Thanks for watching! If you want to watch me rant about Guillame de Machaut's spicy 14th century harmony, you can check out the bonus video over on Nebula! Get both CuriosityStream and Nebula for 26% off here (best deal): curiositystream.com/adamneely
Hey man! Thanks for not being a dick about being so thoroughly correct in the face of such thorough incoreected... Incorrectly... Uhh... Incorr... Wrong!
Repetition of the repetition of repetition legitimizes legitimizes the repetition of repetition legitimizes legitimizes the repetition of repetition and thus legitimizes the repetition of repetition legitimizes
You know what's funny? When Adam mentioned the "two types of tritones", comparing the lighter rising tritone to the sadder descending tritone, I immediately thought of lovemenot. I'm 90% sure the 2nd to the 3rd note in the guitar intro is a tritone by listening. I'll have to actually play it on a piano when its not so late lol.
I think it's more lo-fi since it's merely a sample of a medieval tune. But using medieval instruments and choral harmony to simulate a lo-fi type beat would be a pretty cool experiment.
Someone today: "Man, this riff is SICK!" Someone in 2321: "300 years ago, this sequence of notes was banned by health officials who declared it to cause disease"
Where I learned music theory, the teacher kept declaring that the tritone was "the ugliest" interval so I started calling it "the nicest" interval in retaliation. I didn't even like it that much, looking back on it. But no interval shall be deemed the ugliest if I have anything to say about it! Then I got into jazz and realised that the tritone is probably the most interesting and versatile interval out there - it can sound ominous, expectant, sarcastic, whatever you like. It can make the melody spicier or it can peacefully resolve into a minor sixth.
Me... Die... Devil... Evil? Juggalio dude that is so effin' Metal you *gotta* respect it -- even if historically Europe were total gaylords what with all that "Final Countdown" power ballad sh*t...
Woooow that's impressive (to know you're a true historian) and inspiring... You're so right, we don't have enough respect and admiration for scholarships nowadays....
As a historian it’s always really frustrating when people assume people in the past where just dumber than we are now. Thank’s for pushing back on this.
Or that they didn't care for hygiene and were always covered in mud. Or that they were flat earthers or all died before 30 (shout out to Shadiversity). Or that the commoners didn't know any life aside from hard labour. And were also illiterate (in the present meaning of this word)
"Repetition legitimizes" is such an interesting and deep concept, because sometimes it cannot change the truth (like rewriting history, or changing the laws of physics), but sometimes it can (like word definitions and evolutions of language). This subtle distinction can be quite fascinating. There's lists and lists of words that have changed meaning over time, or been invented as we need them. Some people will say that these aren't 'real' words until they're added to a dictionary, but in actuality, a word must be 'real' before it will be added to any dictionary. Sorry, bit of a tangent there :P
@@NoNameAtAll2 That's what I meant; the actual events of the past cannot be changed. The stories we tell cannot change the past (though they can change how we remember the past).
i dont know if it was to keep the video monetized or what, but the original quote is "if you repeat the lie enough, it becomes the truth" and was a trick used by nazis to legitimize their propaganda. It only really works with things people cannot go check themselves, or atleast heavily banks on people being too lazy (or afraid) to go check themselves. Most of advertisement uses it, that's why influencers exist and they say " this vpn has military grade encryption" so often.
BTW, it's often easy to spot this kind of myth. When people say "during some centuries, the triton was banned by the Church in some places" it directly rings a bell. A serious claim would be "this guy in year X banned the triton to be used in place Y". When an historical claim is always excessively vague, it's surely a myth.
@ Martin Winter, was going to say the same thing :) Myths about myths and myths about my-time-period-is-better-than-all-other-time-periods. We say "Kids these days..." but also say "People back then..." 🤦 Just pick one already. I will add that at least it's understandable why people today believe the tritone myth while, however, there's no reason/excuse for believing everyone was a flat earther at one time.
There is a distinction to be made: if your textbook propagates the myth that it was banned, then sure, let's be mad about it. But most authors of such books have a very strong desire to appear as posh as possible, and throwing around useless terminology like "Diabolus in Musica" is the easiest way for them to do that. They don't necessarily *want* to spread any misinformation, but since they fail at properly explaining the context (aka their only job as a textbook author), that is exactly what happens when the students inevitably misunderstand what's written in the book.
There's a lot of great Tweets here... I'm partial to 12:10 "Literally 3 notes (...) Once banned by the church 😈" Oh, just 3 then? That would surely be exceedingly easy to fact check, you'd think.
Thinking back to my first college music history course - which began in the middle ages - I distinctly remember the professor saying "the tritone was never banned." Oddly, at that point I had never heard the myth that it was, so I was just completely confused by his insistence.
as a musicology student, I must say that I enjoy your longer documentary-like videos very much, I fall in awe thinking about all the research and thought you put into this. Thank you Adam!
As someone who only has the shallowest understanding of music theory from high school band 20 years ago, I love them too! I think that's one of Adam's greatest strengths: he can take very technical material and make it approachable and engaging no matter what your level of understanding is!
This is brilliant Adam, why did I legitimately learn more about tritones from this video than in a zillion years of early music conservatory??? Love a surprise James Tenney mention too (his spatial music is wild) 🎵
Fuck my life, I can't believe how many times I've been the guy that says this to people only to now learn why it's complete bullshit. Sincerely though, thanks Adam. I'm genuinely so glad I learned where this all came from now.
Probably the majority of us honestly. I first heard it when learning part-writing in high school. Though, my understanding was simply that it was to be avoided and never used as anything more than a passing tone to be resolved. The "devil in music" trope was pointed out but no one said it was outright banned. Just frowned upon. Like, "This thing sounds bad. Avoid it as much as possible." Honestly, my theory teachers made a much bigger deal about not using parallel 4ths, 5ths, and octaves (but especially 5ths) to such a degree you'd think that was the _real_ devil in music back then 😛
Bravo sir for correctly pronouncing "Ye olde days" (9:40) The "Y" at the beginning of "Ye" used to be an Anglo Saxon letter known as the "thorn" which was pronounced as "th", it looked quite a lot like a "Y" and as such at the advent of the printing press was often substituted by a "Y" leading to modern confusions and people pronouncing "ye olde" in a way which was never intended.
Þ or lower case þ, to spare those interested some time googling. incidentally, the letter 'eth' (ð) was also dropped, though it was never replaced directly in print. instead it was simply replaced with the digraph 'th'
thorn actually looked like this þ, but german printing presses didn't have it (as the German language didn't have it); replacing it with a y and e stamped on top of eachother, and eventually a y and e next to eachother, "ye" and then that somehow became a "th," though I forgot how that happened. Thorn is a pretty neat letter though! I think we should bring it back! (Well, Icelandic still uses it. It's not completely gone.)
That was clearly the Adam from the darkest timeline. And he's using the power of dissonance, memes, and social media to convince us to summon him and take over the life of our timeline's Adam. I bet Jacob Collier has a goatee in the other timeline as well. Evil Jake and evil Adam!
We need more respectful and accurcate "um actually" stuff like this. There's so much disinfo that gets mutated and malformed and reshared today in so many topics and it's a game of telephone on an evergrowing level. Snd when you get 'certified' ppl involved it can allow for b.s. to catch on even quicker(like the Jacob Collier thing). This is a refreshing format to combat that.
Very fun Adam. Nicely done. I just found something I was amazed I didn't see before: Take the tritone that occurs in the C major scale, B-F. Resolve it inward by half-step and you get C-E, strongly suggesting a C major chord. Now, go back to B-F(E#) and resolve it OUTWARD by half-step. You get A#-F#, strongly suggesting an F# major chord, as far away from C major as you can get. One simple, beautiful interval spans the entire tonal system!
It's incredible how the timbre of the instrument affects how harsh a tritone can sound. Hearing the chant, there's a certain richness between the reverb and the complexity of human voices that is entirely absent when hearing it on a dry piano sound.
The almighty "20th century harmony" really opened my eyes to how drastically timbre affects the harmonic colour of a piece. Definitely changed the way I see the relationship between orchestration and composition.
Good point. I have tried to play it on my cello, and even discounting my not so good intonation (lol), it doesn't sound good. My teacher tried it too, it sounds horrible, really, when you try to play both notes of the tritone at the same time.
19:00 I wonder if Koji Kondo knew about this when composing Saria's Song versus the Song of Healing. I'm sure there are other aspects of the pieces that lend to their respective atmospheres but it was always fascinating to me that the same tritone played ascending versus descending changed the mood of the song.
Interesting too, considering the only notes you can really play on the ocarina are D, F, A, B, and D, making the tritone very easy to access, but the major chord becomes elusive
A tritone!? In this musical period, in this harmonic style, in this part of Western Europe, localized entirely within your piece commissioned by the Catholic Church!?
Music theory is like one of my other hobbies, linguistics, in that people like to perpetuate myths that have no historical basis in order to feel like they are more advanced and evolved than those who came before them.
Like "Eskimos have over 200 words for snow!" I'm also a linguistics geek and the debunking of this "fact" was a key moment for me in seeing how much misinformation is continually propagated. Most areas of study are more complicated than can be explained with these kind of factoids.
