The Song That Taught Us All Music Theory And Nobody Noticed
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ต.ค. 2024
- • 5 Happy Birthday Versi...
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MUSIC THEORY IS NOT THAT HARD! You already know a ton, I guarantee it.
Have you covered the Queen song, Bohemian Rhapsody?
I have a recommendation! Not necessarily something to make a video on but some cool music I discovered recently.
Himiko Kikuchi - Flying Beagle. Particularly the song Sandstorm. Some awesome 80s japanese jazz.
@jimlapbap
charles im begging PLEASE do an elliott smith song his music is SO complex 🙏🙏😭
Here's a funny fact: a lot of kids/young adults learn a "Latin" version of happy birthday. It's in 4/4, mm 1 tresillo instead of 3 quarter notes, and mm2 3 claps after "you". Here's the first two measures as lyrics and as rhythm diagramming, with dashes in the latter indicating additional 8th note length:
Happy | birthday to | you [clap clap clap] happy...
4+ | 1-- +-- 4- | 1- [2+3-] 4+...
THE PROBLEM IS, without music backing, these gen Z / gen A folks smooth out the tresillo back to 3 quarter notes, altering the length of only the odd numbered measures.
The result? Alternating 3/4 & 4/4 time 😅
Feel free to watch the short that I uploaded years ago, showcasing this weird happy birthday musical phenomenon.
As someone who has written and produced music professionally for over 30 years, you just convinced me that Happy Birthday CAN start on the one. LOL. Probably not your intention but I was entertained. :)
I've been writing words for 25 years, and I just found out you CAN start a sentence with one!
Kenny Gioia!!!
Favorite music creator-ception!
@@bsmith8166 Charles is one of my favorites. :)
😂😂😂
I've definitely heard people sing it starting on the one, and phrased in 5/4 with one weird bar that changes depending on the syllables in the name lol
That Moth was just trying to wish you a happy birthday....
😆
@@DoofenSpyroDragon16 happy moth day to you
I spent decades knowing these things, these things I always felt about music, these patterns, these feelings... the tension and resolution. I just never knew that that's really what music theory is. Putting vocabulary to these feelings. Charles Cornell, Adam Neely and Rick Beato have opened my brain to this world, and I appreciate music even more now. Couldn't be more grateful!
I always had the opposite - I understood the vocabulary…in theory (ba-dum ts). But I always struggled with feeling any of it, which is kind of a backwards way for a musician to learn I suppose, but here we are!
I have the same experience. It's not really learning something new, it's putting terms to concepts you already know or use. A perfect example for me personally is that I'm a self taught guitarist that likes to drone on an open string & play a melody in a higher octave of the key. My brother asked me why I do that so much & I always just said I liked the way it sounded but in actuality I was training my ear to stay in key. I didn't actually realize this until years later & that droning itself is a widely used technique in music itself! 😂
It may be the most famous and happy song but it will always be the most awkward song to have sung to you
It's the lack of clapping, here in brasil, we clap every beat, keeps it upbeat, and less awkward
Maybe that's just because it's most often "performed" by a crowd of untrained singers, who rarely even establish a reference pitch before beginning.
There are a ton of videos of little kids crying when the Happy Birthday song is sung to them. I can't say I blame 'em. ;-)
Even more awkward when it's not actually your birthday. My friends and I pulled that trick on a mutual friend at a restaurant once. He was so confused when the waiter brought over a dessert and started to sing to him. He even sang along. When it got to his name, he just awkward mumbled something.
I think “1,2 Freddy’s coming for you” is more awkward 😅
This year, at my birthday party, I busted out my autoharp and made everyone sing Happy Birthday to me in D minor. They struggled so hard, and it was so fun for me.
Sad hilarious birthday song?
This had me chuckling aloud
D minor is the saddest of all keys.
😂😂😂😂😂
Should've filmed it!
David Bennett taught me/us those first couple notes are called an 'anacrusis.'
That's the name I had for it for all the years I've been studying music theory
Technically speaking, the first “Happy” in the song is the anacrusis. All other “Happy”s’ in the song are pickups
Once you start listening for them you'll realise they're everywhere.
You’re right, anacrusis is a fancier word for “pickup note”
Anacrusis is also the name of an amazing thrash metal band who famously had all of their music available to download on their website absolutely free for decades. Good to know where the name comes from!
Your happiness while playing and experimenting with this is infectious. Thanks for making me smile. Awesome video.
I like to think of the #11 (#4) as just a flavor of Lydian to sweeten the person’s name a bit.
Likewise! I do love that Lydian sound on the 4th degree of the major scale when you add the tritone above it.
It's just a non-chord tone. A 4-3 suspension.
@@facemashnot even a suspension, just an appoggiatura. I used to binge this channel but I now hesitate to watch because 1 year of convervatory music school already showed me how inconclusive and innacurstr this guy can be. And also Adam Neely, the guy can really be a dork sometimes LOL
@@Jwellsuhhuh it stinks to be innacurstr.
@@SeekingTheLoveThatGodMeans7648 ikr
Here's a funny fact: a lot of kids/young adults learn a "Latin" version of happy birthday. It's in 4/4, mm 1 tresillo instead of 3 quarter notes, and mm2 3 claps after "you". Here's the first two measures as lyrics and as rhythm diagramming, with dashes in the latter indicating additional 8th note length:
Happy | birthday to | you [clap clap clap] happy...
4+ | 1-- +-- 4- | 1- [2+3-] 4+...
THE PROBLEM IS, without music backing, these gen Z / gen A folks smooth out the tresillo back to 3 quarter notes, altering the length of only the odd numbered measures.
The result? Alternating 3/4 & 4/4 time 😅
So... happy birthday in 7/8 time is the next progression lol
@@emmadobbins694 the Korean version of the song can be analysed as 7/8, but whenever Koreans sing it they tend to clap with a period of 2, so that the syllables that get a clap aren't the same between the first and second verse. If you look up videos of the Korean birthday song you'll notice that pretty much everyone does it that way, from k-pop stars to Korean kids raised abroad.
th-cam.com/users/shortsRjHdqizkV6g
wtf is tresillo i completely dont know what this it
@@vonPeterhof Now I need a video with analysis of Korean Happy Birthday 🤔
When staying with my grandmother (1910-1987), she would wake us up by singing "Good morning to You! 🎶" Which I believe is the original version of this song. Thank you for the lesson!
It is!
It started off by being a simple good morning song
When I hear the words good morning it makes me think of the musical singing in the rain
I loved this. I think most people feel that in order to know music theory, you have to know the terminology. But you can learn something without knowing the language for it.
For example, people always say "The Beatles didn't know music theory." But is that really true when they cut their teeth playing hundreds of cover songs in Hamburg for eight hours a night? They learned music theory concepts through those songs. So they may not have known what a Picardy Third is, but they knew how to use it. Similarly, they may have called diminished chords "naughty chords," but they popped up all over the Beatles' music. There's more than one way to "learn" something.
Arguably though music theory _is_ the terminology--it's more like linguistics and grammar study than it is like language itself, because the equivalent of language itself would be music itself. Just as a great poet doesn't have to know the technical names of grammatical constructs to use those constructs beautifully, a musician doesn't have to know music theory to use namable elements of music beautifully. In other words, it is right to say that the Beatles didn't know music theory, as long as we're clear on what we mean by that--and I do actually think that there is some merit to the narrower definition, since the broader one is essentially the same as simply knowing actual music.
Sir George Martin said that of course they knew the theory, they just didn't know the terminology, and that that was what he did for them, teaching them the technical terms.
There’s also the grade school classic of adding ‘cha cha cha’ after each phrase, which makes each grouping of 2 measures a set of one 3/4 measure and one 4/4 measure, meaning that kids in elementary school are doing mixed meter.
Also - “chocolate cow!” then there was the year my class learned it was my birthday, sang to me and immediately after began the chant “are you 1, are you 2, are you 3…” I had to interrupt: “we’re going to be here for a while.” Upon which one of the dear urchins said, “should we count by tens?” 😂😂😂😂
It also turns the sixth measure into 5/4, teaching kids odd meters
We didn't sing it that way when I was a kid, but we sang "And many more, cha cha cha" at the end.
At the Messianic congregation I attend, we start out singing it in Hebrew (I don't know how the words are spelled, so I won't write it here), then pick up the tempo and sing it in English, clapping along, and shouting "WOO" after the first 2 lines, and then slow it down at the end. I don't know how this tradition started, but there ya go!
@@MrFiddler1959 I haven't heard those variations. I have heard, after the main part is sung: "How old are you now, how old are you now, happy birthday, dear ____, how old are you now?"
I think the Cha Cha Cha version actually is a way to start on the one and always stay in 4/4. Then you sing the second phrase in back beat and it resolves with the Cha Cha Cha at the end to avoid stopping on the 1..
I remember one time singing this in Lydian (and another time in Lydian dominant), and it sounded so much better. Nowadays, I just try to make the group performance work, and it never does.
how does that work
@@moonl1314 for Lydian, you just raise the fourth and emphasise it. Making group performances work, however, is far more complicated and impractical
@1471SirFrederickBanbury for happy birthday, right? the only time the fourth is played is at the end, and it doesn’t sound very good imo…
@@1471SirFrederickBanbury thank you
@@mrtrainman4148 which is why I changed it that one time. I never cared for the original, and when most people sing it, I lose my appetite for cake! So instead, I gave it a little bit of syncopation and swing, an emphasis on using a Lydian 4th, and overall tried to brighten the mood a bit. This was for a friend BTW. He liked it a lot better.
I miss Jimmy - child, 7
Jimmy: Scared, 7
cuz hes older now
When the sequel to a particular short comes out 🎉
@@MarineTeenoh man you've missed out, the video that he's referring to is pre-shorts.
I miss jimmy also
I can't believe this gem was hidden in plain sight all these years, and those chords and rising bass from 8:25 scratched a spot in my ears that I didn't know needed scratching.
I'm so going to steal all of this!
I may need to look more closely at what our common songs and nursery rhymes have been teaching us all along, us being none the wiser. This just made my day brighter and got me excited about music all over again, thank you!
This is such a great concept! It might sound silly but I'd watch a whole series of you breaking down nursery rhymes like this 😂
Would be great to show to my piano students 😅
this goes to show how great of a teacher you are, charles! taking what is seemingly a complex topic to learn is suddenly simplified into something everyone can understand. once i get the money i hope to help your channel out by buying your improvisation course. your playing just mesmerizes me and i wanna learn more!
NGL... I really wish that this video was "Chronotrigger, part 2".
Comment this on every one of his videos until he does it.
Kuro no turiga
@@internetuser8922 Noooooo! There's literally NO reason to troll Charles C. He's awesome. But covering "happy birthday" is indeed... well... it's a bit Magoo. 😕
Chrono pt2 or Octopath traveler series
Oh man, your awesome Happy Birthday version video. That's the one that got me hooked on your channel!
As someone from Sweden, our Happy Birthday song is a completely different song/melody than the one English speaking countries use (Spanish and many others).
Never sang the English Happy Birthday song, I only really know it thanks to media.
Ja må han/hon leva 🙂 men va, använder ni er inte nånsin av "Ha den äran idag" som vi finlandssvenskar?
@@martinwest2538väldigt ovanligt med ”ha den äran” i min personliga erfarenhet, men det händer. Jag har valt att sjunga den själv nån gång till anhörig med födelsedag.
Im a School music teacher in Germany and this part 8:45 describes exactly how music theory should be taught in school. Going from the practice to theory
Curiosity: Here in Brazil, we use to sing Happy Birthday in 4/4. "Birth-" is a minim and "you" a dotted minim. It is also usual to sing it twice, with a ritornello, accelerating at the second time. And there's no fermata.
Vim aqui escrever isso mas vc já fez! Boa contribuição!
someone share a good example video link 🙏😃
@@Blessed_91 th-cam.com/video/YOQef8umV2U/w-d-xo.htmlsi=8amB21Tn8g8Qe_dy
And sometimes people intuitively sing 4/4 at the first time and 3/4 at the second time. Love when that happens.
This was great! I’m a music therapist/teacher and this r used happy birthday to teach theory and how to play by ear for years. Nice to see someone else, especially with your talent, who appreciates simplicity in teaching.
What’s a music therapist?
@@adams3616 there are lots of different types. But in my case, think of a therapist, but instead of talking, the therapist and the client play instruments. It’s especially useful for people who struggle with talking. Like people on the autism spectrum. Or people who have experienced trauma and can’t really talk about it. Similar to play therapy.
@@PlayNowWorkLater interesting!
You need to release the jazz happy birthday background music in the beginning of the video
You mean the one where he's singing? I remember seeing the full video of that long ago, so it should still be posted on his channel.
@@DJHolteany idea what the video name was? Haven't found it so far...
I love the fire you have when you talk about music theory! I love to hear more about it!
you could also say there is a poco ritardando (slow down very slightly on the beat just before the fermata). I love how much you've packed in to this, I will show this to my GCSE students!! love your vids man
happy birthday- the most incorrectly performed song of all time
Speaking of which.. is it just me or is the second phrase of Charles's arrangement kinda.. off.. It doesn't sound like I normally hear it in most arrangements.. Maybe I've just heard the wrong version my whole life too. 😂
Few people these days seem to be able to do the octave jump in the third phrase!
This is brilliant! Thank you for illustrating! :)
Great enthusiasm and energy - and a fun way of teaching this! Cool!
Happy birthday Trinitinsly!🎂
Happy birthday taught everyone the harmonic style of 18th century european musicians and nobody noticed
Thats right, but when adam neely said the harmonic style of 18th century european musicians it didnt mean music theory in general, he just ment the part of music theory that was framed as the superior one. happy birthday taught us much more than just the harmonic style of 18th century european musicians since most of the stuff charles was talking about can be used in most kinds of music.
🤓☝@@spacenexo5654
I am confused wasn’t Happy Birthday first published in a book in 1893? The 19th century.
@@cgisme it was a reference to one of Adam Neely's videos where he talked about how white supremacy shaped people's perception of what music theory should be. Where he replaced some mentions of "music theory" with "the harmonic style of 18th century European musicians" really deliberately which is where it came from.
@@spacenexo5654generally speaking how did that go down? That seems a very divisive way of framing something
The swung 8th note bit is so funny to me, because in Alfred’s Piano Lesson book 1B (one of the most popular books I’ve used to teach children beginner piano), this song is used to teach 8th notes. Straight. The previous song is “Good Morning to You” which has the exact same melody without the 8th notes.
Of course, most kids swing them because that’s how they know the song, but the book is clearly written to have them play it straight, which is such an obvious blunder that I usually just gloss over it and reinforce straight 8ths on the next songs.
Octave leaps… the thorn in the side of every vocal teacher
at 6:20 in measure 5 some could argue that the bass note is an E instead of C so it could teach us about inversions as well!
That is a bit of a stretch. Sure someone COULD use an inverted chord but I am not convinced that is the most natural chord voicing that a casual listener would expect to hear.
@@edwardblair4096 fair enough.
Charles, I love everything you do! I recommend your courses to everyone who walks up to me and says, " hey Jimmy I want to play piano like you. "
It also introduces you to the dreaded octave leap…choral leaders use it for an audition piece (if you can’t jump that hurdle cleanly you don’t get in the choir) 😂
Aspiring singers have to have patriotic, wedding, and funeral songs in their back pockets. For friends and easy opportunities. Which means the dreaded octave leap in America The Beautiful 🎉 and multiple challenging leaps of The National Anthem, The Star Spangled Banner!! And Happy Birthday 🎂 😊
Hey Charles. Thanks for this video, it really is like you said: Music Theory is not that hard. I've been learning music for the first time in my life at 35 playing the saxofone. I used to worried that I'd not be able to understand sheet music and its concepts but 6 months in I feel that I have a really good grasp around the matter. Of course, I've been watching music creators like you, Adam Neely among others for years now and I've learn that consistency is key to achieve this. With no rush and trusting the process I'm seeing an evolution day by day and it's awesome! Thanks for sharing your knowledge and keep it up!
Bro your videos are so good in content, you are truly an inspiration. Do you have a video regarding the technical part of your filming? Like camera, lights and so? Or have you thought about doing this? Like a behind the scenes, it would be very inspiring. Big hugs from Barcelona
Happy Birthday is the most underrated birthday song of all time.
It also taught everybody about polytonality, which is really great (for scaring toddlers it seems).
What's the difference between harmony and polytonality? I don't know what polytonality is but it seems at least similar to harmony.
@@Echo-22-538not an expert but i’m pretty sure that harmony is 2 or more notes together but polytonality is specifically when you have 2 or more keys at a time. So when you sing happy birthday someone can sing in D and another (trying to) sing in D. But since it’s so off it’s 2 keys. Also you can just look this up lol
@@romanallgeier4661 Ah thanks that makes some sense.
I did search it up but I was a little confused so I thought I'd seek someone who likely knows what they're talking about (e.g. Bober909) and could give me a clear difference.
I absolutely love music theory. The more complex, the better!
I love how excited you get.
Some music theory concepts:
0:47… pickup / anacrusis
3:12… odd meter 3/4
4:34.. Fermata or pause
5:27.. funny lead up to 5:50 sharp 11 (#11) or #4
6:35… chord progressions, call and response, tension and release 1 - 5 & 5 to 1 (imperfect & perfect cadences)
11:01… swing feel or dotted 8th and 16th note.
Do Re Mi from The Sound Of Music is a masterclass in the major scale
The song is in the public domain in the United States and the European Union. Warner Chappell Music had previously claimed copyright on the song in the US and collected licensing fees for its use; in 2015, the copyright claim was declared invalid and Warner Chappell agreed to pay back $14 million in licensing fees.
It's also such a good example for Sentence Form.
Hey Charles, I bought your piano course but I don't have access (confirmed on my bank statement I got charged). Can you help me out? I don't know who to reach out to.
You should email him instead
This has been resolved :)
Never thought that I would need a short with Charles and a “weird flex but okay” as a reaction to vocal harmonies😁 I would have shown to fellow singers who love to harmonise! Great video!
7:25 okay, right when you did that little walking up the piano thing you did, it instantly reminded me of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time theme music, specifically the opening of it
10:03 and this is how they taught music at school in Italy 90s, and this is why just at almost 40 I started piano after watching (among others as well 😊) your videos!
Happy birthday also has an interesting legal history. All of these ideas you talked about here may have been intentionally included in the song, as it was composed as a teaching melody by the Hill sisters (who were teachers/composers), as a song that young children would find easy to sing, originally to the words "Good morning to all".
A decent summary of who actually wrote it, and the legal history is on the Wikipedia page (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You).
Hey Charles!! Really love your videos and all the things I've learned from you!! Been playing piano 31 years, and I'm what I call a dumb musician that plays by ear... don't know what a lot of chords are called but if I hear it, I usually pick it up pretty quickly... anyway, I would love you to review and react to a song by Chicago called Remember the Feeling, off of their Chicago 17 album... this song is nuts... I won't spoil it for you but I MUST HAVE YOU DO THIS SONG SOON!!!! Please and thanks... I know you are probably super busy with your videos, but I think you'd have a blast going through it... it's VERY interesting!!!
Most of the time, people don't perform the name line as a fermata. They perform it as exactly one extra beat. One measure of 4/4 in a 3/4 song. No more, no less. Subconsciously. Look out for it next time you hear it!
I think that's usually right, in most Anglo countries at least. I'd never noticed that. Thanks! Furthermore, (I now realise) for three syllable names like Agatha, the first two syllables are swung (as in the word "Happy"). For four syllable names like Elizabeth, the first syllable is pushed back to a swung eight note at the end of the previous bar, (the next bar is as I described for three syllables) and for five syllables, say Maximilian, the first TWO syllables are pushed back to the last two triplet eighth notes of a triplet whose first note is "Dear".
