actually the audio file is very good. the mic is good too. it's just wayyy too hot and is clipping the signal, and the larger room ambient mic is not getting a strong enough signal from the piano itself. in other words, it's not youtube's fault, or the devices used. IT'S JUST SIMPLE HUMAN ERROR
this is a piano trick I learned in high school: Hold down the pedal, bang a big cluster chord on the lower end of the piano, and keep the pedal depressed. Listen to the sound fade away. At the very end of the fade, the rumble sounds exactly like a thunder storm way off in the distance.
My high school choir teacher taught us about this and it was incredible to hear our voices resonating in the piano. His passion for music and general geekiness was palpable and really rubbed off.
This lecture is just blatant misinformation. Random musicians who studied at a conservatory are *NOT* experts on sociology or psychology. We don't recognize the major pentatonic scale because of the harmonic series; we recognize it because of cultural conditioning. If this guy's logic weren't absurdly flawed, then we would be singing along to the actual harmonic series and not the pentatonic scale. This is not the case, however, and if you took somebody who had never heard any music in their life, they would never be able to predict the pitches of the major pentatonic scale.
@@teddydunn3513 speaking of blatant information absurdly flawed... which comes first, the sounds or the cultural conditioning? Isn't the "culture" part just an interpretation of the reality of the harmonic series? Frankly it sounds like you aren't an expert on sociology or psychology, either.
Musicians do really get excited when it comes to harmonic series. It is key of understanding to so many things. We got to listen carefully. Love love love this talk!!!
He corrected himself. All he did was get ahead in his talk. He corrected to strings, and continued through to a vibrating column of air as in the flute.
Whew! I had the EXACT same feeling! It's good to know that someone else instantly invented a world where flutes had strings. Not kidding. For a split second, I actually considered it! When I awoke the next morning, my guitar had become a reed instrument.
In fact... if you can get a copy of the Berstein Norton Lectures, watch them all. Bernstein is talking about his understanding about why we humans mostly stray towards tonality in music. It takes him nine hours, but trust me.. the entire thing is worth it.
sometimes the audience don’t really get excited with these “ intrigue “ topics, i understand it... but i keep saying that most of the talks are a treasure for the kid in his bedroom learning all kinds of stuff. i feel like one.
Look for the video of Leonard Bernstein's Norton Lecture at Harvard maybe 40 years ago. Definitely, this guy was a fan of that particular lecture. As I am. No, Bernstein wasn't the first person to describe the harmonic series, but he got my attention with that lecture, and it changed the way I heard things.
Great lecture! I teach piano and I always teach music theory, not just how to read sheet music. I introduce theory by doing what you did and calling it the Chord of Nature, as it is commonly called. To my technically minded students, it lets them understand why the dominant is as important as the tonic in establishing the key. In fact, when a pianist accompanies a singer, the pianist usually plays an arpeggio of the dominant chord to give the singer the key!
I've noticed a strong tendency to heckle and belittle presentations about music unless they are devoid of technical details, it amazes me how many experts there are who seem to have just a little information, it was refreshing to hear someone who is not immediately compelled to insult the speaker or the content.
Technically, the 7th harmonic is closer to Bb than A but it does exist in the cracks. The pentatonic scale uses the pitches CDEGA because a stack of the third over tone produces it not because of the harmonic series. A pentatonic built from the harmonic series would sound quite different.
Pianodog Mad. Do you know of any resources that go through how the Pentatonic is formed the way you speak? I'm really interested in how scales are formed, and how different tuning systems have come about at the moment. And I'd love to know more about what you speak. It's strange because I would have thought the way he is describing it would make the most sense, in that the brain just picks up on the next most clearly recognisable consonant resonant frequency it hears? So when the tonic note is played, your brain just hears those other frequencies resonating underneath, and goes, ok that's the 'ladder' im going to take going upwards from here. Even though your not consciously hearing those resonating frequencies, on some level you are, and to your brain they appear as the most logical steps forward. To me, it wouldn't' be that your brain 'constructs' so much a pentatonic scale from a stack of third overtones, like we might construct the diatonic scale from a stack of 5ths or so on. It doesn't do that kind of calculating, like we do when we try to make/construct a scale. It just 'hears' what it hears, and naturally goes from there. It is doing calculations of course, but these are inbuilt they are from nature, where as constructing a scale from stacks is more of a 'human' endeavour. What do you think?
Ok cool, glad you find this interesting. The pentatonic scale is built from a stack of fifths as is the 7 tone diatonic/major/minor scale. Tuning (called pythagorean tuning) originally was designed to favor the tuning of fifths so that these scales would sound best. However, tuning is a tricky subject and every improvement on one thing will ultimately hurt something else. The problem with pythagorean tuning is that is makes intervals like thirds and sixths and even fourths sound worse. This CAN be ok depending on what you want in a tuning system. But for whatever reason, the people at the time felt that they wanted certain consonances. 12 ET was formed I think by chinese originally which is why the black keys on the piano literally are pretty close to ancient many chinese scales. That is, without having alot more notes involved. Real chinese scales from ancient times apparently has flatter sevenths. So like if you play C D F G Bb on the piano, the ancient scale most likely had a note flatter than Bb but not quite A. I'm not sure if this is the seventh harmonic, but it was closer to that than to 12 ET. A pentatonic scale directly built from the harmonic series would contain the seventh harmonic ( just below a minor seventh) and fifth harmonic (just below a major third) and would sound much more rich harmonically, the tradeoff, if that fifths wouldn't be in tune except for the fifth built on the first degree and perhaps another place as well. So the harmonic series in terms of 12 ET is Root - perfect Fifth - below major Third - below Minor seventh - TINY BIT FLAT Major ninth. Morale of the story is that 12 ET is a small system that tunes fifths and fourths really well but kinda sucks for thirds and the seventh harmonic is barely approximated at all since it's REALLY SHARP from a good seventh harmonic. Think of it this way, you know the way a fifth kinda growls? Well a decent tuned major third and minor seventh would also growl and sound crunchy which is really cool. What's weird though is thai music which uses a seven equal tuning system. That is, the octave is divided into seven equal steps producing a wildly different sounding scale which is more rough yet very pleasing melodically. There is no recorded history as to the reason for this scale, just theories. There is a facebook group all about this that is extremely active. Come check it out facebook.com/groups/xenharmonic2/ :)
Also another thing you may not realize and may seem strange, tuning often is a mathematical thing much more than an intuitional thing. Most tuning was derived by math not by how good it sounds. Really weird but true.
