@@DBruce, great video! Though I do wish you had placed Rhythm in the center of the map. The most fundamental aspect of music is rhythm. Play that beat fast enough, then we perceive it as a pitch. Consonance & dissonance is how well these "beats" mesh together. All comes from rhythm. Even deaf people can enjoy it. If you've given any consideration to expanding this, it would be amazing to see how music is related to absolutely everything. The Music of the Spheres, as harmonic resonances are observed in the orbits of planets and rings and such, down to the orbitals of electrons around the nucleus of atoms, and everything in between. How all of physics can be understood as cymatics. How all matter we experience is manifestation of the Quantum Wave Function as the acoustic metric. In the words of the Beach Boys... Good vibrations.
[Tiny correction] The clip of the overtone singing at 1:41 is by Радик Түлүш (Radik Tülüsh) of the ensemble “Хүн Хүртү” (Hün Hürtü), who are not from Mongolia, but from Tuva, a part of the Russian Federation. 😊 But of course your point still holds, since Mongolian, Tuvan and Altai traditions of overtone singing are quite similar, and all are connected to different aspects of the natural world. This particular Tuvan style called “сыгыт” (sygyt) is described as imitating gentle summer wind and bird songs. PS I’m so happy I could attend their concert! 😀 They’re amazing musicians and I wholeheartedly recommend everyone to check their live concert recordings on TH-cam.
I finally got to see them live in Galway a few years ago after having been a fan for many years :) My friend who joined me very graciously put up with me gleefully whispering the name of each song in his ear as the band introduced them. It was because of them that I learned how to throatsing (khoomei, sygyt, and a fairly bad kargyraa)
Actually it is kind of a big deal for tuvan people, as their tradition is often labelled as Mongolian when in fact is pretty much their own tradition... This was pointed out by Radik Tyulyush in a FB group, the very same singer in the video. What are the odds 😂 By the way it is a common mistake and the amount of content in this video is huge...
I saw them live last year and nothing compares. Bought tickets as soon as they announced new tour dates but the damn pandemic has to ruin everything :-(
Chiming in to encourage the video poster to re-do the video to give credit to Huun Huur Tu as a Tuvan ensemble (not Mongolian). The instrument featured directly after the Huun Huur Tu clip is not the Tuvan igil, but is the Mongolian horsehead fiddle (morin khuur).
@@charlottedevelyn4718: Since TH-cam does not allow to swap a video with a corrected version, I think that your demand is very much unreasonable. 😉 In the grand scheme of things those are just tiny factual mistakes that don’t undercut the overall point @David Bruce is making here.
This video is the exact opposite of Neely's recent whine tasting. It's expansive, open, looking for the beauty, explorative, adventurous, positive, etc. and yet it attempts the same goal of summing up the history of music and defining the current state of music (albeit in the most general of terms with very limited examples.)
@@MattMusicianX I don't think theese videos are opposities, Adam Neely did his video critcizing the view that european music is seen as more valuable, more complex and in some cases only practiced by geniuses. That may not be a problem for europeans but it sure is in developing countries like mine. This pedestal on which we put european classical music is responsible for extinguising traditional music. Now David did this video that is obviously an oversimplification, yet even with a classical backgroung he tried to include examples of different music from different cultures. I think you should watch again the scene where Adam discusses how we could teach using different types of music, it is just like what David attempted.
@@alexandregirio3177 I stopped at 3 min when he compared 18th century composers to 20th century composers and insisted the most important difference was what continent they are from. Complete reasonlessness. As I explained elsewhere I'm sure there's some great reasoning buried deep in the video but I'm not wasting 45 minutes of my life listening to that reasonless whining just to find the gem in there. Music theory is not racist. Everybody who likes the video agrees it's not racist but say he makes a great point buried in the video. I don't have time though. He should at least have not jumped the shark with the video title.
I really enjoyed this thought-provoking bird's-eye view of music as a whole. One small nit to pick: at 16:07 the wavelength of the higher note is half; the frequency is double.
Great job David - thanks! I suspect if you tried you could easily get the BBC or PBS to back producing a 10 part series on this to allow you to go into more detail. You could be the David Attenborough or Carl Sagan of music. ;)
Actually there are rules for the vertical combination of notes in Balinese gamelan (the example you played a few times). It's a very consistent rule called "ngempat" which just means to play the key a fourth higher than the melody note. So half the players will be playing the melody note and the other half will be playing a fourth higher. Apart from that they're all playing in unison! And I think you've kind of misunderstood colotomy... Colotomy really describes the way that different gongs demarkate the cycle at fixed intervals. Not the idea of wheels within wheels. And most of the parts are derived from the melody, but aren't just rhythmically diminished forms of the same set of notes. It's not a mensuration canon. I'd love to chat through these things with you if you're interested :)
I was specifically talking about Balinese Gamelan music, which is quite different from the styles on other islands of Indonesia. A good all round book on it is called simply "Balinese Gamelan Music" by Michael Tenzer (my supervisor!)
brilliant! your breakdown into horizontal and vertical axes was lovely, and especially your mentioning that music can really be understood as a form of memory, terribly fascinating! this alongside your mention of Messiaen brings to mind the writings of philosophers like Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze. thanks so much for your continued hard work!
@@alexandergadjiev3733 as far as writings explicitly concerning music in this conception, I'd be short of recommendations unfortunately. However, Deleuze's 'Bergsonism' and his essay "Bergson: 1859-1941" in the 'Desert Islands' collection were illuminating for my reception of this video's ideas (you can find pdfs of these for free online!)