I think he's drawing a long bow dissecting the harmonic implications to the extent he does, whereas this sophisticated rhythm adjustment to accommodate different names seems innate to most people, and I for one was blissfully unaware of it - at least, for something over six decades ending about five minutes ago, when I read your post and started paying attention.
PS: The only six syllable name I can think of is Maximiliano, I guess this would be a stretch for most people; personally I would sing a quintuplet for the last beat of the previous bar ( Dear - Max - i - mil- i) and then sing the "a -no " as for a two syllable name, one full measure each.
Your happy birthday video is amazing btw I watch it all the time
I didn't learn any music "theory" until I went to college. But studying theory gave me WORDS to communicate about things I'd been learning all my life just by listening to and making music.
Just celebrated my birthday, thanks for this great video 😊
Happy birthday :3
It's interesting that so much is packed into this song. The song that taught me a lot about more complex chords was "Color My World" by Chicago.
3:52 - Counting?! Nah, I'm just gonna waltz in my head 🙂
Never realised any of it! Great theory lesson!
I gave up my efforts on learning music theory from TH-cam, because I'm very familiar with Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Ti and the concept of C,D,E,F,G,A,B just doesn't make sense to me. It is really really hard for me, not just like learning a foreign language, but like learning an alien language.
very interesting! thanks charles!
Great job lifting the veil of uncertainty.
Now I feel motivated to go out and theory!
When you start to count happy birthday from happy, you reminded me of one classical composition where the bit was off of 1 quarter intencionally.
Sharp 11? Nonsense. The B in your example is merely an appoggiatura. It resolves downwards to the adjacent chordal tone (A), much like all good appoggiaturas do. It might also be called a passing tone.
The realest title as a musician.
Thank you for using Shave and a Haircut as an example of a 5-1. I also like finishing on “hair…” or “two…” as examples of weaker resolutions (either ending with a less-satisfying resolution than the 1, or softer tension than the 5, respectively).
Ending on “hair…” doesn’t exactly sound finished, it sounds kind of mysterious and obscured, but it’s not painful to let it sit there. Meanwhile, ending on “two…” still absolutely begs to get finished - where most people are compelled to go “bits!” afterward, just as if you stop at “cut”.
Which can of course then be spun-off into how the 6 likes to fall back to the 5, but the 7 likes to rise up to the 1. All based on things the person has likely heard a hundred times or more, just like with Happy Birthday 😊
Keep preaching Charles!
Scottish bagpipe player here. Around 1:40 the issue of moving the pickup note to beat one reminds me of a standard piping idiom called a "retreat", which is a march in 3/4 time. It almost always has the feel of a pickup note, but it's not a pickup. This matters because of the rolloff into the tune. Confusingly the rolloff is in 4/4 time (8 counts), but we still rolloff into a retreat march. The tune begins on the first beat after the rolloff, not the last beat of the rolloff. See "The Green Hills of Tyrol" for an iconic example.
Don't know what my point is here, except that putting a "pickup like" note on beat 1 is a normal thing in at least one culture.
happy birthday is literally the tutorial level for music
Interesting video! Incidentally, it also teaches the concept of rit. since that part where you’re leading up to and starting to sing the birthday person’s name, the singers usually slow down until they reach the last syllable of the person’s name (fermata).
Instead of a sharp 11, it also introduces the concept of a suspension/resolution, in this case a 4-3 suspension/resolution.
Great illustration that Theory is everywhere, and just not as intimidating as so many make it out to be! Thanks.
6:40 - I think that B is really just non-harmonic passing tone more than a #11.
What a cool idea to explain those concepts by using Happy Birthday as an example! If you asked me how to improve this video I‘d say: don‘t make us rewind multiple times or pause to read the text boxes. 😅 I liked the part where you played those odd chords and then said the tune doesn’t have to be played like that, but it could. I was thinking which tune you could use for the sequel and came up with Should All Acquaintance be Forgot (with Amazing Grace coming in as a strong second).
Fascinating. Thanks for
I feel like this about somewhere over the rainbow.
It’s one big transition from the I to the vii if I remember for the main melodic line.