Pianodog Thanks to my recent research, I almost get what you are saying about the tuning systems, I'm still struggling with it though. But I think what this man is getting at, and more so what Bobby Mcferrin was getting at was to do with the natural tendency for the human being to identify a pentatonic scale. This is totally separate from tuning instruments, and systems, which came along much later. Were talking here about the human voice, the innate scale that a human being would have sung you, prior to any deliberately constructed tuning systems.
***** In essence, the 'pentatonic' scale exists in nature simply because after the fundamental (and removing octave equivalence) the notes from which it is 'made up from' are the next 'loudest' / discernible frequencies the human brain will hear within the tonic note. It is not constructed, it is implicit in the sound of the tonic note. Later when we get into tuning instruments, and systems, we speak of 'constructing' a pentatonic scale.
Bernstein didn't come up with this! The overtone series is a natural law of acoustics - first articulated / discovered by Marin Mersenne in the 17th century. Weisman here also does a good job of explaining it (sans the mic issues).
It is important to note that he was imprecise in his claims about the harmonic series. The harmonic series is a universal wave phenomenon only for bounded one-dimensional wave paths. Some of our musical instruments approximate one-dimensional wave paths closely enough to be considered roughly as such (like strings and tubes of air). The harmonic series is the special one-dimensional case of the more general modal series, which varies according to the geometry and material characteristics of each vibrating thing. In our very-much-not-one-dimensional instruments (drums, gongs, vibraphones, etc) we have these more complex, non-harmonic, modal series. In short, the closer to one-dimensional our vibrating system is, the closer it's vibrational modes approximate the harmonic series. And vice-versa. Hopefully this clarifies somewhat for any interested readers.
Thank you! Finally, an easy to understand explanation of the harmonics. It really was eye opening for me, though may have been intuitively obvious for others!
That test he does with the resonating overtones is even more impactful if you, say, hold down the G and play a B or C# first. You don’t hear that resonance until a C is played.
Strongly disagree with his theory of getting the pentatonic scale from partials 3-4-5-6-8. In my opinion, it is much more basic: the perfect 5th (from partials 1-2), iterated 5 times, then placed in the same octave. The resulting pentatonic scale is much more in tune, as well
It's been my observation that the more technical the talk, the worse the sound is. The sound quality is inversely proportional to now high tech the talk is! A person talking about his dog has great sound and a studio technician talking about oscillators sounds unintelligible. lol
The whole premise of the pentatonic being derived from the harmonic series is surely wrong. The pentatonic is built from Pythagorean perfect fifths. The seventh harmonic is flat of the equal-tempered minor seventh by only about 3/10th of a semitone, making it sharp of the major sixth by almost 7/10ths of a semitone, so to refer to it as a sixth and part of the pentatonic scale is incorrect.
The pentatonic scale comes from stacking fifth, not really from the harmonic series. The seventh harmonic is usually interpreted as a minor seventh. I promise you, our perception of the pentatonic scale comes from cultural conditioning, not the harmonic series.
I can't believe you're the only person calling this out. It's absolutely from conditioning. It's just coincidence that most major cultures have discovered the ratio of 3:2 repeatedly makes a nice set of notes to play with. It's mindboggling what these independent TED talks get away with saying.
Interestingly enough, the note between A and Bb is not because of how the pianos are tuned but because that is how the harmonic sequence naturally progresses.
Weisman is wrong about the "universal acoustic phenomenon" . This particular overtone series does not happen everywhere in all "regular" instruments. This series he references mainly applies to Western music with Western instruments. Take for example a gong from a Balinese gamelan. The overtone series we would hear would NOT be in the root-octave-fifth-fourth-[etc.] pattern we are taught to hear, but instead a different series altogether. I am currently studying the different overtone series for idiophones vs chordophones vs membanophones vs aerophones and so on. The overtone series mentioned in this video applies to aerophones (wind instruments) and chordophones (strings), even some idiophones but definitely not all! (i.e. Xylos and Marimbas have a different overtone series than the "universal" one Weisman claims all instruments have. Take a listen for yourself!). I just wanted to share because I feel like we Western musicians have been taught incorrectly. And I realize now that only those who have studied the world (ethnomusicologists) know how ignorant western culture is to everywhere else. I know it was hard for me to even grasp that there were other overtone series since I've only been taught about THE overtone series, as opposed to ONE of many overtone series. I was ignorant, but I'm still discovering more about how certain instruments have a unique overtone series than other instruments within the same family. It's a very interesting topic! Don't take my word for it, go out and see for yourself! But please don't stay in the dark. Hope this helped somebody out there!
And to add just a small bit of irony, the piano - of all western non-percussive instruments - shows the strongest deviation from the described integer harmonic overtone scheme. For example, stiff strings (most notably in the lower keys) are severely affected by wave dispersion which causes different frequencies to propagate with different speeds in the string, skewing the distribution of overtones. This is somewhat compensated by tuning the piano "out of tune" so to say by stretching the tuning so that a good portion of harmonic components overlap. For example, a Steinway Model D can have 60 cents tuning deviation when comparing the lowest and highest note. www.simonhendry.co.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/inharmonicity.pdf
Integer harmonics are a physical phenomenon of periodic oscillators and are ubiquitous in nature--not just in musical instruments which may or may not be tuned to the harmonic series. It isn't merely a cultural thing we are "taught to hear".
el Armónico número 27 es el que da la nota La, sexto grado de la escala mayor. Harmonic number 27 is the one that gives the note A, not the seventh harmonic that is closer to Bb
The harmonic series really doesn’t intuitively explain why people default to the pentatonic scale in McFerrin’s experiment, or why it is so ubiquitous across cultures. It might explain why they guess at the major third and perfect fifth, but why the major sixth? The first five unique notes to appear in the harmonic series are identical to the common pentatonic scale with one crucial difference - the sixth is replaced by the minor seventh. So one would think if the harmonic series caused cultures all round the world to use a particular pentatonic scale, then that pentatonic scale would include the minor seventh, not the major sixth. (Edit) I now see he’s interpreting the note I call a minor seventh as being somewhere between a minor seventh and a major sixth, and he’s arbitrarily defaulting to the latter. But the note that naturally occurs in the harmonic series is clearly closer to a minor seventh than it is to a major sixth, so why would the entire world default to the latter if it is purely based on the harmonic series?
