
| svantana wrote:
| Now. For example in Algoriddim DJay
| jonas21 wrote:
| There's a minor issue with the calculations. It should be:
| 60 * 445 / 216.276 = 123.453365145 60 * 445 /
| 216.282 = 123.449940356
|
| 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: 60 * 445 /
| 216.276 = 123.453 60 * 445 / 216.282 = 123.450
|
| So, it's the YouTube version that's 123.45 bpm to within the
| rounding error.
| altairprime wrote:
| Huh. Get out your red string and pushpins because this inspired
| a _theory_.
|
| So if the correct pair of values there ends up being 445 /
| 216.27000197, then it'll be:
|
| 60 * 445 / 216.27000197 = 123.456789
|
| Or, since one of those programs had four decimals:
|
| 60 * 445 / 216.27015788 = 123.4567
|
| Or, if it's 444/446 rather than 445:
|
| 60 * 444 / 215.78415752 = 123.4567
|
| 60 * 446 / 216.75615823 = 123.4567
|
| But I see that they cut the "whooshing intro" at the front,
| which I imagine _is_ 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):
|
| 5.58s * (123.4567bpm / 60s) = 11.4814731 beats
|
| 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:
|
| +11 intervals @ 123.4567 bpm = 5.346s
|
| Which, when added to the original calculation, shows:
|
| 60 * (445 + 11) / (3:41.85 - (0.5.58s - 0:5.346s)) = 123.4567
| bpm
|
| 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:
|
| 60 * 456 / 221.616 = 123.4567 bpm
|
| Or if we use the rounded 123.45 form:
|
| 60 * 456 / 221.628 = 123.45 bpm
|
| And while that 22+1.628 is-that-a-golden-ratio duration is
| _interesting_ and all, the most _important_ part here is that,
| with _123.4567bpm_ , I think it's got precisely _0.2345_
| 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!), _and_ so I think there 's actually
| _456 beats_ in the robotic _123.45 song_!
|
| :D
|
| ^^ the math, because who _doesn 't_ love a parenthetical with a
| _footnote_ in a _red-string_ diagram (cackles maniacally)
|
| 5.58s - (60 * 11/123.4567) = 0.2339961 ~= 0.234
|
| 5.58057179s = 0.23456789 + (60 * 11/123.4567)
| ggus wrote:
| Not sure if it adds anything, but a factoid I know is that CD
| timing is expressed in minutes, seconds, and frames, where
| each frame is 1/75th of a second.
|
| I'm not sure but I think this is also the smallest time
| resolution.
|
| Then each frame is composed of samples, but they seem to be
| counted in groups of 1/75th os a second anyway.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| That's only relevant for navigation from the TOC. The
| samples are always 22.68us apart. That is the finest
| resolvable timing difference.
| frumiousirc wrote:
| I was also wondering about the inherent resolution for
| the BPM precision claims.
|
| Besides the sample period, the total number of samples
| matter for frequency resolution (aka BPM precision).
|
| 44100 Hz sampling frequency (22.675737 us period) for
| 216.276 s is 9537772 samples (rounding to nearest
| integer). This gives frequency samples with a bandsize of
| 0.0046237213 Hz which is 0.27742328 BPM.
|
| Any claim of a BPM more precise than about 0.3 BPM is
| "creative interpretation".
|
| And this is a minimum precision. Peaks in real-world
| spectra have width which further reduces the precision of
| their location.
|
| Edit to add:
|
| https://0x0.st/Pos0.png
|
| This takes my flac rip of the CD and simply uses the full
| song waveform. This artificially increases frequency
| precision by a little compared to taking only the time
| span where beats are occurring.
| mrgriscom wrote:
| This is plainly false though. You're saying beats can't
| be localized to less than one second of precision
| (regardless of track length, which already smells
| suspect). Humans can localize a beat to within 50ms.
| jscalo wrote:
| Thanks for catching that. The durations were reversed but the
| BPMs were correct. Updated!
| Teknomadix wrote:
| > And to confuse matters more, in a 2013 interview with Time
| Magazine, Bangalter says:
|
| > > So we've never actually made music with computers!
