Yeah, I don't see anything wrong with slight timing difference.
This of course is dependent on what constitutes 'slight'. If you look at the wave forms of a recorded band or even two instruments, it's interesting to note that not every simultaneous sound starts at exactly the same moment. But the differences are so 'slight' that not even God would notice the discrepancy. Because to all intents and purposes, everything sounds 'on time'.
If you ever hear absolutely perfect timing, it sounds quite artificial. Even the best musicians aren't truly perfect and performances sound more natural because of it.
I don't know about these two points as absolutes. For the overwhelming majority of songs I have spanning the 20s to now~ish, the timing does sound pretty perfect. And on drum machine/synth programming type tracks, it's not the perfection of the timing that sounds artificial, but the sonics of the sounds themselves. I think musicians have always aspired to be good timekeepers and those that really are not get replaced ! When we talk of musicians/bands being 'tight' or 'locked in', it's really their timing {and
then the feel that results from good timing} that we're referring to.
I agree that slightly being out of sync is usually desirable in avoiding a mechanical feel
I don't. Sometimes I feel we're too analytical of simple things. I was listening to a guy that got a bronze medal in the long jump in the 1964 olympics in Tokyo and he was praising the role of sports science in the modern day and how they studied Carl Lewis jumping and noticed how he started out jumping to the right and moved in left etc and how the athletes had psycologists and biometric this and that's and Mary Peters who won olympic gold in '72 said "when I won, my trainer wrote my instructions on the back of an old envelope !". I thought that said alot.
A mechanical feel in music isn't really to do with timing being perfect or in sync. Most of those great disco hits of the late 70s do not feel at all mechanical. A mechanical, sterile feeling in music points to
something else.
That said sometimes I have played something so out of time that it's annoying.
Therein lies the key ~ "so out of time". Unless you're going for that disorientating effect {and it can be quite difficult to pull it off}, extremely rarely does anyone deliberately play out of sync. But as stated earlier, rarely do notes or beats between players come at exactly the same time, though that difference is only miliseconds. When it's sufficient enough to be noticeable, the song suffers. When double tracking, those slight differences enhance the effect, but that's the point {or one of them} of double tracking - to create an effect that is different from the single element being doubled.
Funnilly enough, a few weeks ago, I was recording with a friend who is a professional drummer in Zambia. On this particular song, I asked him to go mad in the last minute of it, to play out of time, with no form and to just do whatever came but with no recognizable sense.
He found it hard and couldn't do it. He said he'd never had to do something like that before. He said to me "I was brought up with the metronome !".
Back when drum machines and electronic drums were all the rage, producers felt that the songs were *too* perfect, so many times drummers were brought back in with acoustic drums and new drum tracks were used.
And yet, back in the disco days, songs ran at 120 BPM religiously and the shit hot drummers were capable of this. Some recorded to clicks, some didn't. If acoustic drums ran religiously to a set BPM then the 'perfection' couldn't've been the issue. I think it's the overall sonics and synthesization that has led many to conclude that there's something too 'whatever' about much music, not the timing. You expect good timing. Who wants a drummer or guitarist or bassist or trumpeter that can't keep time ? And who seriously goes about measuring whether the timing of songs is perfect ?
Absolute perfect timing is something you shouldn't aspire to. Seriously. Music is dynamic, and it should be allowed to breathe.
Music is dynamic and should be allowed to breathe but it's a fallacy that perfect timing prevents this. On the contrary, it enhances this. Slowing down together and speeding up together preserves the dynamism {and by dynamism/dynamics, I mean
movement, not just loud to soft}.
When you teach kids about counting in music, you teach them to keep time properly, not when they feel like it.
Good music, as far as I'm concerned, doesn't draw attention to timekeeping per se but that timing is an essential component of it being good.