Excellent lecture! As one whose BA is in music theory & composition, I use a similar demonstration with my students showing the overtones. It works better in a small classroom! I have a slight nitpick, however. This lecture shows a Western bias. Historic Asian music, at least until the modern merging of cultures, does not exhibit the pentatonic structure nearly as much (if at all), but often uses harmony based on third and quarter-steps, incompatible with a piano. That suggests a cultural assimilation, not a universal biology.
When I wrote the score for the soundtrack of the immortal film "I was a Communist for the FBI",I specified that the piano part be played on a specially constructed piano on which the higher notes were located on the left,This video reminded me of beautiful times in my life.
I think many of the comments here are too hard on the guy. Its a good talk. It happens to be true so we should expect this explanation will have been given before. He's referring to the major pentatonic, he failed to mention that the blues scale is a minor pentatonic. I think it is equally important to understand how the cycle of 5ths generates the chromatic scale. But the talk is for people who don't know music theory so understandable he didn't cover that.
It is a HUGE leap to interpret the 7th partial of the overtone series as a 6th to complete the pentatonic scale. .....and besides that, the only pitch relations one can play on the piano from the overtone series are the octaves. Every other pitch is not available in equal temperament.
.....and besides that, the only pitch relations one can play on the piano from the overtone series are the octaves. Every other pitch is not available in equal temperament.
Actually not even the octave is a perfect octave on the piano, its stretch tuned so no interval on the piano is true. This should clue us in that "perfect" is not required since the piano sounds wonderful without a single justly tuned "true" interval.
Yes, the 7th partial with the 4th partial does not sound like the interval of the sixth, it sounds like a very clean m7th, if you use 7/4 (m7th) in place of 5/3 (M6th) you will not get the same result.
and that's the "cultural conditioning" part. It depends on which culture hears the harmonic. some cultures descibe it as a sixth, some cultures hit on the flat 7th.. the so called "blues" note, or the major 7th. It's a point of cultural view.
Correct me if I'm wrong.. but isn't this just pure math i.e. wave harmoning.. and of cause physics i.e. material resonance? That is.. strings with some thickness and tension will resonance at some frequency which is of cause the main purpose of string instrument and it's tone.. but that string will only oscillate at that specified and owne frequency and therefore.. only grap the curcent waves from lower tone which match this criteria.. more the tones are harmonic more it will pick up etc?
The animal bones were found to be canine tooth pierced bones and the spacing happened to excite some non-science thinking, there was no fipple or mouthpiece. However, lately from the same region they found a flute even older (42,000 yr) that had an unmistakable notched mouth. I don't know about holes though, but that wouldn't mater. I need to do this demo with my harmonic flute otherwise known as the Sal of Scandinavian origin. No finger holes at all! The harmonics can be played up to double digit range with no moving parts or skill. 9,10,8,2,3? That tune from Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind. As Carl Sagan would say fundamental and valid throughout the universe. Don't leave home without it. With a piano for a demo I would just lightly finger that low C and pull all those notes clearly out of it. You would have to take the lid off though. I like to play on just 2 notes and trill on those 2 keys will spilling gobs of notes out. I remember this lecture at Purdue 1972 or so, when the prof got to the seventh harmonic he said " that one's a wild card we'll throw that one out". No brother! That's the flatted seventh of the Blues, Gospel, Bluegrass, Barbershop, and all the way back to Africa. He didn't want to get into the comma and all that equal tempered mess. The fifth is a little off but the third is really out of the ballpark, the seventh is to some magic or heaven. I am mathematically dyslexic. It took me a long time to understand that there are seven notes in an octave. We all call that 12 tone serial stuff "12 tone" yet keep saying this math myth about the diatonic scale. No wonder America's math score is low. Roman time and the 123...890 way of showing the numbers. Poor Zero he's always getting left out or last in line, instead of first. The telephone keypad was designed to handicap accountant's fast typing when dialing on that new touch-tone system.
I'm sure he's an amazing musician, but he's not an expert on sociology or psychology, and he shouldn't be taken seriously. This lecture is full of misinformation.
The beloved ones are the known ones, Like in the family, that what you hear and See every day, you think that only this is harmonically your GODs! Stay away for three days from all what you surrounded by the most time of your life and than start new! IT will be a pleasure to hear your voice and sound! Do it or let IT be and follow self entitled GODs!
How with the tech involved with this presentation and movement, would anybody not be seeing the RED area on the meter for this whole block? Seems almost impossible , unless they had to use the bathroom maybe.
Overdrive must also be universal... :-( If you're talking about SOUND, you might want to be sure your own sound is set up correctly. With the voice driven into distortion, its hard to hear the much quieter piano in several places.
and then... there is... OVERTONE SINGING ! ! ! ! :-) from Tuva to Sardinia, we can use harmonic overtones in our voices to create music just by singing one fundamental note.
0:50 No; the question is not begged at all. 'To beg the question' is from 'to beggar the question', or in other words, to render the question worthless, make it of no value, or to make it not worth asking in the first place. That's in contradiction to what he then proceeded to do; _ask a valid question._
Yes, it is to the player's right. The player's right is the audience's left. The audience is the player's instrument. So this guy hasn't made a mistake, you have.
@alan crook - it appears as you have devalued the payers [sic] one can only assume you intended to say, players. Or maybe you did mean it in economic terms and they are in fact worth less.
