Hey all! I go quite far off the deep end towards the end of this lecture, but it was all in service of proving my last point. If you stick it out, you see why I start rambling about things that might on the surface appear to be "too far out there," but are in reality a means of understanding some fundamentals of music perception. Hope you enjoy! Thanks to Ableton for having me! Loop was such an amazing experience.
hey adam, some priest once said "if you study about faith it immediately vanishes, but if you study it more, it comes back!". I think this is the level you're on the theory/tech side of music in relation to magic! congrats!
Musical metaphors (rhythm, hamony, balance, contrast....) are used in art and architecture to convey the ideas through comparison and co-relation. BTW your talk was amazing as always.
The level of understanding is high, the connections the different people/scientists and you are incredible and do wonders for the study of not just music theory but the science behind it which most people dont delve into
@@deveyousness I think you mean gabber. And it is also written "*)" before the corrective footnote. The asterisk at the end is the indicator of the presence of a footnote.
42:23 "technically speaking, when you speed up a pitch, it's not going to turn into light" HOWEVER, once it's past the eardrum or retina, it DOES become the same thing - and that's almost certainly why our experience of them is comparable.
Small addition to the part where he talks about the gap in perception between rhythm and pitch. The same happens with visuals, that's why a slideshow is perceived as individual images but a movie (24 frames per second or more) is perceived as movement.
Legit the only reason I kind of like speedcore is because they play around with tempos so fast to the point some drum hits start sounding like tones and these can be used to great effect.
00:00 Part 1 : Intro (Synaesthesia; Newton's Optics and his use of music as a metaphor for colours and their relations) 07:25 Part 2 : Pitch and rhythm are the same thing (Pitch=rhythm; Human perception of pitch and rhythm) 11:50 Part 3 : How to polyrhythm (Practical guide) 22:00 Part 4 : Polyrhythm and harmony are the same thing (Live demonstration) 29:40 Part 5 : "It gets crazy" : the relation with the visible light spectrum 38:15 Part 6 : "The harmony of the spheres" : the relation with the planets 41:25 Part 7 : Contextualizing the previous points and conclusion (Equal temperament vs just intonation; Sound, a compression wave vs light, an electromagnetic wave; Metaphors expand perception)
I felt a little enlightenment after watching this. I mean, I knew almost all things he was talking about, but I never thought of them combined, and it blows my mind
Neely is completely brilliant. Really interesting talk - as always, he comes up with awesome stuff to ruminate and research further. Mind blown. Thank you!
Dude this. This. This is incredible. I began writing an essay on color and sound and the color wheel and circle of fifths and how they're related years ago. Exciting to hear someone actually present it so well. Excited for more videos like this. I mean in subjects like these.
That 2:3 time signature is present on A LOT of folklore/traditional music. From the aztecs, mayans, native americans.. its incredible. It always evokes a feeling of conenction to the earth… at least for me.
2 against 3 is kinda the simplest expression of an even thing against an odd thing. But it's such a simple ratio....it works. We can feel it easily. It's both complex and primal. 2 against 3, in whatever permutation, has always resonated with my own mind. It makes sense that it would be deeply embedded in musical traditions all over the world. It communicates a lot with a little.
@@avedic you are completely right. Thanks for presenting it on that context. It makes so much sense. The rational and the irrational, the even with the uneven, perfectly balance dance that evokes to the root of humans spiritual connection with the all, with the one.
My mind was already blown by how Adam created a chord out of a sped up Polyrhythm. But once he explained how sound could be expressed in colors... I was like "HOLY SHIT" we are getting to a new era of art.
@@-RXB- Yeah, so many things have already existed, the challenge is to occupy our minds wisely. In that sense, lectures like this one help to bring that enlightening material back into mass consciousness.
25 minute mark is when everything he mentioned makes sense and blows your freaking mind! This guys gonna go down in music history as a genius some day.
My technology teacher who was formerly a music teacher told me to check this out because we often have a lot of conversations about music theory (as I want to go into music further). So I started it, picked up a paper and pencil and started taking notes on this. I can wholeheartedly say this changed my outlook on music and art entirely for the better. This stuff is so amazing. Adam Neely never disappoints.
This comes from E being the lowest note on a standardly tuned bass and guitar. The typical blue schema figure can really only played at ease with open strings... but it is of course a nice 'coincidence'
Adam neely if your reading this... great job! This was educational, entertaining and thought provoking all at the same time. Im glad your not just exploring the same old music theory subjects the same way everyone else seems to be doing. Your pushing the boundaries and im looking forward to seeing what you come out with next.
Did he consider it is more about the theme of hot-and-cold (fire and ice) than about ratios? (Several of the posters he showed are quite obivous there.)
Kinda makes sense doesn't it? The colors of action movies are heavily saturated so you can't really have multiple colors because they would clash just like a distorted guitar sounds bad when you play seventh chords
DUDE! Adam Neely you are an actual musical genius. You are breaking down walls that have existed for a century in music and i think thats pretty rad lol. Keep it up yo!
And this is where all my worlds collide, as a graphic designer, photographer and music enthusiast. Colour theory is usually taught superficially. Pretty much like when you learn a scale. You learn where the grades are, the simple relationships and that when you put one or more together you can create a harmony. But my instincts always told me that there was deeper connection or relationship between hues. Thank you Adam to put this forward.
So technically, your entire talk here is a polyrhythm. What chords will it make if you speed it up? Speed it it up more and what colors will it make? Food for thought :)
Awesome video. In the analogy between sound and colour I wish he showed colour as a temporal phenomenon (i.e. a video of colour), not as a static one (i.e. paintings). Rhythm is temporal, pitch is temporal, light is temporal. Would've been cool hear melodies and simultaneously see the corresponding colour changes; or build a chord and simultaneously see how the colour changes as you add more colours
I think he ran out of time - I mean, I don't know what he planned to present, but I saw him look over at one point, looked like someone gave him the "you're outta time" signal and he super sped up after that and skipped what seemed like alot of stuff he might have done more with. I was bummed, cause I was wanting to juice every bit out possible - such a great lecture - maybe he can just do it straight for youtube - the whole schmear, without having someone else involved who needs to move things along.