Very cool video! I loved all the listening examples, the layout of the map is brilliant! Sorry for pointing this out, but one very minor thing I've noticed in the design is a typo at 13:50 "Additive RhyHTm" You might want to fix this before releasing it as a print or download Awesome video, I'll share it with all my composer and musician friends!
Re "Entrainment" (11:23 in the video): A friend with a brain tumor had very practical experience with brainwaves becoming synchronized to repetitious stimulus. As his disease progressed, seizures became a problem. He found that western music, with it's regular beats, were problematic. He was a lifelong aficionado of Balkan dance and music, and was delighted to discover that streaming "crooked" (odd-meter) dance tunes into his ears from an IPod helped forestall incipient seizures by somehow interfering with feedback in his brain. He blogged about calling to his caregivers "Quick! The IPod! And with a paidushko!" (a Bulgarian music/dance form in 5/8=2+3). RIP.
I loved this video David, this is pure gold! It is literally one of the topic that interest me the most as musician, as a composer and as a human being. However, the actual very interesting fact that for me start to be quite an obsession is not just the fact that music sounds in a totally different way around the world ( traditionally speaking ) but WHY does it sound like so?!?!! Why certain cultures went ballistic with tempo subdivisions, why other didn't, is it because of the environment? Is it because of the language? is it because of the resources around? Why music in cold environments tent to be more colorful and with "more notes" than the cold places's music, which is for the majority of cases more monotonous and with just few notes???? WHYYYY :D IT IS FASCINATING! :D Isn't it?
8:00 I am not too happy about the misrepresentation of ambient music here. 'Good' (in my opinion) ambient music rewards attention just as much as any symphony, but can also function as a backdrop to other things. And being able to dive in and out of the visceral musical experience that some ambient pieces offer when paying attention - but not having to pay attention - is one of the reasons the genre actually has such staying power. What you called ambient music is to me very different from muzak/elevator music.
I would tend to agree there, but it doesn't seem like he was talking about "ambient music" as much as the practice of using music to fill silence. Which I would say are two different things. You obviously know about Music for Airports, which I think is a great example of ambient music done right.
I have a comment about the flamenco: for me the 12 beat is, in fact, the downbeat. This way of counting simulates a clock, with the 12 representing the first beat and so on. At least that's how I conceive it. I don't know how many people, even experts, consciously perceive it that way, but as a flamenco practitioner and western trained musician, that's how I count and even make the sheets: four measures (two for Bulerías) of 3/4 as the complete compás with the first tempo as 12. Many palos, as Soleá, initiates the falsetas (licks) and many voice parts on the 1, constructing a trajectory to a accent on the 3. But after the closure on 10, the 12 becomes the main grounded guidance. Bulería is the palo that makes the 12 as a downbeat more clearly, as a 3/4 measure in 110-120 bpm (in festive tempo or guitar soloist e.g: Paco the Lucía's Almoraima) with the first tempo of the first bar as 12 and the first tempo of the second bar as 6, so the complete compás is two bars as mentioned before.
Hey David. At 1:50 the band (Hün Hürtü) is actually not Mongolian but Tuvan which is a region in Russia. They also speak a Turkic language. Granted there is a lot of similar between the cultures and still is a good example that illustrates your point. This however does not take away from how much I enjoy watching and learning from your videos. I also love the fact that grand masters of youtube influence each other.
Fantastic overview! Will order a hard copy for the academy I work at and put it on the wall so my students are conatantly reminded of the myriad of ways music can be experienced.
Thank you for creating a neuanced picture of music, that acknowledges the richness of the human legacy of music. This is very useful, and well-made, I especially liked the accesible universal-ish animations, and the varied use of examples from many musical cultures. I am seriously considdering getting one of these on my wall, or perhaps on the classroom wall where I study.
As a huge ambient music fan I'd say - it's exactly for listening and kinda meditation. Especially with psychic techniques. I hugely recommend you to check out Stellardrone, Carbon Based Lifeforms, and Suduaya, Entheogenic (from the psy-trance corner). It's very good especially in chill purposes. It's very tasteful and deep music tn terms of sound design
@@ignacioclerici5341 sure. Music MUST be serious and extremely complex to be good. Better if it's not electronic. All electronic music is cursed and should die. Btw, what part of this music you call "terrible" and why? It's subjective anyways, asking just because of curiosity.
@@ignacioclerici5341 what exactly makes producers not to put soul and merit into their works in this genre? It's not easier to make good ambient music than other genres. Ambient is a victim of it's own name and stereotypes.
I was driving home yesterday thinking of your channel, I was very pleased to see this video pop up in my YT feed. I bought your poster, can't wait for it to arrive so I can put it up in my music room.
Man. I never thought I'll discover your chanell. It's so beautiful the way that you talk about music and the vídeo is so full of information. Love that so much
This video is fantastic. As a grad student in jazz piano, this is an awesome reality check as to what music is and has been. Thanks so much for the awesome work!!!!!!
I am actually missing a few more aspects, or at least I didn't hear them - first of all the SOUND - each instrument sounds differently, there are many different ways to play an instrument resulting in different sounds, different combinations of instruments sound differently, some instrumentalists have managed to create their own unique and distinctive sounds, and even some large orchestras are known for their specific sound. And in electronic music, sound has often become the most dominant aspect - just think of the famous synthi sounds in the 70s, paving the way for "good" ambience and meditation music later on, today you could name Nils Frahm or Max Richter, and often film music just uses sound to create a specific atmosphere and effects. Then we could also think of Tempo or speed as well as Volume with their variations and dynamics ... And finally, I think you mentioned Repetition, here I would like to add excessive repetition like we have seen it in minimal music ...
Thanks for writing my World Music lecture for me this week, David! Just kidding... but as an educator (and as a musician in general), this video's comprehensive nature makes me want to show it to literally everyone ever. Excellent work!
9:50 Well, one could argue that Harpeji is actually a chordophone. The sound is produced by a vibrating string, but the vibrations are picked up by piezo pickups, and amplified by an amplifier, whereas in other chordophones like guitar the sound is amplified by a sound box. Is electric guitar a chordophone or an electrophone? Is Rhodes piano an idiophone or an electrophone? If you answered "electrophone" to both questions: What's a saxophone put in front of a microphone connected to the sound system? Still an aerophone, or maybe an electrophone? I think that electrophone is an instrument where sound is produced purely by electronic means i.e. using oscillators
I would say too, that it's an electrophone, because the pickups are not outputting the signal of the strings directly, but an internal electronic circuit cancels out the tones (also sympatethic resonances), that you are not touching. That means, that the instrument would be impossible to play without the internal electronic manipulation. So one could say, that it's an electrophone with acoustic oscillators.
I don't think an electric guitars or piano are electrophones at all that category should be for instruments that produce sound using an entirely electronic process, not instruments that incorporate electricity in some way
Awesome presentation... I was very impressed to see Brasilian Capoeira in this video. Cool! =D Added note: Cool t-shirt he is wearing of "the lick" represented in MIDI. Haha!
Thank you for including an extract of Nahandove from Les Chansons Madécasses by Ravel. I feel it deserves to be more well known. Definetly go check it out! :)
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This is one if the best videos about music on youtube! It's very hard to explain music in short and simple terms, but you've managed to do a really good job of it in just under 30 minutes! Bravo!
Wow, while I see what you mean about the possibility for much more depth in this topic, this was incredibly informative and I appreciated the breakdown
This is you'r best video in my opinion. Really facinating and moving to see how rich and vivid the musical world is, and especcially how the music we know today is strongly related and connected to primal and natural phenomenons. Thank you so much!
This video is very meaningful to me, thank you for making it. It feels like a really good place to think about all the whys, and to be helped in getting the answers.
5:18 Capoeira is a dance but it is ultimately a martial art. The enslaved people had to disguise it as a dance in order to practice without being bothered by their captors. And that kind of rhythm stemmed Samba, which in turn stemmed Bossa Nova, then Tropicália, etc, etc.
4:00 Cool you mentioned Latvia! There's a song and dance festival taking place every five years, bringing over 10k performers in an open-air arena. It's a cultural staple in the country, and would've made a more impressively-looking bit for your video! :) I actually got to participate in one of those in the early noughts (sax): the final concert was pretty breath-taking, but we had to rehearse in that arena every day, and every day, it bloody rained. 😂
Excellent presentation, impeccable analysis and simplyfied delivery for muppets like myself. Furthermore you again objectively broadend the musical horizon of one of your subscribers. Adam neely should take notes considering his last video...
Yes, rhythm and the footstep and the human breath. The heartbeat too? I find your videos so fascinating that they're addictive: they give me an excuse for not working in the covid-19 era :-) Many thanks
One can learn little snippets of music from authors and artists, but this enables me to see the bigger picture - how these little snippets relate to each other.
beautiful use of joropo from Venezuela. Thanks for including this music in your video. I've been a fan of your work (both as video creator and as composer) for a while. Thanks for everything you do to bring music to life.
Amazing video, David! Thanks for putting all these ideas together in such a clear way, and explaining very complicated concepts in a simple and understandable manner, it’s really awesome!
Just great, well done !!! I want to show this to people for whom music is a mystery-they like it it ,but don´t want to participate because they feel intimidated by the nomenclature.Your presentation shows the commonality of music and makes it available to anyone willing to engage themselves just by clapping their hands or moving their feet.
Well done, an enormous subject shoe horned into a half hour, but a fantastic basis for anyone wanting to delve deeper into music. Thoroughly enjoyable, must of taken hours, thanks !
This video is great overview of what music is! I’m interested in structure and form and your explanation is a very simple explanation. I was wondering if you could explain more about form and structure. Your videos are Great!
Great video! It was fun to watch, and very informative! A lot of material condensed in a very short time! I would really enjoy and appreciate watching longer and more thorough videos developing each and every idea that you presented in this video. Thank you for this great exposé and keep up the good work. I'll be looking forword to the next video
Very cool. On this channel, I'm used to videos that focus on one small aspect of music and dig extremely deep, but its a nice change of pace to have the opposite for once. Also, interesting that there are many possibilities that I would never have thought of, but seem so obvious in hindsight...
Amazing, David! Again, I'm deeply grateful for all the content on this channel, this video is very special. Excellent and incredible research! All the best thoughts and wishes. Thank you!!!
Excellent video. My only nitpicks are fairly minor. For one, gamelan ensembles (Balinese gamelan in particular) do tend to include at least a few non-percussion elements, particularly the rebab (a bowed instrument similar to the oud), a kind of zither whose name escapes me, and singers for narrative pieces. Also, I would be inclined to say that the wording surrounding music as high art being the province of "advanced cultures" comes off as slanted in the opposite direction of where this video is coming from, which was clearly unintentional but is a smidge unfortunate. That said, the later mention of large ensembles dedicated to performance of complex pieces being a feature of wealthy societies with a lot of leisure time, stability and moving parts presents the same idea in a less awkward fashion. (I should note that I think in some ways "music as high art for its own sake" is, in some respects, simply a secularisation of the concept of music as a tribute to a higher power, or conversely, the extreme rationalisation of music as a game in the case of serialism and various "objective" compositional forms, but that's a whole other issue.)