No, Asaf is referring to a Ted Demonstration by Bobby McFerrin. McFerrin was facing the audience and when he jumped to his left, the audience sang a higher pitch. Maybe we shouldn't jump so quickly to the conclusion that we know more than Juilliard music professors?
I paid for a +$100 college textbook just to be full of free, un-restricted, and unofficial sources like these. The book itself has little text for itself. Feeling ripped off today. Is that okay?
Amazing how the scale was constructed on harmonics (nearly)... nice Debussy, but awful arrangement of Purple Haze (standard piano tropes just don't cut it)... also the harmonic phenomenon begs the question, which came first, harmonic music or the way we sequence our tones while talking - one would think that music melody mimics talk, but it appears to be the other way around (given the underlying harmonic aspect)...
This guy is really late to the party Nowhere near as elegant or useful an explanation as bobby mcferrrin he just sounds like another teacher bring back the master !
It's not plagiarism - it's commonly accepted knowledge which Weisman does a really nice job of explaining (without trying to claim its his discovery). The Harmonic Series (and subsequent pentatonic scale) is related to French mathematician Joseph Fourier's (1768-1830) Fourier Theorem.
@@angusbrooks1077 I'm an Aussie, and it has the wrong timing and the wrong notes to fit anywhere in our National Anthem. It's obviously "Oldangzine". I'm sorry, I just can't hear it.
"You're only partially right." I see what you did there :D And if you guys REALLY want to be floored: the back row of a Chess board resembles a diatonic scale.
1. The major third is rather weak. 2. A conflict between the major and minor thirds is exploited in many musical genres, i.e. blues, and is expected and desirable.
The fourth harmonic is a double octave and not a major third, for example the fourth harmonic of C1 is C3. The fifth harmonic is a major third , C1 has a fifth harmonic at E3, but this is so high above the C and is usually so low in amplitude you can not hear it that well, but you are absolutely right, the minor scales sound slightly less consonant than the major scales for exactly the reason that the 5th harmonic is out of the minor key signature but is within the major key signature. This slightly greater dissonance makes minor resolutions a little less compelling and more troubling, but troubling is what minor does best anyway so this is probably a good thing.
@@adamwisz Sorry, but no. I see what you mean, but not only does he use many explanations verbatim (or close to it), he even uses similar body language and inflection. Especially at 3:26. If you don't see this, than you obviously haven't seen the popular video where Bernstein describes the overtone series because it is blatantly apparent that this man has seen it and used it as a direct influence over this talk
Watching a TED talk on the harmonic series with this audio quality...
Lul. Word
actually the audio file is very good. the mic is good too. it's just wayyy too hot and is clipping the signal, and the larger room ambient mic is not getting a strong enough signal from the piano itself. in other words, it's not youtube's fault, or the devices used. IT'S JUST SIMPLE HUMAN ERROR
@@robbystafford8273 it doesn't mater why it is, only that it is; it's almost impossible to listen to. A noisy recording from a phone would be better.
this is a piano trick I learned in high school: Hold down the pedal, bang a big cluster chord on the lower end of the piano, and keep the pedal depressed. Listen to the sound fade away. At the very end of the fade, the rumble sounds exactly like a thunder storm way off in the distance.
My high school choir teacher taught us about this and it was incredible to hear our voices resonating in the piano. His passion for music and general geekiness was palpable and really rubbed off.
This lecture is just blatant misinformation. Random musicians who studied at a conservatory are *NOT* experts on sociology or psychology.
We don't recognize the major pentatonic scale because of the harmonic series; we recognize it because of cultural conditioning. If this guy's logic weren't absurdly flawed, then we would be singing along to the actual harmonic series and not the pentatonic scale. This is not the case, however, and if you took somebody who had never heard any music in their life, they would never be able to predict the pitches of the major pentatonic scale.
@@teddydunn3513 speaking of blatant information absurdly flawed... which comes first, the sounds or the cultural conditioning? Isn't the "culture" part just an interpretation of the reality of the harmonic series? Frankly it sounds like you aren't an expert on sociology or psychology, either.
Musicians do really get excited when it comes to harmonic series. It is key of understanding to so many things. We got to listen carefully. Love love love this talk!!!
I was getting ready to rethink my life when he said the strings on a flute.
Terrance Shaw mozart
He corrected himself. All he did was get ahead in his talk. He corrected to strings, and continued through to a vibrating column of air as in the flute.
Whew! I had the EXACT same feeling! It's good to know that someone else instantly invented a world where flutes had strings. Not kidding. For a split second, I actually considered it!
When I awoke the next morning, my guitar had become a reed instrument.
I have a guitar synth, my guitar can become anything!
got any death sticks?
In fact... if you can get a copy of the Berstein Norton Lectures, watch them all. Bernstein is talking about his understanding about why we humans mostly stray towards tonality in music. It takes him nine hours, but trust me.. the entire thing is worth it.
sometimes the audience don’t really get excited with these “ intrigue “ topics, i understand it... but i keep saying that most of the talks are a treasure for the kid in his bedroom learning all kinds of stuff. i feel like one.
Look for the video of Leonard Bernstein's Norton Lecture at Harvard maybe 40 years ago. Definitely, this guy was a fan of that particular lecture. As I am. No, Bernstein wasn't the first person to describe the harmonic series, but he got my attention with that lecture, and it changed the way I heard things.
Great lecture!
I teach piano and I always teach music theory, not just how to read sheet music. I introduce theory by doing what you did and calling it the Chord of Nature, as it is commonly called. To my technically minded students, it lets them understand why the dominant is as important as the tonic in establishing the key. In fact, when a pianist accompanies a singer, the pianist usually plays an arpeggio of the dominant chord to give the singer the key!
I've noticed a strong tendency to heckle and belittle presentations about music unless they are devoid of technical details, it amazes me how many experts there are who seem to have just a little information, it was refreshing to hear someone who is not immediately compelled to insult the speaker or the content.