It's low key adorable how Adam is a little uncomfortable and unsteady early in this talk. He's SO authoritative and at ease on his own YT videos....or playing on stage in his bands. But just standing on stage....talking....to a lot of people....is different. The feedback is different. The audience often doesn't realize the role they play in the feedback loop. Adam def gets into the swing of things, but initially he's clearly a bit off balance and feeling a little stage fright. But he nailed the talk overall. This was a very insightful lecture....it hit on a lot of stuff I find fascinating and truly mysterious about not only music...but reality.
You just explained the title of Rick Beato's series: "Everything's music". Well fucking done, marvelous! You just gave me a nice introduction to teach to people who want to know the fundamentals of music... Thank you very much and keep up the good work!
I plan on analyzing artwork from now on by color, rhythm, pitch and harmony and creating music based off of it, whether it be atonal or arhythmic or microtonal, and I'm more excited than I've been about anything in a while and I wanna thank you, Adam, for sharing this with me and reminding me that there are still things to be done, that with critical thinking we can break any boundaries. This is the push I needed, super inspiring and groundbreaking, and I'm so excited to see where it goes. I hope creative thinkers everywhere can learn to apply this information to their lives and seek new ideas, be reminded that there is still so much to be explored
Part 5 = mind blown! I actually knew that colors must have some harmony between them but could never figure it out, and all that "visual-art-color-lessons" actually never helped; though I always felt theres some unknown but exact relationships going on, having strong musical-like feeling in it. I used it a lot, fine-tuning colors in some own abstract amateur artwork, and had same feeling at time as fine-tuning pitches of drum sets in EDM projects. It makes so much sense now
Hey Adam. You're the best. I am thrilled to know someone with such a high-level grasp of music, musicality and musicianship also has a working grasp of the difference between "stuff" waving and "fields" waving. As a physicist who loves music, but doesn't have "the gift" of music, I am thrilled that - to some degree - you represent the other side of that coin.
I studied Physics to 1st year degree level and I've played guitar for 30 +years. Totally followed that. My maths failed after 1st year and I became a computer programmer but I kept a real interest in Physics. I became attuned to harmonics 30 years ago and I've heard the interaction between them in chainsaws, cars etc ever since. I shower and hear harmonics harmonising constantly. The world is alive with it. Amazing video. I need to look into this stuff more. I've written some syncopated basslines 2 over 4 bars but that's not the same thing I think. Your channel is great. It's always beyond me but I take inspiration from it every time. Keep keeping on. :-) Luv and Peace.
My maths is really bad but harmonics are so universal that they must say something about the nature of reality. I often wonder if there is not a solution to resolution of primes built in to the harmonic series. I wonder if the N-dimensional nature of the universe could one day show a straight line through the 3- dimensional harmonic series and the nature of the primes. It looks to me like a puzzling 3d puzzle that makes sense at a higher dimension. Luv and Peace.
This became a bit long so heres the tl;dr Find a couple of those oriental ringing bowls, place in an enclosed room preferably with other metal objects, hit all the ringing bowls, stand back and be amazed. Or broken apart at the molecular level and turned to jelly, because science.. which is not my forte. @Ian Edmonds - I am by no means fluent in mathematics, let alone physics, but I've got a lazy 11 years of bass, guitar, keyboard etc experience, so I can relate to harmonics in that sense at least. Here's something I stumbled upon a few years ago that you may find mildly interesting. Have you ever seen those 'tibetan ringing bowls'? I think thats what they're called. Most antique/pawn shops have a few. Find more than one, take them to an enclosed area in the shop (I mean they're made for ringing I'm sure nobody will complain too much). It helps if there are other metal objects in that enclosed space, preferably thin, long, and hollow objects that stand upright (kinda along the lines of a music stand/pans/old school metal milk containers...something that rings when you knock it). Place the ringing bowls around that preferably small area, then knock each of the bowls enough for them to ring, no need to bring dowm the fist of kali or hammer of God haha, just tap each one, and walk away. For reasons I don't understand they just keep resonating louder and louder, soon anything metalic and hollow joins in, and it becomes a bit uncomfortable to be in the same room. But certainly interesting enough to do it. They seem to, if I would guess, all adjust to the same pitch, which seems to propel and amplify the volume, changing into quite a pretty multiple octave sorta feel. But hey I'm no..bowlringologist.. It'll be a cool addition to your list of harmonic experiences and observations though.
Wow Adam, congratulations! This will sound weird, but I feel a sense of pride for you, not exactly as a parent would for a child, but for a fellow person that I get to know through his videos and witness the progress in his achievements. It is such a moving sentiment I can say. Keep it up!
Fast polyrhythms turn into musical keys reminds me of Ken Wheeler's theory of "hard light" what happens when we goto higher frequencies than gamma/cosmic rays. ;) Electrical universe theory.
There was nothing to calculate, only a few numbers thrown in there. One X and one Y somewhere and I have to agree that definition was not very clear, and that's all?
ApiolJoe So that really awesome lecture we both watched. It leaves me wanting to explore those connections Newton made between pitch and colour. I also found the idea between polyrhythms and chords to be absolutely fascinating, in terms of its compositional potential. It opened some doors in my mind, that I didn’t know were there. If I end up exploring that on my own; it’s going to mean delving into the math. That thats even exciting to me is props to Adam Neely’s teaching/lecturing abilities; wish he had been a teacher when I was in college (I generally hate math). Thats what I meant by “did Adam Neely just make math cool”. Sorry you misunderstood. Peace ✌️
I worked out colors for my students in regards to diatonic harmony some years back. It basically went like this: I, IV and V are the primary colors. I is red because red is the strongest color in the spectrum. IV is yellow because Lydian, the fourth mode is the lightest or brightest mode and V is blue because the blues is largely based on dominant chords. The iiim triad shares notes of both I and V so is therefore the purple chord which works well because purple is the color of mystery and Phrygian is a pretty mysterious sounding mode. That makes the vim triad orange, the color of fire which I think works well for the minor relative. Since we nearly never deal with viidim triads, I combined IV (yellow) and V7 (blue) for the iim chord which shares notes from both of those chords. Green works well for the iim because green is the color of nature and the dorian mode is the most natural minor scale in terms of harmony, in the sense that it can extend all the way out through the scale in alternating minor and major thirds, allowing you to land on and treat any note in the dorian mode as a chord tone. Tertiary colors can be found in 7th chords. I is red, iiim is purple so Imaj7 is magenta. The iim is green and and the IV is yellow so the iim7 is chartruese, the color of Mountain Dew. I don't know how to account for that. By the same logic, the iiim7 would be indigo, the IVmaj7 would be goldenrod (American cheese colored) the V7 is already blue because of our avoidance of the viidim triad, the vim7 is vermilion, the color of tomatoes. To close the loop, the viim7b5 is turquoise. It works out so that weak changes represent non-harmonious color combinations and strong changes represent harmonious color combinations. Great compositional tool. Please visit my channel!
