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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 ส.ค. 2024
- In this video, we do something that I have resisted doing for years. We are taking a critical look at some of Adam Neely's behavior online, and things I find highly problematic. Before you get angry, withhold your judgement and watch the video thru. Hopefully this is the last time I will do a video like this. But stuff needs to be said. Thank you all, love you.
BACKGROUND MUSIC CREDITS:
Crazy Monkey: / @crazymonkeymusic
D Park: / @dparkonline
#musictheory #classicalmusic
SOURCES/RECEIPTS
docs.google.co...
Sideways/Adam Tik Tok Comparison: www.tiktok.com...
Patreon: / naetemusic
Instagram: / nae8te
Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/naete
Soundcloud: / natepatrikk
DEBUT SINGLE Julius Caesar: • Julius Caesar | NÆTe
Julius Caesar Streaming: linktr.ee/n8te4u
00:00 Intro
01:14 Classical Music Misinfo
22:56 Adam Ragusea Bullying/Misinfo
35:17 Sideways Plagiarism (ALLEGED)
44:30 Outro/Vent
EDIT 05/16/2023: Thank you to commenter @arnauddd for pointing out this academic paper from 2004 in which the term phase locking w/ regards to music is used. Here it is used (at least to my eye) as more of an analogy to a musical phenomenon, and not an exact definition, but since I called for sources and got one I wanted to post it here in the service of transparency. www.open.ac.uk... (and perhaps I am wrong and it is an exact definition its just the language seemed to imply analogy, but happy to hear the opposing perspective as well)
![Exclusive! น้องลิกก้า&น้องโรร่า มาแล้ว!! [cc] แดนแพทตี้ SS2 | EP.48 |](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/UmlpJhRekyY/mqdefault.jpg)
Thank you, Aphex Twin
@ppydpy315 I'm not sure you know the difference in meaning between objective and subjective. And as far as how it worked out for me? Well you're here in my comment section making a fuss so I'd say, pretty darn well imo.
@ppydpy315 LYING LMAO. It's called being smart, I believe everything I am saying but again it's an opinion that I cannot state as 100% definitive fact cause I cannot mind read people. You should look up how allegations work in the US. Have a nice day!
@@NAETEMUSIC Love Neely or not. He's a billion times better than most that doing the same type of thing on youtube Like anything we read or listen to, you learn from the things you can and you move past the ones you don't care for. As per this particular video of yours - we all know the game. IE it's a lot better to do a clip on someone who has a large subscriber base than someone who doesn't. The only person who really benefits from this video is yourself. I am sure you will refute that of course.
@@NAETEMUSICyou had a valid point for about 10 minutes with the classical rhythms/conducting, then it devolved into opinion and plagerism claims of a very shared musical concept. I think the initial video on ragusea was in bad taste, but the second one with his article was just posting a relevent article. He meant meme chord more as in overdone in a good way, like the lick. The sideways thing is just your opinion.
@ppydpy315 I think you didn't actually watch the video. Nice try Mr. Angry.
Was disappointed by his newest video and got this in my recommendations. I found your criticism to be bad faith and terribly undercooked.
Same, I came here in hopes of some interesting music theory debate not this garbage
Not to be that person but as a classical musician I’ve never found Adam to be demeaning or anything towards classical musicians. That being said, the first point you made did irk me, I hadn’t seen that video before since I wasn’t really watching him 7 years ago. However,,,,that was 7 yrs ago LMAO his content shows again and again that he is a very open minded and well educated musician. Many of your critiques are nitpicking at best imo and I’d need to see a pattern of behavior to think he was this snobby, ignorant person.
Also the irony of this guy and ppl in the comments calling out adam for being elitist or snobby while also waving whatever musical experiences they’ve had around is definitely not lost on me HAHAH
@@ejaviolin couldnt have said it better
@@ejaviolin 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
The thing is Adam is getting woke. He is trying to appeal to some crowds and does not want offend some people and puts his audience in trouble. I've noticed it too
@@thediminished98 Can you think of a situation where you're not trying to appeal to some crowds? Or maybe a business that aims to offend people?
Getting "woke" as you've described in this comment seems like reasonable business practice. Dumb comment, and the word "woke" has lost it's original meaning entirely.
adam neely's "problematic" "behavior" dude he made a flawed argument about classical music 7 years ago. he criticized a widely-criticized video that you also called "clickbait". he used the most appropriate analogy about key centers in an interview. none of this had to be a call-out
over an 8 year career and millions of youtube views this is the best you can find about adam?
Yeah it's this kind of video that really makes me miss the like/dislike bar.
@@foxsake6634 The "Return TH-cam Dislike" extension for various web browsers lets you see the dislike bar.
I mean he also said whiplash is inaccurate because a character said "know the charts by heart" instead of "have the charts memorized" so...
Ok... Imma be real, this is a lot of classical copium going on rn. I'm only 10 mins in and there's kind of a lot wrong.
First, that actually is a quarter note triplet, because the triplet fits into the length of a quarter note.
Second, Adam isn't claiming any of these musicians are frauds or bad at music. He doesn't even say they feel rhythm badly, he says they feel rhythm differently. The double bass player botching the vocalized 3 over 2 rhythm and getting it right on his double bass is probably a symptom of him relying more on muscle memory from practice rather than feeling the rhythm in his head. That doesn't make him a bad musician, and Adam never said that made him a bad musician. It's a known fact that classical musicians think differently (not worse, mind you) about music than contemporary musicians. Adam's just trying to find examples to elaborate, not prove his point.