Technically, the 7th harmonic is closer to Bb than A but it does exist in the cracks. The pentatonic scale uses the pitches CDEGA because a stack of the third over tone produces it not because of the harmonic series. A pentatonic built from the harmonic series would sound quite different.
Pianodog Mad. Do you know of any resources that go through how the Pentatonic is formed the way you speak? I'm really interested in how scales are formed, and how different tuning systems have come about at the moment. And I'd love to know more about what you speak.
It's strange because I would have thought the way he is describing it would make the most sense, in that the brain just picks up on the next most clearly recognisable consonant resonant frequency it hears? So when the tonic note is played, your brain just hears those other frequencies resonating underneath, and goes, ok that's the 'ladder' im going to take going upwards from here. Even though your not consciously hearing those resonating frequencies, on some level you are, and to your brain they appear as the most logical steps forward.
To me, it wouldn't' be that your brain 'constructs' so much a pentatonic scale from a stack of third overtones, like we might construct the diatonic scale from a stack of 5ths or so on. It doesn't do that kind of calculating, like we do when we try to make/construct a scale. It just 'hears' what it hears, and naturally goes from there. It is doing calculations of course, but these are inbuilt they are from nature, where as constructing a scale from stacks is more of a 'human' endeavour. What do you think?
Ok cool, glad you find this interesting. The pentatonic scale is built from a stack of fifths as is the 7 tone diatonic/major/minor scale. Tuning (called pythagorean tuning) originally was designed to favor the tuning of fifths so that these scales would sound best. However, tuning is a tricky subject and every improvement on one thing will ultimately hurt something else.
The problem with pythagorean tuning is that is makes intervals like thirds and sixths and even fourths sound worse. This CAN be ok depending on what you want in a tuning system. But for whatever reason, the people at the time felt that they wanted certain consonances. 12 ET was formed I think by chinese originally which is why the black keys on the piano literally are pretty close to ancient many chinese scales. That is, without having alot more notes involved. Real chinese scales from ancient times apparently has flatter sevenths. So like if you play C D F G Bb on the piano, the ancient scale most likely had a note flatter than Bb but not quite A. I'm not sure if this is the seventh harmonic, but it was closer to that than to 12 ET.
A pentatonic scale directly built from the harmonic series would contain the seventh harmonic ( just below a minor seventh) and fifth harmonic (just below a major third) and would sound much more rich harmonically, the tradeoff, if that fifths wouldn't be in tune except for the fifth built on the first degree and perhaps another place as well.
So the harmonic series in terms of 12 ET is Root - perfect Fifth - below major Third - below Minor seventh - TINY BIT FLAT Major ninth. Morale of the story is that 12 ET is a small system that tunes fifths and fourths really well but kinda sucks for thirds and the seventh harmonic is barely approximated at all since it's REALLY SHARP from a good seventh harmonic.
Think of it this way, you know the way a fifth kinda growls? Well a decent tuned major third and minor seventh would also growl and sound crunchy which is really cool.
What's weird though is thai music which uses a seven equal tuning system. That is, the octave is divided into seven equal steps producing a wildly different sounding scale which is more rough yet very pleasing melodically. There is no recorded history as to the reason for this scale, just theories.
There is a facebook group all about this that is extremely active. Come check it out
facebook.com/groups/xenharmonic2/
:)
Also another thing you may not realize and may seem strange, tuning often is a mathematical thing much more than an intuitional thing. Most tuning was derived by math not by how good it sounds. Really weird but true.
Pianodog Thanks to my recent research, I almost get what you are saying about the tuning systems, I'm still struggling with it though. But I think what this man is getting at, and more so what Bobby Mcferrin was getting at was to do with the natural tendency for the human being to identify a pentatonic scale. This is totally separate from tuning instruments, and systems, which came along much later. Were talking here about the human voice, the innate scale that a human being would have sung you, prior to any deliberately constructed tuning systems.
***** In essence, the 'pentatonic' scale exists in nature simply because after the fundamental (and removing octave equivalence) the notes from which it is 'made up from' are the next 'loudest' / discernible frequencies the human brain will hear within the tonic note. It is not constructed, it is implicit in the sound of the tonic note. Later when we get into tuning instruments, and systems, we speak of 'constructing' a pentatonic scale.
He so should have acknowledged his source for this presentation... Leonard Bernstein
The source is music theory itself.
I was going to say that. Sounds a lot like Bernstein’s lecture...
@@larrybrown6937 no bernstein obviously invented the way everything resonates DOONT U DARE DISREPSCT OR LORD AND SAVIOR yeeyee
Bernstein didn't come up with this! The overtone series is a natural law of acoustics - first articulated / discovered by Marin Mersenne in the 17th century. Weisman here also does a good job of explaining it (sans the mic issues).
@@pippastar1606 Yeah but Bernstein presents everything exactly like this. Just more profound.
It is important to note that he was imprecise in his claims about the harmonic series. The harmonic series is a universal wave phenomenon only for bounded one-dimensional wave paths. Some of our musical instruments approximate one-dimensional wave paths closely enough to be considered roughly as such (like strings and tubes of air). The harmonic series is the special one-dimensional case of the more general modal series, which varies according to the geometry and material characteristics of each vibrating thing. In our very-much-not-one-dimensional instruments (drums, gongs, vibraphones, etc) we have these more complex, non-harmonic, modal series.
In short, the closer to one-dimensional our vibrating system is, the closer it's vibrational modes approximate the harmonic series. And vice-versa.
Hopefully this clarifies somewhat for any interested readers.
Ok but if you depress any key and strike any note you can hear that other note resonate. You’re just leaving it open to vibrate so of course it will
Leonard Bernstein already gave this exact talk decades ago and the video is on youtube
Thank you! Finally, an easy to understand explanation of the harmonics. It really was eye opening for me, though may have been intuitively obvious for others!