Ethnomusicology is one thing that makes my ears perk up! The recent shows on Flamenco and on the sad ubiquity of Equal Temperament were great. The latter was especially fascinating and answered some questions I had about how non-western musicians deal with the tuning difference - my area of interest is Afghan music. Maestro Kalhaur of Iran,who appeared at the start and end,did some excellent collaboration with YoYo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble. I look forward to shows on Indonesian Gamelan and the Bulgarian Women's Chorus. Oh, wondrous music! One of the few ways we have to transcend the walls that separate us from each other.
Absolutely amazing video. During my musicology masters, I got to know many of those practices you listed. In addition to getting me knowing a lot of things, it also helped me get rid of many prejudices I had toward musical taste and/or practice. Once one get to know that there are many musical cultures and as many REASONS to why play music, it is inevitable to leave aside many prejudices toward music. I always try to share some of this vast knowledge with some of my students. Of course, one might want to focus on certain aspects of the musical life, but, I always say, learning doesn't hurt.
Great video. I love that you introduce music as an anthropological function and question its poor contemporary reduction of meaning. I enjoyed it a lot. Thanks @David ! - I could not catch Asymmetry and Rhythmic Cycle (concepts or examples). - I don't get what flats & sharps stand for in the Harmonic series ? : - I think there is a pulse underlying the shakuhachi example. - What about harmonic tension and release ? Isn't that a major thing in all types of music. - Relating rhythm to feet/walk, we could push further, having the comping related to the chest/emotion, the melody to the head/ideas, and the bass to the belly/dance. - Maybe AABA would deserve a mention.
Every now and then, every musician should take the time and reflect on the richnes of musical expressions and social and spiritual purposes that music can serve. Thank you David for reminding us of the bigger picture. It can only help to create more meaningful music.
One example of music as a way of storytelling is the "Ponto de Cabloco", really present in afrobrazilian culture. Is not something I'm quite familiar, but is usually voice and percussion telling a story. There are many others examples, such as "Repentes" on Brazilian Northeastern music culture, "Samba de Breque", and "Pagode", not the Samba variation, but one distant cousin of Sertanejo-Brazilian Country music that can be track down from the country's Southeast and Middle West.
This is the most beautiful thing I have seen. Thank you David. The issue of explaining music to a cave man is something that has actually been in my head for quite some tome now. And from this question a new one was born. How could I explain to Beethoven, Bach, or Guido D'Arezzo how music has reach this point. This video has been highly inspiring. Thank you again!
Thank you so much David. Even as musician I learned several things. very good. I will recommend to my students and friends and even who is just listener.
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There's a lot of work there, great job it's a cool funny graphic depiction of music, I enjoy it!
Great video. It's giving me good map for making videos about many aspects of the musical world (in portuguese only for now). Hello from Brazil, btw. :)
Excellent summary of so many things that Music is “about”! Minor nitpick: At several places (e.g., ~19:10, describing the harmonic series), you describe higher pitches as having longer wavelengths, when of course it’s exactly the opposite. I think you meant to say “frequency” rather than “wavelength.”
Hey this is great, very informative :D
how does it feel to inspire such a great man like David?
Thanks for the inspiration!
@@DBruce David, I am from India.. this video is super informative. Thanks for taking the time
@@9niceflat I love how we take any opportunity to tell people our nationality.
@@DBruce, great video!
Though I do wish you had placed Rhythm in the center of the map.
The most fundamental aspect of music is rhythm.
Play that beat fast enough, then we perceive it as a pitch.
Consonance & dissonance is how well these "beats" mesh together.
All comes from rhythm. Even deaf people can enjoy it.
If you've given any consideration to expanding this, it would be
amazing to see how music is related to absolutely everything.
The Music of the Spheres, as harmonic resonances are observed
in the orbits of planets and rings and such, down to the orbitals of
electrons around the nucleus of atoms, and everything in between.
How all of physics can be understood as cymatics. How all matter
we experience is manifestation of the Quantum Wave Function as
the acoustic metric. In the words of the Beach Boys...
Good vibrations.
[Tiny correction] The clip of the overtone singing at 1:41 is by Радик Түлүш (Radik Tülüsh) of the ensemble “Хүн Хүртү” (Hün Hürtü), who are not from Mongolia, but from Tuva, a part of the Russian Federation. 😊 But of course your point still holds, since Mongolian, Tuvan and Altai traditions of overtone singing are quite similar, and all are connected to different aspects of the natural world. This particular Tuvan style called “сыгыт” (sygyt) is described as imitating gentle summer wind and bird songs.
PS I’m so happy I could attend their concert! 😀 They’re amazing musicians and I wholeheartedly recommend everyone to check their live concert recordings on TH-cam.
I finally got to see them live in Galway a few years ago after having been a fan for many years :)
My friend who joined me very graciously put up with me gleefully whispering the name of each song in his ear as the band introduced them.
It was because of them that I learned how to throatsing (khoomei, sygyt, and a fairly bad kargyraa)
Actually it is kind of a big deal for tuvan people, as their tradition is often labelled as Mongolian when in fact is pretty much their own tradition... This was pointed out by Radik Tyulyush in a FB group, the very same singer in the video. What are the odds 😂
By the way it is a common mistake and the amount of content in this video is huge...
I saw them live last year and nothing compares. Bought tickets as soon as they announced new tour dates but the damn pandemic has to ruin everything :-(
Chiming in to encourage the video poster to re-do the video to give credit to Huun Huur Tu as a Tuvan ensemble (not Mongolian). The instrument featured directly after the Huun Huur Tu clip is not the Tuvan igil, but is the Mongolian horsehead fiddle (morin khuur).