@@tiddlypom2097 Linguistics gang. the "100s of words for snow" one is really annoying. there's also a lot of bad takes about English spelling. the worst is "'ghoti' is actually a spelling of /fɪʃ/ that is perfectly consistent with English spelling rules" like no it's not. find me one English word that uses for /f/ at the beginning of a word or for /ʃ/ at the end of a word. or even one word that isn't "women" that uses for /ɪ/ (that one *might* exist actually? but I can't think of one off the top of my head so). Like no that's not how English spelling works
@@jolkert_ I mean ive always found the ghoti thing pretty funny as well as pretty useful as a tool to show people the inconsistencies of English orthography. I dont think anyone is literally saying this word could naturally occur, it's more of a 'hey look, heres some weird relationships between sound and writing that you probably haven't noticed' gesture and it can very easily be followed up by a 'now let's think about why this looks so unnatural' to demonstrate exactly how context dependent the patterns of english spelling are. it's a good meme and it mostly gets used fine imo.
Yeah I've never heard of this myth, but as a historian, reading all those tweets and watching to all those clips made me want to cry. Shit's too real and I gotta deal with it all the time.
I'm glad I'm not alone in that, because I started breaking down hearing from Brad Nunn's comment that this misinformation makes it's way into the exact place it shouldn't.
hey! the idea you mentioned of composing music for the big halls might also be the reason behind pop culture's (especially cartoons, think simpsons or something) obsession with that "aaah" sound, it is so characteristic of something godly, or heavenly in those realms and as to why that "aaah" was chosen is because it was the most powerful part of compositions you could hear in a church.
Adam, I love your channel more and more. Admittedly sometimes I don't understand you (because some of the videos are too advanced for me but it's my fault) but you have a way of explaining music theory that really appeals to me. Thank you for sharing with us your experience and expertise as a musician
I've spent many hours of my life debunking historical myths about the Catholic Church and the Middle Ages, around topics like the Crusades, the Inquisition, Galileo, various Catholic doctrines, and more. As such, I really appreciate this video. From my perspective, this "devil's interval" myth fits perfectly into the larger pattern of modern fallacies regarding the Middle Ages.
Yep, its easy to spit on the Church, sadly... And apology is not always possibile, but the Truth will search who He want to know Him! See you in heaven hopefully!
@@tumfilius3245 The RCC is evil. Don't get it twisted just bc this lie is perpetuated doesn't mean everything else is a myth. This 1 lie doesn't absolve the RCC on all the evil things they did. God will judge those who participated in the Inquisition, crusades, and did evil things in the dark ages. The Bible actually foretold everything the RCC would do. RCC in it's origins is more pagan than Christian.
@@xintimidate by the way "dark ages" was dark just because some people start talking bad about the past, at the time of crusades, for exemple, Arab people understand why crusades were done. More than 500 attaks were made by "Arabs" to "Cristian places", by the way dont think mainstream Just because Is mainstream, pls inform yourself. And... In a comment down a video you cant judge the story that at last bring you here and now
I don't know that the modern Catholic Church really needs rescuing. They've dug their own grave ... It's a slow historical fall into that grave, but it's certainly where they have been headed. However, correcting the popular misunderstanding of the historical record of the medieval world is well worth the effort.
One big takeaway from this video for me is how much it highlights the piano's tonality and how so much of western music theory is filtered through the lens of the piano. These relationships are fine and can stand alone as long as they're played with simple enough tones, but the moment they start containing signicant amounts of overtones, you get the cacophony that the piano produces when it's playing the same voicings. Western music notation doesn't account for the tonal qualities of the waveform aside from what instrument it's written for, but if it did have notation for that it would probably indicate that those delicate ars nova voicings simply cannot be played on piano because it produces dissonant relationships between overtones that could be avoided on instruments with more purely sinusoidal tones.
YES!!! machaut on piano......hm...didnt quite sound as i have sung it in a vocal ensemble....then there is ....simultanuous playing all the notes and playing them in succession (albeit with some reverberance)....not transferable to piano entirely indeed
I love Bill Bailey and I appreciate that joke, but there is actually a difference between augmented 4th and diminished 5th. It has to do with context and where each note wants to resolve. The augmented 4th wants to resolve outward but the diminished 5th wants to resolve inward.
@@mastod0n1 For all of us who watch Adam Neely but are nonetheless not the best with music theory, what exactly does resolving outwards versus inwards mean? Out of key versus in key, upper octave root versus lower octave root, I'm lost.
Fascinating! Its a bit like how the myth of medieval 'flat earthers' actually came out of the Darwin debates in the 19th century. The whole period gets it pretty rough with the general popular idea about 'ignorance and superstition' in the middle ages. Drives medievalists crazy.
Yeah, I always love when people praise Columbus as this "genius who realized the Earth was round!" Everyone else knew it was round, and in fact they had fairly accurately calculated it's size in Ancient Greece. Columbus was the idiot, and thought the Earth was way smaller than what everyone else had calculated. Had the Americas not existed, him and his crew would have never reached India, their provisions (and ships) wouldn't have lasted that long. Dude went on what was basically a suicide mission because of his own stupidity, accidentally stumbled across another continent, and gets praised for being a genius. I am sure the guys who used some really impressive trigonometry to calculate the Earth's circumference, instead of wishful thinking, were rolling in their graves.
Wow! And I'd heard "flat earth" was something Jonathan Swift made up in the 17th or 18th century to mock overly religious or ignorant people. Fitting, as Swift is the one who said "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting its shoes on." ... or not, since he actually said “Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it.” GAHH! What all is a lie?? How can we know anymore?? :0
I’ve always thought that while yeah the tritone is dissonant, the “Devil’s Interval” concept did not seem realistic. They knew almost as much about music back then as we do now, with infinitely less technology. Thank you for clearing this up.
I really wish I was your student..anything history is something I love to take part in..and the fact that you love taking new things (especially from TH-cam) just shows how much you want others to learn..Thank U my guy~😂
As an archaeologist, I can confirm that in the last 3 mins you nailed exactly what's the most dangerous bias you might have when looking at the past! So thank you! And the way you turn around themes and pov is so smart!
I think one of the reasons Nirvana’s “Aneurysm” is so good is because its chord progression-F#/C/B/A-features an immediate jump from the first chord to its tritone chord.
Ironically, the depiction of the devil itself as we associate it (horns, red, fire etc) has little to do with actual religious texts (in fact “Satan” didnt even start out as a capitalized name, but rather was a descriptor). Rather it’s based on Dante Alighieri’s Catholic fanfic Divina Comedia.
Yeah he isn't very described physically, as the "evil/bad/danger/forbidden" can take many forms (from a snake in the Genesis, human, "the Beast"), and is used more as an adjective. Same with fire and hotness, which was back then associated with God and sainthood (burning bushes, fire for enlightment, the fire from the sky), and the rare description of evil is cold, outoflove. probably also linked to the humor theory, where fire was the source of life and love. I think the fireish thing comes from Dante at least. Also, (the?) Satan is presented as more of a treacherous, someone who will try to PERSUADE you from going away from God. God send the meteorites and other terrible treats, the devil just talks like "does HE loves you really, does He listens to you?". Well except for Job, where he seems able to spread disease (but with the permission of God), and in Apocalyspe where he uses minions to kill people but mostly to turn humans against each other in endless wars. So yeah back then the Devil was not the monstrous otherworldy ch'tuhlu thing (some angels are depicted more otherworldly), but more as a voice, someone who seems friendly but only wants to convince you to go away from God (and generally through cheering you into sins, or, when God permits it (?), with disaster to test your faith). (PS: I am not even christian, I just like religions lore).
Hearing that 14th century piece makes me want to hear more of it. I really want modern musicians to start capitalizing on these techniques, similar to the way some prog rock refreshes classical techniques.
To clarify, I'm guessing by "early medieval polyphony" you're meaning early polyphony in medieval periods, because of course in the early medieval years (like 500-800 CE), polyphony wasn't much of a thing in notated music was it? Though it was going on in folk music all over the place. Perotin wasn't till way later - 1199.
Before I knew much theory, I always called the jump from 0-6 as the “Nirvana Scream” because it sounded like a portion of Smells Like Teen Spirit. Now I use that interval a lot in my blues playing
I remember a guy telling me that it was banned in church, at which point I pulled a hymnal book and showed him multiple times in which it occured in harmonies of praise songs, and even a few Christmas songs.
In Indian Raaga music theory, we have a thaat called Kalyan. In that the defining characteristics is the usage of "Tivra Madhyam" which roughly translates to and literally is Augumented Fourth. Many raagas in this thaat, used this note in the main phrases. We don't have a concept of harmony but we hear this frequently in the melodies.
It's so funny to see other people's reactions when they mention the god particle and I explain the actual physics behind it and how difficult was to detect it at first. It's like : "Oh!" and they quickly deflate, since such an "awesome" topic became boring physics, although not boring for me. Same when you explain the Mayan Calendar and show 21/12/2012 was just an end of a cycle of it, not the end of the world. Just another cool conversation topic thrown into the gutter, and the person will have to rely on "sure the weather is nice today" as conversation topics once again.
You are awesome Adam. I'm going to show this to my Critical Thinking students - not only to culturize them a little bit in music, but also - to show them how to actually achieve a well driven process of analysis. Thank you so much for all your content 👏🏻
The view that history is a linear story of progress seems to be particularly strong in the US. We lose things as well as gain things, including knowledge.
and some things come back, like sausages sold in buns on the street. Some don´t, like hoods. And that doesn´t coincide with good or bad. It doesn´t even go in circles, it´s more of a timey-whimey-wiggly-waggly...kind of....stuff.
Almost 30 years ago in university, a profesor taught me the evil tritone and how “it was banned by the Catholic Church”. Maybe that’s why it is hard to get rid off this myth.
The history of historical narratives (and myths) themselves is endlessly fascinating. Adam is spot on in his pegging this myth to the narrative of the Enlightenment. Historians have for decades now been trying to kill the idea of "the dark ages," but it is an ever ongoing battle, as myth-debunking inevitably seems to always be.
Ooh! I'd love to learn more about this! I've been studying various topics in sociology and working on my personal health, and it's been interesting to learn how much knowledge was lost as we moved into "the Enlightenment" as that knowledge was deemed basically unhip and passe, whether it worked or not.
@@user-et3xn2jm1u sadly the Enlightenment was very successful in renarrating history to fit its secularist anti-religious worldview. That’s why in the past century we’ve moved to an anti- or post-enlightenment trend, with the rise of secular postmodernism and religious fundamentalism (‘fundamentalism’ not in the militant sense). Much of academia today (in theology, philosophy, history, & other humanities) is criticising the Enlightenment project.
The old church: "They fill their ears with impertinence, and they relieve them not. [...]" Blues musicians: **play dominent 7th chords with no intention of resolving the dissonance**
As a church musician and rock musician, I always thought what a farce the notion was. If we believe God created everything, well that includes the wonderful tritone. Thank you for bringing the prodigal interval back home.
@@lizamohd7151 Perhaps the term "rock musician" conjures the wrong imagery? There are genres that make a point of opposing church and faith - but I refer to otherwise, the more "mainstream" artists. My parents were career church musicians who also loved the secular music of their time, a freedom that they passed on. This is just my faith journey, and not in any way to comment on someone else's. These days I find equal joy playing for a room full of people dancing to their favorite music as I do singing in choir or doing a solo worship piece for the congregation. And more, again just me here, I believe God feels the same joy. Music is a miracle.
@@LifeInZadar My semantics were overly simplistic. I ought to have said, "God made creation and all that can come from it" or something like that. Of course God did not "create" slavery, or oppression, or war, or hate, or greed, or the many ills of humanity - people created those. And if we don't agree, that's fine :-)
When I was ABOUT to mention how the only aspect missing from this video is a commentary on Iluminism(the age of enlightment) and it's objectively wrong and misguided approach to history, this stigma of ignorance and backwardness attributed the past which bored itself into culture forever, Adam goes and mentions just that. We're glad to have you.
David Byrne (from Talking Heads) has a great book about music where he reframed the evolution of western music over the centuries as equally talented musicians writing for the context where their music was performed, and that context changing through the development of technology, changing what pressures musicians were under and eventually giving us more leeway to fuck around Like, if you're writing music for a choir to sing in a reverberant cathedral, you don't want to use much dissonance. With that 10 second reverb, where the last chord is still sounding while the next one plays, it will just turn into an incoherent mess. It's not that they were naive and afraid of the spicy notes, they were just writing for a performance context where those notes weren't very useful.
It's not surprising at all that dissonance became more common as the context changed to allow composers more control over the performance. In the classical period, a string quartet in some rich guy's mansion can get away with a lot more than a choir in a cathedral could. And on top of that, add in economic development. Wagner was able to commission his own performance space to his own specifications, to suit the type of music he wanted to write. Perotin could never have done that. Who knows what Perotin would have written if you have him a billion dollars and told him to do whatever he wanted?
And of course, today, with modern recording technology and synths and shit, we can literally make any sound we want and get away with it. And with the internet and stuff, we have a shot at finding an audience for whatever it is we want to do
Honestly this makes alot of sence. Last week i played a 4 choir Giovani Gabrielli piece and i noticed how many times there would be tritones in my voicing and sometimes in the harmony itself... but its still a very controlled I-V-I type of sounding piece
Great job, Adam!! Thanks for exposing this misconception and it’s fascinating roots. My favorite line, “I think this myth comes from a place where we’re wanting to feel superior to the past.” As ugly things go, prejudice is closer to the work of satan than the tritone.
Hm. I don't think this attitude towards the middle ages is "prejudice" per se... It is more of a common misunderstanding. There were many things that were simply not known or understood in the middle ages which we have since come to understand far better - particularly through the sciences. In this very limited sense, we do have a "superior" knowledge and methods. That seems to get exaggerated into a generalized sense of superiority in all capacities.
@@ems7623 Maybe. I’m reminded of the quote from LP Hartley: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” There’s no arguing that people of the present are more technologically advanced, but since when is technical achievement considered evidence of “superiority” in any other sense. The progressive moral intuition is to recoil from such comparisons in the present, always careful to look for the best in another culture, even if it is technically more “primitive”. We are (I believe correctly) loath to judge a culture purely on its material sophistication. I think Neely does a good job here of pointing out, also, that intellectual progress is not the same as cultural or moral progress. One might criticize medieval culture’s widespread ignorance and superstitions, but was the 20th century really any more civilized? Certainly not judging from the body count. In any case, feeling superior to others, whether culturally or historically or both at the same time, is one of humanity’s main moral failings that no amount of intellect or technology is likely to cure.
@@patricktalley4185 The problem I commonly see with people’s regard to the past is the notion that traditionalism or ancient cultures were superior morally or intellectually, which is common in music academia. I’ve seen more commonly people calling modern music primitive and archaic in simplicity. So, I think you are reaching with this argument. This has more to do with institutions teaching these things as historical fact and people believe it because it’s coming from experts. The truth is many ancient culture were in fact foolish in their thinking about many things, things science as well as technology have enlightened us greatly, of things and warrant the criticism, but then not everything they did was necessarily bad. Just like people love to criticise modern culture of asinine basis’ and others times they have good points. It all comes down to simply a misunderstanding. As to whether technology makes anyone superior, no but it can mean that people are lot smarter in many ways than ancient cultures. I wouldn’t necessarily say that’s superior. This means that as we advance, our understanding should also do so. Keep in mind the many uncivilised things people did in the 20th century, were blatantly disobedient. Even they boast about how morally superior they are to today’s culture, but when you look at the things they did, it shows they knew better and choose to be uncivilised anyway.
@@JRCGuitarist I don't think they're reaching with their argument at all, feeling superior to others based on historical context is silly, whether that's looking up at or down upon people of the past. Ultimately we lose and gain things as time marches on. A person my age living where I live hundreds of years ago had an entirely different skillset to the one I do, I am not more or less knowledgeable, I simply know different things. I have no clue how to properly wind-dry a salmon, where I should do that at, what sort of tools I'd need. Ultimately everyone always thinks they understand things, and yet we can always look back upon the immediate past and look at how foolish we were. In 2300, people will think the people of the 2020s were remarkably foolish, and maybe the people of the 1400s would see us as remarkably foolish. I would argue our greater "understanding" is a bit of a myth. In our day to day lives, we're simply handed information about the world around us, just like the people of the past were. Most of the information we all know is second-hand. There's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't make us "smarter" than people of the past.
Great dive into the myth of the tritone, but you may have perpetuated another myth. Machaut’s Mass was more likely written for the cathedral at Reims where he was employed in the 1360s, called “our lady’s” mass since that was the dedication of that cathedral, or written for one of many feasts of the Virgin.
I was taught in Music Theory (mid-1980s) that they were trying to "eliminate" the tritone by flatting the top note, or sharping the bottom note, which lead to our 12 major scales, since you could never get away from it. Thanks for a great in-depth video. It's great to geek out for an half an hour on a subject such as this.
Saying something is "hard as Hell" doesn't mean it's ACTUALLY FROM HELL. I find it amusing that people seem to think that just because ancient people were ancient that they didn't know what a "figure of speech" was and that they only spoke literally.
I's a very common thing for people to think past humans were antiquated and weren't just as smart, sarcastic, funny, etc. as we are today. Like, of course musicians back then would've complained that tritones and minor seconds were a pain in the ass to sing, because musicians in the present say that too! Historical change isn't a linear progression towards the perfection of the human race; culture changes, but people are still people.
Another aspect of the tritone: All intervals results from string divisions. The Greeks used the arithmetic mean, the harmonic mean and the geometric mean. The geometric mean is not part of the overtone series and is therefore never a natural tone or just intonation. The tritone as the geometric center of the scale is therefore something special and not just any dissonant interval! Many musicians were very concerned about this. Your video cleans up with common phrases and that's a good thing. Thank You!
I love this new fresh style, Adam. I love the silliness and playfulness in it. This episode was both educational and entertaining to a level that surpasses everything I've seen before. Keep it up. I like this new style.
@@NonJohns Nebula and curiosity stream should really open up to payment services like PP or directPay. They accept only credit cards, which are not super common here. I don´t even have a credit card. If I had, I´d have subscribed ages ago. Even Patreon accepts PP.
The quality of Adam's videos are forever improving. This is a thoroughly interesting video with very clear points and great editing. Also nice acting in the Devil costume and the mini chant lo-fi jazz beat
So many myths like this, especially surrounding the medieval ages, still persist today and it’s nice to see an entertaining and well researched video debunking one of them
Adam has created a false argument. He never shows the multitude of examples that show how composers themselves associated the tri-tone with evil or the devil. In other words, he makes a good case for his argument but not a good case. This whole video reeks of ego and jealousy that a far more talented musician, Jacob Collier, has become, rightly so, more appreciated than this clown.
I fondly remember Physical Education class at Arnold Junior School in Blackpool, Lancashire in 1977 during which our Welsh teacher, Mr Dresser, had his 9-year old students perform interpretive dance to the title track of Black Sabbath. Ironically, our headmaster, Mr Outhwaite, introduced the school to Holst during assembly. Tritones were getting a lot of airtime in 70s Blackpool. Love your work Adam Neely. Keep searching for truth and beauty (and spicy goodness).
@@vtnatureboy If those composers claimed that the tritone was banned during the middle ages, then yes they were wrong. Otherwise, there's nothing wrong with composing however you want to evoke a certain feeling.
@@kupopuffs420 I won't be able to say this without sounding holier-than-thou, but I do think it's entirely possible to avoid this sort of smugness about things you picked up from dubious sources by just making the distinction between "Well, you know they did it worse back then," and "I'm pretty sure it's commonly acknowledged that they did it worse back then." Because the former will absolutely be passed on as fact by some of the people hearing you say it, whereas the latter is much more likely to pass on the uncertainty, inspiring either care in the application of the bit of information, or the desire to investigate further. Being careful to hedge your words when you don't remember or don't have justified confidence in the source of your idea can go a long way.
@@vtnatureboy As someone that also has an advanced music degree, I think you should go back and get another degree in reading (listening?) comprehension. Dude is just saying the Tritone wasn’t banned.
The modern version version of this is saying that "the lick" was called "the lick" because it made people lick one another. I guess time will tell if this becomes the truth.
Thanks for watching! If you want to watch me rant about Guillame de Machaut's spicy 14th century harmony, you can check out the bonus video over on Nebula!
Get both CuriosityStream and Nebula for 26% off here (best deal): curiositystream.com/adamneely
What's up bud. I've been watching you.
@@scrumpeldwarf oh dear
did you grow a beard just so you could cosplay as the devil?
Hey man! Thanks for not being a dick about being so thoroughly correct in the face of such thorough incoreected... Incorrectly... Uhh... Incorr... Wrong!
thanks for you for clearing up the misinformation
The year is 2300, there are rumors that three hundred years ago the Lydian scale was banned as to not summon Jacob Collier.
Someone: raises a 4th
Jacob Collier: *AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHS* his way into the room with a G7913
HAHA! I cannot breathe. This is great!
Year is 2301, someone managed to summon him by playing Lydian b9
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
I thought it would summon Rick Astley?
It’s amazing how hard the repetition legitimizes part hits. I guess repetition really does legitimize legitimately
The repetition of repetition legitimizes legitimizes its repetition
Repetition of the repetition of repetition legitimizes legitimizes the repetition of repetition legitimizes legitimizes the repetition of repetition and thus legitimizes the repetition of repetition legitimizes
You know what's funny? When Adam mentioned the "two types of tritones", comparing the lighter rising tritone to the sadder descending tritone, I immediately thought of lovemenot. I'm 90% sure the 2nd to the 3rd note in the guitar intro is a tritone by listening. I'll have to actually play it on a piano when its not so late lol.
I think the reason repetition legitimizes is because repetition legitimizes, y'know?
How repetitively legit
If there's anything I've learned from studying history it's that people in the past were always smarter than we give them credit for.
Not only people of the past but just others in general and there's a psycho concept about it don't remember the name though
Smartest thing I’ve heard all week :)
The flipside is also true -- people today aren't NEARLY as smart as they think they are.
so true. underestimating the past is part of our nature, but technology in special really screwed our perception of history
In some ways. But in other ways they were so shockingly stupid
Can Medieval lo-fi become a thing already? I didn't know I needed that in my life, but now I desperately do.
I think it's more lo-fi since it's merely a sample of a medieval tune. But using medieval instruments and choral harmony to simulate a lo-fi type beat would be a pretty cool experiment.
@@santoriomaker69 Yeah, it would be so cool. Hopefully someone will make it someday! 😀
There are absolutely bands making Medieval European folk music.
Heilung is a good place to start.
@@santoriomaker69 No, what you should do is mix medieval/ars nova theory with lo fi
Not a million miles away from the works of Richard Souther way back in the day - th-cam.com/video/NC6hXhD2OBE/w-d-xo.html
That 13th century lofi is fire af
balls in my face
Definitely worth it's own video
we stan
God Christ Jesus bless you all and have a wonderful day my family!
love you all
Someone today: "Man, this riff is SICK!"
Someone in 2321: "300 years ago, this sequence of notes was banned by health officials who declared it to cause disease"
Genius and very underrated comment
Blessed d+
It was the cause of the covid-19 epidemic. 👍
Exactly.
That riff was sick and he absolutely killed it!
Maybe the real "devil's interval" was the friends we made along the way
😁👌
I'd like but there's a flawless 666 likes
What is this from?
You are yes.
@@Pteromandias I'm not sure, but apparently the first use of the original phrase online was in reference to One Piece, which is very apt.
Where I learned music theory, the teacher kept declaring that the tritone was "the ugliest" interval so I started calling it "the nicest" interval in retaliation. I didn't even like it that much, looking back on it. But no interval shall be deemed the ugliest if I have anything to say about it!
Then I got into jazz and realised that the tritone is probably the most interesting and versatile interval out there - it can sound ominous, expectant, sarcastic, whatever you like. It can make the melody spicier or it can peacefully resolve into a minor sixth.
Wow ur such a revolutionary
As a historian of medieval Europe, THANK YOU. Not just for the content, but for your attention to scholarship and respect towards it.
Me... Die... Devil... Evil? Juggalio dude that is so effin' Metal you *gotta* respect it -- even if historically Europe were total gaylords what with all that "Final Countdown" power ballad sh*t...
Jeg
Woooow that's impressive (to know you're a true historian) and inspiring... You're so right, we don't have enough respect and admiration for scholarships nowadays....
As a historian it’s always really frustrating when people assume people in the past where just dumber than we are now. Thank’s for pushing back on this.
I just wanted to write that.
People forget that they're riding easy on thousands of years of innovation, yet they themselves have never had an original thought.
Or that they didn't care for hygiene and were always covered in mud. Or that they were flat earthers or all died before 30 (shout out to Shadiversity). Or that the commoners didn't know any life aside from hard labour. And were also illiterate (in the present meaning of this word)
@@Riot076 Metatron has a great follow-up on Shadiversity’s video.
@@germansnowman I've seen this one as well. He made some really valid points (as usual)
Imagine if they banned the lick so they didn’t summon Adam
Give it 200 years and repetition will legitimize it as a fact.
L I C C*
an fact
Too late! :D
Too late, LegalEagle already used it. :D
"Repetition legitimizes" is such an interesting and deep concept, because sometimes it cannot change the truth (like rewriting history, or changing the laws of physics), but sometimes it can (like word definitions and evolutions of language). This subtle distinction can be quite fascinating.
There's lists and lists of words that have changed meaning over time, or been invented as we need them. Some people will say that these aren't 'real' words until they're added to a dictionary, but in actuality, a word must be 'real' before it will be added to any dictionary.
Sorry, bit of a tangent there :P
But the truth (aka your standpoint) has also to be repeated - so it's always word against word.
it can rewrite history
not the facts, but their interpretation
@@NoNameAtAll2 That's what I meant; the actual events of the past cannot be changed. The stories we tell cannot change the past (though they can change how we remember the past).
@@Phlarx but it might as well be, since interpretations=facts if no other evidences exist
i dont know if it was to keep the video monetized or what, but the original quote is "if you repeat the lie enough, it becomes the truth" and was a trick used by nazis to legitimize their propaganda. It only really works with things people cannot go check themselves, or atleast heavily banks on people being too lazy (or afraid) to go check themselves. Most of advertisement uses it, that's why influencers exist and they say " this vpn has military grade encryption" so often.
The “tritone is the devil’s interval” myth is basically the “everyone was a flat earther” myth of music history.
Tell that to Camille Saint-Saens.
@@vtnatureboy Who isn't "everyone"
BTW, it's often easy to spot this kind of myth. When people say "during some centuries, the triton was banned by the Church in some places" it directly rings a bell. A serious claim would be "this guy in year X banned the triton to be used in place Y". When an historical claim is always excessively vague, it's surely a myth.
@@ZAWARUD00 Good catch. This is also true for most dissimulative claims overall: When someone's lying, they usually use vague and unspecific language.
@ Martin Winter, was going to say the same thing :) Myths about myths and myths about my-time-period-is-better-than-all-other-time-periods. We say "Kids these days..." but also say "People back then..." 🤦 Just pick one already. I will add that at least it's understandable why people today believe the tritone myth while, however, there's no reason/excuse for believing everyone was a flat earther at one time.