+Darklord_slayer Adam's Extreme Jazz Fusion Reharmonisation video. It was originally a comment left on a video by either Dirty Loops or Knower, can't remember which.
I wonder if, in the same way that we have chord progressions, we can also have rhythmic progressions, with polyrhythms resolving to other polyrhythms. And from there, we could use these rhythmic chords to metrically modulate, in the same way we would use chords to modulate to a new key.
Adam Neely you described difficult concepts with great depth. It is the intersection of music, physics,and color theory.Thanks for 9pening my mind to seeing more of the complex beauty of our world!
22.00 - "everything is rhythm" Adam probably hasn't thought of it this way but he essentially summed up a very important spiritual realisation - the manifest universe exists because of pulsation. Matter and its variety is the way it is because of varying rates of pulsation. In the very fundamental sense, EVERYTHING is INDEED, RHYTHM! Also, really cool class, thanks for sharing! Imma go and start practicing now :D
Thank you for this. I have several forms of synesthesia. I remember these experiences going all the way back to age 4. Thanks for connecting all of this into a cohesive narrative. I feel like you were speaking to me. Brilliant talk.
Great talk. A good reminder that everything is a continuum of frequencies, wavelengths and ratios (light and sound, rhythm and pitch , harmony etc ) that our brains and senses perceive discretely with different senses ( eyes, ears, nose etc )but it’s good to remember how we perceive these and how it affects us. It might be interesting to see how it maps to Interference in wave patterns ( eg michelson Morley experiment ) - it seems like paintings have this in addition to the discrete colors we perceive and certainly sound.
Well, it's not something hard to do. The bigger problem is to define how you're going to draw the image. I mean, you can do it pixel by pixel, each pixel based on each note (or chord), but it would be very chaotic, not meaning much for someone looking at it. You could do a group of pixels, like in a column, that changes color base ond the notes, and it might present better results. Or perhaps you can use some method of even distribution, like perlin noise, to make it seem more natural. Anyway, it may not present a good visual result ^^
Just watched this, Adam - Thanks for sharing your analysis, but even more so for highlighting its limitations. I didn't get the emphasis on the A=440Hz bit at first, so I watched THAT video, and I totally get it now. Many Thanks again.
Absolutely mind boggling theories. This video opened many doors in my head when I saw it the first time. Now, many months later I get to understand what I really is about. A book that illuminated the whole bpm and pitch thing to me was „mathemagical music production“. It breaches those gaps which were left open by this video. I really recommend reading this when you are searching for some kind of „higher“ harmony working with your daw.
Well actually now that you mention it here is a traditional example that somewhat legitimizes this idea of a relationship between sound/pitch/intervals and colour/painting. In the Indian classical musical tradition of ragas, each raga has a painting that corresponds to it as a visual representation. It would be interesting to see if the colours within those paintings for each raga have a corolation with the notes within each raga to the chart you presented. The Indian tradition is full of connections based very much on spiritual principals, for instance, ragas correspond to a particular time of the day and in a strict traditional setting would never be played outside those times. Thanks for this presentation I tottally dug it and the interval ratios used as number to create polyrhythms and then those polyrhythms when sped up turning to that actual harmonic interval, as you demonstrated with the major chord just blew my mind. What I found super interesting is that this only truly works with just intonation and not the tempered scale because one needs whole numbers to create polyrhythms and the equally divided octave creates interval ratios of decimal numbers and therefore cannot translate polyrhythmically, also was a real eye opener for me. Thank you so much, even with mathematics at its root for me this whole demonstration of the mysterious connections inherent in our cosmic world is just awe inspiring and hard not feel as a pointer to a conscious intelligence underpinning it...
Very interesting. I noticed you didn't mention Olivier Messian, who was known to have synesthesia too, and who wrote a lot about it. If I remember correctly, he even associated very complex sets of colours to his "limited transposition modes" (sorry I'm french !). Anyway, this was a great presentation, clear, fun and profound.
This was a very well prepared talk with lots of stuff to "chew" on. Thanks Adam. Thank you for all the effort you put on to summarize so much knowledge and finding the simple path through it. At least it appeared to me like simple to understand.
I took a 20th century styles composition class in 1971. The instructor was a Julliard grad at 16 with a masters. He lectured on modal writing' atonal or serial writing and made us read Cage's book on silence bla bla bla. One day he spent 2 hrs in lecture about this very topic. We were all sent home with the same color sequence with the same assignment to write a piece 12 bars long using the color sequence. We spent the next class session looking at an over head projection while the pieces were played on the piano and laughed our asses off. When he played mine one of the other students accused me of being color blind. Best class I took there.
This was fascinating and spurred great idea about music literally inspired/ interpreted by paintings colour schemes with corresponding pitches rather than just aesthetically or emotionally. Love the connections between rythym and pitch also. Thanks
it is hard to feel when you count in english numbers because your seven is two syllables. I count polyrhythms in indian rhythmic solfege to get it internalized/feel it. If your mouth is doing something music isn't it will always feel weird
Can also define the colour to pitch relationship by considering wavelength rather than frequency, since wavelength in both sound and light can vary depending on the medium
That was truly mind bending and completely awesome. Your research and illustrating the connection shines brightly in a universe of information overload.
@@Nootathotep Doubt. It's more likely TH-cam's audio compression. I've heard people blast high frequencies out of chromebook speakers and a full classroom can hear it, minus the teacher due to age, so I doubt you need quality speakers.