I think you're assuming Adam is trying to thrust superiority over others with your interpretation, when this really isn't the case.
That most definitely was not a quarter note triplet, tuplets aren’t defined by their length rather the note heads and flag used within them.
2:45 - but this is lterally what you are doing. You are using an old video of Neely to introduce a video on stuff he is wrong about. The irony
Btw met Adam Neely when he was on tour with Plini. He's such a sweet guy in person and took the time to talk to people. Really respect him for being down to earth.
wait so the guys were friends and even talked about music theory live on a podcast but both cant use the same analogy about key centers with out it being stealing?
depends if sideways feels wronged (or at least it's a solid clue), and he does.
Truly an unforgivable sin
I mean they WERE friends until the earlier time Neely ripped off Sideways, according to Sideways' partner's Twitlonger
It's also very easy to use something you heard somewhere without even realising it. I'd also say it's irrelevant whether other person feels they were wronged. I'd also wonder how we know for sure this was a unique idea that Sideways came up with?
at 38:22, this is an incredibly common metaphor for keys, at least in jazz. I've heard it many times, from many different people.
I'm here after HBomberguy made a video on youtube plagiarism, and also having watched some of Adam Neely's videos in the past. You are talking about a 'clock face' with the circle of fifths 'laid out on it'. That's a strange description because the circle of fifths ALWAYS looks like a clock face: 12 notes spaced around a circle. I'm not sure what the point here is, really. Also, I'm pretty sure the language analogy has been taught in thousands of music classrooms decades and probably centuries before TH-cam existed.
Sideways acting like he owns that analogy and allegedly quitting his channel over it is hilariously childish.
This guy is digging incredibly deep into small and petty things with this incredibly condemning, even vindictive attitude. Am I saying that Adam Neely is the perfect person? Not at all. Am I saying that this video is made to seem Adam look like a bad person when there's probably zero intentional wrongdoing on his part? Yes. Some of the points seemed fair at first, then they got stretched WAY out of proportion.
Adam is such a sweet guy, this video is hate for no reason
No, it is not out of proportion and any people spreading misinformation must be called out... Even if it's Jesus Christ himself.
@@frafrafrafrafra He's not sweet at all lmao. He's the kind of guy who made a clickbait video criticizing whiplash on 100% BS grounds (e.g. he complained that one character said "know the charts by heart" instead of "have the charts memorized), so excusing him on the basis of supposed pedantry is hypocritical at best.
I can never forgive this Adam Neely character smh. He might as well cut his losses and end it all now. How could he possibly be forgiven for such heinous acts as having a shaky take 7 years ago and making fun of a bad article? :,-(
You had me in the first half ngl
10/10
Adam is doomed to hell for his malicious deception. Give me a break. who cares. I like him and others whether I agree or disagree.The positives outweigh the negatives
@@pocket1684 Oh jeez. You write outweight instead of outweigh. Tut tut, I'm gonna have to make a video about this.
@@manmewxlsgband You are right, I'm gonna(slang) instead of I'm GOING to: TUT TUT is more slang, doesn't work well in correlation with the english language as we know it.
Seeing the chapters, I thought that reporting Sideways' claims of plagiarism would be the most unhinged part of the video, but then you wholly misunderstood the definition of "meme" and tried your hardest to read an insult into what was clearly a compliment. "BUT WAS SHADE IMPLIED??????????" Just unbelievably embarrassing stuff here, man.
Fyi Adam addressed some of the criticism to his video on classical players feeling rhythm differently in the opening of a QnA back in 2016, it was titled QnA#22.
If this dude intended to make a criticism video, instead of a hit-piece, he would've known
I dunno, if Adam has been doing this for 7 years and you can only find 3 somewhat-nitpicky, mostly alleged problems with his videos then that should be a mark in his favor lol
I mean the first point is debatable, maybe he's wrong about it and maybe he stuck up for himself a little too much. The second one is questionable, I mean he called him a journalist because that's what the video said he was. There's no proof that Adam knew he had any further qualifications, or that he has ever seen that video of the other Adam complaining about the way he was treated. And then the last one is pretty questionable too, the idea is not massively novel so its entirely possible that they both came up with the relatively same idea at the same time and Id like to think that if Adam *knew* he was ripping off someone who had been on his channel he probably wouldve mentioned it, I havent seen anything that would say his ego is THAT big.
Viva Frey and Black Horse/Joyful Noise.
His whole CT that Music Theory was "The way how 18th Century Germans thought about Music" (again thoroughly obliterated by, eg, Sideways' videos about both the original unpublished Avatar soundtrack and the Black Panther soundtrack).
Adam Neely really is the worst kind of creator, mixing deliberate disinformation into content otherwise OK, thus having verisimilitude.
Even Neely cannot be so full of ...it that he believes what he's saying, including cool sounding electrical engineering terms like "Phase-Lock" where they are nonsensical and ridiculous (you show me ONE phase locked oscillogram of even TWO musicians playing the same instrument together up to the same model, you have essentially a lottery win - and I guess it would just sound wrong).
