I like the way that Adam's keyboard just slides out of what appears to be his desk. I imagine that he has keyboards concealed in his kitchen table and countertops, and bedside table, and probably even the bathroom sink.
"You can't always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream." -- Frank Zappa
It's one of those fun colloquial style phrases that people like to use. Instead of using the word "slowly," I would argue using the word "deliberately;" that is to learn to tackle a new muscular movement by understanding exactly what the movement is so that your brain and your body can synchronize and program the movement appropriately to recall at speed later. For instance on guitar, moving from one chord shape to another might require a particular odd jump for a particular finger while simultaneously being more accurate and strong with your pinky stretched on the second chord. If that's the first time you are learning a switch like that, it helps to slow down and understand that movement in order to be able to do it quickly in a fast tempo.
The problem with the “if it feels good, it is good” mentality is that I’ve found so many people who don’t know theory end up defaulting to only one or two scales/modes because that’s what “feels” natural and good to them. They are limited in their musical vocabulary and experimentation because of it.
Simplicity isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I do however understand your frustration. If you fully understand the rules, you'd also know when to break them. The problem isn't necessarily lack of knowledge, but rather fear of failure. If something works just fine, you see no reason to change anything, hence you won't change anything, leading to lack of experimentation
exactly, the most "dissonant" is a highlighted minor second sforzatto in FFF dynamics and in a consonant context. Best at the C-2 and c-3 range (alt/soprano voice). To low or to high is again more consonant
I think the problem is yours. If someone is ok, for example, with a blue scale, there's no problem at all. I think musical limitation is a problem from your perspective and ambitions
In other words, if you hear in the bass a C and a G, you know, "You're in the key of C, buddy." You are anchored to a tonality, and when a soloist comes along and plays the C#, he's sending you a message. And where that C# goes is part of the adventure of playing the solo. And if he's playing a B natural or an F# against those notes ... they're like ingredients in a stew. I mean, there's a right way and a wrong way to stick a C# on top of a C-G groundbase. If you play all notes that are part of the C major scale, the recipe you have just prepared is oatmeal, know what I mean? So it's like the difference between eating oatmeal and eating salsa.
If you record yourself and it sounds like you're Russian, try not writing in A or D minor, using fewer dominant 5ths, adding in less over the top harmonic minor violin runs, and using fewer male choirs. Also bass playing cat as Adam's sona is so cute and so fitting.
he interrupts the "repetition legitimizes" joke, a pattern that settles nicely into 9/8, to talk about how other cultures are more used to music in 9/8? what??
@@leaveitorsinkit242 re-pe-ti tion-le-gi ti-miz-es. nine syllables that don't roll off the tongue in 9/8, but can be broken into a pattern of 3 sets of 3 syllables. that's how i metrically percieve it though, results may vary
@@themandownstairs4765 😆 I’ll give you credit for that, but the 9/8 rhythm in his example had three groups of 2’s and one group of 3. So... I don’t know if three groups of 3’s really makes the cut.
dude im an engineering student and its also pretty cool when he talks about things that leave me just as confused as the things we just so happened to go over in physics like two days ago its like wow im confused again only this time its my own fault lmao
10:00 There's a song you'll hear on every polish wedding, "windą do nieba": th-cam.com/video/PWTLbvZRdJw/w-d-xo.html The chorus is a somewhat dreamy piece about how the girl is getting ready for her wedding. The stanza is about the bride saying farewell to her crush, about how she has no feelings for the groom, long story short - about how she is not at all happy with the situation. If one actually follows the text, the song is not dreamy, but quite melancholic - and by no means to be sung at a wedding. Still, you'll hear it at every wedding from Świnoujście to Ustrzyki
The entire history of human culture follows the principle of that line from Nirvana's In Bloom - most people are just sort of nodding along with what's going on around them hoping no one notices they haven't got a clue what they're doing. The reproducibility of culture is affected far more deeply by the attempt to fit in than we give it credit for.
I think it's interesting that even though I know intellectually that a major 7th is considered dissonant, in context it can be incredibly beautiful. Even before I learned music theory, I intuitively perceived harmonies or melodies focusing on the major 7th as "pretty" sounding, even more so than other intervals. a piece like satie's gymnopedie no1, which is built around the major 7th, sounds peaceful and serene, rather than harsh. it doesn't sound "tense" or unresolved. context absolutely transforms how we hear dissonances, even if the interval by itself sounds harsh or unpleasant.
There is a direct quote for Frank in an interview where he discusses, within an example, using a C# note within an improvised guitar solo over a C and a G within the bass. I have studied Zappa for about 2 years now (Specifically the way he composed and improvised guitar from about 1977 through 1988) and plenty of topics in music theory that Adam Neely discusses tangentially augments my Frank studies. His bandmate's, Shawn Crowder, first major TH-cam video discusses in great depth how to tackle Frank's most infamously rhythmically difficult pieces.
