In the first piece, “Polacca” there is some particpatory discrepancy right from the beginning with the voice being slightly behind the beat of the drum rhythm underneath. Later on, about five minutes and 20 seconds in, much more apparent participatory discrepancy is present. There is a guitar-like sound, some kind of other synth, and percussion playing all at the same time. Although simultaneous, they act on their own accord, not really following the timing of the others, until they all join in after a few seconds and play an ascending major scale. This occurs a few times.
The second piece, “Spaced Cowboy” by Sly & The Family Stone has participatory discrepancy similar to the second example from the first piece. While the verse is going on, a second voice can be heard coming through in the background slightly off of the timing of the rest of the music. I feel like it adds the effect of a slight audience participation because of the occasional off-time singing along with the melody and the more shout-like short vocalizations from the female voice. At the beginning, the synth solo is played slightly off the beat, setting a laid-back tone for the song.
The last piece of music by Potato and Totico, called “Agua Que Va A Caer” has much more apparent participatory discrepancy compared to the others, in my opinion. It begins with a steady drum groove, but then a vocal melody enters, seemingly disregarding the background drums for the most part. The guitar solo later on in the music also does something similar. It plays quite out of time for a majority of it. In the call and response section of the music, more participatory discrepancy is heard. If you listen closely to the response, the intonation is not quite perfect in some cases.
The above 3 pieces are great examples of participatory discrepancy, but there is obviously tons of examples out there. This is unfortunately not as common in today’s music due to something called “quantization”. This is used to make everything completely on the beat, which can sometimes be a good thing, but it somewhat removes the feeling that it was made by people. Without that imperfection that is a common part of human beings, it can feel almost unnatural. I think that these discrepancies reminds us that artists aren’t just some powerful figure but that they’re human just like us. Here a few more examples of great studio-recorded music that doesn’t make use of quantization and/ or any other corrections: