not worth bangin your head for tbh unless you get a real cool form. just having letters/numbers/notes be as a certain colour isn't that cool and it's more or less useless
@sirvoid101 Thanks for reminding me of a discussion I had 2 years ago. I think the fact that you took time to spell "the square root of negative one" proves my point: you don't input a negative number in the sqrt(.) function (and also the sqrt(.) function only outputs the positive result, so it is really tied to a physical problem). Also I don't get the part where you said I meant "-2" instead of "i*sqrt(4)" but I agree with everything else.
Atonal music is just some hipster bullshit, just like those middle class hipster composers using irrational time signatures. I am a middle class composer by the way
Feynman "I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing," and I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts." Richard Feynman
It's just to keep people from having to say "Gosh, you must be an engineer" whenever you open your mouth. We are unable to do anything without annoying our surroundings with overanalyzing. It's just a fair warning. I'm an engineer, by the way.
No no, you’re thinking about it too abstractly. He should actually superimpose his scalp with his hair, allowing a multidimensionality to where we can choose to see, and appreciate, both or neither.
It's really nice to get an answer to the question of the length of pop songs that goes deeper than the trite "people's attention spans are getting shorter" spiel. Thanks for discussing that!
Learning music theory has enhanced my appreciation for music and broadened my horizons. I don't know much music theory, but the little I've learned has left me with quenching desire to learn more. Now almost any music I listen to intrigues me, because I can hear things I didn't before thanks to this new knowledge I've gained. I regret not learning music theory in my teens and 20s, because I feel like I've lost 40 years of music.
I did the whole avoiding theory because I didn't want to become soulless. Then I hit so many plateaus that I had to and the opposite happened. I think Mark Twain may have misidentified the cause of his disillusionment. It probably wasn't the gaining of knowledge about the river that soured it, but the experiences he had on that river.
arcanics1971 after studying music theory for 10 years. I found it developed from "just knowledge", to part of my soul. Not something I know, something I feel.
I find Mr. Twain's experience very odd. I worked for a couple of years as a tour guide in a region, which meant that I visited a couple of attractions periodically (every week or so). It could've easily been soul-crushing, but the reality is that, as time passed, I gained more and more knowledge about the places, their history and their features. And as I became more knowledgeable, I enjoyed going there more and more - the magic was never lost, but actually improved and increased with each visit. I could fit more and more pieces of the puzzle, and see the subtle relationships between rock strata, plant species or bird migrations. It could well be because I'm a massive nerd, though :/
'classical music' is just like every other genre like rock or metal. its a general term to give people that aren't too deep into music a vague idea of what to expect. It's just like if you said 'green' to talk about all different hues of green. Technically wrong but it gives people a good baseline on what to expect
Jan Prepadnik Those are forms though, not even close to genre. In Classical music you get the effect of genre with periods, because often, a composer’s style fits with their time period. If they don’t, people will refer to a composer as romantic or neoromantic for example, if they came after the movement, but compose in its style.
+ Duncan Robertson Nope, genre denotes form, style and instrumentation. Romanticism is not a style so much as it is an idea. Nor is Baroque, which is why they are refered to as period rather than genre. For example, a bachian gigue would defer from a Sarabande due to its form, even though the style and instrumentation remain somewhat similar. The final product defers greatly from each other, but most importantly it's purpose and emotional effect changes. This is what creates the "effect" of the genre even though the musical material of pieces within a genre differ. This has always been the definition of genre in acadamia and has been somewhat obscured by the laymen, particularly with the advent of jazz which saw much more uniformed use of instrumentation and style as an art music(classical is generally much more varied in terms of this, if you view it as a genre). TLDR. The concept of the genre has thus lost much of its purpose and at this point is a superficial term for people looking for similar sounds in music. However, since form has largely remained the same in popular music, this aspect of genre has been ignored by the larger public, which Adam does address as the common parlance. Using this definition, something like prog-rock is an entirely different genre than rock and roll.
I was going to say the same thing. Baroque, romantic, contemporary are just subgenres of classical, just like how doom, funeral and drone metal can be have similarities, but are different subgenres all together,
I always thought that learning about things made them more interesting, whether they be music or rivers or science. Not even necessarily learning so that I could use this knowledge in another context, just to know stuff.
Atonality has been a thread in metal music for some time now, starting as innocuously as use of the tritone and chromaticism. Currently, extreme atonality is on the rise in metal, with stellar examples such as Portal and Deathspell Omega leading the charge into the avant garde. Their music plays like intense journeys into insanity and I can't get enough.
ADAM, PLEASE READ THIS!! An ANSWER for your next Q&A ;) (regarding your Video about "NEGATIVE TIME SIGNATURES") As we know from your fantastic videos, harmony is Polypitch. Two or more evenly spaced pulses playing around each other and resolving every now and so often, depending on the frequency ratios involved. A time signature is only a construct within which rhythmic relationships can be portrayed. An event i n s i d e the bar of a given time signature can be regularly repeating, but the time signature itself is merely "hosting" said event. What I'm trying to say is the "signature" in "time signature" is not relevant, but the "time" aspect of it IS. So, I think the term "time signature" is misleading in this case, because it's missing the key variable: the bpm count. Or rather impulses per unit of time. Depending on where you're going with it, compositionally. So instead it's n e g a t i v e r h y t h m i c r e l a t i o n s h i p s we're looking for. Now: If Negative Harmony --> Undertone Series then Negative Rhythmic Relationships --> ?? How do we solve this? By saying frequency = tempo! Let's take a regular quarter note pulse for instance. An "overtone fifth" ( 3 : 2 ) would be an eighth-note-triplet against regular eighth-notes. An "undertone fifth" ( 0.5 : 0.33... ) would be a half the frequency (=tempo) against a third of the frequency (=tempo). So the fundamental = bpm count The weird thing is though, and this detail cannot be overstated: The slowest rhythmic pulses (up to a certain point (but of course you also have a video on that topic)) feel like the "main pulse". So the fundamental bpm might then feel like 4 over 3 polyrhythm when put into this kind of relationship. This is only logical, it happens when notes or chords are flipped into the negative (which is also something that intrigues me: What's a comparable axis, about which to flip?!), and the ear also latches on to lower frequencies, so bass notes are often "mistakenly" felt to be the roots of chords. BUT when you apply this to a groove, which was the motive of the original question, as far as I can tell, you can apply this usefully: Take a hi-hat pattern and let it play something with an eighth-note-triplet feel over a steady quarter-note-oriented groove of 4/4. The negative relationship of that hi-hat would simply be playing the hi-hat only on every third quarter note - resolving on the 1 of every third bar. (Or double or quadruple that frequency of hi-hat pulses, like you would double the frequencies of other negative harmony examples) Right? Apart from this lovely digression, I wanted to humbly recommend my bachelor's thesis to you, I really think you'd dig it. It's about Jacob Collier's microtonal modulations by his witty implementation of Just Intonation and (as he calls it) "gestural" voice-leading. I hope you enjoy it! Please let me know your thoughts on it! drive.google.com/file/d/13JGXJls6IWqOWam0xO84f-5iG3zSL1Xk/view Cheers from Hamburg, Germany, I love your videos, man, thank you so much for your amazing work. Rami
That Irrational Time Signatures example was pretty amazing.. definitely made it (for me) easier to see, and "feel" how its supposed to sound with irrational time signatures.
Hi Adam, Thanks for the amazing videos. Even though I play bass myself. I find your videos with a broader perspective on music a lot more interesting than your earliest videos. It seems like I can learn something new with each video, and really learn about music in general. When I hear bass players talking about the moment they picked up the instrument, it strikes me that a lot of bass players already played another instrument before switching to bass. Marcus Miller played saxophone before picking up bass. James Jamerson played piano before playing an upright bass. A lot of the bass greats have a story where they initially played another instrument before the bass. One exception that I know of is Victor Wooten who was forced to play the bass by his bigger brothers. The same can be said about bass players of all levels. It seems that a lot of bass players, including myself, were already playing music on another instrument before noticing the bass. Why is that? Why is it that people who end up being drawn to the role of a bass player need some familiarity with playing music before realising this? The function of the bass in music is pretty fundamental, IMHO. So why aren't a lot of us bass players drawn to the instrument right away? In my case, I caught myself listening more to the bass part at rehearsal than my own guitar parts. It only made sense to me to play the instrument that you're the most focussed on. What is your story? Thanks
Theory doesn't change what music is; it enhances it. It changes music from "oh, that's nice" to "oh, yes, I already know what I *should* do next to make it sound extra nice." Also, what's wrong with a white woman playing ukulele? What?
Crescendo I actually got a ukulele as a birthday present a few years ago and it’s been really nice. If I was younger, the “cool” factor might have gotten to me, but now I appreciate the flexibility to play wherever I want. There’s also some players like James Hill doing really cool stuff with it.
Asher D I am not defending that guys comment because I do not agree with him but I think I understand the context of what he was saying. The Ukelele has a lower learning curve than guitar because it has very light nylon strings and there are only four of them. Therefore alot of people pick them up to play songs like Riptide. Some might view it as the dumbing down of music. It's kind of like that stereotype of the guy with the acoustic guitar who only knows how to play Wonderwall. I am not saying that the Ukelele is a dumb instrument because it has a great heritage and you can play complex stuff on it. Just that it has a lower learning curve which attracts people who want to be called musicians just because they can play four chords on a Ukelele.
Dude, this channel is awesome. Gold! I can’t believe anyone would hate you or the content. It is clear that the information you provide is well-researched. Gold!
Y'all talking about not wanting to learn theory cause you don't want to learn the language, while i'm here dying to learn theory so I can actually write music but have no idea where to start or how to learn theory XD
Trickster I would be happy to help! My channel has social media links you can use to contact me. I find the "idk about theory" comments funny because without music theory I was thinking about music without knowing what I was thinking. Especially when I was learning instruments, theory vastly improved my ability to visualize the isntrument and its patterns, which patterns are significant, what they look and feel like.
I love the way you argue or debate these points. It’s well done. I wish everyone could conduct themselves how you conduct yourself in a debate/argument. I would never get mad and blow my top if everyone could conduct themselves in this manner. Cool. Calm. Civilized.
Excellent post Adam. I think it’s important to distinguish two overall forms of synesthesia: 'projective' synesthesia and 'associative' synesthesia. Projectors will see actual colors, forms, or shapes when stimulated; associators will feel a very strong and involuntary connection between the stimulus and the sense that it triggers. This article presents early research (2014) on the acquisition of synesthetic perception. This research explores the premise that associative synesthesia can be developed and refined in adults with training rather than being only something that an individual is born with. There are remarkable implications here for the perceptual/conceptual exploration and development of (pitch-color) synesthetic integration in musicians and listeners. www.nature.com/articles/srep07089
I always learn something from your videos. I'm a guitarist and your explanation on time signatures (5/8) was great. You're well spoken and easy to understand. I was undecided on how to feel about 432-vs-440 and your lesson on the subject was fantastic. Thank you for adding to my musical education.
You have a fine mind in answering questions about knowledge Adam and overall i love your broad-minded approach incorporating many fascinating things. To me Knowledge breeds questions- knowing more raises more questions revealing the vastness of what we don't know. No theory and we can explore things that are well known without knowing it. Synaesthesia- All senses have to overlap it's how nervous systems check so everyone has to have some slight overlap. Hypnotically synaesthesia can be induced. Keep up the Great Work!
I won't lie, the answer to question #1 was broadening to me. I also lack a good amount of Musical Theory, and a good portion of reasoning for that is I feel like it's going to kill that exploring and mysterious mentality that music brings to me, and basically all of us at some given point in life (and probably because I'm lazy). I get the feeling it's going to make me robotic and less human to the gift and endless journey that is music.I would really take it less as a killing to the wonderful magic, but rather an expansion that makes you seem to know more now when indulging in Music Theory. Who knows, it might just make you a little more creative than before you knew music theory now that you would have a bigger arsenal of tricks up the sleeve... It's more liberating in a sense.
I'm not sure if it applies, but I've felt, every time i learn something new about photography and how to compose a shot, I can appreciate the artistry and the photo/video even more, while i feel like I have more options to use to make a good, expressive photo myself. And I think, it's also with music. Yes, I can listen to a piece and try to analyze it, maybe overanalyze, but at least for me personally, I can still "shut that off" and just enjoy. And I think that is a very important thing you might need to practice but everyone should definitely try to do from time to time in every art form.
Ye exactly my man. Even if you have absorbed a great chunk of MT knowledge, you can still just kinda go back to your roots to just relax and appreciate music for what it's language speaks y'know.
It's only limiting if you let it be. It's just another way of perceiving music. And you will probably get more work as a hired hand if you are proficient at sight reading
Right on. I liken it to visiting other countries, learning about other cultures and their languages. If you only stay in yours, it's comfortable. Easy. But that's it. That's all it can ever be. When you branch out, you get to see similarities and differences that can really expand your mind, and indeed, "the magic." You discover depths that you never knew were there. I love uncovering hidden motifs and syncopations in music. Particularly when they borrow from other musical traditions. If I hadn't studied some theory, I'm not sure I would have noticed these things. So there's two ways of looking at it. You can be content that the magic trick just "works", or you can dive in and, though you'll know HOW the trick works, you'll also have the beginnings of access to a whole new world of what makes magic...magic.
Music theory makes odd or 'difficult' music so much more magical than 'normal' music could ever be while it's still mysterious. It's how to me a rainbow only becomes more beautiful knowing the science behind it. You can appreciate the choices the musician made because you can hear the choices they made. You know the ingredients yet the taste is entirely new and you are amazed how they managed to do this. This music mystifies you when it steps out of line without making a mistake, and it makes your entire brain light up. Now that I know more about music theory myself, I have a far greater appreciation for listening to technical jazz. It also doesn't change music that I used to listen to because they still carry the nostalgia factor, and no amount of music theory would keep them from being guilty pleasures.
*ADAM PLEASE READ THIS* Can you do a video on how to compose a march. I want to compose a piece for a few clarinets (because that's the instrument I play), and I want to compose it in the style of a concert march (2/4 time etc.) What things do traditional marches have that I should include?
A benefit I've experienced via my chromesthesia is the ability to hear the changes in music and see them in real time. Most skilled musicians can hear the changes obviously but also being able to "see" the nuances and notice how elements in the music itself change is invaluable tbh. As someone who's largely self-taught as a result of not being able to afford to have proper instructors throughout my life, it has definitely helped me better understand music theory a lot better than I believe I would if I didn't have this perception.
Hey adam, im a musician in high school and, i love ur content. I was wondering what you think about Philipp Gerschlauer's microtonal jazz, i feel like the use of a microtonal scale makes the music have a really cool haunting feeling. Thanks, tamayo
Where I studied, (University of Tennessee) my double bass teacher was adamant about teaching both jazz and classical. He always referred to classical music as legit music. This led me to work more on my classical chops and leave the jazz out of the practice room and save the discovery for the band stand.I don't know if his terminology had a negative impact on my jazz studies, but it made me practice way more with a bow and that made my intonation and facility on the instrument improve a lot. That crossed over to my jazz playing pretty directly. Playing solo cello pieces on the bass gave me technics to improve my improvisation, versatility, and develope a better sense of melody and complex harmonic ideas. Clearly terminology matters and I think the terms he used pushed me away from intense study of Mingus, Ray Brown and Paul Chambers and pushed me towards Rachmaninoff, Koussevitzky and Bottesini. Who can say which is better? It certainly worked for me I'm a big fan of your work, Keep making excellent, informative content! BASS!
My synesthesia gets exacerbated hardcore when I take psychedelic drugs, and I think even people without synesthesia can have it on LSD, mescaline, mushrooms, DMT, etc.
That is correct, those substances (some more than others) enhances neuroplasticity and neurogenesis while switching down the Default Mode Network, pushing signals through new patterns to process the same input, therefore leading to temporally synesthetic :)
Just to add to your answer to the last question, much of the music composed in the Baroque era was church music. Just as an example, all the cantatas Bach composed, which we gladly will listen to in a concert, were made just for church services. Actually, both in German-speaking countries and in countries where German is a rather well-known foreign language, like The Netherlands, Bach cantatas are still performed in church services, as well as in concerts. I love your videos and the clear and informed way you tackle all subjects. Congratulations and please do keep them coming. All the best!
You know, hearing about your synesthesia brings me some relief: I didn't know that there was even such a thing as *partial* synesthesia but now that I do it explains SO MUCH about my color associations for sounds, flavors, etc. I never *see* it (I also am aphantasic - one of those people who can't visualize clearly) like my friend in HS did, but that doesn't stop the unbidden association. Gives me food for thought and something to research.
Question for the next Q+A video: Hello Adam from San Francisco! I love your videos and enjoy binge watching them after finishing my homework. I've been playing piano on my own, virtually free from any lessons hold a few tips from local musicians, for around 4 years now. I have been described by my peers as "musically gifted" as I can play by ear decently well and make/improvise songs based on my emotions. I signed up for guitar 1 this year (11th grade), and have been playing for about 6 months now. I have picked it up pretty easily and am having fun bouncing between the two instruments. Then I joined the school band back in January and using my knowledge of the piano to play the mallet instruments, a role desperately needed in our tiny band of 25. I am picking up the mallets fairly easily as well. All of these instruments are fairly similar in my eyes. However, it is here where I need assistance. Despite what people claim about me, I feel as though I am nothing as my music theory is absolutely horrendous. I do of course know what the 2 main clefts are, and can identify notes on the staff, but I struggle to read and play at the same time(usually playing by ear and/or from muscle memory) and can hardly sight read at all. On guitar, I am okay as I am learning in a class, but on piano and mallets I have no instructor. Our concert is coming up in a month and I am expected to play mallets in the concert band, and then guitar and piano in the jazz group, with an improvised solo on piano. The solo is no problem, but there is so much I just don't understand on those pieces of paper the band teacher hands out. I can play triplets, go back an fourth between different time signatures, and change keys easily while just jamming out, but seeing three notes connected by a bar or seeing 5/4 then 3/3 and finally 4/4 in the span of 3 measures... REALLY trips me up man... So I have 2 questions. The first: How can I quickly improve my music theory and knowledge so that I can "progress musically?" and the second(related questions): Would you ever consider creating a Music Theory playlist, ranging from the basics to the very abstract? If you have, what are they titled? And if you haven't and will not, why not? Thank you so much for your channel! It has truly been a blessing of mine to "meet" you as a young 17 year-old musician.
For the next Q&A: Hello Adam, I just saw your comment from 10 months ago on one of Tolgahan Çoğulu's videos. What are your thoughts on maqam music (like Tolgahan plays) and microtonal music in general? Do you think it is going to be the fundemantal of new music? Also how can we combine our tonal system and microtonal tuning systems together in a classical music or jazz music concept? Thanks
Synesthesia... I've been developing connections between musical ideas like keys in the circle of fifths, tuning systems, intervals/chord compositions etc., and as a direct result my creativity has been sparked. For instance, when looking at pictures online of, say, a rosebush that's all greyed out except for a single red rose, I "translated" these colors to what understandings I had developed musically; for instance, to convey the grey bush idea, I used C as tonic, mostly quartal, quintal, nontriadic harmonies and melodies that did not jump more than two spaces left or right on the circle of fifths note to note, and notated for mutes and minimal vibrato to be used on the strings. In contrasting this with the "red rose," I associated red with A major, triadic harmonies melodies that jumped around the circle of fifths freely, and vibrato-happy unmuted strings. All this is just to note my personal experience of associating color with musical ideas and theory, and how I think there's still a whole world of untapped potential that could be realized in this mode of thinking; just some thoughts to chew on.
I found a slip jig and it reminded me of the many rivers of knowledge. It changed some Irish tunes for me to listen to forever. Thank goodness for knowledge gathers. Thanks for this Q&A.
I probably shouldn't be surprised that all of your videos, are really good, but every time I watch a new one I'm reminded of how thoughtful and interesting your content is. I have a quick question for your next Q&A: I'm a tuba player in college and I've been interested in learning more about playing jazz for some time now. What would be some good ways to start getting into it and learning how to play jazz bass ideas? I already listen to jazz a lot and sort of have a concept of how things work, I just lack the knowledge to put this stuff into practice in real time effectively. My classical skills are already pretty strongly developed but I want to be able to do more than this so I can be as versatile as possible later in my musical career. Thanks!
Hey Adam! I'm 16. I can play the Violin, Ocarina, Ukulele and I've been playing the Bass for a year and a half right now. I'm very concerned with my future profession: I like learning languages, conversating with people; I can draw somewhat good(for a person with no art education), and, of cource, I like to study, play and listen to music. I have a problem with choice: when I'm doing anything but music I'm eventually bumping into it again. It's good and all, but it's sort of creeps me out: I would be happy, if I could do music for a living, but I also have a fear of burning out. Could you please tell me, as a professional musician, what's it like to be like you and what to do to get this fear out of the way? Like your music and videos very much! Looking forward to see new stuff from you! Thanks in advance! BASS!
You need to talk to some musicians you know, personally and professionally, about forming a plan. What do you like? Do you want to play in an orchestra? Do you want to teach? Do you want to play sessions? Do you want to tour? After figuring out a game plan for how to survive life as a musician because every day is a fight against low income (never forget that), you have to figure out the best plan of action for you to get there. There's nothing wrong with working a job and practicing to transition. There's nothing wrong with going to school and then being poor and only playing music. Just because you're a career banker or whatever doesn't mean you're not a musician. It's a simultaneous struggle between making a living AND developing yourself as an artist, and there's no safe timeline for anybody on either of those fronts. Both are your journey and your journey alone, in that nobody's will be identical. Make yourself educated, practiced, open-minded, and hard-working. Learn every kind of music and skill you can. Never say no to music. Stay hungry and best of luck.
Maybe this is unrelated but.. How do you feel up in the spotlight, on a stage? Maybe you love it on your own, but don't really like performing. I clarify, I don't mean stage fright, that's normal. I mean, how do you feel going up on a stage several days a week? Have you ever tried? On an unrelated note, if you are a techy kind of guy, look into professions that require to understand music but also technical aspects. I think your ability to play so many different instruments means that you understand them on a more intuitional level, and it could help you mix a song, for example.
Can you actually play the ocarina though? I mean, it's one of those things where anyone can learn the notes and play along with songs but have you actually developed real skill in it that took a lot of practice to achieve. As in, have you even played it for more than 100 hours all together.
Thank you! I actually didn't expect someone to answer! As of "not loving to perform", I don't have nothing like that at all. In fact, my parents are both professional actors and so I LOVE to perform. Though I didn't try to go up on a stage weekly, or even monthly. That's what concerns me. So few opportunities in my town, and most of them aren't gigs. The only "gigging" sortathing happens in one club once or twice a year, when a blues star comes by and it's very hard to even get there to watch; I'm not even talking about working there. That's one of my main concerns. I don't like working in mixing very much. And I don't have no experience in production at all.
I dunno why anyone ever thumbs down your videos. It's like being negative to someone who just wants to give you the ability to learn new things. "Well, he thinks he's smarter than Mark Twain" just isn't valid enough. Love ya dude.
"(european) aristocratic music" sounds nice would you have an idea to replace "popular music" name ? the term implies that classical music (european aristocratic music) can't be popular (while orchestral music that could be called classical like film scores and Philip Glass music have obvious popular success). and I don't think every "popular music" style does have "popular success" (think about math rock for instance). but maybe "popular" refers to the ones who make the music, not the ones who listen to it -> in this case it's still inappropriate (nowadays, who can say he's not from the people ? specially among musicians ...) I've never find a good name for this (huge) category (I thought about "blues-based music" but I don't think every popular music originates from blues : particularly electronic music, and I think a part of folk music a la Bob Dylan, bluegrass music, and a majority of Tin Pan Alley songs)
Much appreciation for you answer to the loss of mystique that comes from learning. I've been in a slump related to this. The analogy you provided was refreshing!
Hey Adam! I got a question for your next QnA if you don’t mind: Why do we associate certain key signatures or chords to a different feeling or theme? For example, playing the chord D minor with the structure of D A D, where D is an octave in the bass, has a very grimy, dark, and almost pirate-sounding tone, borderline “Pirates of the Caribbean”. Does this have to do with years of getting used to hearing these chords and keys, or is there an actual reason behind it?
Voicing a dm as D A D leaves out the third which gives a chord it's colour (asides from obviously telling you if it's major or minor) so that's why when you have omit3 chords or "power" chords, it feels darker 😊😊
Is it only the D5 chord or do other power chords "feel" the same to you? I mean, what if you played C G C or Eb Bb Eb or whatever. Would those chords also have the same feeling or is it just the D A D chord?
MaggaraMarine no it's not just d5, because of the tuning system we use (equal temperament, you should look into it) then no particular chord sound unique... In the sense of how it makes you feel anyway. A d5 will sound no more mysterious or powerful as a c5 or an Ab5. All that matters is that it's a 5 chord. For another example, if you play a perfect cadence in c major (G-C) it will have the same effect on you no matter what key you play it in, so you could play it in Ab (Eb-Ab) and it should have exactly the same effect. Basically you need to stop thinking of chords as individual chords and more like degrees of a scale. So rather than saying oh that progression is C G Am F, say that's a I V vi IV progression in C major. Learning your scales and degrees of the scale really helps. Hope this answered your question and I didn't lose you 😊😊
mark stewart Yeah, I understand. Why I asked the question was because I was curious if TS hears something special in the D5 chord that he doesn't hear in other power chords. I should have been more clear about that. But maybe someone else will find your explanation helpful. :)
A friend taught challenging kids guitar by getting them to chose the colours for the notes on a guitar. It gave those kids a sense of control over their environment and they became faster learners Painting coloured dots on their fretboards.. English used CDE Spanish and Italian uses Do Ray Me, sometimes using sustinado or bemol and sometimes using a variety of solfeggio names (or colours) can work too. It seems simpler for young adolescents who are challenged by the 'system' to use colours they chose rather than western conventional ways. That seemed to be a positive, both for those with synesthesia, and those kids who found colours easier to recall.
My music history teacher like to refers to the western "classical" music as academic music because the term classical can mislead to think that is just referring to the Classicism. Love your content, thanks a lot for sharing.
Question for your next Q&A: What's the big deal with time signatures? If we for example have a 4/4 time signature does it sound any different to 5/4? It's obvious that it makes a difference to the musician reading it, but I simply don't understand how it should sound any different. If I wanted to have a longer note in 4/4 I'd simply make a tied note to the next bar. Would be glad if you could explain that.
I'll try to answer you but I'm Spanish so please don't do be a grammar nazi. There are, to my knowledge, two main reasons. The first reason is that it's simpler to read to most of the musicians. The other reason is that in music you normally accentuate one pulse over the others, so in 4/4 you count ONE,two,three, four,ONE,etc. So having different time signatures gives you instantly and idea of when to accentuate.
Yes it does. But, don't go too complex for now. Search for 3/4 time signature and you'll feel it very differently than 4/4. Time signature is not about one measure, but the whole piece (bear in mind that you can change the time signature anytime during the song). Is not about how many notes per bar you can play, nor their duration only. Is about the feeling of rhythm of a piece. If you change the time signature you'll inevitable change it's accents, changing the meaning of each note played at any given time. So, the notes remain the same in all ways but the feeling that they convey.
It's about how you feel the beat, in 4/4 beat one is emphasized and so is beat 3 (though not as much as 1). In 5/4 beat 1 is emphasized again and either beat three or four has the secondary emphasis.
5/4 has one more quarter note per measure than 4/4. If you have 5 quarter notes in a measure, a 5/4 time signature is simply the best way to get that idea across. Most of the odd time signature stuff I've written would be a complete nightmare to try and write down in 4/4, and it would just look like a mess to most musicians. Like, I have one (very, very stupid) song that changes time signatures every measure at the beginning; so it's written and counted as a very fast 7/8, 5/8, then 4/8. It adds up to 16 8th notes, so it technically could be written and counted in 4's. But each measure in that specific section of that piece is essentially it's own little riff, with a heavy emphasis on the one each time. I have no clue how to get that same piece of music written down so others could understand it without using odd time signatures. Take something simpler, like the 7/8 bass line from pink floyd's "money". How would you go about counting that in 4/4? And if you could figure out a way, would it be any easier than just saying each measure has 7 8th notes, and counting it that way?
When you get into it you can play any song in any time signature & to simplify things you could just write every song in 1/4 or even just 1/1 & vary the tempo as you like. There's also really nothing stopping you from not bothering with time signatures at all & writing your music in one continuous bar. Time signatures are purely just a technique to communicate to people how to think of the phrasing of the music in their heads for the purpose of making it easier to play. You can write wonderwall in 19/8 & it will sound the same as long as you don't change any note lengths & don't add or remove notes, it'll just be nastier to look at for the person reading the music. Time signatures carry connotations of where the downbeat is, how the rythems should be phrased & how to space certain parts relative to other parts, which all makes it easier to interpret the way the composer wanted.
Mankepoots question of fear of Musical Theory Is understandable, but at the same time knowing how the pieces fit together Is amazing to me. I just started studying film and knowing how certain things come together. It all amazes me to know how It works. How Its re-creatable. What came before It and was Improved, changed, and made a new product from It. I still see something as having mystery, but I understand what makes It up and how to create that for others. I have the same thought to Musical Theory. I only ever played guitar as a hobby, I never learned a lot of theory, but I am not opposed to learning It. I watch your channel, Rick Beato, Polyphonic, 12 Tones, and random videos here and there and It amazes me how this artist they talk about took their knowledge or lack of knowledge and created stuff. Even though the artist didn't know It, I personally love to know "well what did make their music so great In a theory sense?" even though the artist Instinctively did It opposed to It being because of their musical knowledge.
M.S. Allen For me it would be Tony Williams, simply for his amazing drumming on Miles Davis’s 1967 album, ‘Nefertiti’. Buddy Rich is the grandaddy of drumming though.
I loved your clarification of the usefulness of irrational time signatures. I admit I had a similar response when I saw that video though I could see from the examples in the main video that it was at least as easy to read and interpret as it would have been with other notation methods. In your example in this video though it really drove it home how impossible it would be (at least for me) to interpret that bassline example without using irrational time signatures. It's a great way to get across certain strange metric modulations, which I'm a huge fan of.
You mentioned cultural appropriation in this Q+A. Is that something you subscribe to? If so, how do you reconcile that with being a jazz musician? I understand that you should respect other cultures and tread carefully when crossing those boundaries. I think most people are on board with that. But cultural appropriation seems to extend beyond that. It seeks to make certain cultural practices out of bounds to people from the dominant culture (for example, the opinion that white Americans shouldn't wear their hair in dreadlocks).
I think he was more saying he could understand if that was the argument being made since that's a big issue for a lot of people more than anything else. Contrasting it as an argument that could've been made instead of the lack of an argument in the comment.
The core of what is cultural appropriation and what isn't is largely about having context and respecting/understanding what you're representing. The example of white Americans and dreadlocks is not really a very good one because while they might just be using it as a fashion statement as opposed to carrying some deeper meaning (which historically there has been), there isn't necessarily any underlying cultural context that they're appropriating by doing so. It's also not a great example because cultural appropriation is difficult to talk about on a case-by-case basis and in those cases it's more just about disrespect, and nearly always about _benefiting_ from the use of "outside" cultural items while simultaneously disrespecting the source. That is, the only use of the culture is to reap some benefits from it being different and intriguing or strange. I wouldn't at all say that defense against cultural appropriation seeks to make some cultural items "out of bounds", but many people without a good grasp on what it means definitely do argue this and I think that lack of nuance hurts a lot more than it helps. On the larger scale it's more about a more privileged culture (in some sense) collectively integrating cultural items from a less privileged or oppressed culture while removing the underlying context of those items and often erasing or ignoring the influence of the other culture. The line between melting pot and appropriation can usually be pretty easily identified with the level of respect and natural integration involved. The appropriation argument is definitely made for jazz in its infancy but I don't think it's been relevant in modern jazz for quite a while.
Isaac Moore - Absolutely, yeah. I just thought I'd ask for his opinion seeing as he used it as an example. All I know is that he's aware of the concept, so I'm interested to know his thoughts.
dork - Thanks for the lengthy response. I don’t think we disagree vehemently, judging by what you said. Though we probably fall on opposite sides of the issue. I used dreadlocks as an example because there seems to be a strong debate about that in particular over in the US. If you Google search ‘cultural appropriation dreadlocks’ you should find a number of articles about it. Here’s a musical example that might be a bit better - I compose music for games and will often be asked to write in a particular cultural style. Game composers will try to be respectful and as authentic as possible but the result will be ‘westernised’ to some extent because of our personal heritage, relative lack of knowledge in that area and time restraints. This in turn causes westerners to have a distorted idea of what certain types of music sound like, and those are integrated into the culture. Would you class that as cultural appropriation?
I didn't mean to suggest I disagreed with you or anything, just my thoughts. Your example here is much more interesting; I might call it appropriation if really pushed but not in a particularly problematic way? There isn't really a disadvantaged culture being used, it's more about the use of ideas of mutual cultures in ways that are trying to represent the original but might come short just from literally not being able to. The point is also to represent the culture somewhat accurately, not just integrating it as "mine now", which is important. In essence you might also ask if trying to make cuisine from another country is appropriation if you don't try super hard at being perfectly authentic, but that's pretty unreasonable (especially since it's often a creative process), and the emphasis here is more on how a lot of that combined can shift the public's perception by accident, I guess. It's unfortunate that interpretations of other cultures in media often tends to end up how that culture is viewed in general, but the solution there is to actually invest in authenticity, I suppose. The internet has shaped the world into a place where misinformation and misrepresentation can now be exposed quite quickly, and by the same token, authentic solutions are easier than what were previously possible, which is a lot of why people aren't able to get away with potentially harmful appropriation as easily anymore. But I don't think that trying to be accurate and failing to meet some arbitrary standard is harmful or is something to shy away from, instead I'd just encourage learning more.
It feels pretty boring tbh, also kinda empty? I can't exactly compare because I've always had it (I think). I think dreaming and imagining would be cool though, so there is a sense of missing out
I have various forms of synesthesia, some more significant than others, but in general, I find having multiple senses linked can really help with memory. If a reminder of one sense's memory is triggered, it also triggers the linked memory of another sense (ie. seeing something years later and suddenly remembering what I was hearing at the time I saw/made the visual, or vice versa). As far as more synesthetic sensory links, they can help with multitasking because I can use different parts of my brain to process multiple things simultaneously. For example, I experience guitar chords as colours, so one time when I was trying to learn a song, I wrote the lyrics and highlighted them in the chord's colour. One part of my brain processed reading and words, and another processed colour as sound/fingering, more on autopilot, and I was able to learn and memorize all aspects of performing the song much more quickly and easier than using methods that require reading for all parts of notation.
There is application for it but conditions have to be extremely precise for it to be applicable. Being able to see different letters as colours can help with in creating a new languages for a book series. Or since we play music with letters, you can try matching the colours of the letters of different harmonic scales to write new music based on how you want the coloured letters to flow. Being able to see sound as color very clearly. You would be able to learn how to play your favour songs by just picking up your favorite instrument & practicing. Being able to Echo locate is a kind of synesthesia. Where you can understand shapes with sound even if you're blind. Being able to see auras is suggested to be a form of synesthesia. You can determine ones emotions by their aura which uses your sense of smell to detect the pheromones & your eyes adding colour to the heat waves coming off of someones body. Being able to see 3D shapes or having a 3D mind palace is also a kind of synesthesia that would help people be good at being artist or engineers. Being able to taste things through thoughts & sight would help people be better cooks. Feeling something that someone else is feeling through pheromones or through seeing it is also one that would help doctors & others understand how to help people better. By god if you get the ability to overlap some of them you get essentially eagle vision. I wonder if we could willing get people with genetic synesthesia to start a family with each other & when their kids start a family find others with genetic synesthesia of similar levels on the scales of synesthesia & keep doing that if it would help humanity evolve further in a positive way? No one should be forced to do this. But it would be interesting if a 500 year long study was conducted to see how much synesthesia would develop & how it might differ from each person.
The 3 minute song goes even further back to the old Phonograph cylinders. When we, as humans, get used to something we tend to stick to those patterns out of comfort. This is part of why repetition is a musical principle, and - perhaps - seem doomed to repeat the stupid things we do. Great videos! Loved the DnB ending :D
For that last question, my method is to use "common practice music" when describing baroque, classical, and romantic. And then use "modernist music" when describing Debussy, Scriabin, Stravinsky, 2nd Viennese school, and so forth.
Please stop answering the same questions over and over again for the sake of us who want to actually learn something. Maybe something like a FAQ would help you with this?
Also, responding to slanderous comments is pretty much wasting time. I believe people are here for the music theory, and no one seems to care about the trolls but you
PublicEnemy1337 there was plenty of theory here. even in some where he responds to slanderous comments. also by saying "the sake of us who actually want to learn" are you trying to say that a majority of these questions don't want to learn? go read a music theory book if you are that upset
He responds to atleast one troll in every Q&A video. No one even takes them seriously, so why devote any time to them? If you look at his older Q&A videos, you'll see what I mean. More theory, less trying to reason with trolls/straight up dumbasses. Also he answered the same questions in more than 3-4 Q&A's. i.e. the "will music theory ruin the magic" question. (His responses weren't the same, but the sentiment was) It looks like he's trying to appeal to non music-savvy people, which is backfiring in terms of the quality of content.
I resent being called a troll. The question is a legitimate one, just by being factual. If you think i am just a lazy dumbass i can just say that you don't know me. Maybe you should read about the tree of knowledge or Pandora to see that this a n archetypical life question, not an excuse to watch youtube.
Amazing to hear that your grapheme-colour synesthesia doesn't correlate to your childhood memories either. I spent years and years with a very clear picture in my head of the TV show theme song that gave me the colours I see for A, B, C, 1, 2, and 3 - just a few years ago, I finally found that theme song, and found that, while I had remembered the visuals perfectly, the colours were wrong. It was a huge shock at the time, so it's nice to hear that I shouldn't expect the colours to have come from anywhere in particular. Fun additional note, a friend of mine has grapheme-colour synesthesia, but only for musical note names, and only for where they exist on a guitar neck in standard tuning - 6th string open note is white, 6th string 12th fret is black, but the same note up on the 5th string 7th fret is different.
For the next Q&A: What is your opinion about "New Complexity" in music, meaning pieces like "Evryali" or "Mists" by Iannis Xenakis or "Lemma Icon Epigram" by Brian Ferneyhough? Although it is quite a challenge to memorize the pieces or even trying to play them, many people still don't consider them "Art" because it doesn't serve a Harmonic sheme or even a predictable melody or motive that leads the listener through the whole piece, like in Beethoven's 5th symphony, which makes them enjoy the piece...
Hi Adam! For Q&A;I'm currently a highschool student who recently fell in love with playing instruments and trying to learn as much as I can about a number of instruments. The first one I started learning, and one I like the most/am most proficient in, is Piano. My current problem is that my family has become an incredible roadblock to my ability to learn. They're either EXTREMELY critical of my playing, not letting me even get through a piece without commenting on it (and not exactly in constructive ways either. They also, more frustratingly, don't play piano, or any instrument for that matter)*. And if they're not being hyper critical, they're getting frustrated at me and telling me to stop playing when they want to do something like work or TV, or even cook. I understand they're either just trying to focus, or are trying to be helpful, but it's so incredibly frustrating for me that I've just stopped practicing at home whenever anyone is home. Do you have any advice for someone like me who wants to practice more but can't? Do I tell my family to suck it/stop giving such aggressive criticism? I usually can get in about only half an hour of practice a day when I more often than not have the energy for 2 and have become more and more annoyed with them limiting my ability to learn.
*I'm usually incredibly accepting of criticism, from piano players or otherwise, but things like commenting on my posture when the way they're saying I should sit would make my hands and wrist feel like death, pointing out every single wrong note/slight deviation in beat, or being slightly too soft/loud on initations, all WHILE I'm trying to play, gets annoying quickly when I'm trying to practice. I know when I flub something usually, and just try to power through it most of the time. I understand they're trying to be helpful but it's frustrating to hear repetitive/wrong advice from someone while you're just trying to learn a piece and know you're not doing everything properly, that being the reason you're practicing.
Hey Adam, not sure if this question ever popped up before, but I will give it a shot. I really enjoy whenever you're talking about bands/albums. Have you ever thought about series where you give your insight about a certain album/cd? Do you think the content would be too narrow for a broad audience to enjoy? These videos would be really cool to watch - I'm sure a lot of people here would be interested in what your opinions are. Your stuff is top notch, by the way. Cheers!
Aloha Adam! I'd love to share with you some information I've learned recently. I'm a Music Technologist/Composer/Songwriter, but due to some Harmonic Series wormholes, Ive been doing research into Georg (Abbe) Volger and found some really interesting stuff. For example, he wasn't satisfied with learning Theory under Martini because he was basically regurgitating Fux, and he disagreed philosophically with him because Vogler believed that there was more science behind music than divine intervention, so he traveled to study under Vallotti, who had spent time developing his theories with who else but Fux himself, as well as with a stint with Tartini. Honestly, I think Vogler was the first true "Jazz" artist. It's said of his methods: "His theory of harmony was based on acoustics, and he argued that dissonances of the seventh, ninth, and eleventh could be introduced anywhere in the scale without modulation" - sounds like the first Romantic/Jazz artist to me. Mozart talked smack about Volger's music, saying "I went to the service, brand new music composed by Vogler. I have never in my life heard such stuff. In many places the parts do not harmonize. He modulates in such a violent way as to make you think that he is resolved to drag you with him by the scruff of the neck. …" I find this music to be full of folk references as well as really interesting modulations that you don't see until the post-Tchaikovsky era, but now that we are 'accustomed' to the ideas of 7ths 9ths and 11ths, his music can be truly appreciated and I challenge anyone with a modern ear to 'try' to hear things from Mozart's perspective without being incredibly pretentious. It's also quite interesting that according to most of the musical contemporaries of Beethoven, Vogler was far better at improvisation than Beethoven, but that Beethovens 'final works' were more sophisticated and succinct. Vogler also traveled far and wide to learn more about music from all places in the world, and wrote his own renditions of national music from the places he visited. He would improvise on a 'study' from Africa while his contemporaries would wander off to eat snacks and talk shit about how 'unrefined' he was as a musician. He was known for using sound effects in his compositions, and his 'storm' sounds that he produced during performances were highly regarded as an artistic achievement. He was a true visionary, and it's sad that his contributions to the evolution of music after him have gone largely under-appreciated. I'd love to learn more about him, but the information available to the average musician seems all too spread out and hard to find for oneself [a bunch of doctorate articles, but few actual resources to his translated material]. Any chance you could dig into the history of the theories of Vogler and Tartini? I also wanted to fill you in a little bit on him, as I knew very little of Vogler aside from the fact that he was a well-known composer and supposed 'charlatan'. I feel like the modern world of Jazz sits in that familiar place that Mozart does while listening to Vogler, without letting the ideas of music really progress as an artform through the new exploration of sonic possibilities because it's not 'familiar'. Thanks for being a pioneer, Adam. We need more of you. Also, I want to plug 12-tone because I found out about Vogler through his channel and his video on usage of Roman Numeral chord voicings.
I feel like music itself is too complex that understanding simple theory couldn't possibly detract from the mystery of it. For me, it just makes me want to learn more about it because music theory is just how we understand our music, and it brings light to the possibility of many new ideas (Shoenberg couldn't've created the 12 tone system without first understanding music theory). And a few questions for the next Q&A: 1. Do major/minor 7/9/11/13 (half diminished too) etc. chords have any harmonic function, or are they just for color? 2. What happened to polyphony in jazz? Does nobody do that anymore except for in Dixieland jazz?
This Q&A (and your discussion of synesthesia in particular) got me thinking...why is the group Yes my all-time favorite band? I always assumed that I liked their music better than any other group, but the truth is that there are all kinds of music and artists I really like. The more I though about this, the more I realized that there was a convergence of ideas happening at a rather formative time in my life: my learning to play bass guitar, my discovery of progressive rock and the beginnings of my search for spiritual meaning in life. Here was one group that provided rather challenging input into all three of these areas of interest in my life. I was wondering if you (and other people) had a similar type of experience that shaped the direction of your musical journey?
Classifying Baroque, Classical, and Romantic all under the umbrella of classical music makes sense to someone with a biology background. Dividing stuff into groups and subgroups is what taxonomy is all about, and often a larger group will take the name of a common sub-group. I just had a conversation today about the genus "Lynx" which contains Bobcats and three other kinds of Lynx. Together these are all a branch of the family felidae, or cats. When someone mentions the word cat, most people think of the common housecat, but this family also encompases animals from a tiny widdle Rusty-Spotted cat weighing in at around two pounds to an almost 1000 pound Liger, bred for its skills in magic.
hey adam, finding your channel has really opened my eyes to a new world of jazz music and I am really happy about that. I was hoping you could recommend albums that you think are essential for the new jazz listener?
Question for next Q&A: In your NAMM 2018 vlog I noticed you tried out the Industrial Radio Pro-4 MIDI bass and seemed to be very impressed with its accurate tracking and versatile expressive capabilities. The MIDI standard has been around for decades now, but the most common MIDI controllers still come in the form of digital keyboards or MPC-style pad units. Less common MIDI controller set-ups like MIDI-translator guitar pick-ups, electronic drum kits and MIDI wind instruments have been around for a while too, but it seems like these alternative MIDI devices have only really become reliable and "cost-effective" (relatively speaking) for consumers in the last 10 years or so. Things like the Pro-4, the Akai EWI series, the Cantini MIDI violins, Roland's GK-3 pick-up and of course the rapidly improving professional edrum market now provide viable options for non-keyboard musicians/pad wizards to cleanly interface with a vast array of synths and DAWs that would have otherwise been off limits. With all that in mind, I have two questions: 1) Do you think we'll see (or have you already seen) any significant shifts in the way electronic music is performed and produced now that more instruments can make full use of the MIDI standard, and if so, what do you think those changes might be? The keyboard is certainly a versatile and powerful form for a MIDI controller to take, but other instruments have their own performative vocabulary and expressive range that could bring something new to the landscape of hardware and DAW sequencing that is so prevalent in electronic music today. 2) Now that more and more instruments have viable midi-capable substitutes, do you think we'll see musicians from more "traditional" scenes start to dabble in electronic music? I've noticed that musicians with classical, jazz and folk backgrounds can be deterred from electronic music because they feel that the production process is too "cold" or "rigid" when compared to the act of developing and performing material within the live ensembles they're used to. If these same doubters could use their own familiar tools to make electronic music, do you think they might be more likely to get involved, or will the DAW-centric workflow remain too much of an obstacle for them? Thanks! :)
"You might develop synesthesia later in life due to brain injury"
Brb gonna go bang my head against the wall
not worth bangin your head for tbh unless you get a real cool form. just having letters/numbers/notes be as a certain colour isn't that cool and it's more or less useless
FH Purcell ur too late i already did it 2 years ago and gave myself brain damage /j
A Pile of Eggs tragic. R.I.P. A Pile of Eggs
@@scrungly did you developed synesthesia
Jereena James well, yes but not the one i wanted, i can taste the days of the week now /j
rational time signatures: 4.01/4
irrational time signatures: sqrt(2)/4
transcendental time signatures: e/4
imaginary time signatures: sqrt(-4)/4
sqrt(-4) doesn't mean anything tho
you prob mean i*sqrt(4)
I'm fun at parties
@@k-intefleush4934
umm..... dont you know how irrational numbers work....
@sirvoid101 Thanks for reminding me of a discussion I had 2 years ago.
I think the fact that you took time to spell "the square root of negative one" proves my point: you don't input a negative number in the sqrt(.) function (and also the sqrt(.) function only outputs the positive result, so it is really tied to a physical problem).
Also I don't get the part where you said I meant "-2" instead of "i*sqrt(4)" but I agree with everything else.
♫ mashed potatoes can be your friend! ♫
Now that you have hair, do you feel like you should be playing more guitar and less bass?
No one, under any circumstance, should play guitar more than bass lol
But what about guitarists?
123JimmyTheCookie especially guitarists
Bass is for girls
Aaron Heaton yeah
Atonal music is just some hipster bullshit, just like those middle class hipster composers using irrational time signatures. I am a middle class composer by the way
Your stew is missing one ingredient: 432 Hz
Alex Burns How was this comment posted 1 day ago when this video was posted 23 mins ago???
Probably early access for patreons.
too meta too fast
Kicks, snares, hats, noises are hipster bullshit? idk man
I like when he roasts those comments from toxic people
8:55 is the title question.
Feynman "I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing," and I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts."
Richard Feynman
What a wonderful quote. Feynman has a lot of quotes that I disagree with but he also has gems like this one.
"congratulations, you're middle class" is easily the funniest phrase i've heard on youtube
How do you know if you are talking to an engineer?
They will tell you.
No I won't ;)
Dan Brilliant
It's just to keep people from having to say "Gosh, you must be an engineer" whenever you open your mouth. We are unable to do anything without annoying our surroundings with overanalyzing. It's just a fair warning.
I'm an engineer, by the way.
Matt F it's similar to vegans
Trust me, I'm an engineer
You look nice with hair.
You also look nice without hair, but you know what I mean
Joshua Anderson gayyyy jk Adam is a cutie
So he should be bald and with hair at the same time
No no, you’re thinking about it too abstractly. He should actually superimpose his scalp with his hair, allowing a multidimensionality to where we can choose to see, and appreciate, both or neither.
or, he can do that with the time dimension, cutting it every now and then
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
It's really nice to get an answer to the question of the length of pop songs that goes deeper than the trite "people's attention spans are getting shorter" spiel. Thanks for discussing that!
Learning music theory has enhanced my appreciation for music and broadened my horizons. I don't know much music theory, but the little I've learned has left me with quenching desire to learn more. Now almost any music I listen to intrigues me, because I can hear things I didn't before thanks to this new knowledge I've gained. I regret not learning music theory in my teens and 20s, because I feel like I've lost 40 years of music.
This is a very interesting channel with an even more interesting comments section.
I did the whole avoiding theory because I didn't want to become soulless. Then I hit so many plateaus that I had to and the opposite happened.
I think Mark Twain may have misidentified the cause of his disillusionment. It probably wasn't the gaining of knowledge about the river that soured it, but the experiences he had on that river.
arcanics1971 after studying music theory for 10 years. I found it developed from "just knowledge", to part of my soul. Not something I know, something I feel.
I find Mr. Twain's experience very odd. I worked for a couple of years as a tour guide in a region, which meant that I visited a couple of attractions periodically (every week or so). It could've easily been soul-crushing, but the reality is that, as time passed, I gained more and more knowledge about the places, their history and their features. And as I became more knowledgeable, I enjoyed going there more and more - the magic was never lost, but actually improved and increased with each visit. I could fit more and more pieces of the puzzle, and see the subtle relationships between rock strata, plant species or bird migrations.
It could well be because I'm a massive nerd, though :/
'classical music' is just like every other genre like rock or metal. its a general term to give people that aren't too deep into music a vague idea of what to expect.
It's just like if you said 'green' to talk about all different hues of green. Technically wrong but it gives people a good baseline on what to expect
Jan Prepadnik Those are forms though, not even close to genre. In Classical music you get the effect of genre with periods, because often, a composer’s style fits with their time period. If they don’t, people will refer to a composer as romantic or neoromantic for example, if they came after the movement, but compose in its style.
+
Duncan Robertson
Nope, genre denotes form, style and instrumentation. Romanticism is not a style so much as it is an idea. Nor is Baroque, which is why they are refered to as period rather than genre. For example, a bachian gigue would defer from a Sarabande due to its form, even though the style and instrumentation remain somewhat similar. The final product defers greatly from each other, but most importantly it's purpose and emotional effect changes. This is what creates the "effect" of the genre even though the musical material of pieces within a genre differ. This has always been the definition of genre in acadamia and has been somewhat obscured by the laymen, particularly with the advent of jazz which saw much more uniformed use of instrumentation and style as an art music(classical is generally much more varied in terms of this, if you view it as a genre).
TLDR. The concept of the genre has thus lost much of its purpose and at this point is a superficial term for people looking for similar sounds in music. However, since form has largely remained the same in popular music, this aspect of genre has been ignored by the larger public, which Adam does address as the common parlance.
Using this definition, something like prog-rock is an entirely different genre than rock and roll.
banson houry great response
I was going to say the same thing. Baroque, romantic, contemporary are just subgenres of classical, just like how doom, funeral and drone metal can be have similarities, but are different subgenres all together,
I always thought that learning about things made them more interesting, whether they be music or rivers or science. Not even necessarily learning so that I could use this knowledge in another context, just to know stuff.
Atonality has been a thread in metal music for some time now, starting as innocuously as use of the tritone and chromaticism. Currently, extreme atonality is on the rise in metal, with stellar examples such as Portal and Deathspell Omega leading the charge into the avant garde. Their music plays like intense journeys into insanity and I can't get enough.
When Adam's Q&A's always feature him roasting some salty potato chip halfway through.
ADAM, PLEASE READ THIS!! An ANSWER for your next Q&A ;) (regarding your Video about "NEGATIVE TIME SIGNATURES")
As we know from your fantastic videos, harmony is Polypitch. Two or more evenly spaced pulses playing around each other and resolving every now and so often, depending on the frequency ratios involved.
A time signature is only a construct within which rhythmic relationships can be portrayed.
An event i n s i d e the bar of a given time signature can be regularly repeating, but the time signature itself is merely "hosting" said event.
What I'm trying to say is the "signature" in "time signature" is not relevant, but the "time" aspect of it IS.
So, I think the term "time signature" is misleading in this case, because it's missing the key variable: the bpm count. Or rather impulses per unit of time. Depending on where you're going with it, compositionally.
So instead it's n e g a t i v e r h y t h m i c r e l a t i o n s h i p s we're looking for.
Now:
If Negative Harmony --> Undertone Series
then Negative Rhythmic Relationships --> ??
How do we solve this?
By saying frequency = tempo!
Let's take a regular quarter note pulse for instance.
An "overtone fifth" ( 3 : 2 ) would be an eighth-note-triplet against regular eighth-notes.
An "undertone fifth" ( 0.5 : 0.33... ) would be a half the frequency (=tempo) against a third of the frequency (=tempo).
So the fundamental = bpm count
The weird thing is though, and this detail cannot be overstated: The slowest rhythmic pulses (up to a certain point (but of course you also have a video on that topic)) feel like the "main pulse".
So the fundamental bpm might then feel like 4 over 3 polyrhythm when put into this kind of relationship.
This is only logical, it happens when notes or chords are flipped into the negative (which is also something that intrigues me: What's a comparable axis, about which to flip?!), and the ear also latches on to lower frequencies, so bass notes are often "mistakenly" felt to be the roots of chords.
BUT
when you apply this to a groove, which was the motive of the original question, as far as I can tell, you can apply this usefully:
Take a hi-hat pattern and let it play something with an eighth-note-triplet feel over a steady quarter-note-oriented groove of 4/4.
The negative relationship of that hi-hat would simply be playing the hi-hat only on every third quarter note - resolving on the 1 of every third bar.
(Or double or quadruple that frequency of hi-hat pulses, like you would double the frequencies of other negative harmony examples)
Right?
Apart from this lovely digression, I wanted to humbly recommend my bachelor's thesis to you, I really think you'd dig it. It's about Jacob Collier's microtonal modulations by his witty implementation of Just Intonation and (as he calls it) "gestural" voice-leading. I hope you enjoy it! Please let me know your thoughts on it!
drive.google.com/file/d/13JGXJls6IWqOWam0xO84f-5iG3zSL1Xk/view
Cheers from Hamburg, Germany, I love your videos, man, thank you so much for your amazing work.
Rami
That Irrational Time Signatures example was pretty amazing.. definitely made it (for me) easier to see, and "feel" how its supposed to sound with irrational time signatures.
Question for the next Q&A:
I've seen a few book recommendations watching your channel, could you provide a suggested reading list?
Hi Adam,
Thanks for the amazing videos. Even though I play bass myself. I find your videos with a broader perspective on music a lot more interesting than your earliest videos. It seems like I can learn something new with each video, and really learn about music in general.
When I hear bass players talking about the moment they picked up the instrument, it strikes me that a lot of bass players already played another instrument before switching to bass.
Marcus Miller played saxophone before picking up bass. James Jamerson played piano before playing an upright bass.
A lot of the bass greats have a story where they initially played another instrument before the bass. One exception that I know of is Victor Wooten who was forced to play the bass by his bigger brothers.
The same can be said about bass players of all levels. It seems that a lot of bass players, including myself, were already playing music on another instrument before noticing the bass.
Why is that? Why is it that people who end up being drawn to the role of a bass player need some familiarity with playing music before realising this? The function of the bass in music is pretty fundamental, IMHO. So why aren't a lot of us bass players drawn to the instrument right away?
In my case, I caught myself listening more to the bass part at rehearsal than my own guitar parts. It only made sense to me to play the instrument that you're the most focussed on. What is your story?
Thanks
7:42 cat's reaction stealing the show. 😊
The first 4 mins of this is so profound, some of your best work, something I will definitely remember and share with my students, thanks Adam!
Theory doesn't change what music is; it enhances it. It changes music from "oh, that's nice" to "oh, yes, I already know what I *should* do next to make it sound extra nice."
Also, what's wrong with a white woman playing ukulele? What?
Royalty free music has ruined the ukulele for me
DZrache I get that. Oversaturation is pretty annoying, but I like it. I love that more people are at least trying to pick up music
Crescendo I actually got a ukulele as a birthday present a few years ago and it’s been really nice. If I was younger, the “cool” factor might have gotten to me, but now I appreciate the flexibility to play wherever I want. There’s also some players like James Hill doing really cool stuff with it.
Asher D I am not defending that guys comment because I do not agree with him but I think I understand the context of what he was saying. The Ukelele has a lower learning curve than guitar because it has very light nylon strings and there are only four of them. Therefore alot of people pick them up to play songs like Riptide. Some might view it as the dumbing down of music. It's kind of like that stereotype of the guy with the acoustic guitar who only knows how to play Wonderwall. I am not saying that the Ukelele is a dumb instrument because it has a great heritage and you can play complex stuff on it. Just that it has a lower learning curve which attracts people who want to be called musicians just because they can play four chords on a Ukelele.
So basically the same reason people get on bass guitarists. (note the wording not being bassist, don't be mad)
Dude, this channel is awesome. Gold! I can’t believe anyone would hate you or the content. It is clear that the information you provide is well-researched. Gold!
Next time try and make sure the time signature and the metronome are in the same key!
Your response to the point from 6:47 onward about middle class female uke players is excellent! Thanks for that, it made me smile. Love your videos!
Y'all talking about not wanting to learn theory cause you don't want to learn the language, while i'm here dying to learn theory so I can actually write music but have no idea where to start or how to learn theory XD
Trickster buy a college music theory textbook
Trickster I would be happy to help! My channel has social media links you can use to contact me.
I find the "idk about theory" comments funny because without music theory I was thinking about music without knowing what I was thinking. Especially when I was learning instruments, theory vastly improved my ability to visualize the isntrument and its patterns, which patterns are significant, what they look and feel like.
immense mood
Same! It's annoying because I know how to read sheet music and play some scales and arpeggios, but talk to me about 5ths or whatever I'm like u wot m8
Do music n shit for uni
I love the way you argue or debate these points. It’s well done. I wish everyone could conduct themselves how you conduct yourself in a debate/argument. I would never get mad and blow my top if everyone could conduct themselves in this manner. Cool. Calm. Civilized.
damn, THE SECOND ONE. i don’t read music very well, but i could’ve sight-read the second one for sure.
discord.gg/6sMzhApFIRE-TOOLZ
Simply, Thank you for being here to set everyone on one page
Excellent post Adam.
I think it’s important to distinguish two overall forms of synesthesia: 'projective' synesthesia and 'associative' synesthesia. Projectors will see actual colors, forms, or shapes when stimulated; associators will feel a very strong and involuntary connection between the stimulus and the sense that it triggers.
This article presents early research (2014) on the acquisition of synesthetic perception. This research explores the premise that associative synesthesia can be developed and refined in adults with training rather than being only something that an individual is born with. There are remarkable implications here for the perceptual/conceptual exploration and development of (pitch-color) synesthetic integration in musicians and listeners.
www.nature.com/articles/srep07089
I always learn something from your videos. I'm a guitarist and your explanation on time signatures (5/8) was great. You're well spoken and easy to understand. I was undecided on how to feel about 432-vs-440 and your lesson on the subject was fantastic. Thank you for adding to my musical education.
That painting is the perfect presentation for my reaction of what I am seeing on this video that is not found on others.
*hairline*
You have a fine mind in answering questions about knowledge Adam and overall i love your broad-minded approach incorporating many fascinating things. To me Knowledge breeds questions- knowing more raises more questions revealing the vastness of what we don't know. No theory and we can explore things that are well known without knowing it. Synaesthesia- All senses have to overlap it's how nervous systems check so everyone has to have some slight overlap. Hypnotically synaesthesia can be induced. Keep up the Great Work!
I won't lie, the answer to question #1 was broadening to me. I also lack a good amount of Musical Theory, and a good portion of reasoning for that is I feel like it's going to kill that exploring and mysterious mentality that music brings to me, and basically all of us at some given point in life (and probably because I'm lazy). I get the feeling it's going to make me robotic and less human to the gift and endless journey that is music.I would really take it less as a killing to the wonderful magic, but rather an expansion that makes you seem to know more now when indulging in Music Theory. Who knows, it might just make you a little more creative than before you knew music theory now that you would have a bigger arsenal of tricks up the sleeve... It's more liberating in a sense.
I'm not sure if it applies, but I've felt, every time i learn something new about photography and how to compose a shot, I can appreciate the artistry and the photo/video even more, while i feel like I have more options to use to make a good, expressive photo myself.
And I think, it's also with music.
Yes, I can listen to a piece and try to analyze it, maybe overanalyze, but at least for me personally, I can still "shut that off" and just enjoy. And I think that is a very important thing you might need to practice but everyone should definitely try to do from time to time in every art form.
Ye exactly my man. Even if you have absorbed a great chunk of MT knowledge, you can still just kinda go back to your roots to just relax and appreciate music for what it's language speaks y'know.
It's only limiting if you let it be. It's just another way of perceiving music. And you will probably get more work as a hired hand if you are proficient at sight reading
Right on.
I liken it to visiting other countries, learning about other cultures and their languages. If you only stay in yours, it's comfortable. Easy. But that's it. That's all it can ever be. When you branch out, you get to see similarities and differences that can really expand your mind, and indeed, "the magic." You discover depths that you never knew were there.
I love uncovering hidden motifs and syncopations in music. Particularly when they borrow from other musical traditions. If I hadn't studied some theory, I'm not sure I would have noticed these things.
So there's two ways of looking at it. You can be content that the magic trick just "works", or you can dive in and, though you'll know HOW the trick works, you'll also have the beginnings of access to a whole new world of what makes magic...magic.
Nick Monks Really well said my man! Really agree with you
Music theory makes odd or 'difficult' music so much more magical than 'normal' music could ever be while it's still mysterious. It's how to me a rainbow only becomes more beautiful knowing the science behind it. You can appreciate the choices the musician made because you can hear the choices they made. You know the ingredients yet the taste is entirely new and you are amazed how they managed to do this.
This music mystifies you when it steps out of line without making a mistake, and it makes your entire brain light up.
Now that I know more about music theory myself, I have a far greater appreciation for listening to technical jazz. It also doesn't change music that I used to listen to because they still carry the nostalgia factor, and no amount of music theory would keep them from being guilty pleasures.
*ADAM PLEASE READ THIS* Can you do a video on how to compose a march. I want to compose a piece for a few clarinets (because that's the instrument I play), and I want to compose it in the style of a concert march (2/4 time etc.) What things do traditional marches have that I should include?
Apparently screaming at Adam, desperately begging for his attention didn't work.
A benefit I've experienced via my chromesthesia is the ability to hear the changes in music and see them in real time. Most skilled musicians can hear the changes obviously but also being able to "see" the nuances and notice how elements in the music itself change is invaluable tbh. As someone who's largely self-taught as a result of not being able to afford to have proper instructors throughout my life, it has definitely helped me better understand music theory a lot better than I believe I would if I didn't have this perception.
Where can I find the full length of this cool tune at the end of the video?
As usual, interesting answers. Thanks.
you're welcome th-cam.com/video/4YHzfjmAvb8/w-d-xo.html
I admire how much knowledge you share! tbh idk 60% of what you are talking about but i try to understand it while you explain it and i get an idea.
Hey adam, im a musician in high school and, i love ur content. I was wondering what you think about Philipp Gerschlauer's microtonal jazz, i feel like the use of a microtonal scale makes the music have a really cool haunting feeling. Thanks, tamayo
Where I studied, (University of Tennessee) my double bass teacher was adamant about teaching both jazz and classical. He always referred to classical music as legit music. This led me to work more on my classical chops and leave the jazz out of the practice room and save the discovery for the band stand.I don't know if his terminology had a negative impact on my jazz studies, but it made me practice way more with a bow and that made my intonation and facility on the instrument improve a lot. That crossed over to my jazz playing pretty directly. Playing solo cello pieces on the bass gave me technics to improve my improvisation, versatility, and develope a better sense of melody and complex harmonic ideas.
Clearly terminology matters and I think the terms he used pushed me away from intense study of Mingus, Ray Brown and Paul Chambers and pushed me towards Rachmaninoff, Koussevitzky and Bottesini. Who can say which is better? It certainly worked for me
I'm a big fan of your work, Keep making excellent, informative content! BASS!
My synesthesia gets exacerbated hardcore when I take psychedelic drugs, and I think even people without synesthesia can have it on LSD, mescaline, mushrooms, DMT, etc.
That is correct, those substances (some more than others) enhances neuroplasticity and neurogenesis while switching down the Default Mode Network, pushing signals through new patterns to process the same input, therefore leading to temporally synesthetic :)
"Don't forget the wonderful, & now legal Cannabis, "I've had many Sinestia experiences with "The Green One"
Just to add to your answer to the last question, much of the music composed in the Baroque era was church music. Just as an example, all the cantatas Bach composed, which we gladly will listen to in a concert, were made just for church services. Actually, both in German-speaking countries and in countries where German is a rather well-known foreign language, like The Netherlands, Bach cantatas are still performed in church services, as well as in concerts.
I love your videos and the clear and informed way you tackle all subjects. Congratulations and please do keep them coming. All the best!
What was the outro music? It was really cool!
sungazermusic.bandcamp.com/track/i-walk-alone-feat-justina-soto
Thanks!
You know, hearing about your synesthesia brings me some relief: I didn't know that there was even such a thing as *partial* synesthesia but now that I do it explains SO MUCH about my color associations for sounds, flavors, etc. I never *see* it (I also am aphantasic - one of those people who can't visualize clearly) like my friend in HS did, but that doesn't stop the unbidden association. Gives me food for thought and something to research.
Hey Adam!
Please for your next Q+A
End off the video saying: *HAIR* instead of *BASS.*
*PLEASE*
Dude I loved this video and I enjoy how you explain your reasoning instead of just stating your position.
I'm really digging that outro song. What is it?
Nevermind, I figured it out. (sungazermusic.bandcamp.com/track/i-walk-alone-feat-justina-soto to future internet travelers)
Thank you for that link, fellow traveler from 28 minutes ago :)
ya bois very greatful
I journeyed through the comments to find this, thanks
If anyone is looking for more music in the same genre, it's liquid drum and bass.
Can't believe it took me so long to discover this channel. You are absolutely amazing man.
Note to (engineer) from another (engineer): Qualities is spelled q-u-a-l-i-t-i-e-s, not q-u-a-l-i-t-y-s.
Question for the next Q+A video:
Hello Adam from San Francisco!
I love your videos and enjoy binge watching them after finishing my homework. I've been playing piano on my own, virtually free from any lessons hold a few tips from local musicians, for around 4 years now. I have been described by my peers as "musically gifted" as I can play by ear decently well and make/improvise songs based on my emotions. I signed up for guitar 1 this year (11th grade), and have been playing for about 6 months now. I have picked it up pretty easily and am having fun bouncing between the two instruments. Then I joined the school band back in January and using my knowledge of the piano to play the mallet instruments, a role desperately needed in our tiny band of 25. I am picking up the mallets fairly easily as well. All of these instruments are fairly similar in my eyes.
However, it is here where I need assistance. Despite what people claim about me, I feel as though I am nothing as my music theory is absolutely horrendous. I do of course know what the 2 main clefts are, and can identify notes on the staff, but I struggle to read and play at the same time(usually playing by ear and/or from muscle memory) and can hardly sight read at all. On guitar, I am okay as I am learning in a class, but on piano and mallets I have no instructor. Our concert is coming up in a month and I am expected to play mallets in the concert band, and then guitar and piano in the jazz group, with an improvised solo on piano. The solo is no problem, but there is so much I just don't understand on those pieces of paper the band teacher hands out. I can play triplets, go back an fourth between different time signatures, and change keys easily while just jamming out, but seeing three notes connected by a bar or seeing 5/4 then 3/3 and finally 4/4 in the span of 3 measures... REALLY trips me up man...
So I have 2 questions. The first: How can I quickly improve my music theory and knowledge so that I can "progress musically?" and the second(related questions): Would you ever consider creating a Music Theory playlist, ranging from the basics to the very abstract? If you have, what are they titled? And if you haven't and will not, why not?
Thank you so much for your channel! It has truly been a blessing of mine to "meet" you as a young 17 year-old musician.
For the next Q&A:
Hello Adam, I just saw your comment from 10 months ago on one of Tolgahan Çoğulu's videos. What are your thoughts on maqam music (like Tolgahan plays) and microtonal music in general? Do you think it is going to be the fundemantal of new music? Also how can we combine our tonal system and microtonal tuning systems together in a classical music or jazz music concept? Thanks
That's a nice question!
Heyman Heyguys Thank you!
Synesthesia... I've been developing connections between musical ideas like keys in the circle of fifths, tuning systems, intervals/chord compositions etc., and as a direct result my creativity has been sparked. For instance, when looking at pictures online of, say, a rosebush that's all greyed out except for a single red rose, I "translated" these colors to what understandings I had developed musically; for instance, to convey the grey bush idea, I used C as tonic, mostly quartal, quintal, nontriadic harmonies and melodies that did not jump more than two spaces left or right on the circle of fifths note to note, and notated for mutes and minimal vibrato to be used on the strings. In contrasting this with the "red rose," I associated red with A major, triadic harmonies melodies that jumped around the circle of fifths freely, and vibrato-happy unmuted strings.
All this is just to note my personal experience of associating color with musical ideas and theory, and how I think there's still a whole world of untapped potential that could be realized in this mode of thinking; just some thoughts to chew on.
QUESTION:
Do you have any experience or any tips with tinnitus or hearing loss? Have you experienced any to some degree?
I found a slip jig and it reminded me of the many rivers of knowledge. It changed some Irish tunes for me to listen to forever. Thank goodness for knowledge gathers. Thanks for this Q&A.
When you need some recognition for being middle class😂 6:56
I probably shouldn't be surprised that all of your videos, are really good, but every time I watch a new one I'm reminded of how thoughtful and interesting your content is.
I have a quick question for your next Q&A: I'm a tuba player in college and I've been interested in learning more about playing jazz for some time now. What would be some good ways to start getting into it and learning how to play jazz bass ideas? I already listen to jazz a lot and sort of have a concept of how things work, I just lack the knowledge to put this stuff into practice in real time effectively. My classical skills are already pretty strongly developed but I want to be able to do more than this so I can be as versatile as possible later in my musical career. Thanks!
Hey Adam!
I'm 16. I can play the Violin, Ocarina, Ukulele and I've been playing the Bass for a year and a half right now.
I'm very concerned with my future profession: I like learning languages, conversating with people; I can draw somewhat good(for a person with no art education), and, of cource, I like to study, play and listen to music. I have a problem with choice: when I'm doing anything but music I'm eventually bumping into it again. It's good and all, but it's sort of creeps me out: I would be happy, if I could do music for a living, but I also have a fear of burning out.
Could you please tell me, as a professional musician, what's it like to be like you and what to do to get this fear out of the way?
Like your music and videos very much! Looking forward to see new stuff from you!
Thanks in advance! BASS!
You need to talk to some musicians you know, personally and professionally, about forming a plan. What do you like? Do you want to play in an orchestra? Do you want to teach? Do you want to play sessions? Do you want to tour? After figuring out a game plan for how to survive life as a musician because every day is a fight against low income (never forget that), you have to figure out the best plan of action for you to get there. There's nothing wrong with working a job and practicing to transition. There's nothing wrong with going to school and then being poor and only playing music. Just because you're a career banker or whatever doesn't mean you're not a musician. It's a simultaneous struggle between making a living AND developing yourself as an artist, and there's no safe timeline for anybody on either of those fronts. Both are your journey and your journey alone, in that nobody's will be identical. Make yourself educated, practiced, open-minded, and hard-working. Learn every kind of music and skill you can. Never say no to music. Stay hungry and best of luck.
Maybe this is unrelated but.. How do you feel up in the spotlight, on a stage? Maybe you love it on your own, but don't really like performing. I clarify, I don't mean stage fright, that's normal. I mean, how do you feel going up on a stage several days a week? Have you ever tried?
On an unrelated note, if you are a techy kind of guy, look into professions that require to understand music but also technical aspects. I think your ability to play so many different instruments means that you understand them on a more intuitional level, and it could help you mix a song, for example.
Can you actually play the ocarina though? I mean, it's one of those things where anyone can learn the notes and play along with songs but have you actually developed real skill in it that took a lot of practice to achieve. As in, have you even played it for more than 100 hours all together.
Thank you! I actually didn't expect someone to answer!
As of "not loving to perform", I don't have nothing like that at all. In fact, my parents are both professional actors and so I LOVE to perform. Though I didn't try to go up on a stage weekly, or even monthly. That's what concerns me. So few opportunities in my town, and most of them aren't gigs. The only "gigging" sortathing happens in one club once or twice a year, when a blues star comes by and it's very hard to even get there to watch; I'm not even talking about working there. That's one of my main concerns.
I don't like working in mixing very much. And I don't have no experience in production at all.
Aaron Heaton Not really. Could't find a decent instrument. But I'm sure, if someone would give me a task and an instrument I would develop the skills.
ron....Just amazing.....how you just flow with all of these comments......thank you for all you do.
Are your sleeves getting tighter or is it just me?
Cory Mck ya boi Adam looks like he getting THICCC with that MUSCLE Dadam be getting SWOLE
First it was the hair, now the muscles. New Year New Dadam. Maybe if we're lucky he'll grow a mustache and put Cleanthony Shavetano to shame.
I dunno why anyone ever thumbs down your videos. It's like being negative to someone who just wants to give you the ability to learn new things.
"Well, he thinks he's smarter than Mark Twain" just isn't valid enough. Love ya dude.
"(european) aristocratic music" sounds nice
would you have an idea to replace "popular music" name ? the term implies that classical music (european aristocratic music) can't be popular (while orchestral music that could be called classical like film scores and Philip Glass music have obvious popular success). and I don't think every "popular music" style does have "popular success" (think about math rock for instance). but maybe "popular" refers to the ones who make the music, not the ones who listen to it -> in this case it's still inappropriate (nowadays, who can say he's not from the people ? specially among musicians ...)