@@charlottedevelyn4718: Since TH-cam does not allow to swap a video with a corrected version, I think that your demand is very much unreasonable. 😉 In the grand scheme of things those are just tiny factual mistakes that don’t undercut the overall point @David Bruce is making here.
Adam: deconstructs music
Ben: take it to the absurd
David: ok, lets start building it again
Really indeed, to me these videos feel like an absurd-mega collab
Almost something like "Okay kids, you had you fun, let's get back to business." :D
This video is the exact opposite of Neely's recent whine tasting. It's expansive, open, looking for the beauty, explorative, adventurous, positive, etc. and yet it attempts the same goal of summing up the history of music and defining the current state of music (albeit in the most general of terms with very limited examples.)
@@MattMusicianX I don't think theese videos are opposities, Adam Neely did his video critcizing the view that european music is seen as more valuable, more complex and in some cases only practiced by geniuses. That may not be a problem for europeans but it sure is in developing countries like mine. This pedestal on which we put european classical music is responsible for extinguising traditional music. Now David did this video that is obviously an oversimplification, yet even with a classical backgroung he tried to include examples of different music from different cultures.
I think you should watch again the scene where Adam discusses how we could teach using different types of music, it is just like what David attempted.
@@alexandregirio3177 I stopped at 3 min when he compared 18th century composers to 20th century composers and insisted the most important difference was what continent they are from. Complete reasonlessness. As I explained elsewhere I'm sure there's some great reasoning buried deep in the video but I'm not wasting 45 minutes of my life listening to that reasonless whining just to find the gem in there. Music theory is not racist. Everybody who likes the video agrees it's not racist but say he makes a great point buried in the video. I don't have time though. He should at least have not jumped the shark with the video title.
I really enjoyed this thought-provoking bird's-eye view of music as a whole. One small nit to pick: at 16:07 the wavelength of the higher note is half; the frequency is double.
Yes, this error occurs quite a few times.
was about to write the same comment ^^
Great job David - thanks! I suspect if you tried you could easily get the BBC or PBS to back producing a 10 part series on this to allow you to go into more detail. You could be the David Attenborough or Carl Sagan of music. ;)
Actually there are rules for the vertical combination of notes in Balinese gamelan (the example you played a few times). It's a very consistent rule called "ngempat" which just means to play the key a fourth higher than the melody note. So half the players will be playing the melody note and the other half will be playing a fourth higher. Apart from that they're all playing in unison! And I think you've kind of misunderstood colotomy... Colotomy really describes the way that different gongs demarkate the cycle at fixed intervals. Not the idea of wheels within wheels. And most of the parts are derived from the melody, but aren't just rhythmically diminished forms of the same set of notes. It's not a mensuration canon. I'd love to chat through these things with you if you're interested :)
This is really interesting! Can you recommend any good resources for learning about gamelan?
I’d also like to learn more bout gamelan.
I was specifically talking about Balinese Gamelan music, which is quite different from the styles on other islands of Indonesia. A good all round book on it is called simply "Balinese Gamelan Music" by Michael Tenzer (my supervisor!)
9:50 - "That instrument looks cool, I wonder who's playi- Jacob Collier, of course it is!"
When he lists types of instruments but forgets pyrophones:
_* Cries in Tchaikovsky. *_
brilliant! your breakdown into horizontal and vertical axes was lovely, and especially your mentioning that music can really be understood as a form of memory, terribly fascinating! this alongside your mention of Messiaen brings to mind the writings of philosophers like Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze. thanks so much for your continued hard work!
Very interesting! Do you have any writings in particular you could recommend? Thanks!
@@alexandergadjiev3733 as far as writings explicitly concerning music in this conception, I'd be short of recommendations unfortunately. However, Deleuze's 'Bergsonism' and his essay "Bergson: 1859-1941" in the 'Desert Islands' collection were illuminating for my reception of this video's ideas (you can find pdfs of these for free online!)
“devil may have the best tunes but heaven has its moments too” LOLLLLL
The Stairway to Heaven at the end of the Highway to Hell
That Georgian priest gave me goosebumps in those few seconds, I'm looking the original video up right now.
@Ron Maimon David Bruce put links in the video description, it's the one called "Georgian Priest"
Very cool video! I loved all the listening examples, the layout of the map is brilliant!
Sorry for pointing this out, but one very minor thing I've noticed in the design is a typo at 13:50 "Additive RhyHTm"
You might want to fix this before releasing it as a print or download
Awesome video, I'll share it with all my composer and musician friends!
Also "Morroco" and "desease".....
Re "Entrainment" (11:23 in the video): A friend with a brain tumor had very practical experience with brainwaves becoming synchronized to repetitious stimulus. As his disease progressed, seizures became a problem. He found that western music, with it's regular beats, were problematic. He was a lifelong aficionado of Balkan dance and music, and was delighted to discover that streaming "crooked" (odd-meter) dance tunes into his ears from an IPod helped forestall incipient seizures by somehow interfering with feedback in his brain. He blogged about calling to his caregivers "Quick! The IPod! And with a paidushko!" (a Bulgarian music/dance form in 5/8=2+3). RIP.
I loved this video David, this is pure gold! It is literally one of the topic that interest me the most as musician, as a composer and as a human being.
However, the actual very interesting fact that for me start to be quite an obsession is not just the fact that music sounds in a totally different way around the world ( traditionally speaking ) but WHY does it sound like so?!?!!
Why certain cultures went ballistic with tempo subdivisions, why other didn't, is it because of the environment? Is it because of the language? is it because of the resources around?
Why music in cold environments tent to be more colorful and with "more notes" than the cold places's music, which is for the majority of cases more monotonous and with just few notes????
WHYYYY :D IT IS FASCINATING! :D Isn't it?
To answer this question I think you have to study aspects of languages
@E. O. very good point!
8:00 I am not too happy about the misrepresentation of ambient music here.
'Good' (in my opinion) ambient music rewards attention just as much as any symphony, but can also function as a backdrop to other things. And being able to dive in and out of the visceral musical experience that some ambient pieces offer when paying attention - but not having to pay attention - is one of the reasons the genre actually has such staying power.
What you called ambient music is to me very different from muzak/elevator music.
I would tend to agree there, but it doesn't seem like he was talking about "ambient music" as much as the practice of using music to fill silence. Which I would say are two different things. You obviously know about Music for Airports, which I think is a great example of ambient music done right.
I have a comment about the flamenco: for me the 12 beat is, in fact, the downbeat. This way of counting simulates a clock, with the 12 representing the first beat and so on. At least that's how I conceive it. I don't know how many people, even experts, consciously perceive it that way, but as a flamenco practitioner and western trained musician, that's how I count and even make the sheets: four measures (two for Bulerías) of 3/4 as the complete compás with the first tempo as 12. Many palos, as Soleá, initiates the falsetas (licks) and many voice parts on the 1, constructing a trajectory to a accent on the 3. But after the closure on 10, the 12 becomes the main grounded guidance. Bulería is the palo that makes the 12 as a downbeat more clearly, as a 3/4 measure in 110-120 bpm (in festive tempo or guitar soloist e.g: Paco the Lucía's Almoraima) with the first tempo of the first bar as 12 and the first tempo of the second bar as 6, so the complete compás is two bars as mentioned before.
I may have missed it in the wealth of information, but texture and dynamics!
Great video, David!
Hey David. At 1:50 the band (Hün Hürtü) is actually not Mongolian but Tuvan which is a region in Russia. They also speak a Turkic language. Granted there is a lot of similar between the cultures and still is a good example that illustrates your point. This however does not take away from how much I enjoy watching and learning from your videos. I also love the fact that grand masters of youtube influence each other.
Definitely not the “harmonic style of 18th century European musicians” ;-)
BASS!
@@nightwishlover8913 Yes, my thoughts exactly. I think David managed this magnificently.
Adam Neely lol
God I hated that Video
Maybe it’s all so weird in the US right now that everything’s getting distorted and it’s hard for people to see straight idk
Fantastic overview! Will order a hard copy for the academy I work at and put it on the wall so my students are conatantly reminded of the myriad of ways music can be experienced.
I absolutely love the Domain of Science channel so seeing this made me light up, thanks David! :)
Thank you for creating a neuanced picture of music, that acknowledges the richness of the human legacy of music. This is very useful, and well-made, I especially liked the accesible universal-ish animations, and the varied use of examples from many musical cultures. I am seriously considdering getting one of these on my wall, or perhaps on the classroom wall where I study.
As a huge ambient music fan I'd say - it's exactly for listening and kinda meditation. Especially with psychic techniques.
I hugely recommend you to check out Stellardrone, Carbon Based Lifeforms, and Suduaya, Entheogenic (from the psy-trance corner).
It's very good especially in chill purposes. It's very tasteful and deep music tn terms of sound design
@@ignacioclerici5341 sure. Music MUST be serious and extremely complex to be good. Better if it's not electronic. All electronic music is cursed and should die.
Btw, what part of this music you call "terrible" and why? It's subjective anyways, asking just because of curiosity.
@@ignacioclerici5341 what exactly makes producers not to put soul and merit into their works in this genre? It's not easier to make good ambient music than other genres. Ambient is a victim of it's own name and stereotypes.
I was driving home yesterday thinking of your channel, I was very pleased to see this video pop up in my YT feed. I bought your poster, can't wait for it to arrive so I can put it up in my music room.
Man. I never thought I'll discover your chanell. It's so beautiful the way that you talk about music and the vídeo is so full of information. Love that so much
Mr. Bruce! Congratulations on another delightful, entertaining, and eye-opening video. Merry Wednesday to you :)
Love this!! It’s a very succinct mapping, in a way that tells the basics, but shows the range of possibilities for creative expression.
This video is fantastic. As a grad student in jazz piano, this is an awesome reality check as to what music is and has been. Thanks so much for the awesome work!!!!!!
I am actually missing a few more aspects, or at least I didn't hear them - first of all the SOUND - each instrument sounds differently, there are many different ways to play an instrument resulting in different sounds, different combinations of instruments sound differently, some instrumentalists have managed to create their own unique and distinctive sounds, and even some large orchestras are known for their specific sound. And in electronic music, sound has often become the most dominant aspect - just think of the famous synthi sounds in the 70s, paving the way for "good" ambience and meditation music later on, today you could name Nils Frahm or Max Richter, and often film music just uses sound to create a specific atmosphere and effects.
Then we could also think of Tempo or speed as well as Volume with their variations and dynamics ...
And finally, I think you mentioned Repetition, here I would like to add excessive repetition like we have seen it in minimal music ...
Thanks for writing my World Music lecture for me this week, David! Just kidding... but as an educator (and as a musician in general), this video's comprehensive nature makes me want to show it to literally everyone ever. Excellent work!
This video is perfect complement to THAT adam neely's video "making controversy" now and the 12 tone one. Lovely put.
I freaking love this channel
So many cultures arround the globe, so much to learn !!! i love it !! Thank you very much !!