That test he does with the resonating overtones is even more impactful if you, say, hold down the G and play a B or C# first. You don’t hear that resonance until a C is played.
there are two ragas in Indian music based on pentatonic scale named Bhupali and Deshkar
Strongly disagree with his theory of getting the pentatonic scale from partials 3-4-5-6-8. In my opinion, it is much more basic: the perfect 5th (from partials 1-2), iterated 5 times, then placed in the same octave. The resulting pentatonic scale is much more in tune, as well
that mic makes this unlistenable
You would think on TED talks they could just get the sound right? Not hard to put a limiter/EQ/whatever on there!
It's been my observation that the more technical the talk, the worse the sound is. The sound quality is inversely proportional to now high tech the talk is! A person talking about his dog has great sound and a studio technician talking about oscillators sounds unintelligible. lol
The audio engineer needs to be fired or trained to properly set the sensitivity on the transmitter.
It's the new HD mics. Horrible. Needs filters.
wow now I'm even more motivated to study for my intro to music composition exam tomorrow.
The whole premise of the pentatonic being derived from the harmonic series is surely wrong. The pentatonic is built from Pythagorean perfect fifths. The seventh harmonic is flat of the equal-tempered minor seventh by only about 3/10th of a semitone, making it sharp of the major sixth by almost 7/10ths of a semitone, so to refer to it as a sixth and part of the pentatonic scale is incorrect.
This whole lecture is full of misinformation.
The pentatonic scale comes from stacking fifth, not really from the harmonic series. The seventh harmonic is usually interpreted as a minor seventh. I promise you, our perception of the pentatonic scale comes from cultural conditioning, not the harmonic series.
I can't believe you're the only person calling this out. It's absolutely from conditioning. It's just coincidence that most major cultures have discovered the ratio of 3:2 repeatedly makes a nice set of notes to play with. It's mindboggling what these independent TED talks get away with saying.
@@TheEmperialist I'm so triggered. This entire lecture is just blatant misinformation.
@@TheEmperialist Well then you could still say the pentatonic scale is (somewhat) based on the harmonic series, being derived from the 3:2 ratio.
@@teddydunn3513 try prozac.
Interestingly enough, the note between A and Bb is not because of how the pianos are tuned but because that is how the harmonic sequence naturally progresses.
I think he's getting at the fact that the reason it isn't a conventional note is because the piano is tuned to equal temperament tuning.
Decades later, people are repeating what Leo Berstein did.
Well.... Pythagoras discussed exactly this issue to say the truth
turn out that it's because of the overtone series, some guy also said the same thing 10 years in the past before Leo Berstein and in theory
And now they charge tons of money for repeating the same thing over and over
Weisman is wrong about the "universal acoustic phenomenon" . This particular overtone series does not happen everywhere in all "regular" instruments. This series he references mainly applies to Western music with Western instruments. Take for example a gong from a Balinese gamelan. The overtone series we would hear would NOT be in the root-octave-fifth-fourth-[etc.] pattern we are taught to hear, but instead a different series altogether. I am currently studying the different overtone series for idiophones vs chordophones vs membanophones vs aerophones and so on. The overtone series mentioned in this video applies to aerophones (wind instruments) and chordophones (strings), even some idiophones but definitely not all! (i.e. Xylos and Marimbas have a different overtone series than the "universal" one Weisman claims all instruments have. Take a listen for yourself!).
I just wanted to share because I feel like we Western musicians have been taught incorrectly. And I realize now that only those who have studied the world (ethnomusicologists) know how ignorant western culture is to everywhere else. I know it was hard for me to even grasp that there were other overtone series since I've only been taught about THE overtone series, as opposed to ONE of many overtone series. I was ignorant, but I'm still discovering more about how certain instruments have a unique overtone series than other instruments within the same family. It's a very interesting topic! Don't take my word for it, go out and see for yourself! But please don't stay in the dark. Hope this helped somebody out there!
Leah Anderson Cool info. Thanks. Will check that out.
Leah Anderson , allright! i've been speculating what you've shared here. Can i get in touch with you?
And to add just a small bit of irony, the piano - of all western non-percussive instruments - shows the strongest deviation from the described integer harmonic overtone scheme. For example, stiff strings (most notably in the lower keys) are severely affected by wave dispersion which causes different frequencies to propagate with different speeds in the string, skewing the distribution of overtones. This is somewhat compensated by tuning the piano "out of tune" so to say by stretching the tuning so that a good portion of harmonic components overlap. For example, a Steinway Model D can have 60 cents tuning deviation when comparing the lowest and highest note.
www.simonhendry.co.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/inharmonicity.pdf
Integer harmonics are a physical phenomenon of periodic oscillators and are ubiquitous in nature--not just in musical instruments which may or may not be tuned to the harmonic series. It isn't merely a cultural thing we are "taught to hear".
Could you point me to some good references about the origin of these different overtone series? Tks
el Armónico número 27 es el que da la nota La, sexto grado de la escala mayor. Harmonic number 27 is the one that gives the note A, not the seventh harmonic that is closer to Bb
The harmonic series really doesn’t intuitively explain why people default to the pentatonic scale in McFerrin’s experiment, or why it is so ubiquitous across cultures. It might explain why they guess at the major third and perfect fifth, but why the major sixth? The first five unique notes to appear in the harmonic series are identical to the common pentatonic scale with one crucial difference - the sixth is replaced by the minor seventh. So one would think if the harmonic series caused cultures all round the world to use a particular pentatonic scale, then that pentatonic scale would include the minor seventh, not the major sixth.
(Edit) I now see he’s interpreting the note I call a minor seventh as being somewhere between a minor seventh and a major sixth, and he’s arbitrarily defaulting to the latter. But the note that naturally occurs in the harmonic series is clearly closer to a minor seventh than it is to a major sixth, so why would the entire world default to the latter if it is purely based on the harmonic series?
He has his right and left muddled !!!
To his left?
Excellent lecture! As one whose BA is in music theory & composition, I use a similar demonstration with my students showing the overtones. It works better in a small classroom! I have a slight nitpick, however. This lecture shows a Western bias. Historic Asian music, at least until the modern merging of cultures, does not exhibit the pentatonic structure nearly as much (if at all), but often uses harmony based on third and quarter-steps, incompatible with a piano. That suggests a cultural assimilation, not a universal biology.
