The Internet and Formula Rhythm | iServalan | Continuum Approach

 

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.

Is the Driving 4/4 Beat lazy music-making? | iServalan | Continuum Approach

 

Is the Driving 4/4 Beat a Pneumatic Drill of Lazy Music-Making?

The short answer is: sometimes.
The honest answer is: only when nothing else is happening. (Caveat, unless you are the drummer.)

A driving 4/4 beat is not inherently lazy. It is a tool. A powerful one. But like a pneumatic drill, its value depends entirely on why it is being used—and what is being built.

The problem begins when pulse replaces thought.

A steady four-on-the-floor does something very specific to the body. It entrains. It locks attention into the present. It reduces cognitive load. That is why it works so well in dance music, ritual music, marching music, and labour songs. It is not decorative; it is functional. 

When Kraftwerk used relentless 4/4, they weren’t being lazy—they were exploring humans-as-machines, repetition as modernity, rhythm as infrastructure.

The accusation of laziness lands when the beat becomes a substitute for musical intention. When harmony is static, melody ornamental, form predictable—and the pulse just keeps hammering away—what we are really hearing is avoidance. The beat carries the listener so the music doesn’t have to.

This is where the pneumatic drill metaphor earns its keep.

A drill is excellent for breaking concrete.
It is terrible for shaping wood, carving stone, or drawing detail.

In large swathes of contemporary pop and algorithm-fed electronic music, the driving 4/4 is doing all the work. It creates urgency without direction. Energy without narrative. Movement without consequence. Remove the beat and there is often very little left—no tension, no release, no conversation between parts.

Contrast that with jazz, funk, or early disco, where the pulse exists but is argued with. The beat breathes. It leans. It answers back. Even when the metre is stable, the internal life of the rhythm is alive. The difference is not speed or volume—it is listening.

The real danger is not the beat itself, but formulaic dependence.

When music is written for playlists, workouts, dopamine cycles, or retention graphs, the 4/4 beat becomes a compliance tool. It keeps the body engaged while the mind drifts. It asks nothing. It risks nothing. It offends no one. In that context, yes—calling it lazy is generous.

But here’s the crucial distinction:

A driving 4/4 beat used consciously is grounding.
A driving 4/4 beat used unconsciously is numbing.

Minimalism, techno, and trance can be deeply intelligent when they understand duration, micro-variation, and psychoacoustic detail. Steve Reich didn’t bore audiences into submission; he trained them to hear differently. The beat was not the point—it was the frame.

So the question is not “Is 4/4 lazy?”
The question is “What is the music doing while the beat continues?”

If the answer is nothing, then yes—you are listening to a pneumatic drill.

If the answer is tension, negotiation, risk, colour, and time, then the beat is not lazy at all.

It is simply holding the door open while the music decides whether it is brave enough to walk through.

What ever is that noise? Must be Jazz | iServalan | Continuum Approach

 What ever is that noise? Must be Jazz | iServalan | Continuum Approach

You heard the saying “Jazz is just good music played badly.” But is it true?

It sounds like a throwaway line.
A pub joke.
A polite insult dressed as wit.

But it reveals something deeply uncomfortable: many people hear risk as error.

Jazz does not aim for polish in the way classical performance does. It aims for presence. The note is not sacred because it is correct; it is sacred because it is chosen. Sometimes that choice scrapes. Sometimes it lands sideways. Sometimes it misses entirely—and keeps going.

That is not bad playing.
That is exposed playing.

Listen to Thelonious Monk and you will hear hesitations that would be corrected in a conservatoire exam. Accents that feel lopsided. Silences that stretch too long. And yet the structure holds—because Monk knew exactly where he was. The “wrongness” is not ignorance; it is refusal.

Jazz musicians do not reject technique. They absorb it so fully that they can afford to bend it. When Miles Davis lets a note thin out, crack, or fade, it is not because he cannot sustain it. It is because fragility communicates something purity cannot.

Classical music often hides its labour. Jazz leaves the joints visible.

And that visibility unsettles listeners who equate quality with control.

The phrase “played badly” really means:

• timing is elastic

• tone is personal, not standardised

• form is negotiated in real time

• mistakes are not erased, but absorbed

Jazz refuses the lie of perfection.

It says: this is a human making decisions under pressure, in conversation with others, with no edit button.

In that sense, jazz is not badly played music.
It is honestly played music.

And for some ears, honesty sounds far too dangerous.