9:50 Well, one could argue that Harpeji is actually a chordophone. The sound is produced by a vibrating string, but the vibrations are picked up by piezo pickups, and amplified by an amplifier, whereas in other chordophones like guitar the sound is amplified by a sound box.
Is electric guitar a chordophone or an electrophone?
Is Rhodes piano an idiophone or an electrophone?
If you answered "electrophone" to both questions: What's a saxophone put in front of a microphone connected to the sound system? Still an aerophone, or maybe an electrophone?
I think that electrophone is an instrument where sound is produced purely by electronic means i.e. using oscillators
I would say too, that it's an electrophone, because the pickups are not outputting the signal of the strings directly, but an internal electronic circuit cancels out the tones (also sympatethic resonances), that you are not touching. That means, that the instrument would be impossible to play without the internal electronic manipulation.
So one could say, that it's an electrophone with acoustic oscillators.
I don't think an electric guitars or piano are electrophones at all
that category should be for instruments that produce sound using an entirely electronic process, not instruments that incorporate electricity in some way
@@leavewe Exactly, an example of an electrophone would be something like a theremin, or a synthesizer
Awesome presentation... I was very impressed to see Brasilian Capoeira in this video. Cool! =D
Added note: Cool t-shirt he is wearing of "the lick" represented in MIDI. Haha!
Thank you for including an extract of Nahandove from Les Chansons Madécasses by Ravel. I feel it deserves to be more well known. Definetly go check it out! :)
This is one if the best videos about music on youtube! It's very hard to explain music in short and simple terms, but you've managed to do a really good job of it in just under 30 minutes! Bravo!
Wow, while I see what you mean about the possibility for much more depth in this topic, this was incredibly informative and I appreciated the breakdown
What a BEAUTIFUL video!! Thanks for this!
Beautiful work! Very encyclopedic and entertaining at the same time. Thank you so very much. :):):)
Brilliant travel across music foundations, geographies and cultures. Great job David.
This is you'r best video in my opinion.
Really facinating and moving to see how rich and vivid the musical world is, and especcially how the music we know today is strongly related and connected to primal and natural phenomenons.
Thank you so much!
This video is very meaningful to me, thank you for making it. It feels like a really good place to think about all the whys, and to be helped in getting the answers.
David is such a fantastic teacher. Loved this
So well done! Thanks David.
Eye opening and fantastic on so many levels. Thanks for making this!
5:18 Capoeira is a dance but it is ultimately a martial art. The enslaved people had to disguise it as a dance in order to practice without being bothered by their captors. And that kind of rhythm stemmed Samba, which in turn stemmed Bossa Nova, then Tropicália, etc, etc.
as a music teacher i just want to THANK YOU SO MUCH for this. thank you for your time, thank you for your effort. this is an invaluable resource.
This is very interesting David
Gonna show this one to my kids!! 🤙🏼
What a wonderful view of music. I like taking a step (or three) back to get the whole picture. Well done!
4:00 Cool you mentioned Latvia! There's a song and dance festival taking place every five years, bringing over 10k performers in an open-air arena. It's a cultural staple in the country, and would've made a more impressively-looking bit for your video! :)
I actually got to participate in one of those in the early noughts (sax): the final concert was pretty breath-taking, but we had to rehearse in that arena every day, and every day, it bloody rained. 😂
Ted Gioia's Subversive History is an excellent book - I'm part way through it now, really worth picking up.
Great vid David!
Excellent presentation, impeccable analysis and simplyfied delivery for muppets like myself. Furthermore you again objectively broadend the musical horizon of one of your subscribers. Adam neely should take notes considering his last video...
The title doesn't really convey the brilliance of this video. Very interesting stuff!
Yes, rhythm and the footstep and the human breath. The heartbeat too? I find your videos so fascinating that they're addictive: they give me an excuse for not working in the covid-19 era :-) Many thanks
One can learn little snippets of music from authors and artists, but this enables me to see the bigger picture - how these little snippets relate to each other.
beautiful use of joropo from Venezuela. Thanks for including this music in your video. I've been a fan of your work (both as video creator and as composer) for a while. Thanks for everything you do to bring music to life.
Amazing video, David! Thanks for putting all these ideas together in such a clear way, and explaining very complicated concepts in a simple and understandable manner, it’s really awesome!
Just great, well done !!! I want to show this to people for whom music is a mystery-they like it
it ,but don´t want to participate because they feel intimidated by the nomenclature.Your presentation shows the commonality of music and makes it available to anyone willing to engage themselves just by clapping their hands or moving their feet.
Wow thank you for making this video. I appreciate the care that must have gone into this research. Interesting and inspiring ! Thank you
Well done, an enormous subject shoe horned into a half hour, but a fantastic basis for anyone wanting to delve deeper into music. Thoroughly enjoyable, must of taken hours, thanks !
Wow, so much effort and so many cool examples from other cultures!
This video is great overview of what music is! I’m interested in structure and form and your explanation is a very simple explanation. I was wondering if you could explain more about form and structure. Your videos are Great!
Awesome video, and I loved that Joropo at the end!
Great video! It was fun to watch, and very informative! A lot of material condensed in a very short time! I would really enjoy and appreciate watching longer and more thorough videos developing each and every idea that you presented in this video. Thank you for this great exposé and keep up the good work. I'll be looking forword to the next video
Very cool.
On this channel, I'm used to videos that focus on one small aspect of music and dig extremely deep, but its a nice change of pace to have the opposite for once.
Also, interesting that there are many possibilities that I would never have thought of, but seem so obvious in hindsight...
Amazing, David! Again, I'm deeply grateful for all the content on this channel, this video is very special. Excellent and incredible research! All the best thoughts and wishes. Thank you!!!