So he's playing a zero-sum game, narcissistically diminishing people with better qualifications than himself to gain a feeling of superiourity and get views from cyberbullies. Consider everything he says to be deliberate misinformation and manipulation.
If you think you need to come after people correcting his BS, get help. Otherwise, watch those creators who make constructive music videos (Sideways, 12tone, and a lot of music professionnals) and support them before narcissists like Neely drive them off the plattform and continue with "enshittification".
@@enysuntra1347 "Consider everything he says to be deliberate misinformation and manipulation." is a pretty hypocritical comment to make. By telling someone to consider someone as always being wrong based on 3 examples of them being wrong, you're providing misinformation and manipulating someone yourself. Nothing you or this video presented is remotely evidence that he's a bully who spreads intentional misinformation rather than a video creator who presents arguments for his point of view.
@@timgehrsitz3267 No, it isn't.
ONE example of bad faith argumentation is all it takes to consider a source tainted. You don't know which information is factual (otherwise you wouldn't need to watch informational content). Contrary to honest mistakes (which happen to everyone), bad faith arguments are deliberate and counter-prove that the source can be trusted.
Neely twice presented a musician by trade as a sell-out. His "music theory is white supremacy" claim is ludicrous, either he lacks the basic qualification to talk about music, or -which I presume- he is a professional who knows what music theory is and that it's rooted in physical phenomena (harmonic waves) which are universal and is able to accomodate musical expressions across cultures. Case in point: James Horner's unpublished original Avatar soundtrack, and the official soundtrack to Black Panther. Both used music theory to compose music that were ordered to be fundamentally different from common western styles. John Cage may have been "white", but his compositions deliberately max out music theory; other modern composers are not as famous, but do exactly the same.
To claim harmonic waves can only be perceived by "Western audiences", however, IS chauvinist and white supremacist, well in the tradition of people excluding Blacks from professions because they were alleged to have an "inferiour depth perception", "inferiour colour perception" and a metric tonne of other BS claims.
What's worse, after Neely ripped off Sideways he hasn't posted in 2 years now, so he seems to have succeeded in displacing a MUCH better and more factual creator who indeed has a music degree and is a musician by trade.
@@enysuntra1347 He doesn't claim that music theory IS white supremacist. The title of the video itself is "Music Theory and White Supremacy", he's discussing the connection between what we think of as "music we should study" and "music we shouldn't study". I don't see a lot of music classes available on the theory of "flow" in rap music. If you believe that one bad faith argument is enough to consider a source tainted, no one should listen to you for the rest of your life. My days
@@martinthemarine920 Oh, that must be why he replaces every time the word "music theory" is used (and should be used) with some BS like "the way 18th century Germans thought about music".
It is not for you to decide who should or shouldn't "listen to me", and it's not about me in the first place. Neely demonstrably uses a position of alleged authority to make misleading claims against his better judgement to pander to what he thinks of as a broader viewer base.
His whole argument about the "flow in rap music" and his ridiculous claim "non-German-18th-century music" could not be described in music theory is flawed, and he claims "white supremacy" (a good signal word NOT to watch further) while in fact every profession on earth is first thought with the basic and well-known. Rap may be well-known, but sure as hell isn't "basic".
Music from the countries that today are Germany, as well as the countries that today form Italy, was diverse as every big city had its own court and government and every noble wanted to have a court composer. That's why there simply was more material and a bigger market for professionals in the geographical regions of 18th century Germany and Italy. And as many compositions used the new methods of music theory, those compositions work well as introductions. You learn to ride a bicycle by using training wheels, not by getting thrust on a unicycle.
Somebody looked at how musical theory is relevant to contemporary pop music and showed an old interview with Paul McCartney where he discusses how he composed a song. There, he describes a well-known concept, however in his own words without knowing the special terminology. In other words, even without knowing it a Beatle used white supremacist theory of white supremacist music by white supremacist 18th century white supremacist Germans(!!!) intuitively.
This goes directly against Neeley's BS that "music theory" in fact only was "the way 18th century Germans thought about music". That Jazz music revived the classical church tone systems he omits, and it would denude his argument even further: He does claim that non-White western people have another hearing apparatus (racialism). If he openly claimed that, as music theory was but "white supremacist thoughts of 18th century Germans about music", Jazz music plagiarised a "white supremacist" concept, this would mark him as a KKK approved "Blacks can only copy art, not create it" racist.
And if Neeley fans would really try to think critically and not just consume him to validate their own beliefs, they'd use the same standards of analysis on his claims and very easily would spot how problematic many of his claims are if held to the standards he imposes on others.