When I wrote the score for the soundtrack of the immortal film "I was a Communist for the FBI",I specified that the piano part be played on a specially constructed piano on which the higher notes were located on the left,This video reminded me of beautiful times in my life.
Leonard Bernstein's Harvard Lectures (1973) get into this as well. In fact, it's quite similar.
I think many of the comments here are too hard on the guy. Its a good talk. It happens to be true so we should expect this explanation will have been given before. He's referring to the major pentatonic, he failed to mention that the blues scale is a minor pentatonic. I think it is equally important to understand how the cycle of 5ths generates the chromatic scale. But the talk is for people who don't know music theory so understandable he didn't cover that.
There is nothing new under the sun. Man does not create - he re-creates.
Really a very clear speaker.
I love this video, especially when he plays Purple Haze - it sounds so good!
didnt Leonard Bernstein do this first?
the hendrix tune is based on a tritone so it couldnt be based on the pentatonic scale as claimed by the talker.
It is a HUGE leap to interpret the 7th partial of the overtone series as a 6th to complete the pentatonic scale. .....and besides that, the only pitch relations one can play on the piano from the overtone series are the octaves. Every other pitch is not available in equal temperament.
.....and besides that, the only pitch relations one can play on the piano from the overtone series are the octaves. Every other pitch is not available in equal temperament.
Actually not even the octave is a perfect octave on the piano, its stretch tuned so no interval on the piano is true. This should clue us in that "perfect" is not required since the piano sounds wonderful without a single justly tuned "true" interval.
Yes, the 7th partial with the 4th partial does not sound like the interval of the sixth, it sounds like a very clean m7th, if you use 7/4 (m7th) in place of 5/3 (M6th) you will not get the same result.
and that's the "cultural conditioning" part. It depends on which culture hears the harmonic. some cultures descibe it as a sixth, some cultures hit on the flat 7th.. the so called "blues" note, or the major 7th. It's a point of cultural view.
Excellent presentation, Assaff. Thank you. I'm a musician and I really enjoyed it.
Correct me if I'm wrong.. but isn't this just pure math i.e. wave harmoning.. and of cause physics i.e. material resonance?
That is.. strings with some thickness and tension will resonance at some frequency which is of cause the main purpose of string instrument and it's tone.. but that string will only oscillate at that specified and owne frequency and therefore.. only grap the curcent waves from lower tone which match this criteria.. more the tones are harmonic more it will pick up etc?
Does this guy know his left from his right???
I can't get past the fact that this guy doesn't seem to know left from right.
Leonard bernstein told us this so much eloquently
Very clear and concise presentation!
The animal bones were found to be canine tooth pierced bones and the spacing happened to excite some non-science thinking, there was no fipple or mouthpiece. However, lately from the same region they found a flute even older (42,000 yr) that had an unmistakable notched mouth. I don't know about holes though, but that wouldn't mater. I need to do this demo with my harmonic flute otherwise known as the Sal of Scandinavian origin. No finger holes at all! The harmonics can be played up to double digit range with no moving parts or skill. 9,10,8,2,3? That tune from Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind. As Carl Sagan would say fundamental and valid throughout the universe. Don't leave home without it.
With a piano for a demo I would just lightly finger that low C and pull all those notes clearly out of it. You would have to take the lid off though. I like to play on just 2 notes and trill on those 2 keys will spilling gobs of notes out. I remember this lecture at Purdue 1972 or so, when the prof got to the seventh harmonic he said " that one's a wild card we'll throw that one out". No brother! That's the flatted seventh of the Blues, Gospel, Bluegrass, Barbershop, and all the way back to Africa. He didn't want to get into the comma and all that equal tempered mess. The fifth is a little off but the third is really out of the ballpark, the seventh is to some magic or heaven.
I am mathematically dyslexic. It took me a long time to understand that there are seven notes in an octave. We all call that 12 tone serial stuff "12 tone" yet keep saying this math myth about the diatonic scale. No wonder America's math score is low. Roman time and the 123...890 way of showing the numbers. Poor Zero he's always getting left out or last in line, instead of first. The telephone keypad was designed to handicap accountant's fast typing when dialing on that new touch-tone system.
thank you Assaff
0:54, GIORNO
Is Jacob's ladder an aspect of the harmonic series?
This is extremely interesting this guy is an amazingly talented and intelligent teacher.
I'm sure he's an amazing musician, but he's not an expert on sociology or psychology, and he shouldn't be taken seriously. This lecture is full of misinformation.
The beloved ones are the known ones, Like in the family, that what you hear and See every day, you think that only this is harmonically your GODs!
Stay away for three days from all what you surrounded by the most time of your life and than start new! IT will be a pleasure to hear your voice and sound!
Do it or let IT be and follow self entitled GODs!
How with the tech involved with this presentation and movement, would anybody not be seeing the RED area on the meter for this whole block? Seems almost impossible , unless they had to use the bathroom maybe.
Interesting. Thank you.
Well presented - but credits should be given to Leonard Bernastein’s almost identical exposition at the Norton lectures in Harvard in the 1970s
How does TED release a talk about the harmonic series with such appalling distortion?
Did he place the mic too close to his mouth or something?
Maybe it is nice that someone tweeks our knowing of this instinctively proper sounding stuff once more. Plagiarized from Bernstein or not!
so tedx doesnt mind blatant plagiarizing of Leonard Bernstein's lecture?
Titan Army that's exactly what I was thinking
Thank you! Much of it verbatim
Thank you, and others who have pointed it out. It is straight-up plagiarism, and it is shameful.
You can't really escape the information being the same, but he could've just given the nod to LB, here he feels like he is passing it off as himself
Some great people have said, "I only steal from the best".
Even if it's mostly Lenny, it's good that he posted this. It makes us think.
Overdrive must also be universal... :-( If you're talking about SOUND, you might want to be sure your own sound is set up correctly. With the voice driven into distortion, its hard to hear the much quieter piano in several places.
the overdrive on the mic had me thought he was going to wrap up by screaming Pantera's 'fucking hostile'
snore. try proofreading some time.
