Your mention of "percussion solo is time to take a restroom break" reminds me of a similar joke in jazz circles. I won't repeat it here, but it involves heavy use of the phrase "drums stop, very very bad".
Wow! You just went and made a video about my master thesis! I am currently writing it now, and i am actually studying under B.C Manjunath. Great video, thanks!
Same for me, I gave my thesis on paper just today ! But it is not a master's thesis, it is 2 years earlier so my thesis is smaller (25 pages). I'm so thrilled to see more and more people discover Konnakol
This is really weird. When I was 15, I played in a bad local metal band, and we had a song that had a similar idea, where we had a phrase in 7/4 that would get shorter in 3/8 steps and then longer again, and our drummer would play 4/4 under all that with accented off-beat quarters. We never managed to play that clean live.
Max Maria Wacholder do you have a recording of the song or do you remember how the song went? It’s a really fascinating idea to say that you thought of it when you were growing up.
@@freyashaw9958 Don't misunderstand me, it wasn't nearly as complex as this. We just wanted to be "prog", so we put a "prog" section after the second chorus. I don't think that I still have a recording, it was 20 years ago, but if I should find one I'll reply again.
I just (for a very loose value of "just" -- at least it's the last thing I posted) did a "math rock" style track in 7/8, but where the looped guitar parts are shortened (in the middle, no dropped notes) by 1/16th and 1/8th note respectively, so they drift out of sync with the rest of the song. mal-2.bandcamp.com/track/strap-on-tool
I appreciate that David did enough research about konnukol and reached out to actual musicians to do it justice, everything here was spot on and introduced a lot of useful and interesting things to an audience that may not have much exposure to south Indian classical music
Glad to see Indian music getting some attention; there is a millennia-long classical tradition (actually _two_ classical traditions) so there's so much depth there which seems to be passed over in the West. I hope we will get to hear your take on the Indian conception(s) of tuning and intervals as well.
I'm willing to build a VST in Maize Sampler, if there are sample sets to be had. I make these fairly frequently for my own purposes, and have one I'm willing to share. mal-2.bandcamp.com/album/bjam-demos
I tried telling my professor about this a while back to help his students with polyrhythms and he was like, "that's too complicated you should just count the beats and subdivide that." Some other players were like, "just feel it" and they usually are playing it wrong lmao.
I mean, counting has its advantages as well. You can work on rhythm and keep track of the meter at the same time. If you want to get people up and running right away, it's a good system too. But yeah, if you're intermediate with rhythm, Konnakol is really worth the time and effort, and the intro material is def not "too complicated".
This video is absolutely wonderful. A friend of mine just sent it to me and I gotta say I really appreciate it. I have kept a very(Emphasis on VERY) basic understanding of konnakol on my toolbelt for the last couple of years and it has always helped me tremendously with the study of rhythm. Sadly, it is not a very widespread accessible subject in it's entirety, and your work has shone light on aspects of it I didn't even know about. It just goes to show how we can all benefit from exchanging information and culture as well as integrating it into our own individual expression. Always with utmost respect and an insatiable hunger for growth and knowledge! Thanks David and all who have been involved in the production and research that made this video possible, sincerely and from the very bottom of my heart. You guys are truly the reason we can keep on pushing the boundaries of the artform and the language that is music.
That's why Indians are all geniuses in math and computer stuff ;-) I was searching for such a video over Indian complex rhythms and now I found it. thanks you very much for this.
I've loved Indian "classical"/traditional music for a long time, and have often wondered about a number of these practices and systems. Thank you for taking this up and doing a video that attempts to explain some of this. Very informative and very much appreciated.
I think an excellent example for EMNM is microtonal music. First of all microtonal music deals with frequencies so even if you work in the purest form which is just intonation you need to do some math to see what are the good intervals, what are the relations between them and to which notes you get if you stack them up. Second, if you temper out some commas, which are rational frequency ratios, you get regular temperaments and then you need to do some math (namely number theory and linear algebra) to see which intervals are the same and more math to optimize the temperament - to decide the right size for the generators such that the resulting frequencies will be the best according to some metrics. And then there are equal temperaments, in which you need to do more math (beginning with rational approximations of logarithms) to decide which equal temperaments have the best approximation to some just intervals or a regular temperament. There are also well temperaments which are a whole other mess and perhaps even more stuff, all of which involving a lot of math. And of course, all of the traditions that existed before Western musicians decided that 12edo was the way to go and dedicated that to the rest of the world (such as Arabic, Indian, Chinese and even European classic and baroque music) include some form of math in the tuning of the music, for example, Indian sruti are a form of just intonation which is also related to 22edo and to regular temperaments such as pajara. So as a proud math nerd, I think microtonal music is one of the extremest mathematical nerdy music that exist.
I've never quite got my head around this despite having a keen interest - a video by David Bruce on an introduction to Erv Wilson would be very helpful!
Bro, I say it all the time, you deserve at least 1M subs. You put so much effort into your videos, well, more than your audience deserves anyway. Keep doing what your doing!
Brilliant stuff my friend...….Big Shakti fan here (I had the pleasure of seeing them twice back in the day)...just stumbled upon this video. Will subscribe......awesome stuff.
Just stumbled over this. I’ve been referring kids to the virtuosity of Guru Varijashree Venugopal for ages - nice surprise to see you explaining it all and referring to the other virtuosic guru D Bruce and our Kundalee 🙌🏻😘 hope you and the family are all keeping well. Huge love
Woo hoo so happy! I was waiting for an Indian video on rhythms especially and also the dagga that I saw in the LSO video. Keep up your good work. B.C Manjunath is a master of rhythm. He has been mentioned in many western classical channels like TwoSet Violin,SoundField and now you, David Bruce. 👌🏼👌🏼👌🏼 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻 Regards from India🇮🇳
I just realized that my drum teacher 11 years ago thought me a little bit of konnakol. I trained to play triplets with takita and quarter notes with ta ka di mi, but I changed the last one to ta ki de mi (because at the time it help me underlining some beats, with portuguese accent it sounds lower, which for me it helped). Amazing and very informative. Thank you very much.
I believe konnakol should be taught to all freshman in every music school. After only learning the basics through a lesson video many years ago, it’s improved my timing and allowed me to communicate rhythm better to this day.
Great video David. After breaking my left hand last year I decided to learn this duet as a way of keeping myself rhythmically challenged. The understanding came first but a long time before I could perform it. I asked BC if he felt a pulse through this piece, in fact the count-in is just for a tempo and starting reference. I began to learn the first cycle whilst walking down the street at a 1/4 not pulse. I then learned the clapping cycle in the same way. Lots of fun but perhaps a bit of a distraction. Keep up the good work. After spending a year with this I think more of it as geometry than a maths puzzle. At no point did I add or subtract any values in working this out. Imagine drawing a perfect square then drawing two lines within the square to crest 4 smaller perfect squares. This process can be but doesn't need to be numerically described as such. So more instead I began to feel the gaps between the notes. I failed maths GCSE twice. The only time I wrote anything down was to work out her Tal variation.
Spent a good portion of my childhood learning the Mirthangam, the two-headed drum that is laidout horizontally on our laps. I find counting the 'western' way of counting difficult to wrap my head around. This is such a good intro, David. Especially for people like me who have lost practice like I have. Good on ya for giving McLaughlin and MVO lads credit for showing konnakol to the outside world. And really, everyone has to listen to Shaki at least once in their lives. Ear candy of the best sort.
Geek Heaven! Thank you so much for this video, I've been wanting a bridge of some kind for a song I'm writing and this video came up in my recommendations at the perfect time. The song is prog, so this really helps. Thank you for phenonemal content as always David. /Elmer
Yes yes yes this video was amazing! Thank you SOO much got shedding light on one of my favorite genres which doesn't get a lot of attention here in the west. An excellent video on a great topic. Thank you so much and more of this!
we used konnakol in my intro to music theory courses at my community college, it was a pretty cool way to learn rhythms quickly once you got used to it.
Thank you for this fascinating piece of Carnatic music! It incorporates many processes that Messiaen used. Now I know that Messiaen researched Indian music, but until now I thought that the only examples he knew were certain "Hindu rhythms", and that even some of those were the result of his misinterpreting rest-symbols as augmentation-dots. (Paul Griffiths, in "Olivier Messiaen", p.60, refers to the copy, in Lavignac's encyclopedia, of a list of 120 deci-talas copied from Sangīta-ratnākara, and writes "Indeed, it is arguable that the Lavignac list errs in notating as a dotted semiquaver what ought to be read as a semiquaver followed by a semiquaver rest, so that many of the irregularities Messiaen specially cherishes are spurious".) But in your video you show some other techniques Messiaen also frequently used: 1. following a rhythm by a repetition of it, but augmented somehow 2. setting a repetitive sequence of pitches or chords to a rhythm that does not repeat in the same way, so that ocurrences of the same pitch might get different durations I had previously thought that Messiaen had learnt the first from Stravinsky and invented the second himself (though he later found out that Guillaume de Machaut had independently had the same idea centuries before). And now I find both of them in Carnatic music, too!
I became obsessed years ago with Jimi Hendrix, and I noticed he was doing all of these crazy rhythms. So I actually made charts of playing different subdivisions with different note groupings. Then when I looked at south Indian rhythms, I noticed the exact same patterns and even the same charts I wrote myself after listening to Hendrix. So somehow, Hendrix was doing this same kind of stuff. It is hard for most people to notice. Many think Hendrix was playing some whacky stuff that made no sense, but he was really playing with all kinds of subdivision and note groupings. He might play a 5 note lick while switching from triplets to sixths to sextuplets without breaking the pattern.
This whole video gave me the best kind of goosebumps and hearing John McLaughlin play and talk about music gives me chills. I'm excited about this challenge and I know what my band will be working on at our next rehearsal!
awesome video! mor of this pls ! and props for nailing the 30 syllable surnames of the indian performers lol. (; Just sifted through the videos in the description, ....so awesome thank you!
That's actually called a "cumulative" song (or story). Other examples: "The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly," "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," "The Ratlin' Bog."
I've only just found Varijashree a month ago when I came across the video of her carnatic skatting along with Coletranes Giant Steps. Amazing then that she's featured here! Im kind of obsessed with her and would love to work with both her and Manjunath someday. I reckon some magical spiritual jazz could happen
After focusing so much on the rhythmic side, you should definitely explore the actual melodic side of Hindustani and Carnatic music. It's perplexing how structured and shockingly beautiful their different ragas are.
This is so cool! I got here from the Rick Beato interview with Mohini Dey. I'm a math nerd so the kind of maths that's relevant here is something called modular arithmetic. For poly rhythms you may want to learn about Euclid's algorithm for computing the greatest common divisor. Then you have the Chinese remainder theorem and Fermat's little theorem. From there you can venture forth to number theory in general. Things like Diophantine equations. Or why not abstract algebra, which is rings (modular arithmetic is a ring), groups, finite fields and so much more...
I'm part Uruguayan, love samba to death, but you must realise how it doesn't even compare to this sort of thing in terms of rhythmic complexity. This is centuries of mathematics. Not taking anything from samba. Hell, definitely not Brazil, we can talk about bossa nova etc., forever, but they're not nearly as deep rhythmically as konnakol.
I really enjoyed this one. Indian music is super interesting. For a suggestion on other "extreme math nerd music", overtone singing can be pretty interesting. There's folk traditions such as some central Asian styles, and other practitioners in Western styles, plus I'm sure others I'm not aware of. I'd definitely recommend Toby Twining's choral piece "Chrysalid Requiem", which definitely qualifies as virtuosic and mathy, very much in the tradition of Ben Johnston.
David, I was just marveling at that video with Manjunath B.C., and attempting to mimic it myself (admittedly with snail-speed progress). Great analysis.
Fantastic video, thanks for posting! As someone who loves Mahler to Steve Vai the most and also loves Metallica, Dream Theatre, Mastadon, Tool, Messugana, Animals as Leaders, I wouldn't know where to start for examples of nerd math music, so 'll start at the beginning: Stravinsky for it's lowest common Multiple poly/multi time signatures towards the end of both Rite of Spring movements; (especially the 2nd.) Chronologically what comes next that's in any way popular is the "rhythmic turnaround" John Paul Jones wrote for Led Zeppelin in the song Black Dog. Let';s also not forget Frank Zappa!
Great stuff! Helped me solidify my need to create a deeper ‘rule based’ system for a rule based algorithm I have in the works. One that already has inherent modes that I’ve obsessively cataloged. There were already so many analogies with both northern and southern Indian traditions I’m shocked that I could have missed the ‘connection’. This connection turns what was meant to be a ‘one off’ into something that could be given to other composers to play with.
Cool stuff! I'm in a prog metal band, and we've done a countdown-countup and inverse in one of our songs, as in 7/8 6/8 5/8 4/8 3/8 2/8 1/8 (implied 0/8) 1/8 2/8 3/8 4/8 5/8 6/8 7/8, but not polyrythmically. We're going to have try that now.
I love the group and the concept...I just personally wish McLaughlin put more focus into the melodic elements of his improvisation with the Mahavishnu Orchestra along with the rhythmic elements
SonSauvage I see where you’re coming from, but a lot of his music already has such beautiful melodies within them. So I can appreciate his focus on rhythm during some improvisation, although I think he focuses more on melody in his later work if I remember correctly
That is a very good point and idea. I hope Bruce will do a video on this subject! African music (in general, there's no such thing as 'african music' of course) is so immensely rich and complicated from a harmonic, melodic and rhythmic point of view, but sadly often looked over or forgotten.
You can check out The Solkattu Manual by Nelson for a gentle introduction. Also, Reina's thesis has been published under the title "applying karnatic rhythmical techniques to western music"
Well, Rhythm understanding is essential for what I call "the ultimate level of musical freedom" - That is, you no longer are restrained in terms of what kind of beauty you could achieve by being able to perform whatever rhythm you could think of not only to "show off" but to express something beautiful musically and spiritually speaking. When I write this lines, I think of Tigran Hamasyan and so many other great musicians that have used rhythm in such way that, it is really inspiring. Thanks for the video mr. Bruce. You are an excellent mentor. Much love from Ecuador.
A year or so ago I watched Ben Levin’s video on this concept and wrote a prog rock song using a bastardization of this method plus a “16 tone” matrix haha I’m glad you’ve made another great video on this concept!
Thank you for this explanation. Your compositions are so wonderful, so interesting, so intellectual, yet emotional and artistic. I just love it. Bravo!
Maybe I'm a bit daft, but the melody, rhythm / counterpoint of the opening piece that you used and highlighted here really reminded me of "Sunday Morning", the second of Benjamin Britten's "Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes".
Between this and some of the recent Sound Field videos, my Spotify recently played list looks very strange right now. Indian konnakol jazz fusion, goth, and bluegrass make for a strange combination. Thanks for introducing this. It's fascinating stuff.
I could not help but be drawn to this one. The moment I saw the thumbnail, I already knew the topic. This is closely related to my thesis topic as well -- in my case, I focused more on the melodic side of things since that's my field as a recovering ex-Carnatic violinist... I was working heavily on how to translate Carnatic music theory into Western parlance. In particular, this is one of those things (along with the very concept of a raga) that really creates a barrier to understanding... Carnatic Music principally differs from its North Indian in that rhythm is a target of hefty improvisation. If you enjoyed this, I highly recommend one of my favorite examples of bringing this sort of polyrhythmic improvisation into complex and artful melodic improvisation -- S Kalyanaraman accompanied by M.S. Gopalakrishnan and Karaikudi Mani in his performance of Maamava Karunayya. You will, in particular hear some amazing polyrhythms in the solfeggio call-and-response portion. Kalyanaraman was really one of the first to bring this level of complex rhythmic insertions and overlays into vocal performance, and now has left his mark on the art form. A more modern example might be Abhishek Raghuram -- he originally trained as a percussionist (and is the grandson of one of the all-time legends of the mridangam - Palakkad Raghu), and transitioned to singing later on... when he does his solfeggio improv, you can really pick up on his tendency to play with complex ways to parse the rhythm. He's particularly fond of prime numbers.
Here's the link to the aforementioned Kalyanaraman performance -- th-cam.com/video/T_4KrOXf_4A/w-d-xo.html It's in a raga called "Shanmukhapriya" - although it doesn't fully explain the raga, the scale is basically an Aeolian minor, except that it has an augmented 4th (tritone). It's also in Misra Chaapu tala, which is one of those that don't fit into the standard set of 35. Its a cycle of 3 claps where the first one lasts 1.5 counts, so it's a fractional time signature of 3.5 counts (at its root gati/nadai).
Your piece at the beginning based on the Indian ryththms is such a toe tapper. But then this whole video is. I might need to soak my feet in Epsom salts by the end, trying to keep up with it all.
This reminds me of how Joseph Schillinger would work with rhythm through what he called the interference of polynomial periodicities (aka polyrhythms: a against b or a against b against c, etc.), which he would map out on graph paper and use as the basis of rhythmic, melodic, harmonic, and/or contrapuntal invention strategies (see his Encyclopedia of Rhythms as well as his System of Musical Composition). His students George Gershwin and Glenn Miller used his system in their compositions (see Gershwin’s I Got Rhythm Variations and Miller’s Moonlight Serenade). Carnatic music theory in its complex use of rhythm provides a fascinating independent meditation on what can be achieved when we approach music through mathematical lenses.
Fantastic video as always. Random but do you think you would ever be interested in making a video on the history of Dutch music. I recently visited Holland and discovered the fascinating musical history. Such as, Dutch jazz and even the flamenco conservatory in Rotterdam.
While I see the very clear reason that "Takadimi" (this is what western academic study is calling it in class room teaching) is used in this Southern Indian Classical Music Tradition, a lot of professors and teachers have started adopting is as their main teaching technique in America. I am SO happy I stumbled upon this video to actually explain the system properly
Something worthy checking concerning Mattias IA Ecklundh is his band Freak Kitchen's song Teargas Jazz. It has riffs that increase and decrease in terms of the beat, it's really fun!
Nik Bartsch is a Swiss jazz musician. His music has layers of proportional rhythms that all align after a cycle and uses creative shifts in emphasis to imply different meters. There’s also an architectural aspect of his music inspired by Japanese aesthetics. Check out his group Ronin, and any of his compositions entitled “Module”!
A proposal for another EMNM video would be group theory in musical composition. There is the use of all possible permutations of rows in method ringing by campanological composers like Stedman, the algorithmic processes of Arvo Pärt, the mathematical music of Tom Johnson (best known for 'Failing' for double bass but has written many pieces he works out as diagrams of geometric machinery). And perhaps you could turn up more examples which I would love because that's so my bag. ❤
Love the video, can’t wait to get back and practice. But it would be great if you could soften the harshness in some of the clips and calls. Maybe a multi and comp or de easer. Thanks so much for your work!
great as always, glad you put this out there! if you don't mind, I would like to recommend Ben Levin's videos on Indian rhythmic solfege. it's great :)
I belong to a lineage of Carnatic musicians. Questions regarding melodic concepts in South Indian classical music are welcome. The deep complex rhythmic elements add some unique features like gamakams to Carnatic music. Gamakam (oscillation, vibration, glide etc amongst notes) is a unique and robust concept of Carnatic music which adds depth and colour to the melody.. Some questions regarding rhythm can also answered, though I am not an expert in that 🙏😇
David, have you ever heard Pat Metheny's The First Circle? It has sections in 22/8, written out as a 12/8+10/8 (5+4 pulse). It inspired me to compose a piece with a version for wind quintet (one with horn, one with a [melody] tenor sax) and one for clarinet quintet.
Instant kudos just for that slight of camera. I totally believed it! 1:25 "How To INSTANTLY ANNOY your MUSICIANS with Times NO-ONE can PLAY!??!?!??!???! Unbelievable Reaction!!!!!!!!"
Dear @David Bruce thank you so so much for featuring me on your channel and indulging deep in analysing those videos. Love your explanation. 🙏
Thank you for your amazing work! I'm so glad you liked the video. 🤩
@@DBruce indeed I am humbled and honored
@@ManjunathBC Deepest respect to both of you!
Your mention of "percussion solo is time to take a restroom break" reminds me of a similar joke in jazz circles. I won't repeat it here, but it involves heavy use of the phrase "drums stop, very very bad".
@@mal2ksc thought you was gonna say "oh its the bass solo we can talk now"
Wow! You just went and made a video about my master thesis! I am currently writing it now, and i am actually studying under B.C Manjunath. Great video, thanks!
Erik Vinje hey, well done you, post a link here when you are done!
Same for me, I gave my thesis on paper just today ! But it is not a master's thesis, it is 2 years earlier so my thesis is smaller (25 pages). I'm so thrilled to see more and more people discover Konnakol
He's a professor? nice
@@woah284 Oh, i don't believe he is, but i am studying konnakol with him through online lessons. :)
I also submit papers for B.C. marijuana....
This is really weird. When I was 15, I played in a bad local metal band, and we had a song that had a similar idea, where we had a phrase in 7/4 that would get shorter in 3/8 steps and then longer again, and our drummer would play 4/4 under all that with accented off-beat quarters. We never managed to play that clean live.
Max Maria Wacholder do you have a recording of the song or do you remember how the song went? It’s a really fascinating idea to say that you thought of it when you were growing up.
@@freyashaw9958 Don't misunderstand me, it wasn't nearly as complex as this. We just wanted to be "prog", so we put a "prog" section after the second chorus. I don't think that I still have a recording, it was 20 years ago, but if I should find one I'll reply again.
@@TheSequentCalculus wow im looking forward to hear that song if you ever find that
I just (for a very loose value of "just" -- at least it's the last thing I posted) did a "math rock" style track in 7/8, but where the looped guitar parts are shortened (in the middle, no dropped notes) by 1/16th and 1/8th note respectively, so they drift out of sync with the rest of the song.
mal-2.bandcamp.com/track/strap-on-tool
@@mal2ksc December of last year is a real loose meaning to "just," my guy xD
Song's actually pretty cool though, good work.
I appreciate that David did enough research about konnukol and reached out to actual musicians to do it justice, everything here was spot on and introduced a lot of useful and interesting things to an audience that may not have much exposure to south Indian classical music
"this is an example of a musical spiral"
*Tool wants to know your location*
keep on the spiral...
It'll be a treat if they use this kind of rhythm in the upcoming adaptation of Uzumaki
RIDE THE SPIRAL TO THE END WE MAY JUST GO WHERE NO ONES BEEN
Glad to see Indian music getting some attention; there is a millennia-long classical tradition (actually _two_ classical traditions) so there's so much depth there which seems to be passed over in the West. I hope we will get to hear your take on the Indian conception(s) of tuning and intervals as well.
Holy Marble Machine X T-shirt Bruce!
Yooo David Bruce watches wintergatan!!
@@AFNacapella I wish! Let's get a petition going. Might have to wait a year or two for him to finish it though (-:
I'm willing to build a VST in Maize Sampler, if there are sample sets to be had. I make these fairly frequently for my own purposes, and have one I'm willing to share.
mal-2.bandcamp.com/album/bjam-demos
I tried telling my professor about this a while back to help his students with polyrhythms and he was like, "that's too complicated you should just count the beats and subdivide that." Some other players were like, "just feel it" and they usually are playing it wrong lmao.
I mean, counting has its advantages as well. You can work on rhythm and keep track of the meter at the same time. If you want to get people up and running right away, it's a good system too. But yeah, if you're intermediate with rhythm, Konnakol is really worth the time and effort, and the intro material is def not "too complicated".
This video is absolutely wonderful. A friend of mine just sent it to me and I gotta say I really appreciate it. I have kept a very(Emphasis on VERY) basic understanding of konnakol on my toolbelt for the last couple of years and it has always helped me tremendously with the study of rhythm. Sadly, it is not a very widespread accessible subject in it's entirety, and your work has shone light on aspects of it I didn't even know about. It just goes to show how we can all benefit from exchanging information and culture as well as integrating it into our own individual expression. Always with utmost respect and an insatiable hunger for growth and knowledge! Thanks David and all who have been involved in the production and research that made this video possible, sincerely and from the very bottom of my heart. You guys are truly the reason we can keep on pushing the boundaries of the artform and the language that is music.
That's why Indians are all geniuses in math and computer stuff ;-)
I was searching for such a video over Indian complex rhythms and now I found it. thanks you very much for this.
I've loved Indian "classical"/traditional music for a long time, and have often wondered about a number of these practices and systems. Thank you for taking this up and doing a video that attempts to explain some of this. Very informative and very much appreciated.
This was a major inspiration for my favorite classical composer, Messiaen, and my favorite jazz composer, Don Ellis. It's really neat stuff!
I think an excellent example for EMNM is microtonal music.
First of all microtonal music deals with frequencies so even if you work in the purest form which is just intonation you need to do some math to see what are the good intervals, what are the relations between them and to which notes you get if you stack them up. Second, if you temper out some commas, which are rational frequency ratios, you get regular temperaments and then you need to do some math (namely number theory and linear algebra) to see which intervals are the same and more math to optimize the temperament - to decide the right size for the generators such that the resulting frequencies will be the best according to some metrics. And then there are equal temperaments, in which you need to do more math (beginning with rational approximations of logarithms) to decide which equal temperaments have the best approximation to some just intervals or a regular temperament. There are also well temperaments which are a whole other mess and perhaps even more stuff, all of which involving a lot of math.
And of course, all of the traditions that existed before Western musicians decided that 12edo was the way to go and dedicated that to the rest of the world (such as Arabic, Indian, Chinese and even European classic and baroque music) include some form of math in the tuning of the music, for example, Indian sruti are a form of just intonation which is also related to 22edo and to regular temperaments such as pajara.
So as a proud math nerd, I think microtonal music is one of the extremest mathematical nerdy music that exist.
I've never quite got my head around this despite having a keen interest - a video by David Bruce on an introduction to Erv Wilson would be very helpful!
Bro, I say it all the time, you deserve at least 1M subs. You put so much effort into your videos, well, more than your audience deserves anyway. Keep doing what your doing!
Best video yet!
What I found most rewarding in my personal studies of Indian rhythm is the wonderful people I’ve met along the way.
Dude, I absolutely love that you have the 'I Believe' shirt on. I should have guessed that you would be as obsessed with the MMX as I am.
Math, an MMX t-shirt, Weird Rythms, I must say this video has it all! My head exploded several times.
Brilliant stuff my friend...….Big Shakti fan here (I had the pleasure of seeing them twice back in the day)...just stumbled upon this video. Will subscribe......awesome stuff.
This is probably one of the most interesting channel one TH-cam
Just stumbled over this. I’ve been referring kids to the virtuosity of Guru Varijashree Venugopal for ages - nice surprise to see you explaining it all and referring to the other virtuosic guru D Bruce and our Kundalee 🙌🏻😘 hope you and the family are all keeping well. Huge love
Wow, konnakol with metal guitar sounds suprisingly awesome!
Woo hoo so happy! I was waiting for an Indian video on rhythms especially and also the dagga that I saw in the LSO video. Keep up your good work. B.C Manjunath is a master of rhythm. He has been mentioned in many western classical channels like TwoSet Violin,SoundField and now you, David Bruce. 👌🏼👌🏼👌🏼
🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
Regards from India🇮🇳
I just realized that my drum teacher 11 years ago thought me a little bit of konnakol. I trained to play triplets with takita and quarter notes with ta ka di mi, but I changed the last one to ta ki de mi (because at the time it help me underlining some beats, with portuguese accent it sounds lower, which for me it helped). Amazing and very informative. Thank you very much.
Speaking as an extreme math nerd, I think we need less basic arithmetic and more category theory.
NEEDS MORE ARROWS
I entertained the thought of finding "missing" harmonic and rhythmic progressions using the Yoneda lemma, but at that point the pub closed.
Lmao there's actually a whole body of ideas about category theory that's used in music. Check out Mazzola's "The Topos of Music".
@@DeGuerre Do you know Guerino Mazzola's Topos of Music?
Brilliant idea. And to think people want to remove music programs.
I believe konnakol should be taught to all freshman in every music school. After only learning the basics through a lesson video many years ago, it’s improved my timing and allowed me to communicate rhythm better to this day.
I have been following Manjunath for years now. He makes fantastic videos.
That is some great study you've done for us western musicians on this rather amazing cultural tradition. Thank you!
Great video David. After breaking my left hand last year I decided to learn this duet as a way of keeping myself rhythmically challenged. The understanding came first but a long time before I could perform it.
I asked BC if he felt a pulse through this piece, in fact the count-in is just for a tempo and starting reference. I began to learn the first cycle whilst walking down the street at a 1/4 not pulse. I then learned the clapping cycle in the same way. Lots of fun but perhaps a bit of a distraction.
Keep up the good work.
After spending a year with this I think more of it as geometry than a maths puzzle. At no point did I add or subtract any values in working this out. Imagine drawing a perfect square then drawing two lines within the square to crest 4 smaller perfect squares. This process can be but doesn't need to be numerically described as such. So more instead I began to feel the gaps between the notes.
I failed maths GCSE twice. The only time I wrote anything down was to work out her Tal variation.
Spent a good portion of my childhood learning the Mirthangam, the two-headed drum that is laidout horizontally on our laps. I find counting the 'western' way of counting difficult to wrap my head around. This is such a good intro, David. Especially for people like me who have lost practice like I have.
Good on ya for giving McLaughlin and MVO lads credit for showing konnakol to the outside world. And really, everyone has to listen to Shaki at least once in their lives. Ear candy of the best sort.
Geek Heaven! Thank you so much for this video, I've been wanting a bridge of some kind for a song I'm writing and this video came up in my recommendations at the perfect time. The song is prog, so this really helps.
Thank you for phenonemal content as always David.
/Elmer
Yes yes yes this video was amazing!
Thank you SOO much got shedding light on one of my favorite genres which doesn't get a lot of attention here in the west. An excellent video on a great topic. Thank you so much and more of this!
we used konnakol in my intro to music theory courses at my community college, it was a pretty cool way to learn rhythms quickly once you got used to it.
Thank you for this fascinating piece of Carnatic music! It incorporates many processes that Messiaen used.
Now I know that Messiaen researched Indian music, but until now I thought that the only examples he knew were certain "Hindu rhythms", and that even some of those were the result of his misinterpreting rest-symbols as augmentation-dots. (Paul Griffiths, in "Olivier Messiaen", p.60, refers to the copy, in Lavignac's encyclopedia, of a list of 120 deci-talas copied from Sangīta-ratnākara, and writes "Indeed, it is arguable that the Lavignac list errs in notating as a dotted semiquaver what ought to be read as a semiquaver followed by a semiquaver rest, so that many of the irregularities Messiaen specially cherishes are spurious".)
But in your video you show some other techniques Messiaen also frequently used:
1. following a rhythm by a repetition of it, but augmented somehow
2. setting a repetitive sequence of pitches or chords to a rhythm that does not repeat in the same way, so that ocurrences of the same pitch might get different durations
I had previously thought that Messiaen had learnt the first from Stravinsky and invented the second himself (though he later found out that Guillaume de Machaut had independently had the same idea centuries before). And now I find both of them in Carnatic music, too!
I became obsessed years ago with Jimi Hendrix, and I noticed he was doing all of these crazy rhythms. So I actually made charts of playing different subdivisions with different note groupings. Then when I looked at south Indian rhythms, I noticed the exact same patterns and even the same charts I wrote myself after listening to Hendrix. So somehow, Hendrix was doing this same kind of stuff. It is hard for most people to notice. Many think Hendrix was playing some whacky stuff that made no sense, but he was really playing with all kinds of subdivision and note groupings. He might play a 5 note lick while switching from triplets to sixths to sextuplets without breaking the pattern.
Indians: the name is Konnakol
David: *iTs nErD mUsiC*
This whole video gave me the best kind of goosebumps and hearing John McLaughlin play and talk about music gives me chills. I'm excited about this challenge and I know what my band will be working on at our next rehearsal!
An incredible video! BC Manjunath is sooo talented
Thanks Soundy! He certainly is!
I recently subscribed to that guy's channel. I'm obsessed! With the rhythms and her voice 🙏💕
awesome video! mor of this pls !
and props for nailing the 30 syllable surnames of the indian performers lol. (;
Just sifted through the videos in the description, ....so awesome thank you!
A song with geometric shape: the Twelve Days of Christmas
Yinchen Xǔ are you talking about twelve DAZE of Christmas for percussion ensemble?
That's actually called a "cumulative" song (or story). Other examples: "The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly," "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," "The Ratlin' Bog."
Great video, and the woman's voice at the beginning is so pure and beautiful
18:01 Bootsy Collins had a similar philosophy: whatever happens during the rest of the measure, always land squarely on the downbeat.
I've only just found Varijashree a month ago when I came across the video of her carnatic skatting along with Coletranes Giant Steps. Amazing then that she's featured here! Im kind of obsessed with her and would love to work with both her and Manjunath someday. I reckon some magical spiritual jazz could happen
After focusing so much on the rhythmic side, you should definitely explore the actual melodic side of Hindustani and Carnatic music. It's perplexing how structured and shockingly beautiful their different ragas are.
Wow, we used some of those techniques in high school to help with complex rhythms. Cool to see where they originated!
This is so cool! I got here from the Rick Beato interview with Mohini Dey. I'm a math nerd so the kind of maths that's relevant here is something called modular arithmetic. For poly rhythms you may want to learn about Euclid's algorithm for computing the greatest common divisor. Then you have the Chinese remainder theorem and Fermat's little theorem. From there you can venture forth to number theory in general. Things like Diophantine equations. Or why not abstract algebra, which is rings (modular arithmetic is a ring), groups, finite fields and so much more...
You should do a video on Brazilian music, specially samba. There's a lot of syncopation and cool rythms.
po não é especificamente sobre samba, mas ele pelo menos toca um pouco no assunto.
th-cam.com/video/jPcXABJVjI8/w-d-xo.html
Mate.
I'm part Uruguayan, love samba to death, but you must realise how it doesn't even compare to this sort of thing in terms of rhythmic complexity. This is centuries of mathematics. Not taking anything from samba. Hell, definitely not Brazil, we can talk about bossa nova etc., forever, but they're not nearly as deep rhythmically as konnakol.
@@KiraPlaysGuitar i don't think he was comparing, i think he was just asking for a video on the Samba rhythm.
@@youreright6627 You know what? You might be right. Weird day, all nighter.
Weird Rhythms: we are impossible to use.
Bjork: Hold my beer.
I really enjoyed this one. Indian music is super interesting. For a suggestion on other "extreme math nerd music", overtone singing can be pretty interesting. There's folk traditions such as some central Asian styles, and other practitioners in Western styles, plus I'm sure others I'm not aware of. I'd definitely recommend Toby Twining's choral piece "Chrysalid Requiem", which definitely qualifies as virtuosic and mathy, very much in the tradition of Ben Johnston.
Yes!! I have been waiting for this video to happen since the spirals in music vid!! Good to see my favourite Guru Mattias Eklundh in here.
David, I was just marveling at that video with Manjunath B.C., and attempting to mimic it myself (admittedly with snail-speed progress). Great analysis.
@9:10 I half expected that to end with "I'M THE SCAT MAN!"
Fantastic video, thanks for posting! As someone who loves Mahler to Steve Vai the most and also loves Metallica, Dream Theatre, Mastadon, Tool, Messugana, Animals as Leaders, I wouldn't know where to start for examples of nerd math music, so 'll start at the beginning: Stravinsky for it's lowest common Multiple poly/multi time signatures towards the end of both Rite of Spring movements; (especially the 2nd.) Chronologically what comes next that's in any way popular is the "rhythmic turnaround" John Paul Jones wrote for Led Zeppelin in the song Black Dog. Let';s also not forget Frank Zappa!
Great stuff! Helped me solidify my need to create a deeper ‘rule based’ system for a rule based algorithm I have in the works. One that already has inherent modes that I’ve obsessively cataloged. There were already so many analogies with both northern and southern Indian traditions I’m shocked that I could have missed the ‘connection’. This connection turns what was meant to be a ‘one off’ into something that could be given to other composers to play with.
*Math nerd music*
Sound like something I would love! 🤓😊
Cool stuff! I'm in a prog metal band, and we've done a countdown-countup and inverse in one of our songs, as in 7/8 6/8 5/8 4/8 3/8 2/8 1/8 (implied 0/8) 1/8 2/8 3/8 4/8 5/8 6/8 7/8, but not polyrythmically.
We're going to have try that now.
Amazingly interesting material! Thanks a lot :)
So unbelievably interesting! I knew about this type of music for a few months already but now I understand how it works!
You're musicians are blessed by lingling rhythmic to perform this
Heyy some love for the Mahavishnu Orchestra
Always
Brilliant act
I love the group and the concept...I just personally wish McLaughlin put more focus into the melodic elements of his improvisation with the Mahavishnu Orchestra along with the rhythmic elements
SonSauvage I see where you’re coming from, but a lot of his music already has such beautiful melodies within them. So I can appreciate his focus on rhythm during some improvisation, although I think he focuses more on melody in his later work if I remember correctly
@@aidangallagher8703 any tracks/videos you could recommend?
That's amazing I enjoy your videos
This really makes me curious about how rhythms are communicated in West African musical traditions. Is there anything similar to konnakol there?
That is a very good point and idea. I hope Bruce will do a video on this subject! African music (in general, there's no such thing as 'african music' of course) is so immensely rich and complicated from a harmonic, melodic and rhythmic point of view, but sadly often looked over or forgotten.
You can check out The Solkattu Manual by Nelson for a gentle introduction. Also, Reina's thesis has been published under the title "applying karnatic rhythmical techniques to western music"
Please bring more, people thumbs up! Could you talk about how this influenced Olivier Messiaen's music?
He used various tala and incorporated them into his La Nativité score
i found about bc manjunath through jacob collier, you seem to hit spot on on your audience's interests every time
Exactly! I found out through Jacob too!
Oh snap, when did Collier talk abt Manjunanth?
@@archkde I found it in his liked videos playlist. That place is a treasure trove lol
Well,
Rhythm understanding is essential for what I call "the ultimate level of musical freedom" - That is, you no longer are restrained in terms of what kind of beauty you could achieve by being able to perform whatever rhythm you could think of not only to "show off" but to express something beautiful musically and spiritually speaking. When I write this lines, I think of Tigran Hamasyan and so many other great musicians that have used rhythm in such way that, it is really inspiring. Thanks for the video mr. Bruce. You are an excellent mentor. Much love from Ecuador.
A year or so ago I watched Ben Levin’s video on this concept and wrote a prog rock song using a bastardization of this method plus a “16 tone” matrix haha
I’m glad you’ve made another great video on this concept!
This is eye-opening! Thank you!
You keep widening my musical horizons with every video. Thank you so much David. :)
I'm Carnatic violin student. From South India (Chennai)
Thank you for this explanation. Your compositions are so wonderful, so interesting, so intellectual, yet emotional and artistic. I just love it. Bravo!
Maybe I'm a bit daft, but the melody, rhythm / counterpoint of the opening piece that you used and highlighted here really reminded me of "Sunday Morning", the second of Benjamin Britten's "Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes".
Thank David for your time and dedication.
Between this and some of the recent Sound Field videos, my Spotify recently played list looks very strange right now. Indian konnakol jazz fusion, goth, and bluegrass make for a strange combination.
Thanks for introducing this. It's fascinating stuff.
Great way to tie in so many genres and applications across styles!
I love odd tuplets and odd time signatures, I cannot get enough of them.
I could not help but be drawn to this one. The moment I saw the thumbnail, I already knew the topic. This is closely related to my thesis topic as well -- in my case, I focused more on the melodic side of things since that's my field as a recovering ex-Carnatic violinist... I was working heavily on how to translate Carnatic music theory into Western parlance. In particular, this is one of those things (along with the very concept of a raga) that really creates a barrier to understanding... Carnatic Music principally differs from its North Indian in that rhythm is a target of hefty improvisation.
If you enjoyed this, I highly recommend one of my favorite examples of bringing this sort of polyrhythmic improvisation into complex and artful melodic improvisation -- S Kalyanaraman accompanied by M.S. Gopalakrishnan and Karaikudi Mani in his performance of Maamava Karunayya. You will, in particular hear some amazing polyrhythms in the solfeggio call-and-response portion. Kalyanaraman was really one of the first to bring this level of complex rhythmic insertions and overlays into vocal performance, and now has left his mark on the art form. A more modern example might be Abhishek Raghuram -- he originally trained as a percussionist (and is the grandson of one of the all-time legends of the mridangam - Palakkad Raghu), and transitioned to singing later on... when he does his solfeggio improv, you can really pick up on his tendency to play with complex ways to parse the rhythm. He's particularly fond of prime numbers.
Here's the link to the aforementioned Kalyanaraman performance --
th-cam.com/video/T_4KrOXf_4A/w-d-xo.html
It's in a raga called "Shanmukhapriya" - although it doesn't fully explain the raga, the scale is basically an Aeolian minor, except that it has an augmented 4th (tritone). It's also in Misra Chaapu tala, which is one of those that don't fit into the standard set of 35. Its a cycle of 3 claps where the first one lasts 1.5 counts, so it's a fractional time signature of 3.5 counts (at its root gati/nadai).
Metal/Konnakol fusion is not a thing I knew I needed until now. EXCELLENT.
Tool did that
Your piece at the beginning based on the Indian ryththms is such a toe tapper. But then this whole video is. I might need to soak my feet in Epsom salts by the end, trying to keep up with it all.
This reminds me of how Joseph Schillinger would work with rhythm through what he called the interference of polynomial periodicities (aka polyrhythms: a against b or a against b against c, etc.), which he would map out on graph paper and use as the basis of rhythmic, melodic, harmonic, and/or contrapuntal invention strategies (see his Encyclopedia of Rhythms as well as his System of Musical Composition). His students George Gershwin and Glenn Miller used his system in their compositions (see Gershwin’s I Got Rhythm Variations and Miller’s Moonlight Serenade). Carnatic music theory in its complex use of rhythm provides a fascinating independent meditation on what can be achieved when we approach music through mathematical lenses.
Wow that's such a genius system!!!!! Amazing work! Thank you!!!
Fantastic video as always. Random but do you think you would ever be interested in making a video on the history of Dutch music. I recently visited Holland and discovered the fascinating musical history. Such as, Dutch jazz and even the flamenco conservatory in Rotterdam.
This is an amazing video, flows very well :D
Also, for uses of equivalents of Yati, Aperghis’ “Recitatios” are a great example :)
While I see the very clear reason that "Takadimi" (this is what western academic study is calling it in class room teaching) is used in this Southern Indian Classical Music Tradition, a lot of professors and teachers have started adopting is as their main teaching technique in America.
I am SO happy I stumbled upon this video to actually explain the system properly
Just rewinded the intro about 30 times now, I need to nail this down!
Something worthy checking concerning Mattias IA Ecklundh is his band Freak Kitchen's song Teargas Jazz. It has riffs that increase and decrease in terms of the beat, it's really fun!
Nik Bartsch is a Swiss jazz musician.
His music has layers of proportional rhythms that all align after a cycle and uses creative shifts in emphasis to imply different meters. There’s also an architectural aspect of his music inspired by Japanese aesthetics.
Check out his group Ronin, and any of his compositions entitled “Module”!
So awesome. Great video, David!
Thanks Shawn! I'm expecting you'd have zero problem playing the opening rhythm here (-: Just off to watch your new video.
A proposal for another EMNM video would be group theory in musical composition. There is the use of all possible permutations of rows in method ringing by campanological composers like Stedman, the algorithmic processes of Arvo Pärt, the mathematical music of Tom Johnson (best known for 'Failing' for double bass but has written many pieces he works out as diagrams of geometric machinery). And perhaps you could turn up more examples which I would love because that's so my bag. ❤
wonderful stuff really, interesting! but hey.... throwing these video gems at us like that gets us easily bruce'd
Love the video, can’t wait to get back and practice. But it would be great if you could soften the harshness in some of the clips and calls. Maybe a multi and comp or de easer. Thanks so much for your work!
Awesome video! Funny and VERY instructive! Cheers!
great as always, glad you put this out there! if you don't mind, I would like to recommend Ben Levin's videos on Indian rhythmic solfege. it's great :)
Check out the band invalids. The album strengths is pretty far down the mathy rhythm rabbit hole. Thanks for the awesome video!
I belong to a lineage of Carnatic musicians. Questions regarding melodic concepts in South Indian classical music are welcome. The deep complex rhythmic elements add some unique features like gamakams to Carnatic music. Gamakam (oscillation, vibration, glide etc amongst notes) is a unique and robust concept of Carnatic music which adds depth and colour to the melody.. Some questions regarding rhythm can also answered, though I am not an expert in that 🙏😇
So nice to see! This system is used slightly eased down, in the method of Kodaly!
Does "math metal" count as EMNM? I'm really not a fan of metal vocals, but instrumental math metal is impressive
you mean in the likes of Animals as Leaders and such ?
David, have you ever heard Pat Metheny's The First Circle? It has sections in 22/8, written out as a 12/8+10/8 (5+4 pulse). It inspired me to compose a piece with a version for wind quintet (one with horn, one with a [melody] tenor sax) and one for clarinet quintet.
Instant kudos just for that slight of camera. I totally believed it!
1:25 "How To INSTANTLY ANNOY your MUSICIANS with Times NO-ONE can PLAY!??!?!??!???! Unbelievable Reaction!!!!!!!!"