A wonderful presentation except for one thing -- Issac Newton work in Optics was in 1666. Adam demonstrates the correlations between musical pitch and visible light based on A = 440 Hz which was not the standard until 1926
Thank you Adam Neely for teaching an old dog of 78 (years, not RPM) new tricks. Wonderful talk. You have my brain racing. Just one off the wall thought. Whenever we are shown a video of an explosion in space, the sound track that accompanies it is very loud. But as you explained, pitch and rhythm are sound pressure waves that our ears and brains respond to. Those waves depend on being generated in the air or earth's atmosphere, or through earth, rock and water in order to reach our ears. If in outer space there is no air to transfer pressure from one particle to another, only a vacuum or near vacuum, then is there no rhythm and no pitch? Is a super-nova in fact silent? Also, you discussed mathematical ratios in orbital resonance. But those ratios are not sound or pitch per se. They can only be turned into rhythm and pitch through your instruments.
Staying up late nights thinking lead me to figure out the way you did the grid with the numbers for the polyrhythm before I watched this, I thought no one else figured that out
This is starting to make a lot of sense to me. When using Ableton I'm always thinking of which colour matches what sound. Dark dirty bass lines and drums = dark blue to black. Bright synth and vocal samples = yellow (maybe bright pink if they are high pitched) etc. That's what I love about working with a Push controller and the sw. Great presentation by the way, lots of food for thought.
Would be cool to create some a software that reads color data and turns it into musical pitch and then use it together with an eye tracker to play the harmonies of the colors seen based on what you are looking at and where on it you are looking. This way you could have music the same you have art, where the impression of it is based on where your eyes focus.
seriously! However, as Adam mentioned VERY quickly at the end, there are disputes as to what specific Hz equal which specific pitches - because of the purity or lack of purity of the intervals - when he talked about JUST temperment vs. EQUAL temperment. And so different musical artists could literally tweak something like that to have slightly different pitches and perhaps more or less dissonance would be heard due to that. As it stands, in modern ears, we're sadly all VERY accustomed to hearing most things slightly out of tune due to EQUAL temperment, and so our musical world is a little more noisy and less pure sounding than it was when we sorta recognized you can't just take an octave and equally divide each note's distance from each other within that.
Hey all! I go quite far off the deep end towards the end of this lecture, but it was all in service of proving my last point. If you stick it out, you see why I start rambling about things that might on the surface appear to be "too far out there," but are in reality a means of understanding some fundamentals of music perception. Hope you enjoy!
Thanks to Ableton for having me! Loop was such an amazing experience.
hey adam, some priest once said "if you study about faith it immediately vanishes, but if you study it more, it comes back!". I think this is the level you're on the theory/tech side of music in relation to magic! congrats!
I love you
Musical metaphors (rhythm, hamony, balance, contrast....) are used in art and architecture to convey the ideas through comparison and co-relation. BTW your talk was amazing as always.
All part of studying harmonics and resonance. It's everything.
The level of understanding is high, the connections the different people/scientists and you are incredible and do wonders for the study of not just music theory but the science behind it which most people dont delve into
Adam: but what if we go beyond visible spectrum?
Audience: * dies from radiation poisoning *
Fucking Gamma radiation
Deveyous of course, gabba radiation
@@Victor-dg6wm *ABBA Radiation
@@deveyousness I think you mean gabber.
And it is also written "*)" before the corrective footnote. The asterisk at the end is the indicator of the presence of a footnote.
"It's beautiful!!" (Face melts)
Pro tip: Make sure the painting and the vocals are in the same key.
Just - what a great comment :D
lol
Pro tip: make sure the orbit of the earth and the rhythms are in the same key
LMFAO
dam
*lick plays*
Adam Neely: EHEH EHEHE EHEHEHEHE
Adam laughing to himself during that transition was hilarious
xD
42:23 "technically speaking, when you speed up a pitch, it's not going to turn into light"
HOWEVER, once it's past the eardrum or retina, it DOES become the same thing - and that's almost certainly why our experience of them is comparable.
Small addition to the part where he talks about the gap in perception between rhythm and pitch. The same happens with visuals, that's why a slideshow is perceived as individual images but a movie (24 frames per second or more) is perceived as movement.
Car tire spinning 🏎️
under 10 Hz: rhythm
10-20 Hz: helicopter
over 20 Hz: pitch
over 20000 hz: colour
@@xeonlw
bat: hm?
What is helicopter pitch then?
Pithm?
Legit the only reason I kind of like speedcore is because they play around with tempos so fast to the point some drum hits start sounding like tones and these can be used to great effect.
'what key are we in?'
'look, just throw me a fourth, we're in f okay'
passes yellow paint
Pro tip: Make sure the harmony and polyrhythm match the album cover artwork colours.
the other way around please, we're musicians here :p
@@thr0ne1997 Actually some of us here are both. …but yes, the music usually comes first. 😉
00:00 Part 1 : Intro (Synaesthesia; Newton's Optics and his use of music as a metaphor for colours and their relations)
07:25 Part 2 : Pitch and rhythm are the same thing (Pitch=rhythm; Human perception of pitch and rhythm)
11:50 Part 3 : How to polyrhythm (Practical guide)
22:00 Part 4 : Polyrhythm and harmony are the same thing (Live demonstration)
29:40 Part 5 : "It gets crazy" : the relation with the visible light spectrum
38:15 Part 6 : "The harmony of the spheres" : the relation with the planets
41:25 Part 7 : Contextualizing the previous points and conclusion (Equal temperament vs just intonation; Sound, a compression wave vs light, an electromagnetic wave; Metaphors expand perception)
Thanks for this
And tnx for this! Good to know I didn't do it only for myself
I felt a little enlightenment after watching this. I mean, I knew almost all things he was talking about, but I never thought of them combined, and it blows my mind
The audience didn't laught at the lick :(
Unfortunately the lick is a Jazz Meme and not a musician meme.
They seemed to get the 440 Hz one though.
heh heh
or at futurama
Neely is completely brilliant. Really interesting talk - as always, he comes up with awesome stuff to ruminate and research further. Mind blown. Thank you!
finally someone I can I agree with. Just a genius this guy is, isn't?
Music + adam neely = mind blown
So good I had to watch it twice!