As a classical musician that has 9 years of experience with violin, I would agree with Adam in his video... When I watched it for the first time there were many things that made sense to me especially as a person coming from that world of music. A very large majority of classical musicians that I have met and played with obviously know and understand what rhythm is and how it works, as well as having exceptional technical abilities on their respective instruments but the understanding begins to fall off when going outside of the norm of "classical" rhythms. Typically, rhythmic integrity is not as important as the overall emotion and dynamics of each piece, this not to say that rhythmic integrity ISN'T important, because of course it is, but it's simply not the MOST important thing for classical music. A point Adam also brings up in his video, is the fact that stringed instruments (such as the violin) can be played in such a way that you can simply "melt" into the pre-existing sound so that if you play at a slightly incorrect time, the listener might not even notice. They do not react like a drum head that's been struck which has a very quick attack and very quick drop off that would make it so that every incorrect rhythm is extremely obvious, not to mention the reliance on a conductor to keep time, make interpretations in the music, and give cues for every instrument during rehearsal and performances in an orchestral setting which is not something seen as common practice for many other genres of music. So rhythmic deficiencies are absolutely something that every classical musician deals with especially when compared to, say, a jazz drummer who's sole purpose is to be a rhythmic machine. You, while maybe coming from a place of good when making this video, clearly lack understanding and perspective that would help you see Adam's video doesn't mean to disparage any classical musician that makes rhythmic mistakes or has deficiencies but is simply documenting how different musicians learn different genres of music with different priorities.
Very good points...I mostly agree with what you have experienced.
I agree, i have tons of classical musician an jazz musician friends who watched that video. While the example he gave was poor he goes indepth later.
Kinda like how classical musicians are very poor players when it comes to improvisation. He even has a video comparing the two.
Very well said. I know many players in the band scene who couldn't read sheet music if it could save their life. It's all a matter of what you've been playing, who you've been playing and studying with, how and what you practice and what you've been listening to. I have a degree in music and have been playing guitar for over 30 years, but I read sheet music so infrequently that it would take me more time to play a classical piece by reading it than it would to just listen to a rendition of it and memorize it. And I would probably play it in a way that would rhythmically please me more, but would slightly offend people who have been studying that music for years.
As a classical musician I am truly awful with time 🤣I either need to sit down and work out complex rhythms in a quiet room or I need to hear it once or twice and then I'm good. I absolutely agree with what you say, our focus just isn't on the exacts of timing, it's more about the interpretation of it. I have so much respect for drummers and jazz musicians, I could never get those rhythms right the first time or do improv. I remember in high school my teacher tried to force me to play in a jazz band to overcome these deficiencies but... yeah I quit after two weeks.
In nine years the dude never played pizzicato
Man, this video was a stretch. Happy you got it out of your system.
"As a rule, I don't like call-out videos, they are kind of a negative vibe." Yeah, and for good reason. This video has zero chill. The evidence behind this video is weak sauce, and I don't buy for a second that Adam " plagiarised" the language-clock analogy. Like what, any time I use that analogy, I'm supposed to couch it with "as invented whole cloth by youtuber Sideways..." no, it just becomes a meme in the cultural consciousness.
This feels like nit picking a few moments out of a youtuber's vast canon. If you get big enough, I'm sure somebody could find plenty of fault in your work.
I think adam is using the original definition of "meme" when referring to "meme quality". Not something inherently funny, but instead just an idea shared by people, like for example composers writing music using the letters in their names.
exactly^
And he even writes that he thinks the article is good lol
And isn't like Neely didn't used meme in that meaning other times. Although that was not good phrasing to conveying his thoughts.
This is really petty stuff. You find a few things to nickpick and then layer on the adjectives to let us know “this is REALLY egregious stuff.” Well, it’s not. Adam made one mistake about a guy’s credentials and you act like he made fun of the kid in the hospital.
But it was a BLATANT LIE and he made this other mistake too!!! How dare Adam Neely not be perfect!?? Clearly Neely knows nothing and is just a huge fraud smh
"This is really petty stuff."
Adam complained that a character in whiplash said "know the charts by heart", you don't get to complain about petty.
Best way to get plugged into fhe algorithm is "youtube beef" dont act like that exactly what ya doing. Hopefully we get some sick rap battles going
Imagine i totally agree with you. 3 examples in more than 10 years of the channel Is definitively not a Lot.
There were more, but I felt these 3 made each point I wanted to make. Plus, listing out like 7-12(?) examples would feel petty, though those instances are out there for sure for anyone who wants to go looking for them.
@@NAETEMUSIC "listing out like 7-12(?) examples would feel petty" - Yeah you really nailed it on not coming off as petty.
@@NAETEMUSIC Yeah spectacular failure on the "trying not to seem petty" front there chief.
@@Skaftholu It's funny that you guys don't seem to like petty yet are here defending... adam neely. The guy who thinks it's a crime if a jazz musician in a movie uses a common phrase "knows the charts by heart".
"classical musicians don't have rhythmic deficiencies-" he spoke to the loud sound of violinists not being able to play syncopates
These video essays are getting so out of control.
I’m gonna go ahead and give the disclaimer that I haven’t watched the whole video (only 10 mins in) but I gotta point this out.
The score indicates eighth note triplets, but the bass professor mentioned he had to play 3:2, and I’m assuming the metronome was giving him eighth notes because the rhythm he attempted to execute was placing 3 notes against two metronomic beats - which he failed to do accurately. Now, this is one moment of mishap but most jazz professors will not mess up this rhythm because they’ve internalized this so many times it’s second nature. I’ve also witnessed mistakes with the quarter note triplet from my classical professors, where I’ve had to correct them.
I’d also like to point out that you’re doing the same thing you’re accusing Adam of - he may be generalizing about a genre of music based on one’s mistake but you’re taking an example from THIS TH-cam video, setting aside Adam’s time in music school, where I’m sure he’s interacted with classical musicians and noticed that their time feel wasn’t the same as him and his jazz peers.