This is very cool.
Higher pitch on "his left"?
Bernstein did it
I think you are right - I saw that once, I will look for it; thanks for posting.
the first overtone i heard wasn't the octave but the major third or tenth
Cave paintings discovered from the Paleolithic period showed Fred Flintstone playing a rock piano.
African-carved representations of demons show Donald Trump on the toilet.
and then... there is... OVERTONE SINGING ! ! ! ! :-) from Tuva to Sardinia, we can use harmonic overtones in our voices to create music just by singing one fundamental note.
Overtone singing uses overtones, not the pentatonic scale.
@@teddydunn3513 give a look at the intervals between harmonics number 8,9,10,12,13.
Then we talk again ;-)
0:50 No; the question is not begged at all. 'To beg the question' is from 'to beggar the question', or in other words, to render the question worthless, make it of no value, or to make it not worth asking in the first place. That's in contradiction to what he then proceeded to do; _ask a valid question._
Higher pitch is to the payers right! T.E.D. Has been devalued.
THANKS I WAS LOOKING FOR THIS COMMENT ..
Yes, it is to the player's right. The player's right is the audience's left. The audience is the player's instrument. So this guy hasn't made a mistake, you have.
@alan crook - it appears as you have devalued the payers [sic] one can only assume you intended to say, players. Or maybe you did mean it in economic terms and they are in fact worth less.
No, Asaf is referring to a Ted Demonstration by Bobby McFerrin. McFerrin was facing the audience and when he jumped to his left, the audience sang a higher pitch.
Maybe we shouldn't jump so quickly to the conclusion that we know more than Juilliard music professors?
music and math are universal language
This is Raga Bhupali in Hindustani classical music.
I paid for a +$100 college textbook just to be full of free, un-restricted, and unofficial sources like these. The book itself has little text for itself. Feeling ripped off today. Is that okay?
This guy is just some random musician who studied at Julliard. He's not an expert on sociology or psychology.
thanks! beautiful!
Amazing how the scale was constructed on harmonics (nearly)... nice Debussy, but awful arrangement of Purple Haze (standard piano tropes just don't cut it)... also the harmonic phenomenon begs the question, which came first, harmonic music or the way we sequence our tones while talking - one would think that music melody mimics talk, but it appears to be the other way around (given the underlying harmonic aspect)...
The harmonics of his mic are bothering me XD
This guy is really late to the party
Nowhere near as elegant or useful an explanation as bobby mcferrrin
he just sounds like another teacher
bring back the master !
"The strings on a flute"
Nice job Assaff. Long time, no see! Hope you're well! B
Those who pressed thumbs down were Neanderthals who didn't write pentatonic scale music!
Yeah,, he is on the faculty at Juilliard .. just saying .
Earrape sir
but, I love that Jimi!
that is a cheap plagiarism of Leanard Bernstein first Norton lecture...
It's not plagiarism - it's commonly accepted knowledge which Weisman does a really nice job of explaining (without trying to claim its his discovery). The Harmonic Series (and subsequent pentatonic scale) is related to French mathematician Joseph Fourier's (1768-1830) Fourier Theorem.
Yeah, and there's a professor over at MIT plagiarizing Isaac Newton in the calculus course. Terrible!
The mic is awful, but the pentatonic discourse was amazing, insightful, and helpful. Thank you.
his scottish thing at 7:52 is the australian anthem
no not land downunder :|
That's Auld Lang Syne...
ive no doubt , but it sounds like the verse part of our anthem "Our land abounds in Nature's gifts Of beauty rich and rare;"
Be that as it may, it's still "Auld Lang Syne", a Scottish tune that's hundreds of years old. :)
@@angusbrooks1077 I'm an Aussie, and it has the wrong timing and the wrong notes to fit anywhere in our National Anthem. It's obviously "Oldangzine". I'm sorry, I just can't hear it.
This is not, Advance Australia, Fair... at all.
hes talking about the major pentatonic right?
Yes, he is talking about the major pentatonic.
"You're only partially right."
I see what you did there :D
And if you guys REALLY want to be floored: the back row of a Chess board resembles a diatonic scale.
;-D
Higher pitch to the left? Lower pitch to the right? Huh?
To McFadden’s left and right of course. As in he jumped to his left.
what's that sound quality for a tedx talkin' about music ?!
A continuation of Bernstein's music education legacy? ;)
Why don't things sound out of tune when you are playing in a minor scale if the fourth harmonic is a major third?
1. The major third is rather weak. 2. A conflict between the major and minor thirds is exploited in many musical genres, i.e. blues, and is expected and desirable.
The fourth harmonic is a double octave and not a major third, for example the fourth harmonic of C1 is C3. The fifth harmonic is a major third , C1 has a fifth harmonic at E3, but this is so high above the C and is usually so low in amplitude you can not hear it that well, but you are absolutely right, the minor scales sound slightly less consonant than the major scales for exactly the reason that the 5th harmonic is out of the minor key signature but is within the major key signature. This slightly greater dissonance makes minor resolutions a little less compelling and more troubling, but troubling is what minor does best anyway so this is probably a good thing.
Good
They no longer have the Bobby McFerrin piece - grrrr. Kinda leaves this guy's presentation high and dry.
Dope!!!
omg dieting concepts!!!! zinger!!! great video
To his right ?
Ripping off Bernstein
Bernstein was explaining that the sky is blue and 2+2=4. It's not a rip off, it's just the fundamentals of music theory.
@@adamwisz
Sorry, but no. I see what you mean, but not only does he use many explanations verbatim (or close to it), he even uses similar body language and inflection. Especially at 3:26. If you don't see this, than you obviously haven't seen the popular video where Bernstein describes the overtone series because it is blatantly apparent that this man has seen it and used it as a direct influence over this talk
@@littlefishbigmountain Yep. It's an almost exact copy.
the mic is clipping because it's too close to his mouth
now i lrned to do harmonics on piano so prettyful ^u^
i dont hear C
Left?
The harmonic series doesn't exist on equal-temperament piano notes.