I completely disagree with the last paragraph. Between rubuto, accelerandos, ritartandos, fermatas, ect notation comes with a lot of feel how to play a piece. Just because musicians today are less familiar with it does not mean that it can't be used to represent the feels nor that can't represent the feels.

@Dom I think those specify feel on a slightly different timescale to the 'rhythmic feel' I was referring to. Perhaps I should have used the word 'groove'.

I think you’ve got some okay guesses here. It’s important to remember that rhythm is used very differently between classical and popular worlds. Many “lay” musicians can’t read, so it stands that rhythms would need to be simple and repetitive to remember easily. Songs are written to be played over and over, while compositions less frequently. If you look at historical versions of present days bands - troubadours for example - I’m sure you’d see many connections.

@jjmusicnotes I'm not sure I'd say that popular rhythms are necessarily simple and repetitive compared to classical rhythms - they're certainly repetitive, but apart from that (large) qualification, I personally feel that it's the popular genres that are more rhythmically sophisticated - at least in my lifetime. Although I think the repetition is primarily to serve the function of the music from a listener's point of view, I do agree that it also reduces the need to write it down (or be able to read it!).

I think one more guess would be the presence of the conductor who can give accurate timing. Drums might be picking up that role in jazz/rock/etc.

@topomorto - again, important to be distinctive here. The “classical” genre is different than the Classic period; important not to conflate the two. Also do not mistake density for complexity. I could point out hundreds of quite simple pop songs and hundreds of intricate classical pieces. Feelings are good, but they can’t justify a fact nor be a substitute for truth.

@jjmusicnotes i'm only talking 'classical' in general - no mention of the period here from me. "do not mistake density for complexity" - it's a reasonable warning, but I don't think I'm making such a mistake - the kind of multi-level, multi-device, timing criticality you get in each bar of many pop rhythms is decidedly complex to my mind, not just dense. "I could point out hundreds of quite simple pop songs and hundreds of intricate classical pieces" - I'm sure that's true, but on the level of rhythmic groove I'm talking about, I'm still very confident in saying that non classical genres...

...such as jazz, EDM, hip-hop, etc taken as a whole have more complexity on the level of timescale relating to rhythmic 'groove' that I'm talking about in the answer here. By the same token, classical genres have more complexity in at the level of timing granularity that the features @Dom was talking about imply - rubuto, accelerandos, ritartandos, fermatas, etc...

I agree with @jjmusicnotes . You don't really offer any objective evidence to this and you don't really define your terms well enough. Of course classical music doesn't groove like jazz, but that doesn't mean one has a harder to notate feel than the other. As someone who has studied classical and jazz and play most pop music today, you can easily notate it all and in fact I would say modern music is typically easier to notate because repetition dominants it thus the idea that they are rhythmically more complex is doubtful.

@Dom Some of the answer is certainly just my perspective. "that doesn't mean one has a harder to notate feel than the other" - maybe true, but that's not quite what I'm saying - I'm saying that there are aspects to rhythm that SN doesn't capture well that are more critical to (say) jazz or hip-hop than they are to some other genres, and hence the classical sphere's emphasis on notation represents a slight bias away from "grooves".

@Dom I can't see how one can claim "you can easily notate it all". The feel of many rhythms often depends on e.g. one beat being pushed a few milliseconds this way, another beat being pushed a few milliseconds that way; on very specific timbres being used for certain drum sounds, and so on. These aren't things that are easily notated.

@topomorto you write the feel with the tempo and the desired effects/sound in the passage. For example a reggae peice for guitar might have a "slow and loose" mark with the exact percussion instrument and effect marked. It's not like if I mark ruboto on a passage that every ruboto passage will sound the same and have those microsecond differences. Those passages very much have nuances per peice and complexities similar to a standard groove you are describing

@Dom yes, and the word 'loose' might be interpreted differently by different performers (and perhaps interpreted subjectively poorly by drummers who aren't familiar with the genre), just as rubato passages might be performed differently by different performers. This is all fully in agreement with my point that standard notation is of limited precision when it comes to rhythmic feel. Likewise with timbre - many sounds are hard to specify textually with sufficient precision.

Seems like a lot of good conversation both for the question and the one written answer - maybe this should be moved to chat.

@topomorto I hadn't read this answer when I started to write mine. I couldn't agree more. Your two points, that classically trained musicians have incredible difficulty in playing a "groove" together and that standard musical notation is wholly inadequate at notating many modern rhythms are both a consequence of the fact that those rhythms were not present as the notation and pedagogy of classical music evolved. (The size of the hall is not the problem, classical musicians play rhythm very differently to say a jazz band, I've seen samba schools play in large echoey spaces)

That's not to denigrate classical musicians, it's just a completely different concept of rhythm; on the flip side most jazz players can't convincingly play with classical rhythmic devices based on the ebbing and flowing pulse of much of western art music. As a final point, the idea that you can accurately notate modern jazz/pop drumming using standard notation comes from a lack of understanding of that drumming itself; it's microscopic variations of timing and dynamics that make the groove, and all of that is lost on the page!

@jjmusicnotes I don't think so, while there are an unusually high number of comments, they're all all specifically about answering the original question itself (rather than a conversation wandering off in another direction), and so are better left here in my opinion.

Just to put a cap on this - notation is only ever as limited as the person notating it. Notation reflects sound, not the other way around. If sounds are loose, notation will be loose. If sounds are tight, notation will be tight. Notation can be infinitely complex or infinitely simple. To posit that something not-notated is arguably more complex is short-sighted at best; it's less quantifiable. To posit that something is too complex to be notated is equally ignorant. Performative traditions of each are not causal nor indicative of the limits of each, so it's silly to argue either side.

@Some_Guy - Actually, they aren't; the comments have wandered down the tangential path on the validity / possibility of music notation vs. performative practice and the limits of each. This has strayed from the original question, which is seeking to explore the role of percussion development in the larger "classical" art form.

@jjmusicnotes Let's think of a few simple examples. In standard musical notation, how would we indicate that: 1) beats 2 and 4 should be 15 ms late, but beat 3 should be 10ms early; 2) specify the exact timbre of snare drum sound that should be used for each drum hit, given that the timbre might vary on each hit; 3) specify exactly different continuous controllers are to be manipulated to change the filter, sync osc frequency, and resonance of a synth lead sound?

@jjmusicnotes Even if you can give me standard ways to notate those with absolute precision (and I'd be genuinely interested), asserting that nothing is too complex to be notated in standard notation means that you think it's possible to round-trip any sound through standard notation and get the original audio back. In some particular cases that might be true, but In general, I'm fairly confident that's not something you or anyone else can do.

@topomorto - those are good questions; as a composer I ask myself similarly difficult questions every day. Your issue is precisely the issue composers contend with - “how do I write this down so other people know what to do?” Notation is an aid for reproduction. It is also fluid, with people inventing new symbols and directions to convey sounds and ideas. If others can’t reproduce the sounds, it’s not their fault or notation, it’s the person who notates. I do have rather straightforward answers to your questions. We’re off topic here so this will be my last comment, we can cont. in chat?

@Some_Guy you may be right that it's not entirely the environment that's the problem - perhaps (given my respect for the musicians) I just rather hoped that it was, given a couple of somewhat disturbing attempts I've seen to make an orchestra groove! Perhaps it's partly down to looking to the conductor to lead, rather than purely 'locking in' aurally and physically to the rhythm that's going on around you.

@jjmusicnotes I don't want to waste too much of your time but of course I am interested in the answers to the questions I posed - and (as we're talking rhythm) perhaps also how you notate precise volume levels of drum hits, which are also important to the feel.