Fermata is Italian for "hold" or even "stop." The spot where a bust stops is a "Fermata obligatoria," or obligated stop or pause in the bus's route. That was one of my first lessons as a musician when I lived in Italy for 4 years, ages ago. Just had to share.
I'm surprised that you got through this without mentioning the two sisters who wrote it and collected royalties for over half of a century.
It’s fascinating to hear your analysis of this song as a jazz musician who is harmonizing the song by ear. The sharp eleven in classical music is a suspension. Melodically it would be called a retardation. I am also used to putting a minor iv chord on the last “Happy” in the song.
Hey Charles,
very entertaining! The only thing I shortly puked about is the fifth's parallel at 8:03 xD Of course 5th parallels are not always bad, sometimes it's just a bit boring.. I'm sure you considered F-sharp dim instead of Dm as well?
Theory is just about finding and naming patterns that have known and useful musical effects, so that they’re easier to talk about and think about. It’s not a hard, immutable book of Musical Law; it’s just a useful shorthand notation.
You only briefly touched on it, but that the pickup can be interpreted and notated in a few ways, including as triplets, shows some interesting elements of notation.
You are an amazing teacher and I wish I had one like you.
I'm very pleased that this particular video came out on my birthday.
Hey Charles! Could you do a video analyzing the amazing composition called “Us Again” from the Disney short “Us Again”? I would love to see it! I listen to it all the time! It really tells a story and is very dynamic and would be a cool piece to have on your channel I think!
Love it!! I expected tons of harmony mess, but I'll ask Jacob :)
Oh I love the explanation "Fermata is the italian name for the sign [^] which in english is commonly called a pause"... kind of a convoluted way to say fermata == literally "stop" in italian :D
Same root exists in english, when you hold something "firmly", in the physical sense.
When it comes to swing rhythm, musical notation is just an approximation. You've got to listen to actual performance and develop your intuition. If you actually sit down and measure the note lengths, you might get 55/45 or 70/30 depending on the context.
Hey it's my birthday! Thanks Charrels!
i now realize happy birthday can be composed into a lot of variations at once and im here for it
It also teaches us the interval of an octave!
Charles... A long time ago I was listening to Beethoven's 16th string quartet and then the third movement, "Lento Assai e Cantante Tranquillo" about measure 50 has a melody very similar to"Happy birthday " check it out. I was just listening and thought... "Wow that's very similar to happy birthday for a moment..." Probably not related... But maybe!!?? Thanks for the great content
Hi Charles, In classical theory, measure 6 going from B to A could be a 4-3 suspension of the IV chord (F). Any thoughts?
You trying to play while counting off beat reminds me of my singing with most groups. I start off strong singing Happy Birthday with people, but I always trail off the moment the key wanders because I actually don't know how to sing in H#.
I thought it would go another way/The song is all about suspended notes. E.g. A goes to G in 1st bar and then С goes to B but because suspension takes 2 notes and rhythm goes 3/4 - the phrase sounds also polyrhythmically. Suspensions are in bars 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8 (sometimes it's between the bar so I named both))) No need to mention that the song is made of 4 rhytmically identical phrases but only the 3rd of them is one fouth longer
In Italian:
"Femare" = to stop
Used in everyday language when talking to children, ;
"FERMATI"!." (an imperative )
"You stop:"
"Happy Birthday " ( in italian)=
"Tanti Aguri" (many best wishes).
You were speaking to me in this video.
I love playing "Happy birthday"
anywhere in the world!!
GREAT video.
Thank you Maestro.
I learnt heaps.
Gracia
Dude... I never thought about it being in 3/4! It's so obvious now that you've pointed out, but just never realized it before now!
Happy birthday starting with a pickup actually genius. When you want a group to start singing happy birthday, the pickup allows everyone to understand the tempo before the first downbeat. It feels alot more natural to join in on the downbeat rather than a weak beat or the next downbeat which would be in the middle of a phrase
Agree. In school, I quit the music course, because my teacher would teach theory without making it audible. I told him and left. I’m a professional musician now.
Your Jimmy rendition was the reason I subbed to this channel.