Adam + Neely = Adam Neely
adam Neely = Vsauce of music
30:37 - A little dig at the A = 432Hz crowd! haha!
pythagoras is in that crowd
i thought the same thing lmao
That was honestly one of the coolest lectures I've ever seen
About music, yes. Best lecture about music stuff!
Dude this. This. This is incredible. I began writing an essay on color and sound and the color wheel and circle of fifths and how they're related years ago. Exciting to hear someone actually present it so well. Excited for more videos like this. I mean in subjects like these.
That 2:3 time signature is present on A LOT of folklore/traditional music. From the aztecs, mayans, native americans.. its incredible. It always evokes a feeling of conenction to the earth… at least for me.
2 against 3 is kinda the simplest expression of an even thing against an odd thing.
But it's such a simple ratio....it works. We can feel it easily.
It's both complex and primal.
2 against 3, in whatever permutation, has always resonated with my own mind. It makes sense that it would be deeply embedded in musical traditions all over the world. It communicates a lot with a little.
@@avedic you are completely right. Thanks for presenting it on that context. It makes so much sense. The rational and the irrational, the even with the uneven, perfectly balance dance that evokes to the root of humans spiritual connection with the all, with the one.
Blissfully grace or Gracefully bliss realization
My mind was already blown by how Adam created a chord out of a sped up Polyrhythm.
But once he explained how sound could be expressed in colors... I was like "HOLY SHIT" we are getting to a new era of art.
EpicZEVEN not really anthing news
But we do have more theoretical knowledge.
Nothing new. He is simple stolen (in a good way) from Hofstadter. Read the book Godel, Escher and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. This is an old idea.
@@-RXB- Yeah, so many things have already existed, the challenge is to occupy our minds wisely. In that sense, lectures like this one help to bring that enlightening material back into mass consciousness.
25 minute mark is when everything he mentioned makes sense and blows your freaking mind! This guys gonna go down in music history as a genius some day.
well, he's not the one who found all of that out, soo...
My technology teacher who was formerly a music teacher told me to check this out because we often have a lot of conversations about music theory (as I want to go into music further). So I started it, picked up a paper and pencil and started taking notes on this. I can wholeheartedly say this changed my outlook on music and art entirely for the better. This stuff is so amazing. Adam Neely never disappoints.
Dude... the most common key in the genre of “Blues” is literally blue
Really?
I'm blue dabadeedabada... dabadeedabada... dabadeedabada... dabadee _DA BA DAH..._
This comes from E being the lowest note on a standardly tuned bass and guitar. The typical blue schema figure can really only played at ease with open strings... but it is of course a nice 'coincidence'
"A is 440 hz, let me be clear about that..."
*Chuckles*
Audience has no clue...
Jorge Allen nice little A:432 roast...
DESTRUCTION 100
I think they do. They are attending a lecture on music theory.
432 people just died that moment 😂
Can someone explain to us peasants?
EDIT: Nevermind, I just noticed that there is a recommended video where he talks about this 432hz thing.
Adam in his own meme world :
"I'm just feeling it maaan ! *chuckles* "
Idk about the rest of you but I still think the lick is absolutely hilarious
Why
The lick resembles more than just the lick itself, and it is hilarious
Coincidence is hilarious to me
It fucking sucks
Repetition is hell; but-home.
Adam neely if your reading this... great job! This was educational, entertaining and thought provoking all at the same time. Im glad your not just exploring the same old music theory subjects the same way everyone else seems to be doing. Your pushing the boundaries and im looking forward to seeing what you come out with next.
Action movies color grade in power chords. Lol
Is Smells Like Teen Spirit a Marvel franchised movie ? That's left for us to answer...
@@Charlyfromthenuclearcity oh my HAHHAHA
Did he consider it is more about the theme of hot-and-cold (fire and ice) than about ratios? (Several of the posters he showed are quite obivous there.)
Action movies are the Ramones.
Kinda makes sense doesn't it? The colors of action movies are heavily saturated so you can't really have multiple colors because they would clash just like a distorted guitar sounds bad when you play seventh chords
Great performance! I was in the room at Loop 2017. I expected nothing and was really flashed by this presentation. Very inspiring!
DUDE! Adam Neely you are an actual musical genius. You are breaking down walls that have existed for a century in music and i think thats pretty rad lol. Keep it up yo!
I think what he's doing - which is just as brilliant - is making this school of thought more accessible and popular. You go girl.
And this is where all my worlds collide, as a graphic designer, photographer and music enthusiast. Colour theory is usually taught superficially. Pretty much like when you learn a scale. You learn where the grades are, the simple relationships and that when you put one or more together you can create a harmony. But my instincts always told me that there was deeper connection or relationship between hues. Thank you Adam to put this forward.
So technically, your entire talk here is a polyrhythm. What chords will it make if you speed it up? Speed it it up more and what colors will it make? Food for thought :)
Incredible... you’ve opened multiple doors of perception. What is the equivalent of a TH-cam standing ovation, because I applaud you, Sir Adam Neely.
Awesome video. In the analogy between sound and colour I wish he showed colour as a temporal phenomenon (i.e. a video of colour), not as a static one (i.e. paintings). Rhythm is temporal, pitch is temporal, light is temporal. Would've been cool hear melodies and simultaneously see the corresponding colour changes; or build a chord and simultaneously see how the colour changes as you add more colours
Yeah, a painting is like a chord. A movie is more like a song 😊🎥🎶
I think he ran out of time - I mean, I don't know what he planned to present, but I saw him look over at one point, looked like someone gave him the "you're outta time" signal and he super sped up after that and skipped what seemed like alot of stuff he might have done more with. I was bummed, cause I was wanting to juice every bit out possible - such a great lecture - maybe he can just do it straight for youtube - the whole schmear, without having someone else involved who needs to move things along.
It's low key adorable how Adam is a little uncomfortable and unsteady early in this talk.
He's SO authoritative and at ease on his own YT videos....or playing on stage in his bands.
But just standing on stage....talking....to a lot of people....is different. The feedback is different. The audience often doesn't realize the role they play in the feedback loop. Adam def gets into the swing of things, but initially he's clearly a bit off balance and feeling a little stage fright.
But he nailed the talk overall. This was a very insightful lecture....it hit on a lot of stuff I find fascinating and truly mysterious about not only music...but reality.
