Quote Originally Posted by Francisco Scaramanga
One other thing - this business about techno being tight - what and classical music isn't? I'm sure those musicians are playing to a metronome, only they are good enough that its in their head, and they can no doubt stick to that as well as a drum machine can, because to play serious classical music you have to be that good. I have never heard of any orchestra that prides itself on the looseness of their musicianship, and most of the truly great pieces require an immense amount of precision timing, there is no room at all for looseness, if you arent bang on you screw the whole thing up.
Well, I have a very good mate who composes and conducts.
So we talk classical a lot.
Essentially the conducter is the metronome, but his job isn`t just to keep time, he reads the mood of the music as it plays, and adjusts acccordingly. If a performance is sublime but seems that it needs to slow down slightly then it will do so, and so to speeding up.
Of course you have to be good, because you have to play in unison, and to change tempo in unison, and be fluid takes more skill than just being rigid to the beat.
Thats why people have preference to different conductors and to different orchestras. It`s all about the way the dynamics work together.
Techno isn`t about that at all, it`s a rigid beat, with possible repetative swing to the groove. It has to be, otherwise DJ`s would be crying all over the world.

I`ve got plenty of contemporary classical music that I`ve tried to sample so I could wack it into a tune, but it is impossible, as the beat shifts (albeit imperceptably until you wack a metronome to it).