11:50ish. “The Ultimate Rule ought to be: 'If it sounds GOOD to you, it's bitchin'; if it sounds BAD to YOU, it's shitty. The more your musical experience, the easier it is to define for yourself what you like and what you don't like." - Frank Zappa
I have begun to listen to a lot of Bowie again lately and was fascinated by the chords in "Ashes to Ashes". It involves a lot of major third movement. Would love to see a Neeley take on the functions of this songs chords!
2:17. I love the sound of that chord. Especially the way you balanced the notes of that voicing on the bass. It's a really melancholy take on the major 7th, Lots if cool places that could go. Even if just as a passing chord, it has a real visceral quality.
As a visual artist who has a ton of experience using Photoshop, I was amazed the first time I saw someone using Ableton. It's like magic! The changes you can make with such minor adjustments in Ableton blow my mind.
There's a Death from Above 1979 song called "Go Home, Get Down" off their first album that used a minor 9th riff in the synth. It is SO dissonant, but in the context of that song it is also so intense and satisfying.
I did a program production in the northwest a while back, and one day we had a 'festival' for said program cause it was the first year of and one of the creators wanted a celebration thing going all day with a guest and a performance at night and a bbq and the whole shebang. Our guest on this initial fest was Billy Martin of Medeski, Martin, and Wood. He was really chill and stayed the whole the time to the point of helping us take down the set up for the show that ended the day. One of the panels we had was a few certified trainers or masters or what have you for Ableton Live, a DAW which was added to our campus computers mid-program.. Billy attended this panel and noted that program had save his ass several times when he was doing soundtrack work, and had questions beyond the scope of what the main presentation was so the more knowledgeable of the two panelists took him aside to show him some of the more elaborate things he was enquiring about. So uh yeah, really good program for composing on. I myself wound up on Pro Tools cause that was being used in our recording class stuffs and seemed the most sensible thing to have. But when I see the question asked 'what is the best program to compose on' and I see the stock answer of 'The one you know how to use' I tend to think that the real true answer is Ableton Live.
FL Studio is extremely capable at Automation, I recommend checking it out (demo is free). You can set each line of your automation to be a line, sine wave, step series, half-wave, logarithmic sinusoid, and everything in between.
Yeah, I got the impression FL Studio is actually quite intuitive and thus beginner-friendly. I.e. if the entry threshold is low, you can immediately lauch like a rocket, and then if it you grow dissatisfied, it is because of the great energy it unlocked in you that wants to break barriers.
Imagine you're walking down a dark street in the middle of the night, all alone. It's absolutely dead silent. No traffic, no people, no anything. And then, seemingly coming from nowhere, you suddenly hear a minor 9th echo through the night air. Imagine the instant, primal fear that would shoot through you in that moment.
Follow up to the minor ninth question that always "bothered" me. Why does a minor ninth sound more dissonant than a minor second? Since the notes are the same, you'd expect the larger space between the ninth to "cushion" the dissonance. A minor sixteenth sounds less dissonant than a minor ninth, etc, to the point where if you play B0 and C8 at the same time, the dissonance is pretty much gone. When comparing minor 2nd, 9th, 16th, etc, why should the dissonance "peak" with the minor ninth?
@@dallasstiles118 Ah yes, the old "I would love to play along with this Pink Floyd bootleg live concert recording, but it is a quarter pitch to high" dilemma
@@DemsDaBrakes1996 That makes no sense why that would exist. Please tell me that is only some devices and not a consequence of the Bluetooth protocol. You may have me fucked up for life. I already hardwire my internet for gaming with an Ethernet cable, prompting chicks to question my aesthetic since there are cords routed all over the apartment, creating difficulty in the whole social enjoyment arena... Now this?
@@mss11235 we used tapes in lab band in school to work on improvisation, and I seem to remember that there higher and lower versions maybe, I guess to compensate for whatever player was used idk. I think there was a Miles album that was released way off.
@@jonaswassermann1359 absolutely. Logic’s supposed equivalent is Mainstage, though I’ve never used it and everyone I know that integrates a DAW into live performance always seems to use Ableton Live. I think the reality is that it’s 2021 and there are an abundance of choices for all applications and they all probably work REALLY well.
"Every Breath You Take" by The Police was popular at weddings for much longer than it should have been. And there was a decade where "Throw Your Arms Around Me" by Hunters and Collectors was big in Australia. SMH
The minor 9th on the bass sounds like it would be perfect as a musical sting in an haunted woods game. Like after this dialog box "You found a cursed artifact"
Adam Neely; you are the first person on TH-cam who has given me a nose bleed. Better yet, while talking about dissonance. That was a pretty intense discussion.
A musician I work with once played a bride down the aisle to the song hallelujah... perhaps the one thing that tops "will you still love me tomorrow" for tasteless wedding songs
Fully agree! To REALLY play a lick fast -- practice it with a metronome at 1/4 speed. Lock it in your brain -- and eventually all of the notes will become a single thought that just spills out and flows.
apart from all the music stuff, one of the greatest things Adam has shown me is the value of asking questions that... I don't want to call them bad or pointless, but questions many would see as not worth asking, or not very relevant, because the unveiling of anything reveals a lot about how and why we veil things, and how and why we remove it later.
I prefer automation in FL Studio. You can easily make automation clips, link whatever you want to any automation clip, and place them wherever you want on the timeline.
The B section in Naima (if I'm remembering correctly) starts with a Bbmaj7/A which is a beautiful use of a 'tense' maj7 chord with the 7 on bottom creating a 9b from A to B. Something tragically beautiful about its use there....
A chord with the maj7th in the bassline could be used in a progression like this: Fadd9/E B7#9/E Emadd9 it's a very dissonant phrygian-esque cadence, especially with that B7/E, but the E bass 'drone' really connects it all nicely.
I love your emphasis on how a decision in songwriting doesn't always need to have a music theory justification behind it, I would add that the flip side is also true, that a piece of music might be incredibly theorically complex and masterful from the sheet music's perspective, but if it just doesn't sound good to you, you're not "wrong" in disliking it
Music theory is like learning to cook using recipes. There's nothing right or wrong about experimenting in the kitchen, you might come up with some unexpectedly brilliant combinations, you can learn by watching other people cook, or you can buy books and learn other people's recipes by rote until you feel confident trying out your own stuff. You can delve into the science of what makes food taste good and why we cook the way we do, or you can just get stuck in and make up your own recipes. You probably aren't going to reinvent the soufflé without an education of some sort, but that doesn't mean you can't make some banging bbq rub that all your friends will enjoy. Music is basically food/cooking. You can take this analogy all the way to the bank and back.
All three of these prime dissonances are in Maya Malavagowla raga. Its the first raga you learn in indian classical. However, you never play them at the same time.
Another tip for for not rushing when playing is to sound out the subdivision of what you are playing in your head or even out loud if you are practicing. For example of you are playing something where the time is subdivided into 16th notes you sound out Da da da da Da da da da etc.
@@AdamNeely anyway I've just saw all the comments, there are a lot of Frank's fans. Do you ever considered to make a full episode on Frank Zappa musical language?
9:38 I was literally just thinking right before this how much more relaxed and warmer Adam seems in his videos now versus when he started YouTubing. Two seconds later after my thought, this played.
Automation is definitely just as intuitive and easy in Cubase. I find the possibilities to manipulate automation curves even better (bezier curves, tilting them/scaling multiple points at once, etc.). And it's way more convenient to handle multiple automated parameters if they are displayd on different lanes/tracks. But there's nothing wrong with using ableton, I'm sure it has other strong points as well.
I used to work in a hotel bar and I think my favourite song played at a wedding was - and I'm 100% serious, this actually happened - "Unfaithful" by Rihanna. Very close second was, of course, "Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" by U2... 🤣🤦♂️
@Adam Neely, Bitwig Studio was created by former Ableton employees who thought that Live was not innovative enough. Especially with regards to innovation, and even more -- to the control musical hardware by the means of it. Everyone should check it out.
Greek folk music is connected to dance steps, so it's dominated by 7/8, 9/8, etc. That doesnt mean theres no 4/4, but it always has specific voicings. A very typical and recognizable rhythm for even modern folk music is the "zeimbekiko", 9/4 (can be counted as 9/8) with these accents: 8th 4th 8th 4th 4th (so you strike a note/chord on the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th and 7th eighth note), repeated twice, with one more quarter note at the end, forming the 9/4 loop. It's fascinating how natural this rhythm seems to us, and how the instrumentation and vocal melodies of songs fit into this pattern so effortlessly. I tried to explain to my mom once how there's an extra quarter note in there, making it "anomalous" compared to the music she usually hears, and it really changed the way she listens to music, even with no formal musical knowledge. One of my uni professors has dedicated her whole life to uncovering and documenting as many obscure greek folk idioms as possible, and it just depresses me so much that the rich musical culture of Greece, which is directly linked with Bulgaria and Turkey, hasn't seen more exposure worldwide. Lemme tell ya, some of these scales are ridiculous, like, minor b4 b5 #7 that ends on the minor 9th instead of the octave, and half of them are just badly transcribed from non equally tempered instruments. It's just magic, you can never really know enough about music
“slower is faster”. Ahhhh brings back memories! I haven’t played piano in decades but I took piano lessons all throughout my youth... I was very undisciplined and never made it very far. But, I was taught by a piano teacher who taught under the “Suzuki Method”. A Japanese man who came with a certain way to teach piano to kids. All throughout the years my teacher constantly drilled into my brain, Slower is Faster, Slower is Faster, Slower is Faster. And not in a mean way, but in her totally calm way of saying. I never knew that other disciplines of musicianship also taught this! how cool.
Logic Pro as well. I don't think "because automation" is really enough to differentiate Ableton Live from the other DAWs. I suppose he'd then have to pick apart all the DAWs' workflows, and that would take too long. But still...not a satisfying answer.
I like the way that Adam's keyboard just slides out of what appears to be his desk. I imagine that he has keyboards concealed in his kitchen table and countertops, and bedside table, and probably even the bathroom sink.
funniest comment looooool
Out of his pillow cover lol
Only liked to make the 400th comment
now I want keyboards everywhere like this. How convenient will that be!
no I won't imagine
I could never imagine Adam saying "fursona"... oh my
Catam Neely.
made so much better by him pretending not to know exactly what it means
legitimately caught me off guard
There is already r34 art of him
when he said that i felt a primal fight-or-flight response in my soul
Your hair is looking very E today adam
very purplemaj7th indeed
i don’t get it
@@louiszaffino4071
It's ok louis
Why did I think that this meant his hair was gonna be green?
@@louiszaffino4071 need to watch his video where he talks about Chromesthesia
the quizzical way with which you said "fursona" was just...the best thing that's happened to me all morning.
He kinda said it like Raymond Holt would ahahah
⁸
I am so 0
88feet of course
As a furry, I absolutely agree-
That was hilarious!
“I think you would call that a- uh… *fursona..?* “
I love how you never refer to any of these intervals or chords as “bad” just that they’re dissonant or a little spicy. It’s all subjective
Very Persichetti of him
"dude that sounds SO bad!"
*it's not bad, it's SPICY*
Dissonance is not bad if it resolves
@@pdorism I mean I think one could also find a creative artistic use for unresolved dissonance.
How dare you interrupt the "repetition legitimizes" joke. I expect this interruption to be repeated in future videos.
Thats the only way I would acknowledge its legitimacy
I was waiting for that, godd*** xD
My exact thought
Went straight to the comment section to search for this haha
Illegitimacy has to have been repeated enough times by now to reach legitimacy.
what i expected: dissonant intervals
what i got: adam neeley fursona
Glad i wasnt alone in that
"Metal music theory" channel has wonderful breakdowns of metal harmony and rhythmic structures
Can't complain though!
Best treat in years!
HE PULLED OUT THE PIANO FROM HIS DESK AGAIN THIS IS SO COOL
He's a musician, that's why.
I pull out a computer keyboard from under my desk...
What do you pull out?
@@JoeLabisch I pull out my... Nevermind...
MIDI controller, to be precise. Hell of a tool.
Now I just want to get a mini piano keyboard and swap it for a coworkers computer keyboard :-D
I love how the human brain associates the word “dissonance” with Frank Zappa, as shown by the thumbnail.
I associate it with Schönberg
Or Sun Ra
@@TimothyReeves I associate dissonance with Schönberg by way of his influence on Zappa
"You can't always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream." -- Frank Zappa
Idk
So Adam Neely unironically suggested that 'If you can play it slowly, you can play it quickly'.
..you can though?
Only because he practices 40 hours a day
sAcRiLegIoUs
inTeResTing
It's one of those fun colloquial style phrases that people like to use. Instead of using the word "slowly," I would argue using the word "deliberately;" that is to learn to tackle a new muscular movement by understanding exactly what the movement is so that your brain and your body can synchronize and program the movement appropriately to recall at speed later. For instance on guitar, moving from one chord shape to another might require a particular odd jump for a particular finger while simultaneously being more accurate and strong with your pinky stretched on the second chord. If that's the first time you are learning a switch like that, it helps to slow down and understand that movement in order to be able to do it quickly in a fast tempo.
"Maybe this is the sound that gets you there."
MASHES KEYBOARD REPEATEDLY
The problem with the “if it feels good, it is good” mentality is that I’ve found so many people who don’t know theory end up defaulting to only one or two scales/modes because that’s what “feels” natural and good to them. They are limited in their musical vocabulary and experimentation because of it.
Simplicity isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I do however understand your frustration. If you fully understand the rules, you'd also know when to break them. The problem isn't necessarily lack of knowledge, but rather fear of failure. If something works just fine, you see no reason to change anything, hence you won't change anything, leading to lack of experimentation
exactly, the most "dissonant" is a highlighted minor second sforzatto in FFF dynamics and in a consonant context. Best at the C-2 and c-3 range (alt/soprano voice). To low or to high is again more consonant
I think the problem is yours. If someone is ok, for example, with a blue scale, there's no problem at all. I think musical limitation is a problem from your perspective and ambitions
haha total!
c major first inversion and g major first inversion are the only things that makes me feel good
Adam saying 'Fursona' has had a collossal effect on my recommended videos.
Oh no.
*J O I N U S*
these anti-thumbnails are somehow more effective..
it works because you want to hear the explanation
Seriously though
th-cam.com/video/IImYdIXAz-4/w-d-xo.html
In other words, if you hear in the bass a C and a G, you know, "You're in the key of C, buddy." You are anchored to a tonality, and when a soloist comes along and plays the C#, he's sending you a message. And where that C# goes is part of the adventure of playing the solo. And if he's playing a B natural or an F# against those notes ... they're like ingredients in a stew. I mean, there's a right way and a wrong way to stick a C# on top of a C-G groundbase. If you play all notes that are part of the C major scale, the recipe you have just prepared is oatmeal, know what I mean? So it's like the difference between eating oatmeal and eating salsa.
It’s Adam’s specialty
"That joke's not even funny"
False. I laughed quite a bit at that joke. Good one, Adam.
4:47 Local jazz musician grows mad with power (2021, colorized)
If you record yourself and it sounds like you're Russian, try not writing in A or D minor, using fewer dominant 5ths, adding in less over the top harmonic minor violin runs, and using fewer male choirs.
Also bass playing cat as Adam's sona is so cute and so fitting.
Хорошо, я учту
Ahaa this is great lmao
Why do I need to hide that I’m Russian?
daaaaaaaaaaaa
@@mikubrot It’s more of an ironic question
he interrupts the "repetition legitimizes" joke, a pattern that settles nicely into 9/8, to talk about how other cultures are more used to music in 9/8? what??
if you follow the channel, the joke is at the stage where you hear it without it even needing to be there
it's become natural like 4/4
@@dopaminecloud No joke, I hear those words in my head often now whenever a relevant situation (musical or otherwise) arises.
The pattern settles nicely into 9/8? How do you mean?
@@leaveitorsinkit242 re-pe-ti tion-le-gi ti-miz-es. nine syllables that don't roll off the tongue in 9/8, but can be broken into a pattern of 3 sets of 3 syllables. that's how i metrically percieve it though, results may vary
@@themandownstairs4765 😆 I’ll give you credit for that, but the 9/8 rhythm in his example had three groups of 2’s and one group of 3. So... I don’t know if three groups of 3’s really makes the cut.
When Zappa is on the cover, the video goes straight to the top of the line!!!
They should pitch those vaccine posts with zappa pics
Top of the line? How do you mean?
@@leaveitorsinkit242 the line of videos to watch
but why was zappa on the cover? he didn't mention him at all. I clicked for zappa and got nothing :(
@@cmingus2044 I was thinking the same thing. I wasn’t disappointed by the video tho. Adam does a good job.
I love how you're able to answer the question posed right in the thumbnail and I still click the video.
anti-clickbait
As a current Berklee student, it's pretty cool when you talk about things that we just so happened to go over in class like two days ago
dude im an engineering student and its also pretty cool when he talks about things that leave me just as confused as the things we just so happened to go over in physics like two days ago
its like wow im confused again only this time its my own fault lmao
10:00 There's a song you'll hear on every polish wedding, "windą do nieba": th-cam.com/video/PWTLbvZRdJw/w-d-xo.html The chorus is a somewhat dreamy piece about how the girl is getting ready for her wedding. The stanza is about the bride saying farewell to her crush, about how she has no feelings for the groom, long story short - about how she is not at all happy with the situation. If one actually follows the text, the song is not dreamy, but quite melancholic - and by no means to be sung at a wedding. Still, you'll hear it at every wedding from Świnoujście to Ustrzyki
The entire history of human culture follows the principle of that line from Nirvana's In Bloom - most people are just sort of nodding along with what's going on around them hoping no one notices they haven't got a clue what they're doing. The reproducibility of culture is affected far more deeply by the attempt to fit in than we give it credit for.
Uster was a piece of rack mount gear called "Russian Dragon" for keeping on beat.
The most important lesson I took away from this video is that Adam Neely has a Fursona
and it’s a cat, which honestly is a *purr*fect fit. please end me.
Hearing that hit me like a truck, I was _not_ expecting that
There is a furst for everything.
Question And Answer Time With CATAM FURRY
Hehehe
I think it's interesting that even though I know intellectually that a major 7th is considered dissonant, in context it can be incredibly beautiful. Even before I learned music theory, I intuitively perceived harmonies or melodies focusing on the major 7th as "pretty" sounding, even more so than other intervals. a piece like satie's gymnopedie no1, which is built around the major 7th, sounds peaceful and serene, rather than harsh. it doesn't sound "tense" or unresolved. context absolutely transforms how we hear dissonances, even if the interval by itself sounds harsh or unpleasant.
10:58 Catam Neely
Clicked for Zappa
I love videos where you take questions, Adam. I hope you have the time to do them more frequently! Fursona???!
First 60 seconds of the video
Adam: "These are called prime dissonances."
Me: No, those are panic chords
Prime Dissonance! At The Disco
idk how to make a mathcore joke here, i pretty much BOTCHed it
Yep, the whole time he was talking about those intervals, I was like "I know one way to use all 3 of them: in a breakdown between chugs"
@@heavymachete6235 I love botch
"are you a rusher or a dragger?"
Yes, I play rythyn games.
I clicked first thing when I saw Frank Zappa in the thumbnail
I was disappointed he didn’t talk about him in the video 😢
@@AkimboCorndogs Same
I was disappointed and then I wasn't. Lol.
@@AkimboCorndogs I don't think you can say the name Zappa nowadays without getting legal threats from his family
There is a direct quote for Frank in an interview where he discusses, within an example, using a C# note within an improvised guitar solo over a C and a G within the bass.
I have studied Zappa for about 2 years now (Specifically the way he composed and improvised guitar from about 1977 through 1988) and plenty of topics in music theory that Adam Neely discusses tangentially augments my Frank studies. His bandmate's, Shawn Crowder, first major TH-cam video discusses in great depth how to tackle Frank's most infamously rhythmically difficult pieces.
11:50ish. “The Ultimate Rule ought to be: 'If it sounds GOOD to you, it's bitchin'; if it sounds BAD to YOU, it's shitty. The more your musical experience, the easier it is to define for yourself what you like and what you don't like." - Frank Zappa
I have begun to listen to a lot of Bowie again lately and was fascinated by the chords in "Ashes to Ashes". It involves a lot of major third movement. Would love to see a Neeley take on the functions of this songs chords!
"I believe its called a... _fursona_ ?"
No idea what you're talking about man, not in the slightest
Hey I’ve never seen an Elias randomly like this!
@@Qyver there's a first time for everything
@@eliasmg9144 Great, a pure human being.
1:44 to 1:55, is a central motif in Tom Waits’ “Alice”. Hauntingly beautiful song.
2:12 i actually love that sound a lot
"Will you answer my question?"
"Yes!"
LMFAO
I want a loop of Adam going "CLICK! RED LINE! DRAW!"
Repetition Legitimizes, after all
Same lol
2:17. I love the sound of that chord. Especially the way you balanced the notes of that voicing on the bass. It's a really melancholy take on the major 7th, Lots if cool places that could go. Even if just as a passing chord, it has a real visceral quality.
ok glad to see other comments talking about him saying fursona that shit felt weird
As a visual artist who has a ton of experience using Photoshop, I was amazed the first time I saw someone using Ableton. It's like magic! The changes you can make with such minor adjustments in Ableton blow my mind.
There's a Death from Above 1979 song called "Go Home, Get Down" off their first album that used a minor 9th riff in the synth. It is SO dissonant, but in the context of that song it is also so intense and satisfying.
Now we need a shirt with "CLICK. RED LINE. DRAW!" on it xD
When I click onto the red line, it is always a draw.
"Are you a rusher or a dragger?"
Me: yes
It's call 🌟rubato🌟
I did a program production in the northwest a while back, and one day we had a 'festival' for said program cause it was the first year of and one of the creators wanted a celebration thing going all day with a guest and a performance at night and a bbq and the whole shebang. Our guest on this initial fest was Billy Martin of Medeski, Martin, and Wood. He was really chill and stayed the whole the time to the point of helping us take down the set up for the show that ended the day. One of the panels we had was a few certified trainers or masters or what have you for Ableton Live, a DAW which was added to our campus computers mid-program.. Billy attended this panel and noted that program had save his ass several times when he was doing soundtrack work, and had questions beyond the scope of what the main presentation was so the more knowledgeable of the two panelists took him aside to show him some of the more elaborate things he was enquiring about. So uh yeah, really good program for composing on. I myself wound up on Pro Tools cause that was being used in our recording class stuffs and seemed the most sensible thing to have. But when I see the question asked 'what is the best program to compose on' and I see the stock answer of 'The one you know how to use' I tend to think that the real true answer is Ableton Live.
FL Studio is extremely capable at Automation, I recommend checking it out (demo is free). You can set each line of your automation to be a line, sine wave, step series, half-wave, logarithmic sinusoid, and everything in between.
Yeah, I got the impression FL Studio is actually quite intuitive and thus beginner-friendly. I.e. if the entry threshold is low, you can immediately lauch like a rocket, and then if it you grow dissatisfied, it is because of the great energy it unlocked in you that wants to break barriers.
This is the only channel where I look forward to Q&A’s.
Adam pls bring this series back
Imagine you're walking down a dark street in the middle of the night, all alone. It's absolutely dead silent. No traffic, no people, no anything. And then, seemingly coming from nowhere, you suddenly hear a minor 9th echo through the night air.
Imagine the instant, primal fear that would shoot through you in that moment.
Lost it at 11:03, never thought i'd hear that from the neelster
The Prime Dissonants would be a great name for a band.
A cat is the most accurate impersonation of Adam’s personality
Follow up to the minor ninth question that always "bothered" me.
Why does a minor ninth sound more dissonant than a minor second? Since the notes are the same, you'd expect the larger space between the ninth to "cushion" the dissonance. A minor sixteenth sounds less dissonant than a minor ninth, etc, to the point where if you play B0 and C8 at the same time, the dissonance is pretty much gone. When comparing minor 2nd, 9th, 16th, etc, why should the dissonance "peak" with the minor ninth?
Please don’t have another piano tuned up a half step lol
Must be like trying to play to tapes that are flat
@@dallasstiles118 Ah yes, the old "I would love to play along with this Pink Floyd bootleg live concert recording, but it is a quarter pitch to high" dilemma
@@mss11235 or the subtle pitch warping you get from Bluetooth
@@DemsDaBrakes1996 That makes no sense why that would exist. Please tell me that is only some devices and not a consequence of the Bluetooth protocol. You may have me fucked up for life. I already hardwire my internet for gaming with an Ethernet cable, prompting chicks to question my aesthetic since there are cords routed all over the apartment, creating difficulty in the whole social enjoyment arena... Now this?
@@mss11235 we used tapes in lab band in school to work on improvisation, and I seem to remember that there higher and lower versions maybe, I guess to compensate for whatever player was used idk. I think there was a Miles album that was released way off.
FYI: The “click line draw” automation feature is how Logic operates as well.
My reactions as well. Also tho, ableton is better for live purposes :) He must have forgotten that
@@jonaswassermann1359 absolutely. Logic’s supposed equivalent is Mainstage, though I’ve never used it and everyone I know that integrates a DAW into live performance always seems to use Ableton Live. I think the reality is that it’s 2021 and there are an abundance of choices for all applications and they all probably work REALLY well.
"Every Breath You Take" by The Police was popular at weddings for much longer than it should have been. And there was a decade where "Throw Your Arms Around Me" by Hunters and Collectors was big in Australia. SMH
The minor 9th on the bass sounds like it would be perfect as a musical sting in an haunted woods game. Like after this dialog box "You found a cursed artifact"
Commercial break happened before he could say “repetition legitimizes”
TH-cam is shamelessly manipulating all its users.
Adam Neely; you are the first person on TH-cam who has given me a nose bleed. Better yet, while talking about dissonance. That was a pretty intense discussion.
A musician I work with once played a bride down the aisle to the song hallelujah... perhaps the one thing that tops "will you still love me tomorrow" for tasteless wedding songs
I was listening to Apostrophe at the exact moment your video showed up. Loved it!
Fully agree! To REALLY play a lick fast -- practice it with a metronome at 1/4 speed. Lock it in your brain -- and eventually all of the notes will become a single thought that just spills out and flows.
About that b9, a major 7 chord with a b9 is in bowie's song "alladin sane" and there it sounds amazing
apart from all the music stuff, one of the greatest things Adam has shown me is the value of asking questions that... I don't want to call them bad or pointless, but questions many would see as not worth asking, or not very relevant, because the unveiling of anything reveals a lot about how and why we veil things, and how and why we remove it later.
I prefer automation in FL Studio. You can easily make automation clips, link whatever you want to any automation clip, and place them wherever you want on the timeline.
The B section in Naima (if I'm remembering correctly) starts with a Bbmaj7/A which is a beautiful use of a 'tense' maj7 chord with the 7 on bottom creating a 9b from A to B. Something tragically beautiful about its use there....
A chord with the maj7th in the bassline could be used in a progression like this:
Fadd9/E B7#9/E Emadd9
it's a very dissonant phrygian-esque cadence, especially with that B7/E, but the E bass 'drone' really connects it all nicely.
Always good to see zappa recognition
Whenever I see Zappa, I have to click!
I love your emphasis on how a decision in songwriting doesn't always need to have a music theory justification behind it, I would add that the flip side is also true, that a piece of music might be incredibly theorically complex and masterful from the sheet music's perspective, but if it just doesn't sound good to you, you're not "wrong" in disliking it
Music theory is like learning to cook using recipes. There's nothing right or wrong about experimenting in the kitchen, you might come up with some unexpectedly brilliant combinations, you can learn by watching other people cook, or you can buy books and learn other people's recipes by rote until you feel confident trying out your own stuff. You can delve into the science of what makes food taste good and why we cook the way we do, or you can just get stuck in and make up your own recipes. You probably aren't going to reinvent the soufflé without an education of some sort, but that doesn't mean you can't make some banging bbq rub that all your friends will enjoy.
Music is basically food/cooking. You can take this analogy all the way to the bank and back.
All three of these prime dissonances are in Maya Malavagowla raga. Its the first raga you learn in indian classical. However, you never play them at the same time.
I really wanna play obscure chord progressions, send it to Adam, and have him describe how it makes him feel. He's good at that.
Another tip for for not rushing when playing is to sound out the subdivision of what you are playing in your head or even out loud if you are practicing. For example of you are playing something where the time is subdivided into 16th notes you sound out Da da da da Da da da da etc.
Rodger and Hart’s masterpiece entitled “You Are Too Beautiful” utilizes the flat ninth in a lovely and interesting way.
I've asked to Adam if he likes Frank Zappa on Instagram qna. Thumbnail but no response :(
what if that is the response 🤔
@@AdamNeely :O !!!!! (Metal Gear Solid Sound) thanks for your thumbnailresponse! That's f¥@!ng cool!
@@AdamNeely anyway I've just saw all the comments, there are a lot of Frank's fans. Do you ever considered to make a full episode on Frank Zappa musical language?
Wow, an early Adam Neely! I really loved the outro back then
9:38 I was literally just thinking right before this how much more relaxed and warmer Adam seems in his videos now versus when he started YouTubing. Two seconds later after my thought, this played.
@3:57
And now we know why Stanley Kubrick made Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta so central to The Shining
Automation is definitely just as intuitive and easy in Cubase. I find the possibilities to manipulate automation curves even better (bezier curves, tilting them/scaling multiple points at once, etc.). And it's way more convenient to handle multiple automated parameters if they are displayd on different lanes/tracks. But there's nothing wrong with using ableton, I'm sure it has other strong points as well.
Adam saying fursona... We've come too far, this is too much, stop.
Bail if you want, but I want this train full steam ahead. Catam Neely is too precious, we must protect him.
@@-perge Yeah... can't wait to see all fandoms colliding, what's next? Catam Neely Vtuber debut?
I used to work in a hotel bar and I think my favourite song played at a wedding was - and I'm 100% serious, this actually happened - "Unfaithful" by Rihanna. Very close second was, of course, "Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" by U2... 🤣🤦♂️
FL studios is sorta like that where u can do "automate last tweaked" and it will give you a line for anything you can change anywhere
um... reaper does exactly that for less and has an unlimited trial period.
This^ but also he’s probably just used to it and it doesn’t really matter.
And Cubase makes a new "mini-track" for each parameter rather than stacking them on top of the audio but otherwise works the same.
Adam really rocks that Ten Tree sweater.
@Adam Neely, Bitwig Studio was created by former Ableton employees who thought that Live was not innovative enough. Especially with regards to innovation, and even more -- to the control musical hardware by the means of it. Everyone should check it out.
Adam Neely fursona reveal, I'm quitting the internet.
whats so wrong with that
At first I thought Adam had dyed his hair
But now I know he's a closet Furry
You don’t, at this point, need to be a furry to know what a fursona is though.
@@alsatusmd1A13 That intuition is, in fact wrong. Anyone is a furry, it just takes time to realize.
Honestly... I like the GM/F# sound, especially on bass. It's like a friend's house; mildly unfamiliar, but still homely.
Love ya for putting the answer in the thumbnail - it should become a norm for everyone!
As soon as I saw Zappa I clicked on this video
Greek folk music is connected to dance steps, so it's dominated by 7/8, 9/8, etc. That doesnt mean theres no 4/4, but it always has specific voicings.
A very typical and recognizable rhythm for even modern folk music is the "zeimbekiko", 9/4 (can be counted as 9/8) with these accents: 8th 4th 8th 4th 4th (so you strike a note/chord on the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th and 7th eighth note), repeated twice, with one more quarter note at the end, forming the 9/4 loop. It's fascinating how natural this rhythm seems to us, and how the instrumentation and vocal melodies of songs fit into this pattern so effortlessly. I tried to explain to my mom once how there's an extra quarter note in there, making it "anomalous" compared to the music she usually hears, and it really changed the way she listens to music, even with no formal musical knowledge.
One of my uni professors has dedicated her whole life to uncovering and documenting as many obscure greek folk idioms as possible, and it just depresses me so much that the rich musical culture of Greece, which is directly linked with Bulgaria and Turkey, hasn't seen more exposure worldwide. Lemme tell ya, some of these scales are ridiculous, like, minor b4 b5 #7 that ends on the minor 9th instead of the octave, and half of them are just badly transcribed from non equally tempered instruments. It's just magic, you can never really know enough about music
How can this caliber of musical education be freely available?! I've been watching Adam for years now and I still can't wrap my head around it.
They played “Will You Still Love Me,” at my wedding.
Thanks, Obama.
What does Obama have to do with this?
@@leaveitorsinkit242 You haven’t heard?
@@jf5343 No?
How the fuck haven't you heard? Everyone's heard.
I'm simple... if I see Frank Zappa in the thumbnail, I click
“slower is faster”. Ahhhh brings back memories! I haven’t played piano in decades but I took piano lessons all throughout my youth... I was very undisciplined and never made it very far. But, I was taught by a piano teacher who taught under the “Suzuki Method”. A Japanese man who came with a certain way to teach piano to kids. All throughout the years my teacher constantly drilled into my brain, Slower is Faster, Slower is Faster, Slower is Faster. And not in a mean way, but in her totally calm way of saying. I never knew that other disciplines of musicianship also taught this! how cool.
Some of the greatest drummers ever have that “behind the beat” style.
Propellerhead's Reason DAW has the same automation capabilities in the exact same way. Good ole drawing in your automation points with your cursor.
Same thing in Pro Tools. No idea what he's talking about. Just cmnd+ctrl click and it's exactly like Ableton
5:11 bitwig be just sitting in the corner crying
5:11 - Reaper's automation is freakin great too
Logic Pro as well. I don't think "because automation" is really enough to differentiate Ableton Live from the other DAWs. I suppose he'd then have to pick apart all the DAWs' workflows, and that would take too long. But still...not a satisfying answer.