You just explained the title of Rick Beato's series: "Everything's music". Well fucking done, marvelous! You just gave me a nice introduction to teach to people who want to know the fundamentals of music... Thank you very much and keep up the good work!
I plan on analyzing artwork from now on by color, rhythm, pitch and harmony and creating music based off of it, whether it be atonal or arhythmic or microtonal, and I'm more excited than I've been about anything in a while and I wanna thank you, Adam, for sharing this with me and reminding me that there are still things to be done, that with critical thinking we can break any boundaries. This is the push I needed, super inspiring and groundbreaking, and I'm so excited to see where it goes. I hope creative thinkers everywhere can learn to apply this information to their lives and seek new ideas, be reminded that there is still so much to be explored
Part 5 = mind blown! I actually knew that colors must have some harmony between them but could never figure it out, and all that "visual-art-color-lessons" actually never helped; though I always felt theres some unknown but exact relationships going on, having strong musical-like feeling in it. I used it a lot, fine-tuning colors in some own abstract amateur artwork, and had same feeling at time as fine-tuning pitches of drum sets in EDM projects. It makes so much sense now
This talk has literally changed how I understand my world. Thanks so much Adam.
This is literally mindblowing.
He’s a god damn genuine genius
Seriously worth the whole watch through even for non music writers
10:06 - What happens between 10Hz and 20Hz?
Answer: Death metal drumming.
very true.
Hot For Teacher
and now metal bass
Morbid Angel double kicks
Hey Adam. You're the best. I am thrilled to know someone with such a high-level grasp of music, musicality and musicianship also has a working grasp of the difference between "stuff" waving and "fields" waving.
As a physicist who loves music, but doesn't have "the gift" of music, I am thrilled that - to some degree - you represent the other side of that coin.
I studied Physics to 1st year degree level and I've played guitar for 30 +years.
Totally followed that. My maths failed after 1st year and I became a computer programmer but I kept a real interest in Physics.
I became attuned to harmonics 30 years ago and I've heard the interaction between them in chainsaws, cars etc ever since. I shower and hear harmonics harmonising constantly.
The world is alive with it.
Amazing video. I need to look into this stuff more.
I've written some syncopated basslines 2 over 4 bars but that's not the same thing I think.
Your channel is great. It's always beyond me but I take inspiration from it every time.
Keep keeping on.
:-)
Luv and Peace.
My maths is really bad but harmonics are so universal that they must say something about the nature of reality. I often wonder if there is not a solution to resolution of primes built in to the harmonic series. I wonder if the N-dimensional nature of the universe could one day show a straight line through the 3- dimensional harmonic series and the nature of the primes.
It looks to me like a puzzling 3d puzzle that makes sense at a higher dimension.
Luv and Peace.
This became a bit long so heres the tl;dr
Find a couple of those oriental ringing bowls, place in an enclosed room preferably with other metal objects, hit all the ringing bowls, stand back and be amazed. Or broken apart at the molecular level and turned to jelly, because science.. which is not my forte.
@Ian Edmonds - I am by no means fluent in mathematics, let alone physics, but I've got a lazy 11 years of bass, guitar, keyboard etc experience, so I can relate to harmonics in that sense at least. Here's something I stumbled upon a few years ago that you may find mildly interesting. Have you ever seen those 'tibetan ringing bowls'? I think thats what they're called. Most antique/pawn shops have a few. Find more than one, take them to an enclosed area in the shop (I mean they're made for ringing I'm sure nobody will complain too much). It helps if there are other metal objects in that enclosed space, preferably thin, long, and hollow objects that stand upright (kinda along the lines of a music stand/pans/old school metal milk containers...something that rings when you knock it). Place the ringing bowls around that preferably small area, then knock each of the bowls enough for them to ring, no need to bring dowm the fist of kali or hammer of God haha, just tap each one, and walk away. For reasons I don't understand they just keep resonating louder and louder, soon anything metalic and hollow joins in, and it becomes a bit uncomfortable to be in the same room. But certainly interesting enough to do it. They seem to, if I would guess, all adjust to the same pitch, which seems to propel and amplify the volume, changing into quite a pretty multiple octave sorta feel. But hey I'm no..bowlringologist.. It'll be a cool addition to your list of harmonic experiences and observations though.
@@ianedmonds9191 watch Fields Medal math professor Alain Connes lecture on music of the quantum spheres
Wow Adam, congratulations! This will sound weird, but I feel a sense of pride for you, not exactly as a parent would for a child, but for a fellow person that I get to know through his videos and witness the progress in his achievements. It is such a moving sentiment I can say. Keep it up!
Mind blown. I understood 1/4 of this talk but listened to it all the way through, because it was so fascinating.
“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”
Tesla
Fast polyrhythms turn into musical keys reminds me of Ken Wheeler's theory of "hard light" what happens when we goto higher frequencies than gamma/cosmic rays. ;)
Electrical universe theory.
The concepts of energy, frequency and vibration have a lot of overlap. You could also add motion to that lineup.
gOoD fReQuEnCiEs OnLy
This is one of best music theory lesson I've ever seen. What a trip music is folks!?
Adam the madman you've done it again
This is wonderful! Got stuck watching this and couldn't leave! Well done!
24:48 Tomas Haake be like "challenge accepted"
Ahah, quite true.
Nice profile picture btw !
According to Adam's explanation Tomas Haake may sound as a minor second interval
24:30 blew my mind away. Brilliant talk.
Never mind music theory, did Adam Neely just make math cool?!? Mind blowing lecture!
huh, this was like the bottom of basic difficulty in maths...
ApiolJoe Maybe I’m not very good at maths 😉
There was nothing to calculate, only a few numbers thrown in there. One X and one Y somewhere and I have to agree that definition was not very clear, and that's all?
ApiolJoe So that really awesome lecture we both watched. It leaves me wanting to explore those connections Newton made between pitch and colour. I also found the idea between polyrhythms and chords to be absolutely fascinating, in terms of its compositional potential. It opened some doors in my mind, that I didn’t know were there. If I end up exploring that on my own; it’s going to mean delving into the math. That thats even exciting to me is props to Adam Neely’s teaching/lecturing abilities; wish he had been a teacher when I was in college (I generally hate math). Thats what I meant by “did Adam Neely just make math cool”. Sorry you misunderstood. Peace ✌️
If that's what you meant then I indeed misunderstood you :) And yes, this was very interesting in many regards!