Excellent video. My only nitpicks are fairly minor. For one, gamelan ensembles (Balinese gamelan in particular) do tend to include at least a few non-percussion elements, particularly the rebab (a bowed instrument similar to the oud), a kind of zither whose name escapes me, and singers for narrative pieces. Also, I would be inclined to say that the wording surrounding music as high art being the province of "advanced cultures" comes off as slanted in the opposite direction of where this video is coming from, which was clearly unintentional but is a smidge unfortunate. That said, the later mention of large ensembles dedicated to performance of complex pieces being a feature of wealthy societies with a lot of leisure time, stability and moving parts presents the same idea in a less awkward fashion. (I should note that I think in some ways "music as high art for its own sake" is, in some respects, simply a secularisation of the concept of music as a tribute to a higher power, or conversely, the extreme rationalisation of music as a game in the case of serialism and various "objective" compositional forms, but that's a whole other issue.)
Ethnomusicology is one thing that makes my ears perk up! The recent shows on Flamenco and on the sad ubiquity of Equal Temperament were great. The latter was especially fascinating and answered some questions I had about how non-western musicians deal with the tuning difference - my area of interest is Afghan music. Maestro Kalhaur of Iran,who appeared at the start and end,did some excellent collaboration with YoYo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble. I look forward to shows on Indonesian Gamelan and the Bulgarian Women's Chorus. Oh, wondrous music! One of the few ways we have to transcend the walls that separate us from each other.
This made me realize how much I love the different cultures on this earth. Each are beautiful in their own way.
FINALLY! I was looking for something like this is ages, thank you so much!
What about noise music?
Absolutely love the video and your channel, but you did say you were looking forward to what we would say you missed.
Yeah, there could be another region on the map labeled "timbre".
Absolutely amazing video. During my musicology masters, I got to know many of those practices you listed. In addition to getting me knowing a lot of things, it also helped me get rid of many prejudices I had toward musical taste and/or practice. Once one get to know that there are many musical cultures and as many REASONS to why play music, it is inevitable to leave aside many prejudices toward music. I always try to share some of this vast knowledge with some of my students. Of course, one might want to focus on certain aspects of the musical life, but, I always say, learning doesn't hurt.
One of the very best videos I've ever seen, if not the best on the topic of music. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge
Well, first I noticed "The Lick" on the T-Shirt - now lets continue...
Great video.
I love that you introduce music as an anthropological function and question its poor contemporary reduction of meaning.
I enjoyed it a lot. Thanks @David !
- I could not catch Asymmetry and Rhythmic Cycle (concepts or examples).
- I don't get what flats & sharps stand for in the Harmonic series ?
:
- I think there is a pulse underlying the shakuhachi example.
- What about harmonic tension and release ? Isn't that a major thing in all types of music.
- Relating rhythm to feet/walk, we could push further, having the comping related to the chest/emotion, the melody to the head/ideas, and the bass to the belly/dance.
- Maybe AABA would deserve a mention.
Every now and then, every musician should take the time and reflect on the richnes of musical expressions and social and spiritual purposes that music can serve. Thank you David for reminding us of the bigger picture. It can only help to create more meaningful music.
One example of music as a way of storytelling is the "Ponto de Cabloco", really present in afrobrazilian culture. Is not something I'm quite familiar, but is usually voice and percussion telling a story. There are many others examples, such as "Repentes" on Brazilian Northeastern music culture, "Samba de Breque", and "Pagode", not the Samba variation, but one distant cousin of Sertanejo-Brazilian Country music that can be track down from the country's Southeast and Middle West.
What an amazing video! It really feels like you got everything covered in less than 30 minutes, holy moly
Listening to you as I drive from Colorado to Oregon ❤️
Excellent educational work David! Thank you
Wow, brilliant vid David!
One of the best informative videos I've ever seen :-) Should be mandatory in every music class
Perfect. I bought the poster, going to use it extensively in the music classes I teach. Thank you David, it's just what I needed.
Amazing! So hard to get it all together in a clear direction! Well done! 🙌🏻
This is my very favorite video you have made. Also I love your shirt. Also I never knew a kazoo was technically considered a membranophone!
this is so good! i like that you didn't just focus on the very specific history of western European music but included music from all around the world
This is the most beautiful thing I have seen. Thank you David. The issue of explaining music to a cave man is something that has actually been in my head for quite some tome now. And from this question a new one was born. How could I explain to Beethoven, Bach, or Guido D'Arezzo how music has reach this point. This video has been highly inspiring. Thank you again!
Watched this video several times already. This is exceedingly wonderful, David. Will watch it more times. This is just too good. =)
Excellent David. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much David. Even as musician I learned several things. very good. I will recommend to my students and friends and even who is just listener.
There's a lot of work there, great job it's a cool funny graphic depiction of music, I enjoy it!
I really appreciate the work you do with your channel. Thank you!
23:39 !! such groove... absolute fire. wow.
Great video. It's giving me good map for making videos about many aspects of the musical world (in portuguese only for now). Hello from Brazil, btw. :)
Excellent summary of so many things that Music is “about”!
Minor nitpick: At several places (e.g., ~19:10, describing the harmonic series), you describe higher pitches as having longer wavelengths, when of course it’s exactly the opposite. I think you meant to say “frequency” rather than “wavelength.”
A very deleuzian musical plato or plane of immanence furnished with such marvelous concepts. Thank your for sharing this
Love that joropo you played at the end. You got a venezuelan proud of his country today :)
Your videos are such a pleasure to watch... thank you :)
David! One again amazing. Thanks!!
Absolutely Great David!!!