The Continuum Approach vs Formula Rhythm
(Why living music bends time—and why platforms cannot tolerate it)
Formula rhythm treats time as a grid.
The Continuum Approach treats time as a field.
That single distinction explains almost everything we are hearing—and not hearing—now.
In formula-driven music, rhythm is fixed in advance. Tempo is locked, quantised, corrected, and preserved. Beats are engineered to be reliable rather than expressive. This is not an aesthetic accident; it is a delivery requirement. Music designed for algorithmic platforms must behave predictably so it can be chopped, looped, clipped, and reused without breaking the illusion of continuity.
This is why AI music leans so heavily on rigid pulse. And why us poor humans are ever forced to pander to its avarice - to the detriment of music.
AI cannot inhabit time.
It can only replicate measurements of it.
When rhythm becomes formula, tempo ceases to be expressive and becomes infrastructural—like a conveyor belt moving content past the listener. Auto-tempo correction ensures nothing leans. Auto-tune ensures nothing strains. Auto-lyrics ensure nothing hesitates. The result is music that moves but does not travel.
The Continuum Approach rejects this premise entirely.
In living music—particularly orchestral and jazz traditions—tempo is not a number but a negotiation. It responds to breath, gesture, room acoustics, emotional weight, and collective attention. A phrase expands because it needs space. A pulse tightens because tension has arrived. Time stretches because meaning demands it.
This is why orchestral music and jazz are almost invisible on TikTok.
A platform built on fixed-duration clips cannot tolerate elastic time. Rubato breaks loops. Fermatas disrupt scroll rhythm. Tempo drift confuses metrics. A rallentando is catastrophic to retention graphs.
So these musics are not “unpopular.”
They are incompatible.
Listen to how a jazz ensemble breathes together, or how an orchestra slows infinitesimally at a harmonic arrival. These moments cannot be pre-rendered convincingly by AI because they are not decisions in isolation. They are relational events. One player leans, another responds, the group recalibrates. Time is shared.
This is also why these musics feel harder to newcomers: they ask the listener to stay present. There is no metronomic safety rail. You cannot half-listen and still “get it.” The music does not promise to meet you where you are—it invites you to join it.
Formula rhythm, by contrast, removes risk.
It flattens time so no one has to lead, follow, or listen deeply. It creates movement without consequence. The beat continues whether anything meaningful happens or not.
The Continuum does not oppose rhythm.
It opposes coercive rhythm.
A steady pulse can be grounding, even necessary—but only when it remains permeable. Only when it can yield. Only when it can fail. Because the moment rhythm cannot bend, it stops being music and becomes enforcement.
This is the quiet danger of AI-generated music culture. It trains ears to expect compliance. It normalises the absence of rubato, of hesitation, of strain. It teaches listeners that time must always behave.
But living musicians know better.
Time is not a container.
It is a participant.
And the Continuum Approach exists to protect that relationship—before we forget how it feels to let music arrive slightly late, or leave slightly early, because something human just happened.