My wife is a classical musician and I’ve spent a lot of time around classical musicians, and their general sense of time is more “fit x amount of notes within y amount of beats” rather than precise metronomic “grid based” rhythms that jazz musicians aim for. The bass professor even described these “eighth note triplets” as fitting 3 notes within the span of 2 rather than explaining that it’s grouping 16th note triplets in two (the more and precise definition of “eighth note triplets”).
TLDR; disagree with you
You should watch the whole video. The video you reference is not the only video that's presented to prove the point.
@@AlexandMaggie07 Eh, I’m good. I’m not necessarily defending Adam, but I’m saying that point didn’t feel strong to me. I’m sure he has valid points further on, Adam is an imperfect being as all human beings are - just wanted to chime in on this specific point.
@@njrous I went through the whole video, I'll spare you the rest by saying that was still his strongest point of all. Go figure
For someome who claims to not like being negative, you sure spent a lot of time going through every comment on this video and favoriting the ones being overly negative toward Neely. You favorited a comment calling him a "clown"? Really?
that's what I'm noticing as well here :DD... it's ok to be proud of something you've spent hours on making and to show thanks to people who enjoyed what you made, but there are incredibly good points and critique in the comments that don't get a reply or a heart, I assume they just get dismissed because they're not a part of this anti-Adam Neely echo chamber that he's (even if unintentionally) created here.
@@trollikanavaxddd6387 Just to be clear, me not favoriting things I don't agree with is "negative" and hearting the things agree with is weird? Is that not how this website works?
@@NAETEMUSICit gets kinda weird when those liked comments are negatively charged no?
@@NAETEMUSIC it's just strange how you claim "I hold no biases and no hate is intended" but favorite hate comments... do u see the contradiction?
@@mono1931 I feel like it should be obvious from the video, I do not like Adam Neely, and despair a bit that he is the dominant force teaching music theory on youtube to a lot of under-privileged kids who rely on open source music theory for education, as I mentioned in the video (I think?) So yes, I do not like him and will agree with statements that say as much. The end.
I kept hearing about this plagiarism accusation and I was actually shocked to see this is what the actual accusation was. He used the same analogy, of which the concept of Language or phrasing is super common in music circles. Soloists often describe the idea of expanding your "musical vocabulary". The fact that Adam admitted it was similar because yeah, if watched that video and then someone asked me a question about the circle of fifths much later, that memory of the analogy is still probably rattling around in my head so I might use it? Why? Because it's a good analogy. And you know what else you do in music theory circles? You're constantly learning and sharing knowledge with others. I don't know man, compared to recent allegations of plagiarism from Hbomberguys recent expose, this really just seems like simple recall and not malicious theft.
"Do not go into a session with musicians, take their worst moments, and use it to generalise"
=> proceeds to cherrypick the worst chosen moments of Adam Neely's youth and generalise about him.
Piece of advice: do as much as he did, then engage dialogue with him, then make videos WITH him, laughing and discussing about the alledged mistakes. ;) Be smart.
Kind of a false equivalence, this guy is arguing not to generalize someone's technical skills as a musician based off one or two bad moments from one session, whereas this video is critiquing Adam Neely for not correcting misleading or outright incorrect information especially considering he's a big TH-camr and has a bunch of people blindly following him (see above; there are many other instances of this with Adam, the most absurd one being the one that correlates Western based music theory with white supremacy and uses it for a clickbait title, like most of his videos). It's okay to admit Adam's not perfect unless you have a vested interest from all the parasocial time you've probably spent with him.
@@danielplainview2584 "the most absurd one being the one that correlates Western based music theory with white supremacy" it's not just him who makes the correlation, there are studies and papers written on it, you can find them in every aggregator of academic papers (like google scholar). I'm not a huge fan of Adam either but his content is lukewarm at best, all the stuff he says/repeats is non controversial and already existing in academic conversations.
Adam was just the right guy at the right time: he's studied a lot, he's played a lot, has a lot of credentials/collabs and was one of the first people to talk about music theory. Boom. Nothing special about what he does. OP just seems mad that he isn't as big as Adam despite their content being similar... hence this absurd video.
I don't usually call people jealous but come on. adam neely wannabe, music that doesn't even get 1k views, 8k subs... really?
Did you just accuse a guy of plagiarism but then add a big "ALLEGED" disclaimer just to have an easy way out?
Wow! I was wrong about Adam Neely. I used to think he was an amazingly talented and insightful musician. But after learning what I've seen here, I have now decided that he is probably the best source of knowledge on music theory on the internet, in addition to being amazingly talented and insightful.
FWIW: Years ago, I wrote a piece for violin and electronics using a *lot* of rhythmic vocabulary from electronic dance music (mainly d'n'b). The violinist really struggled with the rhythm. He played the notes that were written but a lot of the dotted-8th cross rhythms were a bit... off... not "wrong" exactly but the vibe was a bit awkward. So I think there is something to the idea that classical music's rhythmic vocabulary differs in fundamental ways from jazz/pop/rock/EDM, and that it isn't necessarily easy for musicians from either side of that aisle to cross over -- imagine Skrillex trying to do a Viennese waltz, to go the other way too. (This isn't what Adam said -- fair criticism there.)