The "devil in music" myth was literally in my music theory textbook. Really goes to show how easy it is for misinformation to become canonized.
same
There is a distinction to be made: if your textbook propagates the myth that it was banned, then sure, let's be mad about it. But most authors of such books have a very strong desire to appear as posh as possible, and throwing around useless terminology like "Diabolus in Musica" is the easiest way for them to do that. They don't necessarily *want* to spread any misinformation, but since they fail at properly explaining the context (aka their only job as a textbook author), that is exactly what happens when the students inevitably misunderstand what's written in the book.
“… become canonized” - I see what you did there ;)
Right up there with "Columbus proved the earth is round".
@@Tmanaz480 Columbus proved the earth is round *Laughs in medieval Portuguese's armillary sphere*
"a chord progression called the tritone". That one just stung.
Even better: the guy's playing A major
“yet ever present in the minor 7th chord”
worse I think is 'a note called the tritone'
There's a lot of great Tweets here... I'm partial to 12:10 "Literally 3 notes (...) Once banned by the church 😈"
Oh, just 3 then? That would surely be exceedingly easy to fact check, you'd think.
@@eboone 🤢🤢
Thinking back to my first college music history course - which began in the middle ages - I distinctly remember the professor saying "the tritone was never banned." Oddly, at that point I had never heard the myth that it was, so I was just completely confused by his insistence.
as a musicology student, I must say that I enjoy your longer documentary-like videos very much, I fall in awe thinking about all the research and thought you put into this. Thank you Adam!
As someone who only has the shallowest understanding of music theory from high school band 20 years ago, I love them too! I think that's one of Adam's greatest strengths: he can take very technical material and make it approachable and engaging no matter what your level of understanding is!
This is brilliant Adam, why did I legitimately learn more about tritones from this video than in a zillion years of early music conservatory??? Love a surprise James Tenney mention too (his spatial music is wild) 🎵
Were any of your teachers classically trained metal-heads? 😆
James Tenney is sooooo rad. Diapasón is one of the best pieces I’ve heard!
Cause you were a lazy student prob lol? :D
Yooooo it's Sarah
Yooooo team recorder! I started recorder because of you!
Fuck my life, I can't believe how many times I've been the guy that says this to people only to now learn why it's complete bullshit. Sincerely though, thanks Adam. I'm genuinely so glad I learned where this all came from now.
Same!
Probably the majority of us honestly. I first heard it when learning part-writing in high school. Though, my understanding was simply that it was to be avoided and never used as anything more than a passing tone to be resolved. The "devil in music" trope was pointed out but no one said it was outright banned. Just frowned upon. Like, "This thing sounds bad. Avoid it as much as possible." Honestly, my theory teachers made a much bigger deal about not using parallel 4ths, 5ths, and octaves (but especially 5ths) to such a degree you'd think that was the _real_ devil in music back then 😛
X2
And I have never heard about this ban, so thank you Adam, that you and not any of the misinformed would command my attention.
Yep. In the same club.
Bravo sir for correctly pronouncing "Ye olde days" (9:40) The "Y" at the beginning of "Ye" used to be an Anglo Saxon letter known as the "thorn" which was pronounced as "th", it looked quite a lot like a "Y" and as such at the advent of the printing press was often substituted by a "Y" leading to modern confusions and people pronouncing "ye olde" in a way which was never intended.
I guess repetition legitimized that one, too. How fascinating.
Did you know that thorn was banned in the middle ages by the catholic church bc of its connection to paganism??
YES I LOVE THIS FACT
Þ or lower case þ, to spare those interested some time googling. incidentally, the letter 'eth' (ð) was also dropped, though it was never replaced directly in print. instead it was simply replaced with the digraph 'th'
thorn actually looked like this þ, but german printing presses didn't have it (as the German language didn't have it); replacing it with a y and e stamped on top of eachother, and eventually a y and e next to eachother, "ye" and then that somehow became a "th," though I forgot how that happened. Thorn is a pretty neat letter though! I think we should bring it back! (Well, Icelandic still uses it. It's not completely gone.)
Came to see the Devil costume…stayed for the lo-fi…and to hear you say “ars nova” a bajillion times.
That Viderunt Omnes Lo-Fi slaps hard!
New arse lol
Love how you music creators support each other! Y’all rock!!
The lo-fi was 🔥🔥
That lo-fi reminded me a lot of one song from the Silent Hill 2 tho... (white noiz)
I love how Adam Neely spent a few days not shaving just so he could play Satan for like two minutes.
He probably already had the beard. Filmed the parts as the devil, shaved and then filmed the rest.
So that’s what’s taken so long for the next video! :)
I firmly believe that he grew the goatie in over a month.
That was clearly the Adam from the darkest timeline. And he's using the power of dissonance, memes, and social media to convince us to summon him and take over the life of our timeline's Adam. I bet Jacob Collier has a goatee in the other timeline as well.
Evil Jake and evil Adam!
He summoned the beard using tritones
We need more respectful and accurcate "um actually" stuff like this. There's so much disinfo that gets mutated and malformed and reshared today in so many topics and it's a game of telephone on an evergrowing level. Snd when you get 'certified' ppl involved it can allow for b.s. to catch on even quicker(like the Jacob Collier thing). This is a refreshing format to combat that.
One thing my high school music director drilled into us was: "Practice isn't perfect. Practice is permanent. So learn it right the first time."
I love how Adam basically did a genealogy of this concept to deconstruct our misconceptions of medieval music.
I can't decide what's better: debunking a pernicious myth or shining a spotlight on the radness that is early music.
Thank you Adam!
Make an EP called "repetition legitimizes" containing all the lo-fi tracks you've made for your videos please.
I second this.
I decasecond this
PLEASE yes, also the stuff from the microtonal equal temperament video
@@TheSummoner I second this.
Much agreed
Very fun Adam. Nicely done.
I just found something I was amazed I didn't see before:
Take the tritone that occurs in the C major scale, B-F. Resolve it inward by half-step and you get C-E, strongly suggesting a C major chord. Now, go back to B-F(E#) and resolve it OUTWARD by half-step. You get A#-F#, strongly suggesting an F# major chord, as far away from C major as you can get. One simple, beautiful interval spans the entire tonal system!
The greatest trick the Tritone Ban ever pulled was convincing the world he did exist.
But what if he does, you know?
🤣
I want to like this, but it's got 666 now and that seems appropriate for this video.
@@Moonless_Future same I hit like then undid it
You, my friend have won the comments. -Chris
What a well made and perfectly paced docu… He is really in a league by himself for music content.
It's incredible how the timbre of the instrument affects how harsh a tritone can sound. Hearing the chant, there's a certain richness between the reverb and the complexity of human voices that is entirely absent when hearing it on a dry piano sound.
I wouldn't be surprised if the choir is not singing in equal temperament.
@@owenbloomfield1177 that's a good point I hadn't considered. I wouldn't be either, now that you mention it.
I prefer a string patch to a piano patch on my keyboards for trying out chord movements, piano makes the more dissonant chords extra dissonant.
The almighty "20th century harmony" really opened my eyes to how drastically timbre affects the harmonic colour of a piece. Definitely changed the way I see the relationship between orchestration and composition.
Good point. I have tried to play it on my cello, and even discounting my not so good intonation (lol), it doesn't sound good. My teacher tried it too, it sounds horrible, really, when you try to play both notes of the tritone at the same time.
19:00 I wonder if Koji Kondo knew about this when composing Saria's Song versus the Song of Healing. I'm sure there are other aspects of the pieces that lend to their respective atmospheres but it was always fascinating to me that the same tritone played ascending versus descending changed the mood of the song.
Yeah,
It’s so playful and misty sounding, like forest feel like.
Interesting too, considering the only notes you can really play on the ocarina are D, F, A, B, and D, making the tritone very easy to access, but the major chord becomes elusive
ascending tritone: delightful
descending tritone: devilish
purchasing fast food and disguising it as my own cooking: delightfully devilish
Well, Shane, you’re a strange man, but I must admit: you steam a good ham.
A tritone!? In this musical period, in this harmonic style, in this part of Western Europe, localized entirely within your piece commissioned by the Catholic Church!?
@@klimentmilanov yes
@@callumwoulahan7681 Can I listen to it?
@@slowpunkforslowpunks2050 No
Music theory is like one of my other hobbies, linguistics, in that people like to perpetuate myths that have no historical basis in order to feel like they are more advanced and evolved than those who came before them.
Like "Eskimos have over 200 words for snow!"
I'm also a linguistics geek and the debunking of this "fact" was a key moment for me in seeing how much misinformation is continually propagated. Most areas of study are more complicated than can be explained with these kind of factoids.
@@tiddlypom2097 Linguistics gang. the "100s of words for snow" one is really annoying.
there's also a lot of bad takes about English spelling. the worst is "'ghoti' is actually a spelling of /fɪʃ/ that is perfectly consistent with English spelling rules" like no it's not. find me one English word that uses for /f/ at the beginning of a word or for /ʃ/ at the end of a word. or even one word that isn't "women" that uses for /ɪ/ (that one *might* exist actually? but I can't think of one off the top of my head so). Like no that's not how English spelling works
@@jolkert_ "try to find me the one word that does this that's not the one word that does this"? 😶 I'm not trying to be an asshole, but...