| [laughs] Neither Homework nor Discovery nor even Human After
| All were made with computers.
|
| > Was he contradicting himself from 12 years before? Or did
| he forget? Or maybe it's a terminology thing?
|
| The thing is--and this is coming from someone who has been
| making electronic dance music daily for over 35 years and
| counting--when Bangalter spoke earlier in their career about
| a PC (likely an Atari ST or Falcon) it was being used as a
| MIDI / SMPTE timepiece and master sequencer, nothing more.
| Later when he speaks about never making music with a
| computer, the context of the discussion has changed, as by
| that time computers were becoming more accomplished at DSP.
| The comment he is making is that they didn't use computers
| for audio domain tasks, like Pro Tools, Digital Audio
| Workstation type action.
|
| That said, computers were still deeply embedded in their
| workflow just not in the way most modern producers would
| recognize. Even the SSL 9000 J console at the heart of their
| studio relied on an onboard computer system for total recall,
| automation, and channel configuration. The distinction
| Bangalter draws is really about where the actual audio lived:
| in 12-bit sampler memory, on tape and through analog audio
| circuits, not as samples and waveforms being crunched inside
| a CPU. The computer was a conductor, not a performer.
| Teknomadix wrote:
| PS: All of this got me thinking about the past and
| dislodged a bunch of memories from my old crusty techno
| battered brain. In that early interview where Bangalter
| loosely mentions their production setup: an E-mu SP-1200,
| an MPC3000, and "Logic on a PC." He doesn't specify what
| kind of PC, and he doesn't say who made the software--just
| the word "Logic." One thing is for sure he wasn't talking
| about an Apple computer or software product.
|
| I was working in studios around Europe in the late '90s and
| if you said "Logic" in a studio context, you were certainly
| talking about Emagic Logic, and "PC" didn't mean a Windows
| box. In that era, particularly in France, "PC" was often
| used colloquially to mean any Atari ST or Falcon, which had
| been the backbone of European electronic music production
| for a decade. Given Daft Punk's roots in the French house
| scene and the timing of Homework's production (1996-97),
| there's a strong chance they were running Emagic Logic on
| Atari hardware, because at the time, the ports of this
| program to other platforms were garbage and were not to be
| trusted.
|
| The lineage of the software is an entire saga unto itself.
| What became Apple Logic started life as C-Lab Notator on
| the Atari ST in the late '80s which dominated Euro
| electronic music. In late 1992, after a dispute with
| C-Lab's owners, the core developers, one of whom was
| Apple's own Gerhard Lengeling, walked out and founded
| Emagic. They rewrote everything from scratch as Notator
| Logic, which eventually dropped the Notator prefix and just
| became Logic.
|
| Around '02, Apple came knocking and swallowed the whole
| operation. They immediately killed the Windows version, and
| dropped the Emagic branding entirely with Logic Pro 7. Like
| I said, Gerhard Lengeling is still at Apple, now their
| 'Senior Director of Software Engineering for Musical
| Applications' according to his LinkedIn.
| oars wrote:
| Daft Punk continues to awe us, even after their retirement.
|
| Can't believe it's been almost 20 years since Alive 2007!
| moomin wrote:
| My supplemental question would be: what BPM is Cola Bottle Baby?
| alexjplant wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiD39jo5Yo4
| fenwick67 wrote:
| This is true with many of Daft Punk's tracks imo, when
| listening to the original and then going back to the Daft
| Punk version it feels like a downgrade because of missing
| instruments and structure
| relaxing wrote:
| I count it at 116 bpm. Nice and funky, just like mama liked it.
| chews wrote:
| 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)
| HelloUsername wrote:
| Just tried this in Reaper. It's actually much closer to 123.47
|
| 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.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Did you mark or like did a FFT of some sort?
| HelloUsername wrote:
| I imported the .wav track from the CD, manually put the BPM
| on 123.45, cut the first 21 seconds intro out (easier to sync
| on the main beat), and from there started dragging the track
| and adjusting the BPM, so that the first bar of the song and
| the last bar of the song were still on beat. My findings is
| that it's somewhere between .47 and .48
| kupopuffs wrote:
| that part you bit off could account for the difference?
| analog31 wrote:
| That would be about 160 ppm off, more than I'd expect if the
| track was recorded digitally and set to 123.45
| bargainbin wrote:
| I've listened to this album so many times and cannot believe
| I've never noticed Veridis Quo is literally Very Disco.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _Almost all electronic music is synced to a sequencer and so
| obviously is going to have a very steady tempo._
|
| Haha if only
|
| 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.
| zero_bias wrote:
| Usually top electronic studios use external clock sync device
| which prevents that kind of issues, I'm sure that Daft Punk
| uses it too
| JodieBenitez wrote:
| Probably not on this album.
| zero_bias wrote:
| Why not? It's a common equipment and it's not count as
| "digital device forbidden in analog studio" as you connect
| synth directly to it, just to make sure that your front
| waves are in sync
| JodieBenitez wrote:
| First, it's not that common. These are specialized tools
| you won't find in every producers tool belt. Not everyone
| cares that much about midi clock accuracy or many people
| will just circumvent the problem. Also, like homework,
| Discovery is very much a homestudio album, recorded at
| Bangalter's place. That's not what "top electronic
| studios" are. Ultimately we don't know and this whole
| thread is like seeing pictures in clouds to me.
| MomsAVoxell wrote:
| Actually, it is very common - the DAW is usually used as
| the master clock to external devices such as drum
| machines, sequencers and synths with onboard
| arpeggiators/sequencers, and the DAW is itself commonly
| synced to the high end clocks in a decent quality audio
| interface, which do not have as much jitter these days as
| most folks seem to think. Even in the 90's, this was a
| feature of many audio interface and DAW rigs. Bangalter
| was not known for having cheap gear.
| JodieBenitez wrote:
| > audio interface, which do not have as much jitter these
| days
|
| But it's not about audio jitter.
|
| Anyway, like I said, too much speculation in this thread.
| MomsAVoxell wrote:
| It's about MIDI jitter, and if the MIDI clock is locked
| to the audio clock, its going to be pretty darn good.
| JodieBenitez wrote:
| That's a big "if". And then there is the jitter induced
| by the gear receiving the clock. Many drum machines are
| bad there. See https://innerclocksystems.com/litmus/
| MomsAVoxell wrote:
| It's really not a big if, it's currently an actual
| reality of modern audio interface/DAW configurations.
| Very few modern audio interfaces do not have MID clock
| very tightly bound to their audio clock, which is the
| master clock with far greater accuracy, anyway.
|
| Yes, MIDI jitter can be compounded on the receiving end -
| but having a very tightly bound MIDI clock to the audio
| clock can negate a lot of those issues upstream in the
| first place, and _that is precisely why you get a good
| audio interface that does this anyway_.
|
| (Disclaimer: have worked in pro audio product development
| for decades, have written drivers for exactly this use-
| case, and I have personally been in the trenches to fight
| the myths about Audio and MIDI jitter as a developer for
| a long time now..)
| anigbrowl wrote:
| More than likely they did, sync boxes have been around for
| a long time, they're not that expensive (would have been in
| the hundreds of dollars or euro at the time), and Daft Punk
| could surely have bought or borrowed one if they wanted. I
| was just having a chuckle at the blog author's idealism
| about how well sync works in the real world. If they were
| using MIDI, the standard allows for a 1% timing variance at
| the hardware level (not 1% of 1 beat, 1% of the tempo). I
| would guess Daft Punk were more likely using old 'classic'
| synths with control voltage, which is often a bit more
| reliable.
| JodieBenitez wrote:
| Yeah, it's a really bold claim by someone who obviously never
| had to sync midi gear, which can become a nightmare depending
| on the gear. The problem is so difficult that we have
| specialized expensive sync gear that try to tackle it.
| mixologic wrote:
| You mean a protocol designed for 9600 baud has issues with
| saturation?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Is the tempo continuous? It's also possible the tempo just shifts
| between 123.4 and 123.5 to average out to 123.45
| default-kramer wrote:
| > But for the time being there remain a few things that humans
| can do very easily which computers find difficult. Along with
| counting traffic lights and crosswalks, one of those things is
| finding the exact BPM of a song. Not an estimate like most
| software does, but the exact value with extreme precision across
| the entire song.
|
| I thought BPM detection has been extremely precise for some time
| now (for electronic music anyway). Does this mean when software
| like Mixxx reports (for example) 125 BPM the raw output of the
| algorithm might have been 124.99, but some higher logic replaces
| it with an even 125?
| tibbon wrote:
| I'd have to check, but I wonder what pitch the song is in? Could
| have it just been sped up ever so slightly in mastering, or even
| just between tape playback from mixing to mastering?
|
| I have to wonder if this is like Dark Side of the Moon/Wizard of
| Oz - viewers can imply all sorts of intent that is very unlikely
| to have been there originally. A small mistake or tweak in any
| layer of processing could have easily done this.
| zero_bias wrote:
| It's important for electronic music to have consistent and
| predictable pitch, otherwise djs on stage will have hard time
| to play (they loop a start of the song and play it together
| with tail loop of previous song), so Daft Punk need to
| intentionally choose fractional BPM as mastering engineers will
| not change pitch even slightly
| InfiniteAscent wrote:
| DJs routinely change the playback speed to match tempos.
|
| It's easier if a track's tempo stays the same throughout its
| duration, but even if it changes, DJs will adjust the
| playback speed on the fly.
|
| As far as syncing is concerned, the actual value of the
| tempos doesn't matter at all.
| postit wrote:
| I'm not at the computer to check now, but you gotta consider that
| the music uses a sample from Cola Bottle Baby that was recorded
| in analog and most likely had transport drift when plagued in a
| different equipment. A lightly variation on the nominal speed can
| cause a fractional BPM.
|
| When that is sampled and speed/slowed in software - specially at
| the time the record was made, you couldn't get exact on the beat
| with a digital metronome.
| Group_B wrote:
| Yes, I am thinking this is mostly just a coincidence.
| matchagaucho wrote:
| Seems most likely they used an analog trick, like Varispeed, on
| the final mix (old Beatles trick from the 60s).
| afro88 wrote:
| Probably. Their final mixing chain is quite interesting too.
| There's a thread on gearspace that I can't find right now,
| which details how they record stems into a Roland S760 sampler
| because it colours the sound in a pleasantly digital way.
| gfody wrote:
| having a daft punk themed morning, was just looking at this old
| answer on SO
|
| https://stackoverflow.com/a/10760494
| wiber wrote:
| Year of robot showmanship?
| manytimesaway wrote:
| Very unlikely to be an actual easter egg. This was posted on the
| (awful) DaftPunk subreddit a while back, and reads just like some
| hidden advertisement.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| An ad for what? One of the best songs ever?
| manytimesaway wrote:
| The tempo app that the author developed.
| enthdegree wrote:
| Good Luck Babe by Chappell Roan has a chorus that is 1 bpm slower
| than the verse!
| Loughla wrote:
| On a different but related note, the best version of this song is
| by Scary Pockets;
|
| https://youtu.be/RHu0ALxqUIo?si=39AqMuSrLL2zu3At
| jccx70 wrote:
| Put words where they don't exist.
| internet2000 wrote:
| Daft Punk was cooking up next level stuff in Discovery. Face to
| Face's sample breakdown still blows my mind
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd7zDp35zBI
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Most likely a coincidence, but the article and this thread are so
| cool I hope they never confirm or deny.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| " Computers have a rough time of this because they don't really
| know how to "keep a beat", and the algorithms that can find the
| beat do a lot better when they already know the estimated BPM,
| which is obviously a chicken/egg problem."
|
| Incredible! Would love some science on this.
| ericzawo wrote:
| Daft Punk if you're reading this please go on tour. We only have
| a few years before the robots take over for real...