I am a guitar teacher and I found myself using the exact same analogy with music and languages when teaching to my students, I don't know if I picked it from the internet in general or Adam Neely in particular, but if you ask me, I think that making a case for plagiarism is a bit far fetched.
I even had a course called ¨Music and language¨ in collage, it is a widespread belief that music and language share a lot of similarities, and seeing music learning as language learning might bring some pedagogical benefits, and I heard numerous analogies reagarding this matter both as a student and later as a musician.
Anyhow, I consider it to be such a commonly shared knowledge among musicians that is hard for me to see it strictly as the intelectual property of Sideways, I mean watch any Victor Wooten video where he talks about how he learned music and you will get the vibe, and, perhaps the only bit Adam ripped of was using Spanish and Portugesse as examples, though I bet you would have made a case against him if he would have used Romanian and Italian languages for examples as well.
Wooten often insists on the connection between spoken languages and music. The idea is indeed not unique
as a teacher, try not using unnecessary analogies. there's no reason for it anyway. teach the thing, as the thing, for what it is, as a thing. no need for the misleading and distracting "this thing is like this other thing [which it is often not really] and that other thing does this other thing which is kind of like the original thing." no wonder everyone has such a hard time with basic, basic music fundamentals.
Plagiarism isn't when two people get the same idea. The case has been made that Neely knows Sideways and his content, and that the presentation was so similar that it, indeed, points to deliberate plagiarism. Two textbooks discussing the same topic are not plagiarism, as it's in the nature of the topic that they must discuss the same concepts. One textbook copying the same structure, figures, layout and style, on the other hand, plagiarises the other if it doesn't attribute the original work.
@@enysuntra1347 Couldn't it be that it's a pretty standard analogy/example used when teaching music theory, so both Adam and Sideways may have encountered it there? Like how linguists may illustrate "sound symbolism" to a layman by using the famous kiki/bouba example/experiment.
@@akmadsen No, it couldn't. I answered your point one post above. The similarities seem too striking, and Neely's deflection when asked about it aren't consistent with typical behaviour.
There are many instances of creators on TH-cam and elsewhere who reacted when pointing out similarities to other works. It's almost scripted: "Oh, well, great minds think alike, don't they? I was not aware of that, but a huge shoutout to [other creator]."
Why are you attacking people for stuff they did in 2016? Sure it is great if you want to clear up misinformation but what you're doing here is not just attacking their arguments but also attacking them as people for things in the past. If you think they're problematic please bring up something more recent.,
I don’t get this comment. Because stuff happened in 2016, it’s too far back? Also to your second point I literally did? The events in question run up 2018-2021. Is that not current enough?
I have come to the conclusion that although you raise good points, they are shrouded in some serious weird juju about adam my guy my dude my brodda. You absolutely have some feelings about adam that propel you to push the criticism beyond what his shortcomings call for. It could perhaps be jealousy or maybe you are annoyed at his holier than thou vibe or his robotic presentation or his success that we all want more of yeah? Im not bashing you by the way, i think its perfectly natural to be a little envious and not at all shameful, and that applies to every person ever definitely including myself.
But yeah he got some stuff wrong about classical musicians back in 2016, missed ragusea’s credentials also a long long time ago, and used an extremely common analogy to address a huge mostly casual layman type viewer base. 45 minutes and sighing and nitpicking over eight or quarter triplets is … pushing it. And trust me im no stan of his. And i did enjoy your video. But maybe try to see why you were so propelled to make this video because what he has done is not so so abysmal imo.
Because something on the internet annoyed me and I have the avenue to respond/rebut it. Same as mostly everyone out here. There is a longer more detailed reason I don’t particularly like Adam or think he is good for music Ed, but as I said at the end of my video his entire anti-classical/weird series of hit pieces annoyed the heck out of me. And just quickly in regards to “jealousy” that would imply that there is something about him as a musician that I admire/want and I can promise that is not the case
@@NAETEMUSIC oofta, this reply sort of proves the above point that you have a strong disdain for Adam that causes this video to go overboard into territory where you're slandering him by overstating your own conjecture and misrepresenting some of his statements pretty blatantly. You don't have to like Adam to think this stinks of some sort of hit piece.
@@timgehrsitz3267 Thank you. Bro really replied to accusations of personal bias with "Nuh uh, that guy sucks and I don't like him."
How does he expect to be taken seriously?
I think to use the same analogies for an explanation is like using the same arguments on a debate, if you want to consider the language analogy a plagiarism you should consider every time someone uses a similar argument in discussions a plagiarism too
There's also the part that this specific analogy for languages and the circle of fifths is overall a very good and understandable explanation and might have been used by a lot of people before sideways or adam. In fact, it is possible they could even have learned the concept because their teachers used this explanation, so they are just passing the information forward.
Yeah, I was trying to articulate this in another comment but you put it so much better. That circle of fifths languages explanation is definitely older than both their videos and quite possibly older than TH-cam itself. I'm pretty sure I heard it from my music teacher in the '90s.
Just a quick note, phase locking is a very broad term: when oscillating or repeating things that interact become synchronized. While you found a usage for it in psychology, it's also used this way in other fields (e.g. in electrical engineering).
