What exactly is PRaT???

I have always fancied, however erroneously, that PRAT was often due to very slightly erratic timing which is why tube amps sometimes can be masters of PRAT perhaps because something in some tubes is faintly "off" timing wise. This in turn might create a sense of naturalness or "live" performance even if the tunes have been very precisely guided in the studio.

Sometimes PRAT can be that ineffable thing called "swing."  SRV nearly always had it in his playing.

The Stones often made Pratty records perhaps because of their catch-as-catch-can recording practices.

The Stones Recording At Muscle Shoals Part1

The Stones Recording At Muscle Shoal Part2

What would a discussion of PRAT be without bringing in marijuana?

Why Weed and Music Go So Well Together

"Dr. Jörg Fachner: [Marijuana] works like a psycho-acoustic enhancer. That means you are more able to absorb, to focus on something, and to have a bit of a broader spectrum. It doesn’t change the music; it doesn’t change the ear functioning. Obviously it changes the way we perceive ear space in music.

It also changes time perception, and if you listen to music, it is a time process, so if you have a different time perception of course you will listen differently to music.

Dancing is very important to people who play music with a beat. I think that people who don't dance, or who never did dance, don't really understand the beat... I know musicians who don't and never did dance, and they have difficulty communicating.

Perhaps it should be "Pulse, Rhythm and Timing." I have often wondered whether musical timing is governed however subtly by the heart rate of the musician which must vary according to the demands the music is making on the performer and the demands the performer is making on the music. The heart can be likened to a metronome residing in the chest, and its interaction with music making could be creating a very subtle poly-rhythm in the musical performance that sometimes urges the musician into altered and sublime states that are both familiar and novel at the same time and which strike the listeners the same way.

Effect of Music On the Cardiovacular System

@dogearedaudio 

Did you bring up Klemperer because of the phenomenal PRAT he brought to the Beethoven symphonies? My mother introduced me to the vinyl boxed set of Klemperer's Beethoven symphonies. That absolutely mind blowing explosion in the Ode To Joy 4th movement where all the instruments fly into the vortex simultaneously is the most PRAT-ey thing I have ever heard. Pretty sure that moment when first heard ushered me into puberty all those years ago.

@dogearedaudio 

Did you bring up Klemperer because of the phenomenal PRAT he brought to the Beethoven symphonies? My mother introduced me to the vinyl boxed set of Klemperer's Beethoven symphonies. That absolutely mind blowing explosion in the Ode To Joy 4th movement where all the instruments fly into the vortex simultaneously is the most PRAT-ey thing I have ever heard. Pretty sure that moment when first heard ushered me into puberty all those years ago.

The tube amps that sit next to the Audion based system always sound most Prat-ey after a few hours of warm-up in the early evening before a midnightish listening session. Time of day is a factor or rather the state of the "grid" which tends to be more Prat sounding after midnight. Also, the tube amps (pre and power) transformers have warmed up enough to be "saturated." State of the grid and transformer saturation have a big bearing on PRAT in this household and moreso with the tube amps than the GanFet amps.

SRV - "Little Wing"

Master of PRAT ie."swing"

Mechanism of Brain Hysteresis In Human Brain Networks

Cha-cha cha.

Tony Rice, one of the legendary flatpickers, explains how his bands let the music breathe by mixing beats or a he rightfully calls it "pulse.

"Tony Rice On Time In Music

PRAT was what happened when the Grateful Dead were "on." They sure as heck were not "on" all the time, but when they were the joint was hoppin'.