I've never find a good name for this (huge) category (I thought about "blues-based music" but I don't think every popular music originates from blues : particularly electronic music, and I think a part of folk music a la Bob Dylan, bluegrass music, and a majority of Tin Pan Alley songs)
Much appreciation for you answer to the loss of mystique that comes from learning. I've been in a slump related to this. The analogy you provided was refreshing!
Hey Adam! I got a question for your next QnA if you don’t mind:
Why do we associate certain key signatures or chords to a different feeling or theme? For example, playing the chord D minor with the structure of D A D, where D is an octave in the bass, has a very grimy, dark, and almost pirate-sounding tone, borderline “Pirates of the Caribbean”.
Does this have to do with years of getting used to hearing these chords and keys, or is there an actual reason behind it?
Voicing a dm as D A D leaves out the third which gives a chord it's colour (asides from obviously telling you if it's major or minor) so that's why when you have omit3 chords or "power" chords, it feels darker 😊😊
Is it only the D5 chord or do other power chords "feel" the same to you? I mean, what if you played C G C or Eb Bb Eb or whatever. Would those chords also have the same feeling or is it just the D A D chord?
the CCC contains all the mysteries of life: th-cam.com/video/HqSSl-ezNKs/w-d-xo.html
MaggaraMarine no it's not just d5, because of the tuning system we use (equal temperament, you should look into it) then no particular chord sound unique... In the sense of how it makes you feel anyway. A d5 will sound no more mysterious or powerful as a c5 or an Ab5. All that matters is that it's a 5 chord. For another example, if you play a perfect cadence in c major (G-C) it will have the same effect on you no matter what key you play it in, so you could play it in Ab (Eb-Ab) and it should have exactly the same effect. Basically you need to stop thinking of chords as individual chords and more like degrees of a scale. So rather than saying oh that progression is C G Am F, say that's a I V vi IV progression in C major. Learning your scales and degrees of the scale really helps. Hope this answered your question and I didn't lose you 😊😊
mark stewart
Yeah, I understand. Why I asked the question was because I was curious if TS hears something special in the D5 chord that he doesn't hear in other power chords. I should have been more clear about that. But maybe someone else will find your explanation helpful. :)
A friend taught challenging kids guitar by getting them to chose the colours for the notes on a guitar. It gave those kids a sense of control over their environment and they became faster learners Painting coloured dots on their fretboards.. English used CDE Spanish and Italian uses Do Ray Me, sometimes using sustinado or bemol and sometimes using a variety of solfeggio names (or colours) can work too. It seems simpler for young adolescents who are challenged by the 'system' to use colours they chose rather than western conventional ways. That seemed to be a positive, both for those with synesthesia, and those kids who found colours easier to recall.
BEIS
Hugo Leonardo Amaral BR presente! kkkk
My music history teacher like to refers to the western "classical" music as academic music because the term classical can mislead to think that is just referring to the Classicism. Love your content, thanks a lot for sharing.
Question for your next Q&A:
What's the big deal with time signatures? If we for example have a 4/4 time signature does it sound any different to 5/4? It's obvious that it makes a difference to the musician reading it, but I simply don't understand how it should sound any different. If I wanted to have a longer note in 4/4 I'd simply make a tied note to the next bar. Would be glad if you could explain that.
I'll try to answer you but I'm Spanish so please don't do be a grammar nazi. There are, to my knowledge, two main reasons. The first reason is that it's simpler to read to most of the musicians. The other reason is that in music you normally accentuate one pulse over the others, so in 4/4 you count ONE,two,three, four,ONE,etc. So having different time signatures gives you instantly and idea of when to accentuate.
Yes it does. But, don't go too complex for now. Search for 3/4 time signature and you'll feel it very differently than 4/4.
Time signature is not about one measure, but the whole piece (bear in mind that you can change the time signature anytime during the song). Is not about how many notes per bar you can play, nor their duration only. Is about the feeling of rhythm of a piece. If you change the time signature you'll inevitable change it's accents, changing the meaning of each note played at any given time.
So, the notes remain the same in all ways but the feeling that they convey.
It's about how you feel the beat, in 4/4 beat one is emphasized and so is beat 3 (though not as much as 1). In 5/4 beat 1 is emphasized again and either beat three or four has the secondary emphasis.
5/4 has one more quarter note per measure than 4/4. If you have 5 quarter notes in a measure, a 5/4 time signature is simply the best way to get that idea across. Most of the odd time signature stuff I've written would be a complete nightmare to try and write down in 4/4, and it would just look like a mess to most musicians. Like, I have one (very, very stupid) song that changes time signatures every measure at the beginning; so it's written and counted as a very fast 7/8, 5/8, then 4/8. It adds up to 16 8th notes, so it technically could be written and counted in 4's. But each measure in that specific section of that piece is essentially it's own little riff, with a heavy emphasis on the one each time. I have no clue how to get that same piece of music written down so others could understand it without using odd time signatures.
Take something simpler, like the 7/8 bass line from pink floyd's "money". How would you go about counting that in 4/4? And if you could figure out a way, would it be any easier than just saying each measure has 7 8th notes, and counting it that way?
When you get into it you can play any song in any time signature & to simplify things you could just write every song in 1/4 or even just 1/1 & vary the tempo as you like. There's also really nothing stopping you from not bothering with time signatures at all & writing your music in one continuous bar.
Time signatures are purely just a technique to communicate to people how to think of the phrasing of the music in their heads for the purpose of making it easier to play. You can write wonderwall in 19/8 & it will sound the same as long as you don't change any note lengths & don't add or remove notes, it'll just be nastier to look at for the person reading the music. Time signatures carry connotations of where the downbeat is, how the rythems should be phrased & how to space certain parts relative to other parts, which all makes it easier to interpret the way the composer wanted.
Mankepoots question of fear of Musical Theory Is understandable, but at the same time knowing how the pieces fit together Is amazing to me. I just started studying film and knowing how certain things come together. It all amazes me to know how It works. How Its re-creatable. What came before It and was Improved, changed, and made a new product from It. I still see something as having mystery, but I understand what makes It up and how to create that for others. I have the same thought to Musical Theory. I only ever played guitar as a hobby, I never learned a lot of theory, but I am not opposed to learning It. I watch your channel, Rick Beato, Polyphonic, 12 Tones, and random videos here and there and It amazes me how this artist they talk about took their knowledge or lack of knowledge and created stuff. Even though the artist didn't know It, I personally love to know "well what did make their music so great In a theory sense?" even though the artist Instinctively did It opposed to It being because of their musical knowledge.
Pigeon
*throws popcorn*
i just wanted to say how much i love your videos; theyre always interesting and engaging and theres not much of that on youtube
Who would you consider the most “advanced” drummer?
t.Zach Hill
gorfreckuf m my boy
In terms of technical skills or most accomplished? Buddy Rich is up there.
M.S. Allen I mean technically advanced.
A player who could be considered “ahead of their time” behind the kit
M.S. Allen For me it would be Tony Williams, simply for his amazing drumming on Miles Davis’s 1967 album, ‘Nefertiti’.
Buddy Rich is the grandaddy of drumming though.
I loved your clarification of the usefulness of irrational time signatures. I admit I had a similar response when I saw that video though I could see from the examples in the main video that it was at least as easy to read and interpret as it would have been with other notation methods. In your example in this video though it really drove it home how impossible it would be (at least for me) to interpret that bassline example without using irrational time signatures. It's a great way to get across certain strange metric modulations, which I'm a huge fan of.
You mentioned cultural appropriation in this Q+A. Is that something you subscribe to? If so, how do you reconcile that with being a jazz musician?
I understand that you should respect other cultures and tread carefully when crossing those boundaries. I think most people are on board with that. But cultural appropriation seems to extend beyond that. It seeks to make certain cultural practices out of bounds to people from the dominant culture (for example, the opinion that white Americans shouldn't wear their hair in dreadlocks).
I think he was more saying he could understand if that was the argument being made since that's a big issue for a lot of people more than anything else. Contrasting it as an argument that could've been made instead of the lack of
an argument in the comment.
The core of what is cultural appropriation and what isn't is largely about having context and respecting/understanding what you're representing. The example of white Americans and dreadlocks is not really a very good one because while they might just be using it as a fashion statement as opposed to carrying some deeper meaning (which historically there has been), there isn't necessarily any underlying cultural context that they're appropriating by doing so.
It's also not a great example because cultural appropriation is difficult to talk about on a case-by-case basis and in those cases it's more just about disrespect, and nearly always about _benefiting_ from the use of "outside" cultural items while simultaneously disrespecting the source. That is, the only use of the culture is to reap some benefits from it being different and intriguing or strange. I wouldn't at all say that defense against cultural appropriation seeks to make some cultural items "out of bounds", but many people without a good grasp on what it means definitely do argue this and I think that lack of nuance hurts a lot more than it helps.
On the larger scale it's more about a more privileged culture (in some sense) collectively integrating cultural items from a less privileged or oppressed culture while removing the underlying context of those items and often erasing or ignoring the influence of the other culture. The line between melting pot and appropriation can usually be pretty easily identified with the level of respect and natural integration involved. The appropriation argument is definitely made for jazz in its infancy but I don't think it's been relevant in modern jazz for quite a while.
Isaac Moore - Absolutely, yeah. I just thought I'd ask for his opinion seeing as he used it as an example. All I know is that he's aware of the concept, so I'm interested to know his thoughts.
dork - Thanks for the lengthy response. I don’t think we disagree vehemently, judging by what you said. Though we probably fall on opposite sides of the issue.
I used dreadlocks as an example because there seems to be a strong debate about that in particular over in the US. If you Google search ‘cultural appropriation dreadlocks’ you should find a number of articles about it.
Here’s a musical example that might be a bit better - I compose music for games and will often be asked to write in a particular cultural style. Game composers will try to be respectful and as authentic as possible but the result will be ‘westernised’ to some extent because of our personal heritage, relative lack of knowledge in that area and time restraints. This in turn causes westerners to have a distorted idea of what certain types of music sound like, and those are integrated into the culture. Would you class that as cultural appropriation?
I didn't mean to suggest I disagreed with you or anything, just my thoughts. Your example here is much more interesting; I might call it appropriation if really pushed but not in a particularly problematic way? There isn't really a disadvantaged culture being used, it's more about the use of ideas of mutual cultures in ways that are trying to represent the original but might come short just from literally not being able to. The point is also to represent the culture somewhat accurately, not just integrating it as "mine now", which is important. In essence you might also ask if trying to make cuisine from another country is appropriation if you don't try super hard at being perfectly authentic, but that's pretty unreasonable (especially since it's often a creative process), and the emphasis here is more on how a lot of that combined can shift the public's perception by accident, I guess.
It's unfortunate that interpretations of other cultures in media often tends to end up how that culture is viewed in general, but the solution there is to actually invest in authenticity, I suppose. The internet has shaped the world into a place where misinformation and misrepresentation can now be exposed quite quickly, and by the same token, authentic solutions are easier than what were previously possible, which is a lot of why people aren't able to get away with potentially harmful appropriation as easily anymore. But I don't think that trying to be accurate and failing to meet some arbitrary standard is harmful or is something to shy away from, instead I'd just encourage learning more.
Adam answers topic question at 09:00
Thanks for the awesome Q+A, Adam!
I have aphantasia, so no, I probably can't learn synthesia
like if you cri ebery time
Woah what does that feel like? I'm curious.
She the singer who likes her hips, right?
"Aphantasia is the suggested name for a condition where one does not possess a functioning mind's eye and cannot visualize imagery." - Wikipedia
lol
It feels pretty boring tbh, also kinda empty? I can't exactly compare because I've always had it (I think). I think dreaming and imagining would be cool though, so there is a sense of missing out
I have various forms of synesthesia, some more significant than others, but in general, I find having multiple senses linked can really help with memory. If a reminder of one sense's memory is triggered, it also triggers the linked memory of another sense (ie. seeing something years later and suddenly remembering what I was hearing at the time I saw/made the visual, or vice versa).
As far as more synesthetic sensory links, they can help with multitasking because I can use different parts of my brain to process multiple things simultaneously. For example, I experience guitar chords as colours, so one time when I was trying to learn a song, I wrote the lyrics and highlighted them in the chord's colour. One part of my brain processed reading and words, and another processed colour as sound/fingering, more on autopilot, and I was able to learn and memorize all aspects of performing the song much more quickly and easier than using methods that require reading for all parts of notation.
West african music isn't that different from American's
By the way hello from mali :)
There is application for it but conditions have to be extremely precise for it to be applicable.
Being able to see different letters as colours can help with in creating a new languages for a book series. Or since we play music with letters, you can try matching the colours of the letters of different harmonic scales to write new music based on how you want the coloured letters to flow.
Being able to see sound as color very clearly. You would be able to learn how to play your favour songs by just picking up your favorite instrument & practicing.
Being able to Echo locate is a kind of synesthesia. Where you can understand shapes with sound even if you're blind.
Being able to see auras is suggested to be a form of synesthesia. You can determine ones emotions by their aura which uses your sense of smell to detect the pheromones & your eyes adding colour to the heat waves coming off of someones body.
Being able to see 3D shapes or having a 3D mind palace is also a kind of synesthesia that would help people be good at being artist or engineers.
Being able to taste things through thoughts & sight would help people be better cooks.
Feeling something that someone else is feeling through pheromones or through seeing it is also one that would help doctors & others understand how to help people better.
By god if you get the ability to overlap some of them you get essentially eagle vision.
I wonder if we could willing get people with genetic synesthesia to start a family with each other & when their kids start a family find others with genetic synesthesia of similar levels on the scales of synesthesia & keep doing that if it would help humanity evolve further in a positive way? No one should be forced to do this. But it would be interesting if a 500 year long study was conducted to see how much synesthesia would develop & how it might differ from each person.
Woah. Hair.
The 3 minute song goes even further back to the old Phonograph cylinders. When we, as humans, get used to something we tend to stick to those patterns out of comfort. This is part of why repetition is a musical principle, and - perhaps - seem doomed to repeat the stupid things we do. Great videos! Loved the DnB ending :D
>Which one sounds better to you?
Neither, I think they're both awful. Sounds out of time and out of tune. :(
Not educated enough.
Eh, it is a bit weird. Still, the second one is deffinitely better for me
I struggled to make sense of the first line in time with the music, whereas the second made much more sense
For that last question, my method is to use "common practice music" when describing baroque, classical, and romantic. And then use "modernist music" when describing Debussy, Scriabin, Stravinsky, 2nd Viennese school, and so forth.
Please stop answering the same questions over and over again for the sake of us who want to actually learn something. Maybe something like a FAQ would help you with this?
Also, responding to slanderous comments is pretty much wasting time. I believe people are here for the music theory, and no one seems to care about the trolls but you
PublicEnemy1337 there was plenty of theory here. even in some where he responds to slanderous comments. also by saying "the sake of us who actually want to learn" are you trying to say that a majority of these questions don't want to learn? go read a music theory book if you are that upset
He responds to atleast one troll in every Q&A video. No one even takes them seriously, so why devote any time to them? If you look at his older Q&A videos, you'll see what I mean. More theory, less trying to reason with trolls/straight up dumbasses. Also he answered the same questions in more than 3-4 Q&A's. i.e. the "will music theory ruin the magic" question. (His responses weren't the same, but the sentiment was) It looks like he's trying to appeal to non music-savvy people, which is backfiring in terms of the quality of content.
I enjoy watching him respond to trolls. And Lord forbid he makes himself more accessible to those of us who aren't full music geeks yet!
I resent being called a troll. The question is a legitimate one, just by being factual. If you think i am just a lazy dumbass i can just say that you don't know me. Maybe you should read about the tree of knowledge or Pandora to see that this a n archetypical life question, not an excuse to watch youtube.
Amazing to hear that your grapheme-colour synesthesia doesn't correlate to your childhood memories either. I spent years and years with a very clear picture in my head of the TV show theme song that gave me the colours I see for A, B, C, 1, 2, and 3 - just a few years ago, I finally found that theme song, and found that, while I had remembered the visuals perfectly, the colours were wrong. It was a huge shock at the time, so it's nice to hear that I shouldn't expect the colours to have come from anywhere in particular.
Fun additional note, a friend of mine has grapheme-colour synesthesia, but only for musical note names, and only for where they exist on a guitar neck in standard tuning - 6th string open note is white, 6th string 12th fret is black, but the same note up on the 5th string 7th fret is different.
For the next Q&A:
What is your opinion about "New Complexity" in music, meaning pieces like "Evryali" or "Mists" by Iannis Xenakis or "Lemma Icon Epigram" by Brian Ferneyhough? Although it is quite a challenge to memorize the pieces or even trying to play them, many people still don't consider them "Art" because it doesn't serve a Harmonic sheme or even a predictable melody or motive that leads the listener through the whole piece, like in Beethoven's 5th symphony, which makes them enjoy the piece...
Magical thoughts and analogies about the first question!! I love it.
Hi Adam! For Q&A;I'm currently a highschool student who recently fell in love with playing instruments and trying to learn as much as I can about a number of instruments. The first one I started learning, and one I like the most/am most proficient in, is Piano. My current problem is that my family has become an incredible roadblock to my ability to learn. They're either EXTREMELY critical of my playing, not letting me even get through a piece without commenting on it (and not exactly in constructive ways either. They also, more frustratingly, don't play piano, or any instrument for that matter)*. And if they're not being hyper critical, they're getting frustrated at me and telling me to stop playing when they want to do something like work or TV, or even cook. I understand they're either just trying to focus, or are trying to be helpful, but it's so incredibly frustrating for me that I've just stopped practicing at home whenever anyone is home. Do you have any advice for someone like me who wants to practice more but can't? Do I tell my family to suck it/stop giving such aggressive criticism? I usually can get in about only half an hour of practice a day when I more often than not have the energy for 2 and have become more and more annoyed with them limiting my ability to learn.
*I'm usually incredibly accepting of criticism, from piano players or otherwise, but things like commenting on my posture when the way they're saying I should sit would make my hands and wrist feel like death, pointing out every single wrong note/slight deviation in beat, or being slightly too soft/loud on initations, all WHILE I'm trying to play, gets annoying quickly when I'm trying to practice. I know when I flub something usually, and just try to power through it most of the time. I understand they're trying to be helpful but it's frustrating to hear repetitive/wrong advice from someone while you're just trying to learn a piece and know you're not doing everything properly, that being the reason you're practicing.
Hey Adam, not sure if this question ever popped up before, but I will give it a shot. I really enjoy whenever you're talking about bands/albums. Have you ever thought about series where you give your insight about a certain album/cd? Do you think the content would be too narrow for a broad audience to enjoy? These videos would be really cool to watch - I'm sure a lot of people here would be interested in what your opinions are. Your stuff is top notch, by the way. Cheers!
Aloha Adam! I'd love to share with you some information I've learned recently. I'm a Music Technologist/Composer/Songwriter, but due to some Harmonic Series wormholes, Ive been doing research into Georg (Abbe) Volger and found some really interesting stuff. For example, he wasn't satisfied with learning Theory under Martini because he was basically regurgitating Fux, and he disagreed philosophically with him because Vogler believed that there was more science behind music than divine intervention, so he traveled to study under Vallotti, who had spent time developing his theories with who else but Fux himself, as well as with a stint with Tartini. Honestly, I think Vogler was the first true "Jazz" artist. It's said of his methods: "His theory of harmony was based on acoustics, and he argued that dissonances of the seventh, ninth, and eleventh could be introduced anywhere in the scale without modulation" - sounds like the first Romantic/Jazz artist to me.
Mozart talked smack about Volger's music, saying "I went to the service, brand new music composed by Vogler. I have never in my life heard such stuff. In many places the parts do not harmonize. He modulates in such a violent way as to make you think that he is resolved to drag you with him by the scruff of the neck. …" I find this music to be full of folk references as well as really interesting modulations that you don't see until the post-Tchaikovsky era, but now that we are 'accustomed' to the ideas of 7ths 9ths and 11ths, his music can be truly appreciated and I challenge anyone with a modern ear to 'try' to hear things from Mozart's perspective without being incredibly pretentious. It's also quite interesting that according to most of the musical contemporaries of Beethoven, Vogler was far better at improvisation than Beethoven, but that Beethovens 'final works' were more sophisticated and succinct. Vogler also traveled far and wide to learn more about music from all places in the world, and wrote his own renditions of national music from the places he visited. He would improvise on a 'study' from Africa while his contemporaries would wander off to eat snacks and talk shit about how 'unrefined' he was as a musician. He was known for using sound effects in his compositions, and his 'storm' sounds that he produced during performances were highly regarded as an artistic achievement. He was a true visionary, and it's sad that his contributions to the evolution of music after him have gone largely under-appreciated. I'd love to learn more about him, but the information available to the average musician seems all too spread out and hard to find for oneself [a bunch of doctorate articles, but few actual resources to his translated material]. Any chance you could dig into the history of the theories of Vogler and Tartini? I also wanted to fill you in a little bit on him, as I knew very little of Vogler aside from the fact that he was a well-known composer and supposed 'charlatan'. I feel like the modern world of Jazz sits in that familiar place that Mozart does while listening to Vogler, without letting the ideas of music really progress as an artform through the new exploration of sonic possibilities because it's not 'familiar'. Thanks for being a pioneer, Adam. We need more of you. Also, I want to plug 12-tone because I found out about Vogler through his channel and his video on usage of Roman Numeral chord voicings.
I feel like music itself is too complex that understanding simple theory couldn't possibly detract from the mystery of it. For me, it just makes me want to learn more about it because music theory is just how we understand our music, and it brings light to the possibility of many new ideas (Shoenberg couldn't've created the 12 tone system without first understanding music theory).
And a few questions for the next Q&A:
1. Do major/minor 7/9/11/13 (half diminished too) etc. chords have any harmonic function, or are they just for color?
2. What happened to polyphony in jazz? Does nobody do that anymore except for in Dixieland jazz?
you are a bright and warm guy, thx for inspiration every week ;)
This Q&A (and your discussion of synesthesia in particular) got me thinking...why is the group Yes my all-time favorite band? I always assumed that I liked their music better than any other group, but the truth is that there are all kinds of music and artists I really like.
The more I though about this, the more I realized that there was a convergence of ideas happening at a rather formative time in my life: my learning to play bass guitar, my discovery of progressive rock and the beginnings of my search for spiritual meaning in life. Here was one group that provided rather challenging input into all three of these areas of interest in my life.
I was wondering if you (and other people) had a similar type of experience that shaped the direction of your musical journey?
Classifying Baroque, Classical, and Romantic all under the umbrella of classical music makes sense to someone with a biology background. Dividing stuff into groups and subgroups is what taxonomy is all about, and often a larger group will take the name of a common sub-group. I just had a conversation today about the genus "Lynx" which contains Bobcats and three other kinds of Lynx. Together these are all a branch of the family felidae, or cats. When someone mentions the word cat, most people think of the common housecat, but this family also encompases animals from a tiny widdle Rusty-Spotted cat weighing in at around two pounds to an almost 1000 pound Liger, bred for its skills in magic.
Wow man, your adding to the Essay of "two ways to see the river" is gold, im sure he would have smiled at you with bromance.
hey adam, finding your channel has really opened my eyes to a new world of jazz music and I am really happy about that. I was hoping you could recommend albums that you think are essential for the new jazz listener?
Question for next Q&A:
In your NAMM 2018 vlog I noticed you tried out the Industrial Radio Pro-4 MIDI bass and seemed to be very impressed with its accurate tracking and versatile expressive capabilities. The MIDI standard has been around for decades now, but the most common MIDI controllers still come in the form of digital keyboards or MPC-style pad units. Less common MIDI controller set-ups like MIDI-translator guitar pick-ups, electronic drum kits and MIDI wind instruments have been around for a while too, but it seems like these alternative MIDI devices have only really become reliable and "cost-effective" (relatively speaking) for consumers in the last 10 years or so. Things like the Pro-4, the Akai EWI series, the Cantini MIDI violins, Roland's GK-3 pick-up and of course the rapidly improving professional edrum market now provide viable options for non-keyboard musicians/pad wizards to cleanly interface with a vast array of synths and DAWs that would have otherwise been off limits.
With all that in mind, I have two questions:
1) Do you think we'll see (or have you already seen) any significant shifts in the way electronic music is performed and produced now that more instruments can make full use of the MIDI standard, and if so, what do you think those changes might be? The keyboard is certainly a versatile and powerful form for a MIDI controller to take, but other instruments have their own performative vocabulary and expressive range that could bring something new to the landscape of hardware and DAW sequencing that is so prevalent in electronic music today.
2) Now that more and more instruments have viable midi-capable substitutes, do you think we'll see musicians from more "traditional" scenes start to dabble in electronic music? I've noticed that musicians with classical, jazz and folk backgrounds can be deterred from electronic music because they feel that the production process is too "cold" or "rigid" when compared to the act of developing and performing material within the live ensembles they're used to. If these same doubters could use their own familiar tools to make electronic music, do you think they might be more likely to get involved, or will the DAW-centric workflow remain too much of an obstacle for them?
Thanks! :)