Have a good day.
I worked out colors for my students in regards to diatonic harmony some years back. It basically went like this: I, IV and V are the primary colors. I is red because red is the strongest color in the spectrum. IV is yellow because Lydian, the fourth mode is the lightest or brightest mode and V is blue because the blues is largely based on dominant chords. The iiim triad shares notes of both I and V so is therefore the purple chord which works well because purple is the color of mystery and Phrygian is a pretty mysterious sounding mode. That makes the vim triad orange, the color of fire which I think works well for the minor relative. Since we nearly never deal with viidim triads, I combined IV (yellow) and V7 (blue) for the iim chord which shares notes from both of those chords. Green works well for the iim because green is the color of nature and the dorian mode is the most natural minor scale in terms of harmony, in the sense that it can extend all the way out through the scale in alternating minor and major thirds, allowing you to land on and treat any note in the dorian mode as a chord tone.
Tertiary colors can be found in 7th chords. I is red, iiim is purple so Imaj7 is magenta. The iim is green and and the IV is yellow so the iim7 is chartruese, the color of Mountain Dew. I don't know how to account for that. By the same logic, the iiim7 would be indigo, the IVmaj7 would be goldenrod (American cheese colored) the V7 is already blue because of our avoidance of the viidim triad, the vim7 is vermilion, the color of tomatoes. To close the loop, the viim7b5 is turquoise.
It works out so that weak changes represent non-harmonious color combinations and strong changes represent harmonious color combinations. Great compositional tool.
Please visit my channel!
Pro tip: Make sure the synth and the vocals are in the same key.
What is that meme from I see it everywhere but haven't actually found the source.
Edit: I just checked, Mr. Apple is right, it's the Reharmonization video.
+Darklord_slayer Adam's Extreme Jazz Fusion Reharmonisation video. It was originally a comment left on a video by either Dirty Loops or Knower, can't remember which.
Mister Apple Knower
Nero/Skrillex - Promises (cover by KNOWER)
Adam Neely is a REALLY good teacher. To explain complex problems with SUCH easy that it SOUNDS easy is amazing.
I wonder if, in the same way that we have chord progressions, we can also have rhythmic progressions, with polyrhythms resolving to other polyrhythms. And from there, we could use these rhythmic chords to metrically modulate, in the same way we would use chords to modulate to a new key.
Adam Neely you described difficult concepts with great depth. It is the intersection of music, physics,and color theory.Thanks for 9pening my mind to seeing more of the complex beauty of our world!
Pro tip: make sure the polyrhythms and the Isaac Newton are in the same key.
I wish you had three hours, this one of the most beautiful concepts I've come across in years. Well done!
Adam Neely, nice!!
When will the other talks be released? I’m really looking forward to the one from Tennyson.
did you just say 'tennyson' 'talk'
??
I need to see this :O
Yeah, i think they did some kind of interview where they look at their tracks and perform live afterwards.
I need that!
We uploaded the Tennyson talk today - enjoy! th-cam.com/video/KMRm9cpjm_w/w-d-xo.html
This firmly blew my mind. Thanks
I've been saying this for years: music is rhythm and rhythm only
22.00 - "everything is rhythm" Adam probably hasn't thought of it this way but he essentially summed up a very important spiritual realisation - the manifest universe exists because of pulsation. Matter and its variety is the way it is because of varying rates of pulsation. In the very fundamental sense, EVERYTHING is INDEED, RHYTHM! Also, really cool class, thanks for sharing! Imma go and start practicing now :D
i could watch adam just talk for days
Thank you for this. I have several forms of synesthesia. I remember these experiences going all the way back to age 4. Thanks for connecting all of this into a cohesive narrative. I feel like you were speaking to me. Brilliant talk.
God I enjoyed every second of this.
This makes me want to study beyond what I considered my horizons to be.
Great talk. A good reminder that everything is a continuum of frequencies, wavelengths and ratios (light and sound, rhythm and pitch , harmony etc ) that our brains and senses perceive discretely with different senses ( eyes, ears, nose etc )but it’s good to remember how we perceive these and how it affects us. It might be interesting to see how it maps to Interference in wave patterns ( eg michelson Morley experiment ) - it seems like paintings have this in addition to the discrete colors we perceive and certainly sound.
Now i really want a programm that turns musical pieces into paintings...
I used to have one that turned images into sound, I'm certain there's a piece of freeware that can do what you're looking for.
Well, it's not something hard to do. The bigger problem is to define how you're going to draw the image. I mean, you can do it pixel by pixel, each pixel based on each note (or chord), but it would be very chaotic, not meaning much for someone looking at it. You could do a group of pixels, like in a column, that changes color base ond the notes, and it might present better results. Or perhaps you can use some method of even distribution, like perlin noise, to make it seem more natural. Anyway, it may not present a good visual result ^^
I think the name is harsh noise or something, but theres a freeware vst that lets you draw something and decides the sound based off that
th-cam.com/video/QFZBTYFTeto/w-d-xo.html
How about a visualizor that is controlled by midi data of songs
Just watched this, Adam - Thanks for sharing your analysis, but even more so for highlighting its limitations. I didn't get the emphasis on the A=440Hz bit at first, so I watched THAT video, and I totally get it now. Many Thanks again.
Pro tip: Make sure the colors in your painting are in the SAME KEY
Well this is what coloristics is all about
It's called complementary colours
r/woooosh
@@notvelleda redditor
Maybe the most inspiring video I have ever seen.... Building a nice starting point to explore new ideas... Thank you
Seeing the Picasso painting I thought : "Well, why didn't he even mention Kandins... Oh there you are."
Absolutely mind boggling theories. This video opened many doors in my head when I saw it the first time. Now, many months later I get to understand what I really is about. A book that illuminated the whole bpm and pitch thing to me was „mathemagical music production“. It breaches those gaps which were left open by this video. I really recommend reading this when you are searching for some kind of „higher“ harmony working with your daw.
Was there a Q and A at the end? Any chance that video will be posted?
Well actually now that you mention it here is a traditional example that somewhat legitimizes this idea of a relationship between sound/pitch/intervals and colour/painting. In the Indian classical musical tradition of ragas, each raga has a painting that corresponds to it as a visual representation. It would be interesting to see if the colours within those paintings for each raga have a corolation with the notes within each raga to the chart you presented. The Indian tradition is full of connections based very much on spiritual principals, for instance, ragas correspond to a particular time of the day and in a strict traditional setting would never be played outside those times. Thanks for this presentation I tottally dug it and the interval ratios used as number to create polyrhythms and then those polyrhythms when sped up turning to that actual harmonic interval, as you demonstrated with the major chord just blew my mind. What I found super interesting is that this only truly works with just intonation and not the tempered scale because one needs whole numbers to create polyrhythms and the equally divided octave creates interval ratios of decimal numbers and therefore cannot translate polyrhythmically, also was a real eye opener for me. Thank you so much, even with mathematics at its root for me this whole demonstration of the mysterious connections inherent in our cosmic world is just awe inspiring and hard not feel as a pointer to a conscious intelligence underpinning it...
Very interesting. I noticed you didn't mention Olivier Messian, who was known to have synesthesia too, and who wrote a lot about it. If I remember correctly, he even associated very complex sets of colours to his "limited transposition modes" (sorry I'm french !). Anyway, this was a great presentation, clear, fun and profound.
I could be wrong but I believe he did talk a bit about Messian in one of his vids about synesthesia on his channel.
This was a very well prepared talk with lots of stuff to "chew" on. Thanks Adam. Thank you for all the effort you put on to summarize so much knowledge and finding the simple path through it. At least it appeared to me like simple to understand.
L I C C
he licc
but he also
slicc
@@KingBlonde T H E L I C C
I took a 20th century styles composition class in 1971. The instructor was a Julliard grad at 16 with a masters. He lectured on modal writing' atonal or serial writing and made us read Cage's book on silence bla bla bla. One day he spent 2 hrs in lecture about this very topic. We were all sent home with the same color sequence with the same assignment to write a piece 12 bars long using the color sequence. We spent the next class session looking at an over head projection while the pieces were played on the piano and laughed our asses off. When he played mine one of the other students accused me of being color blind. Best class I took there.
Also, is that Ben Levin in the front row?
Akshit Jha I thought the same thing! Probably not, but it would be cool.
yes
HAHAHAHAHA!
No that's just me but I'm flattered 😊
lucky
The most eye-opening talk on music I have ever seen.
I've never seen Adams legs before
This was fascinating and spurred great idea about music literally inspired/ interpreted by paintings colour schemes with corresponding pitches rather than just aesthetically or emotionally. Love the connections between rythym and pitch also. Thanks
Those were the fastest 45 mins of my life! :o
this is honestly the only smart and interesting video ableton has ever put out thanks adam.
it is hard to feel when you count in english numbers because your seven is two syllables. I count polyrhythms in indian rhythmic solfege to get it internalized/feel it. If your mouth is doing something music isn't it will always feel weird
Half the seven when you speak it. It's what jazz heads tend to do, so one, two, three, four, five, six, sev etc, makes life easier when counting.
Amazing talk Adam, loved every second.
Really interesting, thanks !
Can also define the colour to pitch relationship by considering wavelength rather than frequency, since wavelength in both sound and light can vary depending on the medium
Now I really want to know if there's any physiological link between 20:20 vision and the human hearing range 20Hz:20kHz
That was truly mind bending and completely awesome. Your research and illustrating the connection shines brightly in a universe of information overload.
The day I realized my hearing had fallen below 15khz
or your headphones
@@Nootathotep Doubt. It's more likely TH-cam's audio compression. I've heard people blast high frequencies out of chromebook speakers and a full classroom can hear it, minus the teacher due to age, so I doubt you need quality speakers.
So awesome to see Adam on the Ableton channel!
A wonderful presentation except for one thing -- Issac Newton work in Optics was in 1666. Adam demonstrates the correlations between musical pitch and visible light based on A = 440 Hz which was not the standard until 1926
Mad, mad props Adam Neely.
Totally worth the time.
if this were a room full of jazz students, the audience would crack up each time there is a new part when
"the lick" plays
Thank you Adam Neely for teaching an old dog of 78 (years, not RPM) new tricks. Wonderful talk. You have my brain racing. Just one off the wall thought. Whenever we are shown a video of an explosion in space, the sound track that accompanies it is very loud. But as you explained, pitch and rhythm are sound pressure waves that our ears and brains respond to. Those waves depend on being generated in the air or earth's atmosphere, or through earth, rock and water in order to reach our ears. If in outer space there is no air to transfer pressure from one particle to another, only a vacuum or near vacuum, then is there no rhythm and no pitch? Is a super-nova in fact silent? Also, you discussed mathematical ratios in orbital resonance. But those ratios are not sound or pitch per se. They can only be turned into rhythm and pitch through your instruments.
Staying up late nights thinking lead me to figure out the way you did the grid with the numbers for the polyrhythm before I watched this, I thought no one else figured that out
Polo 10k use that kind of critical thinking and create breakthroughs like this on your own man, never take the gift of knowledge for granted.
This is starting to make a lot of sense to me. When using Ableton I'm always thinking of which colour matches what sound. Dark dirty bass lines and drums = dark blue to black. Bright synth and vocal samples = yellow (maybe bright pink if they are high pitched) etc. That's what I love about working with a Push controller and the sw.
Great presentation by the way, lots of food for thought.
Would be cool to create some a software that reads color data and turns it into musical pitch and then use it together with an eye tracker to play the harmonies of the colors seen based on what you are looking at and where on it you are looking. This way you could have music the same you have art, where the impression of it is based on where your eyes focus.
seriously! However, as Adam mentioned VERY quickly at the end, there are disputes as to what specific Hz equal which specific pitches - because of the purity or lack of purity of the intervals - when he talked about JUST temperment vs. EQUAL temperment. And so different musical artists could literally tweak something like that to have slightly different pitches and perhaps more or less dissonance would be heard due to that. As it stands, in modern ears, we're sadly all VERY accustomed to hearing most things slightly out of tune due to EQUAL temperment, and so our musical world is a little more noisy and less pure sounding than it was when we sorta recognized you can't just take an octave and equally divide each note's distance from each other within that.