| leeoniya wrote:
| > please go on tour
|
| he blew up
| input_sh wrote:
| Not happening, that's basically _the_ reason they broke up. To
| quote Thomas Bangalter:
|
| > As much as I love this character, the last thing I would want
| to be, in the world we live in, in 2023, is a robot.
| JodieBenitez wrote:
| > The year is 1999 or 2000. Would the gear Daft Punk uses even
| support fractional BPMs? And if so out to how many decimal
| places?
|
| Do not assume that because a particular gear prints out a
| particular BPM value that the actual BPM is that. Plenty of midi
| gear is inaccurate.
| Pikamander2 wrote:
| Here's John's Reddit post about his discovery, which he deleted
| for some reason:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/DaftPunk/comments/1phvika/did_i_jus...
| bn-l wrote:
| This band really appealed to gen x and early millennial for some
| reason.
| InfiniteAscent wrote:
| "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" was built around a one- or
| two-bar loop sampled from Edwin Birdsong's "Cola Bottle Baby."
|
| Daft Punk determined that this loop had a tempo of 116.527 BPM
| and played it a semitone higher.
|
| 116,527 * 2 ^ (1 / 12) = 123,456 BPM
| alun wrote:
| Daft Punk are very clever in the way they make their music. Their
| song "One More Time" is a simple three-part sample from a 70s
| disco song. This video is a great visualization on how it's
| composed. Absolutely incredible.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QwOpRh-IfI
| kachapopopow wrote:
| I listened to this song a day ago, freaky coincidence.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| It's funny how perspective reveals the fallacy of coincidence.
|
| To you, it seems an uncanny coincidence. To me, it seems
| someone heard the song and then saw this post.
|
| Given all the people who see this post, I am not surprised one
| of them heard that song recently.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| It's not a fallacy to call that a coincidence. The point of
| coincidences are that they're unconnected events.
|
| So, perhaps ironically, it would be more of a fallacy to say
| this wasn't a coincidence.
|
| However you are right that coincidences are easy to
| manufacture through volume of samples.
| jesprenj wrote:
| Even if the software didn't support it, they could just make the
| song at 123 BPM and speed it up a tiny bit before releasing it.
| dwringer wrote:
| It's really a stretch for the article to suggest their gear
| might not have supported fractional bpm. MIDI itself has always
| supported it and analog sequencers before that support it even
| easier. Not to mention external clock sync has been a thing for
| decades.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I am not convinced that it is really 123.45 BPM, more like 123.48
|
| Reasons are:
|
| - Someone here commented that Reaper gives 123.47 BPM
|
| - I implemented my own BPM finder back in the days, which is
| quite accurate with electronic music that doesn't change tempo,
| dug it out, and got a result of 123.48 BPM
|
| - I looked for files for rhythm games, and I found this
| https://osu.ri.mk/beatmapset/1495670 with a listed BPM of 123.48
|
| If you want precise BPM, I suggest looking at rhythm games
| (DDR/ITG stepcharts, OSU beatmaps, etc...). People playing these
| games really want tight timing, in the order of 10 ms or less, it
| means that a difference of 0.01 BPM matters. For top players, a
| difference of 0.03 BPM would be completely off after a couple of
| minutes.
| deepzn wrote:
| Daft Punk is one of my favorite artists ever but I am not
| familiar with all their discography(my shame and I mean to remedy
| that). But this was such a cool read from an obvious bigger fan
| than me. Half way through was only when I realized the
| significance of a BPM of 123.45, I didn't read it out without the
| decimal until then lol. And so many more fans in the comments,
| wow.
| mjgoeke wrote:
| With all the talk about "does the software support fractional
| bpm" wouldn't you just create it at say 124bpm and then scale
| down to 123.45 (or whatever) by taking the total length and
| scaling it by that percentage (e.g.
| 0.99561926612903225806451612903226). You don't even need to scale
| it trying to keep the pitch correct. You just speed it up < half
| a percent, the pitch rises slightly, and you have your perfect
| bpm.
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