@@jolkert_ I mean ive always found the ghoti thing pretty funny as well as pretty useful as a tool to show people the inconsistencies of English orthography. I dont think anyone is literally saying this word could naturally occur, it's more of a 'hey look, heres some weird relationships between sound and writing that you probably haven't noticed' gesture and it can very easily be followed up by a 'now let's think about why this looks so unnatural' to demonstrate exactly how context dependent the patterns of english spelling are. it's a good meme and it mostly gets used fine imo.
Narcissism of Small Differences? Smells like it.
Yeah I've never heard of this myth, but as a historian, reading all those tweets and watching to all those clips made me want to cry. Shit's too real and I gotta deal with it all the time.
biologist. I feel you.
Twitter is the equivalent of why you don't give people too much power
I'm glad I'm not alone in that, because I started breaking down hearing from Brad Nunn's comment that this misinformation makes it's way into the exact place it shouldn't.
Yep, fellow historian. So sick of people thinking that those who lived before us were silly or stupid or less enlightened.
history student, and yeah :(
hey! the idea you mentioned of composing music for the big halls might also be the reason behind pop culture's (especially cartoons, think simpsons or something) obsession with that "aaah" sound, it is so characteristic of something godly, or heavenly in those realms and as to why that "aaah" was chosen is because it was the most powerful part of compositions you could hear in a church.
Adam, you are no longer making essays. This production quality is through the roof on this. Damn, son, this is such a joy to watch.
The PERFECT tritone ever present in the minor seventh chord
There are just so many things wrong with that tweet it’s hilarious
It’s a great example of knowing a word exists without knowing what it actually means.
these people really typing just to type
Those are all indeed words in an order.
there was another one that seemed to imply that the tritone is literally 3 notes
@@Cloiss_ Well, "tri" and "tone". I can't even blame him to not understand what tritone is
I would love way more lofi-chant tracks
Do you know if this one was released?
Yes please!
Don't worry pals, I'll remake it!
@@netrunnerz bet. Please do it
@@jonbezeau3124 delete your comment it's not relevant to the reply section.
Adam, I love your channel more and more. Admittedly sometimes I don't understand you (because some of the videos are too advanced for me but it's my fault) but you have a way of explaining music theory that really appeals to me. Thank you for sharing with us your experience and expertise as a musician
This is how you educate the internet in 2021: you make 13th century lo-fi beats to study/summon the devil to
Underrated comment
You made me choke on a chicken nugget
“Forgive me, father, for I have sinned. It has been a year since my last confession. I, uh… I played a tritone today in music class…”
why do we have the same username lol
@@mb-176 what- @@@m b
I've spent many hours of my life debunking historical myths about the Catholic Church and the Middle Ages, around topics like the Crusades, the Inquisition, Galileo, various Catholic doctrines, and more. As such, I really appreciate this video. From my perspective, this "devil's interval" myth fits perfectly into the larger pattern of modern fallacies regarding the Middle Ages.
Yep, its easy to spit on the Church, sadly... And apology is not always possibile, but the Truth will search who He want to know Him! See you in heaven hopefully!
@@tumfilius3245 The RCC is evil. Don't get it twisted just bc this lie is perpetuated doesn't mean everything else is a myth. This 1 lie doesn't absolve the RCC on all the evil things they did. God will judge those who participated in the Inquisition, crusades, and did evil things in the dark ages. The Bible actually foretold everything the RCC would do. RCC in it's origins is more pagan than Christian.
@@xintimidate what do you mean with RCC? Feels like a generalization
@@xintimidate by the way "dark ages" was dark just because some people start talking bad about the past, at the time of crusades, for exemple, Arab people understand why crusades were done. More than 500 attaks were made by "Arabs" to "Cristian places", by the way dont think mainstream Just because Is mainstream, pls inform yourself. And...
In a comment down a video you cant judge the story that at last bring you here and now
I don't know that the modern Catholic Church really needs rescuing. They've dug their own grave ... It's a slow historical fall into that grave, but it's certainly where they have been headed.
However, correcting the popular misunderstanding of the historical record of the medieval world is well worth the effort.
One big takeaway from this video for me is how much it highlights the piano's tonality and how so much of western music theory is filtered through the lens of the piano. These relationships are fine and can stand alone as long as they're played with simple enough tones, but the moment they start containing signicant amounts of overtones, you get the cacophony that the piano produces when it's playing the same voicings. Western music notation doesn't account for the tonal qualities of the waveform aside from what instrument it's written for, but if it did have notation for that it would probably indicate that those delicate ars nova voicings simply cannot be played on piano because it produces dissonant relationships between overtones that could be avoided on instruments with more purely sinusoidal tones.
YES!!! machaut on piano......hm...didnt quite sound as i have sung it in a vocal ensemble....then there is ....simultanuous playing all the notes and playing them in succession (albeit with some reverberance)....not transferable to piano entirely indeed
As Bill Bailey put it: "this is an augmented forth or a diminished fifth, depending on your outlook on life."
I suppose both, all pure tritones have inverses
I love Bill Bailey and I appreciate that joke, but there is actually a difference between augmented 4th and diminished 5th. It has to do with context and where each note wants to resolve. The augmented 4th wants to resolve outward but the diminished 5th wants to resolve inward.
@@mastod0n1 they are literally different notes in any system of JI, singers will also usually hit one or the other but rarely the 12tet one
@@mastod0n1 For all of us who watch Adam Neely but are nonetheless not the best with music theory, what exactly does resolving outwards versus inwards mean? Out of key versus in key, upper octave root versus lower octave root, I'm lost.
@@drpibisback7680 The 4< resolves to a 6 while the 5> resolves to a 3
Fascinating!
Its a bit like how the myth of medieval 'flat earthers' actually came out of the Darwin debates in the 19th century. The whole period gets it pretty rough with the general popular idea about 'ignorance and superstition' in the middle ages. Drives medievalists crazy.
"medievalists" lol
Yeah, I always love when people praise Columbus as this "genius who realized the Earth was round!"
Everyone else knew it was round, and in fact they had fairly accurately calculated it's size in Ancient Greece. Columbus was the idiot, and thought the Earth was way smaller than what everyone else had calculated. Had the Americas not existed, him and his crew would have never reached India, their provisions (and ships) wouldn't have lasted that long.
Dude went on what was basically a suicide mission because of his own stupidity, accidentally stumbled across another continent, and gets praised for being a genius. I am sure the guys who used some really impressive trigonometry to calculate the Earth's circumference, instead of wishful thinking, were rolling in their graves.
The Medievalists sounds like a great band name
@@MatthewSmith-sz1yq Calling Columbus and idiot is quite ignorant. There is far to much evidence to debunk that claim.
Wow! And I'd heard "flat earth" was something Jonathan Swift made up in the 17th or 18th century to mock overly religious or ignorant people.
Fitting, as Swift is the one who said "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting its shoes on." ... or not, since he actually said “Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it.” GAHH! What all is a lie?? How can we know anymore?? :0
"All these 'Lil' rappers with their triplet flow." - Pope John XXII
I’ve always thought that while yeah the tritone is dissonant, the “Devil’s Interval” concept did not seem realistic. They knew almost as much about music back then as we do now, with infinitely less technology. Thank you for clearing this up.
That sudden lo-fi section hit me like a truck in the best way possible.
I'm a teacher, and I'm going to use part 5 as an example of the difference between history and memory. Thanks Adam!
I really wish I was your student..anything history is something I love to take part in..and the fact that you love taking new things (especially from TH-cam) just shows how much you want others to learn..Thank U my guy~😂
Hell yeah
As an archaeologist, I can confirm that in the last 3 mins you nailed exactly what's the most dangerous bias you might have when looking at the past! So thank you! And the way you turn around themes and pov is so smart!
I think one of the reasons Nirvana’s “Aneurysm” is so good is because its chord progression-F#/C/B/A-features an immediate jump from the first chord to its tritone chord.
Ironically, the depiction of the devil itself as we associate it (horns, red, fire etc) has little to do with actual religious texts (in fact “Satan” didnt even start out as a capitalized name, but rather was a descriptor). Rather it’s based on Dante Alighieri’s Catholic fanfic Divina Comedia.
yup, with some babylonic demons thrown in ad libitum.
although Lucifer is mentioned in the bible AFAIK. But all depictions of lucifer are that of a beautiful angel, not a Pan+Baal+Poseidon mashup demon.
@@Bronze_Age_Sea_Person Even his name means "the enlighter" (lux + -iferous)!
Yeah he isn't very described physically, as the "evil/bad/danger/forbidden" can take many forms (from a snake in the Genesis, human, "the Beast"), and is used more as an adjective.
Same with fire and hotness, which was back then associated with God and sainthood (burning bushes, fire for enlightment, the fire from the sky), and the rare description of evil is cold, outoflove. probably also linked to the humor theory, where fire was the source of life and love. I think the fireish thing comes from Dante at least.
Also, (the?) Satan is presented as more of a treacherous, someone who will try to PERSUADE you from going away from God. God send the meteorites and other terrible treats, the devil just talks like "does HE loves you really, does He listens to you?". Well except for Job, where he seems able to spread disease (but with the permission of God), and in Apocalyspe where he uses minions to kill people but mostly to turn humans against each other in endless wars.
So yeah back then the Devil was not the monstrous otherworldy ch'tuhlu thing (some angels are depicted more otherworldly), but more as a voice, someone who seems friendly but only wants to convince you to go away from God (and generally through cheering you into sins, or, when God permits it (?), with disaster to test your faith).
(PS: I am not even christian, I just like religions lore).
catholic fanfic lmao
I need this lo-fi track man. These little snippets of music you make are so goddamm good.
we all need adam to release a lofi album
Same
Fr, got his lofi xmas tracks he did when he had them on bandcamp. Would do again for this.
I'm very happy that you're exposing people to the greatness of early medieval polyphony. We need melodies in modern music again
Hearing that 14th century piece makes me want to hear more of it. I really want modern musicians to start capitalizing on these techniques, similar to the way some prog rock refreshes classical techniques.
To clarify, I'm guessing by "early medieval polyphony" you're meaning early polyphony in medieval periods, because of course in the early medieval years (like 500-800 CE), polyphony wasn't much of a thing in notated music was it? Though it was going on in folk music all over the place. Perotin wasn't till way later - 1199.
Before I knew much theory, I always called the jump from 0-6 as the “Nirvana Scream” because it sounded like a portion of Smells Like Teen Spirit. Now I use that interval a lot in my blues playing
The "lo-fi choral" is basically a Massive Attack song.
It was called trip-hop in the 90's.
I remember a guy telling me that it was banned in church, at which point I pulled a hymnal book and showed him multiple times in which it occured in harmonies of praise songs, and even a few Christmas songs.
Adam always stands apart from the rest of the TH-cam crowd with these extremely well-researched deep-dives. So much effort; VERY much appreciated!
In Indian Raaga music theory, we have a thaat called Kalyan. In that the defining characteristics is the usage of "Tivra Madhyam" which roughly translates to and literally is Augumented Fourth. Many raagas in this thaat, used this note in the main phrases. We don't have a concept of harmony but we hear this frequently in the melodies.
That’s super fascinating.
On even shorter time scales, the higgs boson became "the god particle" from being originally "that goddamn particle"... patterns I'm finding...
omg i didn't even know hahaha
It's so funny to see other people's reactions when they mention the god particle and I explain the actual physics behind it and how difficult was to detect it at first. It's like : "Oh!" and they quickly deflate, since such an "awesome" topic became boring physics, although not boring for me.
Same when you explain the Mayan Calendar and show 21/12/2012 was just an end of a cycle of it, not the end of the world. Just another cool conversation topic thrown into the gutter, and the person will have to rely on "sure the weather is nice today" as conversation topics once again.
the daseian scale is actually just a bunch of licc baits stacked on top of each other
I thought I was the only one who noticed
Licc tease
Dasein scale? The Being There scale?
@@mattgilbert7347 ahahah nice heidegger reference
I thought I was the only one lmaooo
In the late 20th century, the minor 2nd was banned on beaches to avoid summoning sharks.
You are awesome Adam. I'm going to show this to my Critical Thinking students - not only to culturize them a little bit in music, but also - to show them how to actually achieve a well driven process of analysis. Thank you so much for all your content 👏🏻
So the tritonus was not avoided in medieval music?
The view that history is a linear story of progress seems to be particularly strong in the US. We lose things as well as gain things, including knowledge.
and some things come back, like sausages sold in buns on the street. Some don´t, like hoods. And that doesn´t coincide with good or bad. It doesn´t even go in circles, it´s more of a timey-whimey-wiggly-waggly...kind of....stuff.
That's called the Whig theory of history
the view that the US is only the country affected by general human failures seems to be particularly strong on the internet.
Wow the amount of primary sources found for this is pretty incredible
Almost 30 years ago in university, a profesor taught me the evil tritone and how “it was banned by the Catholic Church”. Maybe that’s why it is hard to get rid off this myth.
About the same here.
University professor.....
I learned about it in a music appreciation class.
He probably hated God.
I love how the devil is wearing a shirt with the lick
The history of historical narratives (and myths) themselves is endlessly fascinating. Adam is spot on in his pegging this myth to the narrative of the Enlightenment. Historians have for decades now been trying to kill the idea of "the dark ages," but it is an ever ongoing battle, as myth-debunking inevitably seems to always be.
Ooh! I'd love to learn more about this! I've been studying various topics in sociology and working on my personal health, and it's been interesting to learn how much knowledge was lost as we moved into "the Enlightenment" as that knowledge was deemed basically unhip and passe, whether it worked or not.
@@user-et3xn2jm1u sadly the Enlightenment was very successful in renarrating history to fit its secularist anti-religious worldview.
That’s why in the past century we’ve moved to an anti- or post-enlightenment trend, with the rise of secular postmodernism and religious fundamentalism (‘fundamentalism’ not in the militant sense). Much of academia today (in theology, philosophy, history, & other humanities) is criticising the Enlightenment project.
The old church: "They fill their ears with impertinence, and they relieve them not. [...]"
Blues musicians: **play dominent 7th chords with no intention of resolving the dissonance**
As a church musician and rock musician, I always thought what a farce the notion was. If we believe God created everything, well that includes the wonderful tritone. Thank you for bringing the prodigal interval back home.
How come you can be a church musician and rock musician? .It's sound interesting..
Did God create the wonderful slavery, too?
@@lizamohd7151 Perhaps the term "rock musician" conjures the wrong imagery? There are genres that make a point of opposing church and faith - but I refer to otherwise, the more "mainstream" artists. My parents were career church musicians who also loved the secular music of their time, a freedom that they passed on. This is just my faith journey, and not in any way to comment on someone else's. These days I find equal joy playing for a room full of people dancing to their favorite music as I do singing in choir or doing a solo worship piece for the congregation. And more, again just me here, I believe God feels the same joy. Music is a miracle.
@@LifeInZadar My semantics were overly simplistic. I ought to have said, "God made creation and all that can come from it" or something like that. Of course God did not "create" slavery, or oppression, or war, or hate, or greed, or the many ills of humanity - people created those. And if we don't agree, that's fine :-)
@@davidpage9355 I certainly agree that we humans created all of those things.
I'm almost entirely ignorant of 'music theory,' and you intrigue and inspire me. What an extraordinary perspective you offer. Thank you so much!
Side note: I love the phrase "jpeg'd into oblivion"
We're truly living in a digital age now that "jpeg'd into oblivion" is more relatable than "Xerox of a xerox".
When Bojack Horseman’s downfall in Season 6 is named “Jpeg’d into oblivion”
@@daanwilmer Xerox wasn't a thing in my language, it was just called copy machine.
Simulacrum of Simulacrum!!
When I was ABOUT to mention how the only aspect missing from this video is a commentary on Iluminism(the age of enlightment) and it's objectively wrong and misguided approach to history, this stigma of ignorance and backwardness attributed the past which bored itself into culture forever, Adam goes and mentions just that. We're glad to have you.
Imagine an alternative history where the tritone was described as "a pain in the ass" and it became known as the music of kinky sex.
Insert the painting by Hieronymus Bosch which has a guy playing a trumpet with his ass here.
Then the soundtracks to anal scenes would be super jazzy
Esse comentário devia ter mais atenção 😭
I mean, there are tritones all over the Nine Inch Nails discography... and damn if that isn’t classic bdsm background music.
David Byrne (from Talking Heads) has a great book about music where he reframed the evolution of western music over the centuries as equally talented musicians writing for the context where their music was performed, and that context changing through the development of technology, changing what pressures musicians were under and eventually giving us more leeway to fuck around
Like, if you're writing music for a choir to sing in a reverberant cathedral, you don't want to use much dissonance. With that 10 second reverb, where the last chord is still sounding while the next one plays, it will just turn into an incoherent mess. It's not that they were naive and afraid of the spicy notes, they were just writing for a performance context where those notes weren't very useful.
It's not surprising at all that dissonance became more common as the context changed to allow composers more control over the performance. In the classical period, a string quartet in some rich guy's mansion can get away with a lot more than a choir in a cathedral could.
And on top of that, add in economic development. Wagner was able to commission his own performance space to his own specifications, to suit the type of music he wanted to write. Perotin could never have done that. Who knows what Perotin would have written if you have him a billion dollars and told him to do whatever he wanted?
And of course, today, with modern recording technology and synths and shit, we can literally make any sound we want and get away with it. And with the internet and stuff, we have a shot at finding an audience for whatever it is we want to do
Note to self: never get into an argument with Adam. The lenghts he will go through to prove you're wrong are ridiculous.
doesn't that just make him easy to control
Honestly though, if you call out Jacob on something he said, you better make sure noone will have any ground to attack you :D
Cross out ridiculous, and replace with wondrous.
@@Digital-Dan Yes! I meant ridiculous in the most positive and incredible way!
This is him not even in an argument! Imagine how much more thorough he'd be
The real devil's music is autotuning Veder's voice. That made me feel all sorts of creeped out.
That lofi gregorian jam was really tight. Much like this video.
I was always skeptical of that story. Thanks for setting the record straight
Jacob and co.: Tritones are so dissonant they can literally summon devils
me: *hold my badly tuned guitar*
Pokémonishly laughs in the minor second and tritones
"And can I learn this interval?"
"Not from a Jedi."
"Have you heard of Tony Iommi the wise" ?...
ha! :D nice one
have you ever heard the tragedy of the tritone?
@@manueldelsol31270 I thought not. It's not a story the Catholic Church would tell you.
“Not from a pop artist”
Adam is living proof that all music when rendered to its root form is Lofi Dilla Jazz! This is gospel!
Honestly this makes alot of sence. Last week i played a 4 choir Giovani Gabrielli piece and i noticed how many times there would be tritones in my voicing and sometimes in the harmony itself... but its still a very controlled I-V-I type of sounding piece
"He shows me a chord progression called 'the tritone'..." hmm... something don't add up with this statement 🤔
The number of "tritone was banned" comments who think "the tritone" consists of three notes played together, though.
Great job, Adam!! Thanks for exposing this misconception and it’s fascinating roots.
My favorite line, “I think this myth comes from a place where we’re wanting to feel superior to the past.”
As ugly things go, prejudice is closer to the work of satan than the tritone.
Hm. I don't think this attitude towards the middle ages is "prejudice" per se... It is more of a common misunderstanding. There were many things that were simply not known or understood in the middle ages which we have since come to understand far better - particularly through the sciences. In this very limited sense, we do have a "superior" knowledge and methods. That seems to get exaggerated into a generalized sense of superiority in all capacities.
@@ems7623 Maybe. I’m reminded of the quote from LP Hartley: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
There’s no arguing that people of the present are more technologically advanced, but since when is technical achievement considered evidence of “superiority” in any other sense.
The progressive moral intuition is to recoil from such comparisons in the present, always careful to look for the best in another culture, even if it is technically more “primitive”. We are (I believe correctly) loath to judge a culture purely on its material sophistication.
I think Neely does a good job here of pointing out, also, that intellectual progress is not the same as cultural or moral progress. One might criticize medieval culture’s widespread ignorance and superstitions, but was the 20th century really any more civilized? Certainly not judging from the body count.
In any case, feeling superior to others, whether culturally or historically or both at the same time, is one of humanity’s main moral failings that no amount of intellect or technology is likely to cure.
@@patricktalley4185 The problem I commonly see with people’s regard to the past is the notion that traditionalism or ancient cultures were superior morally or intellectually, which is common in music academia. I’ve seen more commonly people calling modern music primitive and archaic in simplicity. So, I think you are reaching with this argument.
This has more to do with institutions teaching these things as historical fact and people believe it because it’s coming from experts. The truth is many ancient culture were in fact foolish in their thinking about many things, things science as well as technology have enlightened us greatly, of things and warrant the criticism, but then not everything they did was necessarily bad. Just like people love to criticise modern culture of asinine basis’ and others times they have good points. It all comes down to simply a misunderstanding. As to whether technology makes anyone superior, no but it can mean that people are lot smarter in many ways than ancient cultures. I wouldn’t necessarily say that’s superior. This means that as we advance, our understanding should also do so.
Keep in mind the many uncivilised things people did in the 20th century, were blatantly disobedient. Even they boast about how morally superior they are to today’s culture, but when you look at the things they did, it shows they knew better and choose to be uncivilised anyway.
@@JRCGuitarist I don't think they're reaching with their argument at all, feeling superior to others based on historical context is silly, whether that's looking up at or down upon people of the past.
Ultimately we lose and gain things as time marches on. A person my age living where I live hundreds of years ago had an entirely different skillset to the one I do, I am not more or less knowledgeable, I simply know different things. I have no clue how to properly wind-dry a salmon, where I should do that at, what sort of tools I'd need. Ultimately everyone always thinks they understand things, and yet we can always look back upon the immediate past and look at how foolish we were. In 2300, people will think the people of the 2020s were remarkably foolish, and maybe the people of the 1400s would see us as remarkably foolish.
I would argue our greater "understanding" is a bit of a myth. In our day to day lives, we're simply handed information about the world around us, just like the people of the past were. Most of the information we all know is second-hand. There's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't make us "smarter" than people of the past.
Great dive into the myth of the tritone, but you may have perpetuated another myth. Machaut’s Mass was more likely written for the cathedral at Reims where he was employed in the 1360s, called “our lady’s” mass since that was the dedication of that cathedral, or written for one of many feasts of the Virgin.
Thanks for making this video! I’ve been trying to tell people that the tritone was never “banned” for years
Adam is now officially a mythbuster!
"now"
You're quite late, buddy ;)
I was taught in Music Theory (mid-1980s) that they were trying to "eliminate" the tritone by flatting the top note, or sharping the bottom note, which lead to our 12 major scales, since you could never get away from it. Thanks for a great in-depth video. It's great to geek out for an half an hour on a subject such as this.
Saying something is "hard as Hell" doesn't mean it's ACTUALLY FROM HELL. I find it amusing that people seem to think that just because ancient people were ancient that they didn't know what a "figure of speech" was and that they only spoke literally.
I's a very common thing for people to think past humans were antiquated and weren't just as smart, sarcastic, funny, etc. as we are today. Like, of course musicians back then would've complained that tritones and minor seconds were a pain in the ass to sing, because musicians in the present say that too! Historical change isn't a linear progression towards the perfection of the human race; culture changes, but people are still people.
Same goes for the Bible. So many people think humanity just became smart a few generations ago.
*undantes your sonata*
@@CravensBen amazing how even with a few thousand years of art, music and theater to draw from, we still manage to make such childish mistakes.
It's probably linked to classism and racism. People don't think preindustrial societies were/are human.
Another aspect of the tritone: All intervals results from string divisions. The Greeks used the arithmetic mean, the harmonic mean and the geometric mean. The geometric mean is not part of the overtone series and is therefore never a natural tone or just intonation. The tritone as the geometric center of the scale is therefore something special and not just any dissonant interval! Many musicians were very concerned about this. Your video cleans up with common phrases and that's a good thing. Thank You!
I love this new fresh style, Adam. I love the silliness and playfulness in it. This episode was both educational and entertaining to a level that surpasses everything I've seen before. Keep it up. I like this new style.
is the power of good funding in the right hands
sub to curiosity Stream if you haven't
@@NonJohns Nebula and curiosity stream should really open up to payment services like PP or directPay. They accept only credit cards, which are not super common here. I don´t even have a credit card. If I had, I´d have subscribed ages ago. Even Patreon accepts PP.
The quality of Adam's videos are forever improving. This is a thoroughly interesting video with very clear points and great editing. Also nice acting in the Devil costume and the mini chant lo-fi jazz beat
This and Garota are episodes of a gd documentary man, I love it.
So many myths like this, especially surrounding the medieval ages, still persist today and it’s nice to see an entertaining and well researched video debunking one of them
Adam has created a false argument. He never shows the multitude of examples that show how composers themselves associated the tri-tone with evil or the devil. In other words, he makes a good case for his argument but not a good case. This whole video reeks of ego and jealousy that a far more talented musician, Jacob Collier, has become, rightly so, more appreciated than this clown.
@@vtnatureboy Don't cut yourself on that edge.
@@armstrong.r Whatever that means.
@@vtnatureboy but was it banned in the middle ages?
@@vtnatureboy ego you say?
I fondly remember Physical Education class at Arnold Junior School in Blackpool, Lancashire in 1977 during which our Welsh teacher, Mr Dresser, had his 9-year old students perform interpretive dance to the title track of Black Sabbath. Ironically, our headmaster, Mr Outhwaite, introduced the school to Holst during assembly. Tritones were getting a lot of airtime in 70s Blackpool. Love your work Adam Neely. Keep searching for truth and beauty (and spicy goodness).
Oof, watching people try to be smug about this fake fact is difficult.
Let's admit, we've all done this. Cant fact check everything
@@vtnatureboy If those composers claimed that the tritone was banned during the middle ages, then yes they were wrong. Otherwise, there's nothing wrong with composing however you want to evoke a certain feeling.
@@kupopuffs420 I won't be able to say this without sounding holier-than-thou, but I do think it's entirely possible to avoid this sort of smugness about things you picked up from dubious sources by just making the distinction between "Well, you know they did it worse back then," and "I'm pretty sure it's commonly acknowledged that they did it worse back then." Because the former will absolutely be passed on as fact by some of the people hearing you say it, whereas the latter is much more likely to pass on the uncertainty, inspiring either care in the application of the bit of information, or the desire to investigate further.
Being careful to hedge your words when you don't remember or don't have justified confidence in the source of your idea can go a long way.
@@vtnatureboy Did we watch the same video?
@@vtnatureboy As someone that also has an advanced music degree, I think you should go back and get another degree in reading (listening?) comprehension. Dude is just saying the Tritone wasn’t banned.
Does repetition really legitimize? Or have we just heard people say it so many times it sounds true?
criminally underrated comment.
Is... isnt that the same thing...
That's the same thing
@@alexjustalexyt1144 Thats the joke. Repeating something with only a slight variation of wording is a form of repetition.
The modern version version of this is saying that "the lick" was called "the lick" because it made people lick one another. I guess time will tell if this becomes the truth.
But that's an established fact. What are you talking about?
In fact, it was banned during the Covid19 pandemic due to the high risk of infecting others