Fair enough but since I couldn’t find any academic literature referencing it w/ regard to music I feel it’s fair to point it out in Adams video (unless you or anyone has the literature w/ reference to music in which case I will issue a correction)
Adam said "... which is called phase locking", which suggests it is common terminology. It may have been a bad formulation, but he doesn't commonly make such mistakes.
@@NAETEMUSIC The word phase comes up a ton in music, in all sorts of contexts. It's more common in Audio Engineering than in music theory, but the basic concept of phase applies in both subjects. It's just a maths word for how things are shifted against each other in time. The way he uses it is entirely correct.
And if you know phasing from a production standpoint, it makes sense
i would imagine that by a very wide margin the term is most common in the expression "phase locked loop", which enters public awareness in analog hi-fi tuners (if you can imagine such a thing once existing) as a means of locking onto a station, vs the drift of a basic circuit. it constantly monitors phase error between tuned & station frequency and moves the circuit frequency in the appropriate direction. keeping the peaks aligned keeps the frequencies identical [although the point here would just be the allusion to keeping beats in sync]. in simpler times it was quite the delight to see the LED blink on to announce it had achieved a lock. these days a digital tuner sorts it out with a quartz clock, if anybody even uses radio anymore. anyway, average hi-fi buyers once knew what a PLL was, but with varying degrees of understanding, so it's not surprising that "phase lock" would appear in the lexicon with various and flexible usage
Adam's actual point in "how and why classical musicians feel rhythm differently wasn't that classical musicians are somehow bad at rhythm, just that classical musicians "feel rhythm differently." He never says that they are "opposing" feelings of rhythm, and he never refers to this difference as a "deficiency." I can't let that section of the video go, you've got the wrong thesis, and it sure seems due to a bad-faith interpretation.
Yes, people are wrong on the internet sometimes, got it.
Yes, Adam shouldn't have tweeted "stay in your lane," and should take down the callout video.
Yes, he plagiarized Sideways by several metrics. He didn't realize it at the time. THAT HAPPENS. (George Harrison, "My Sweet Lord")
You don't need 45 minutes of yet another callout video that encourages harassment (nice job failing to include a "hey btw don't harass Adam Neely") to say that. Edit tighter, and be more responsible dude, cmon.
Yes, you are a clown.
Now, did we really need another useless comment from a brain-dead fanboy like you telling us how stupid you are? The biggest atrocity however is comparing blatant and shitty plagiarism to goddamn My Sweet Lord. what's next, you gonna compare his shitty response tweet to "This Song"?
"Edit tighter" lol, what an actual schmuck
Yeah, this could've been just a very cool opportunity to give better explanations and additional information about stuff that Adam may have reported, as a human, incorrectly; this man clearly has a great knowledge of what he's talking about, and despite I'm curious about the topics per se I can't ignore the fact that the definitely unnecessary butthurt gives him the very same biased attitude he accuses Adam Neely of having.
Back in the day, Adam's video actually introduced me to a new understanding of tempo; of course, I later found out that some of the information wasn't 100% accurate, of course that video alone gave me none of the material that I had analyse in order to learn something new, but at least it gave me an input: Adam with that video told me "hey, want to sound more like this? then this is kind of what you should look for".
I think the author of this video has completely missed the point and misinterpreted the words of a guy that's making TH-cam videos that, yeah, are normally watched by music nerds, but that in order to get some more views NEED to be easily understood potentially by anyone: no person relatively fluent in English will watch Adam's video and go around saying "classical musicians can't follow a metronome!!!!!", and EVEN IF they will, IF Adam has to be criticised for the spread of incorrect information HIS THESIS must be attacked, not the person, and I think this video sort of walks on a very thin line to me.
@@francescopicco_fputf does he have a great knowledge? he doesn't seem to know what a circle of fifths is
Great shout on the "My Sweet Lord" comparison. I was just going to say Harisson claimed he wasn't consciously copying The Chiffons' song, yet Apple and George still had to pay out to the original songwriters.
Most of the criticisms of his videos, can be applied to this video in tenfold. Especially the part about the apparent ‘bullying’, and taking short stems out of context…
I respect the pedantic nitpicking of Neely's music theory. However, in your moralising section about Neely "bullying" Ragusea, I think you are being hypocritical. You lambast Neely for failing to consider that his comments might incite shitheads to harass Ragusea. Given that you seem sensitive to internet people being bullying shitheads, I'd expect you to remind people that you do not condone abuse directed at internet personalities including Adam Neely. This is especially pertinent given the quality of criticism being levelled. In Neely's case, he is merely criticising Ragusea's _ideas_ that he published about music theory. In your case, you are criticising Neely, morally, _as a person_ . Attacking someone's ideas (as Neely did to Ragusea) might invite internet bullying, but attacking someone personally seems much more likely to do so. Therefore, if Neely acted irresponsibly by failing to remind people not to bully and be shitheads, you are also guilty of this, only more so.
(Of course, I should now add: this criticism does not mean to say that Naete deserves to receive abuse or harassment. Please don't do that.)
I do agree that he should have clarified that he does not want anyone to harass Neely over any of this, but I disagree with some of your points. Neely did more than criticize Ragusea's ideas, he made the (false) claim that he was not a musician/musicologist, but a journalist. Whether or not this was intentional (I believe it was more than likely unintentional), it is false information, and Neely has a responsibility as a educational content creator to do a proper amount of research before making such claims. I still don't believe that this qualifies as "attacking him as a person," but nevertheless, you are downplaying what Neely said.
This video is also not attacking Neely as a person, it is just criticizing mistakes that he has made. There is a very big difference between criticizing someone's moral character and criticizing the morality of actions that they have made in the past. Although, yes, the criticism given through this video is far more direct (mentioning Neely in the title) and detailed, it's also worth pointing out the level of influence each creator has. Neely, one of, if not the, most popular music theory channels on TH-cam, was criticizing Ragusea, who had a very small presence on the internet at the time, if any at all. This channel, with only 5 thousand subscribers, is criticizing Adam Neely, who has over a million subscribers. Though, like I said, he still has a responsibility to clarify that his viewers shouldn't go out and harass Neely over these mistakes, the weight of that responsibility is far smaller.
I agree with Adam about rhythmic deficiencies, I played with a really good classically trained musician at church who really struggled with music with certain rhythms because he was so stuck reading the notes on the page
And that is just one experience out of thousands… and the worst aspect of this problem is that they are normally incacpable of recognizing their deficiencies. Most classical musicians think that Jazz/Groove musicians are 'rhythmically deficient' because when applicable, they tap their foot. Need I say any more?…
How many classical musicians make people want to dance. Hardly any!
@@timpullen4941 Well, that is the "Rhythm on another level" that Adam is referring to. And the author of the video doesn't even really understand… Of course, making people want to dance is such a "lower-class occupation" that the maker of our video would just scoff at my comment. BUT how much do you want to bet that he couldn't make anyone want to dance > even if he wanted to ? If he could, he would play Stravinsky and Bartok (and Lutoslawski)a hell of a lot better…
This is such a beautiful example of a bad faith debate. The sheets amount information that you manage take out of context is truly overwhelming. So much so that I can’t fit it in a comment. You take a 6 minute video about how jazz musicians and classical musicians feel time somewhat differently and turn it into a 20 minute rant that completely fails to understand the very basic premise of the video it’s analyzing. Like Adam makes it very clear in his original video that he’s not trying to say classical musicians cant feel time, and just to make sure I wasn’t crazy I rewatched the video and a very key moment of the video is when he says (paraphrasing here) “classical musicians react to timing and jazz/rock/pop musicians anticipate” he even literally says that he’s (again paraphrasing) “not saying one is better or worse but they’re different”. Now I really hope you read this comment and I feel like you might, you’ve been responding to a lot of other comments. Also I know based on reading some of your responses that you weren’t expecting this video to blow up the way it has and I definitely feel sympathy for you there. You made a fun call out video about a TH-camr you don’t like and then it blew up and hundreds of people started commenting about how bad your video is. That sucks. But your arguments are bad and a lot of people have been providing you with sound criticism that you haven’t been lending any credence to. Often saying something along the lines of (paraphrasing 😅) “no one wants to have a factual debate”. So let’s debate some facts. In Adams video about the Vox Christmas video Adam brings up Adam Regusea once. That clip of him saying he was a journalism professor or whatever it said is the only instance in Adam neelys video that even remotely references Adam Regusea. His whole video (which is less than 5 minutes) is almost exclusively about how the argument made by vox isn’t very good something that Adam Regusea would agree with as he states in his response video. Now another thing that I find truly misleading and malicious in your video is when you try to paint the picture that Adam Neely was somehow responsible for the twitter bullying of Regusea, which first off I wanna say does suck, I like Adam reguseas videos a lot and him being harassed on twitter about a shitty vox video is sad. But Adam Neely is not responsible for that. I don’t think he even knows who Adam regusea is. You said it yourself they have never interacted publicly and I’d like to say again that Neely barley mentioned him in his video. Anyways to say that adam Neely is somehow responsible for reguseas bullying is just wrong. Neelys video doesn’t have that many views compared to most of his other videos and it has substantially less views that reguseas own response video does (something you failed to mention even tho you were very specific to mention view counts for most other videos you referenced). Another thing I find particularly gross is when you clip regusea talking about how people he admired on twitter were telling him to “stay in his lane” then cleverly cut to that clip of Adam neelys video to suggest that adam was the one saying that. But Neely never said anything like that. As you said in you own video they never interacted publicly, and in Reguseas response video he only brings up adam Neely once at the very end of the video to talk about how he thinks independently produced TH-cam videos are a better way to teach music theory. And one last quick thing to mention in case you didn’t understand the basic premise of Adam Reguseas response video, you know that whole video was to talk about how Vox didn’t do a great job making a video and twitter (not adam Neely) blamed him right. Anyways onto the whole sideways thing. This one is pretty easy I think. Sideways and Neely are friends and I sideways made a good analogy in a video that was presented in an original way but was based on some very basic principles. Music is a language so it’s very common and easy to compare it to other languages. So when sideways says something like that in a video while it is an original idea it’s a fairly basic one. And yes Adam Neely did say nearly the same thing. But you did just watch a 30 minute video about how a different musician named Adam was featured in a similar video produced by Vox and how that Adam had a shitty time working with Vox. So it’s safe to assume that Adam Neely was afforded some of the same issues that Adam regusea has with Vox. