Greg Saunier
Greg Saunier is, amongst other things, the drummer of Deerhoof, a band that I have followed and adored for the past seventeen years. Back in the Fall of 2020, I maintained a dialogue with Greg on the topic time for the archive of interviews with drummers about time that Nadia Chaney kept for the Time Zone Research Lab.
I was extremely excited to dialogue with Greg on the topic of time because I’ve learned far more about time by enjoying Deerhoof’s live shows than I’ve learned by reading philosophers like Henri Bergson, Martin Heidegger, Gilles Deleuze, and Bernard Stiegler. Indeed, my recent dispatch on Freeing Time draws more from my experiences watching and listening to musicians like Greg than from my taking any of the aforementioned philosophers at their word.
Greg
Acceleration, deceleration, syncopation, anticipation, delay — these are the tools of the drumming animal.
Come the 20th century, it became modish to imitate machines and we've more or less enslaved ourselves to that grid ever since. Don't you think?
Muindi
You are speaking my language! Those are the words, right?
I was compelled to look up a few etymologies: galloping, swooning, grasping in advance, letting things get away.
celerity (n.): "swiftness, rapidity of motion," late 15c., from Old French celeritee (14c., Modern French célérité), from Latin celeritatem (nominative celeritas) "swiftness," from celer "swift," from PIE *keli- "speeding" (source also of Sanskrit carati "goes," Greek keles "fast horse or ship," Lithuanian šuoliai "a gallop," Old High German scelo "stallion").
syncopation (n.): 1530s, "contraction of a word by omission of middle sounds," from Medieval Latin syncopationem (nominative syncopatio) "a shortening or contraction," from past participle stem of syncopare "to shorten," also "to faint away, to swoon," from Greek synkope "contraction of a word," originally "a cutting off, cutting up, cutting short," from synkoptein "to cut up," from syn- "together, thoroughly" + koptein "to cut," which is perhaps from PIE root *kop- "to beat, strike, smite"
anticipation (n.): late 14c., "foreshadowing," from Latin anticipationem (nominative anticipatio) "preconception, preconceived notion," noun of action from past-participle stem of anticipare "take (care of) ahead of time," literally "taking into possession beforehand," from anti, an old form of ante "before" (from PIE root *ant- "front, forehead," with derivatives meaning "in front of, before") + capere "to take," from PIE root *kap- "to grasp."
delay (v.): c. 1300, delaien, "to put off, postpone;" late 14c., "to put off or hinder for a time," from Old French delaiier, from de- "away, from" + laier "leave, let." This is perhaps a variant of Old French laissier, from Latin laxare "slacken, undo". But Watkins has it from Frankish *laibjan, from a Proto-Germanic causative form of PIE root *leip- "to stick, adhere.”
Greg
These etymologies all make the words seem so emotional.
Muindi
They do, don't they! I've found that about etymologies: you dig back far enough into the history of a word and it feels like you get closer to those affective/affecting experiences that made people want to have different words for different things in the first place.
Greg
The first time humans synchronized their clocks was when railroad appeared.
Muindi
I'm curious as to how you'd describe the difference between syncing clocks, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, count-offs, count-ins, or lead-ins — those verbal, instrumental or visual cues that musicians use to “entrain” the entrance of players into a piece. I feel there is something fundamentally different there.
Greg
The Beatles count-ins for “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Taxman”— these are kind of like the director's "action!"
It’s affect again, more than time.
Amateur musicians often count-in at a different tempo from the song they are going to play because it's really just “ready, set, go!”
Here's favorite music term: rubato.
Muindi
That one's an "Italian Job" isn't it? Short for tempo rubato, literally "stolen time".
Greg
Exactly.
Muindi
God, I love that term. I feel like that's my way of getting thinking and writing done during a typical work day. I gotta do it rubato, I gotta steal back the time I sold them.
Greg
Our song “Wrong Time Capsule“ is about music as time travel.
Muindi
I’ve been thinking a lot about time machines and capitalism lately. My thoughts are still rather rough, but I’ve been thinking about three kinds of time machines: time-sharing machines, time-keeping machines, and time-dilating machines. Respectively, these are machines that let us share time, machines that let us keep time, and machines that let us stretch and squeeze time.
My basic idea is that capitalism is all about making us into time-keeping machines: paying bills on time, showing up to work on time, etc. And I was wondering how time-sharing and time-dilating might take place either without time-keeping or with minimal time-keeping.
In thinking about all of this, I’ve been thinking a ton about music and rhythm. As a drummer do you ever think of yourself as a time-keeper? Do the terms time-sharing and time-dilating mean much to you?
Greg
No, I think in gestures but, kinda unfortunately, the first gesture I learned on the drums was a rock beat.
I started to feel extra proud of myself in recent years when I realized I lose count a lot more easily than I used to.
I think I am like a florescent bulb that makes my bandmates work harder. Jack DeJohnette says playing the drums is stoking the fire.
Bullshit Jobs [by David Graeber] reveals that many the cute stories we tell about making workers more productive are lies: workers are very often incentivized to mark time.
Marking time = waiting
People think they can mark time and be the same after. Like a cryogenic freeze. But actually they are living and practicing boredom.
Muindi
We are incentivized to mark time while being told it is imperative to be productive, to be timely. That incentive-imperative combo produces a bad conscience about slowing down, one that doesn't let one enjoy slowing down, one that doesn't let one feel comfortable "taking" time instead of just "marking" it.
Marking time is also the phrase they use to refer to the soldier who is just marching in place in a regimented fashion.
Greg
That contradiction mirrors the one about debt [from David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years].
Sometimes on stage I experience timelessness. I can see everything I'm about to play for the next several bars.
Sometimes I write songs in dreams and the whole song seems to arrive at once rather than from beginning to end.
Muindi
What's it like to communicate or notate the dream song to others afterwards? I feel like whenever I have an idea it is something like that, the idea feels timeless, and then I've gotta somehow get the idea across “in time”, using some kind of notation, to someone else. How do you manage that?
Greg
I write it down for myself to remember but that's just me
We never came up with a good communication system in Deerhoof. Every song ends up [having] a different method [of communication].
Muindi
I'm actually interested in whether what you have is a "good" communication culture, as opposed to a "good" communication system, inasmuch as [your culture of communication] recognizes that different songs have peculiarities specific to them that require the use of different methods of communication. This is a pre-occupation of mine: developing ways of communicating that are shaped by a specific problem to be communicated or accounted for, rather than the problem of communicating and accounting for things in general. Hence my interest in weird ways of scoring music.
Back to time though, a question that I have is how things that are conventionally distinguished from time — loudness, timbre, pitch, making a show of a gesture (e.g., flipping a drumstick) — shape your sense of time?
Greg
Those are ways to measure an act. The act might be totally unanalyzed when it is in progress. It's like thinking about your tongue while talking. Usually you're focused on meaning.
Sometimes I wonder about rehearsing though as away to become self-conscious. I think of Shatner in Star Trek or especially of Kubrick movies. Where you can see the actor has become self conscious of inflection and pacing and kind of lost the meaning.
Repetition is strange in relation to time too. Like if I go to McDonald's it's the same everywhere...the placeless place. Repetition is timeless time. Not just a repeating riff but also playing the same song every night.
One of the "questions I'm being asked" [during a given performance of a song] is that of yesterday's performance of that song. Which feels like it happened one second ago instead of 24 hours ago. This strange relation to time starts to develop on tour…
Unrelated time stuff that's fascinating... ahead of the beat and behind the beat — a horn section always plays perfectly together but way late compared to the rhythm section.
Chris Cohen always played way behind and when he played bass on Runners Four it was such a pleasure to see how long we could stand to be out of sync, always me a split second ahead of him for many bars at a time…
Visual time is strange.
When you can anticipate something is coming but it hasn't hit yet. Watching Dale Crover of the Melvins was always like that because his windup was so long…
I've noticed that classical players always react late to conductors.
If I'm in a group with them and the baton comes down I always hit with the baton and I'm way ahead of everyone else.
Something we, [Deerhoof], do that I rarely hear anyone do is gradually slow down on purpose over the course of a song. Usually rock bands speed up. It's a thing in Japanese court music. In a way it is like Kubrick acting. By take 100 the performershave slowed way down. Losing all meaning and just listening to the sound of their own voice
I wonder if time is experienced differently by (1) very earnest direct musicians (2) musicians who create perfect simulations of earnestness (3) campy musicians. #1 is when time stops or is irrelevant, #3 is when it is dilated and savored.
Muindi
On you and Chris. That tension between you and him, before and after, are definitely what made Running Thoughts and Siriustar incredibly fun tracks for me.
"Repetition is timeless time." — now that's something! I'll be pondering that one for a bit because that is a paradox that really hits the spot.
Greg
If placeless place is McDonalds, then timeless time or musicless music would be “With Or Without You “or “Billie Jean” or something
Weirdly with McDonalds etc the goal is comfort, but with U2 the goal is heartbreak which is why I can't stand going into a gas station and it's always playing and oppressing and manipulating my feelings. Or “Billie Jean” is hard not to dance to and especially hard not to sing along to.
I have been thinking lately about battle music, fifes and drums, or trumpets and drums etc. Partly meant for synchronization in marching like you said, partly meant to give courage.
I like the idea of music meant to give courage that isn't meant to synchronize at all.
Muindi
I love that. The music of the regiment, that synchronizes the regiment, is supposed to make the group into a unit, to give them courage by making many feel like one mighty force. What would it mean to not to synchronize but to still give courage. To give courage by giving the many a motive to make a difference to one anotherwithout necessarily making the many into one?
Greg
Interdependence and independence.
Muindi
The one is a monoculture, it is monorhythmic.
The many are a polyculture, they are poly-rhythmic.
And there's another word I like "idiorrhythmic" and perhaps "idio-culture" — but I don't know how to imagine that practically. But I think that this "idiomatic/idiotic" rhythm has that rubato, off-beat, upset the rhythm thing about it.
Greg
Oh man…
Pandemic combined with societal collapse combined with no moral possibility under capitalism has turned every one of us into an idiorrhythmic monk
Millennial DIY self help in isolation…
Muindi
Some like to translate idiorrhythmic activity as an activity in which one "follows one's own devices" . The term devices is what strikes me with the millennial DIY self help thing because in many ways, we are at the mercy of Apple devices, or Google devices, or Microsoft devices and not our own: at least to the extent that we aren't hacking/misusing their devices to suit purposes of our own design.
I feel like there's a craving for actual idiorrhythmic life during this time, for actually following our own devices, and I experience flashes of it now and then, but we're still hooked up to or hooked on devices that aren't ours. This makes me want to follow that Time Nuts group and start building my own clocks.
I read about Time Nuts this morning, and one of the guys said something fun: "Precision time is the infrastructure on which most modern technology depends. Unlock the black boxes of the computers, travel, telecommunications and transportation, he says, and you get clocks.”
Another funny line: "A man with one clock knows what time it is. A man with two clocks is never sure. But I would add further: A man with three clocks is more sure than a man with two clocks."
Greg
And social media is also both a device on its own and a device of peer pressure.
Owning a phone or having an account makes you feel self-empowered but you are prey to everyone else's "devices"
Muindi
I am curious as to what recording does to your sense of time, repetition, synchronization. I think this relates to a good bit of what we've been talking about.
Greg
Recording to a click is like the 3 clocks joke. There's your inner time clashing with the machine's time. And the result is either you learn to let the machine win (2 clocks) or find some awkward compromise (3 clocks)
Recording is projected time. The live album was fun because it was inthe no man's land between past and future. But usually, [when recording], you’re creating an imaginary experience in someone else's time, in the imagined future.
Personally, I always imagine the listener getting bored because I picture them clicking on it on their phone while doing other things. But live they are captive so time experience is not fraught with anxiety over potential boredom.
I think we solved it with the Love-Lore listening party by it being in real time with the audience, and also with the voiceover intro that took its time and slowed everyone down to say “OK this is going to be at this slower pace and I need to adjust my patience.”
It is funny that rehearsal and multiple takes in a recording are so often mechanical repetition with the goal of a more mechanical result — a mechanical and repeatable result. For whatever reason, recording multiple takes has been for me just more chances to try totally different things until you hit on the magic one. The mechanical process is saying, “Perfection is there and I just have to repeat it until I can repeat it perfectly.” The other process is saying, “I haven't found the thing yet, I'm still searching, but when I get it it is accidental and I immediately stop doing it.”
If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.
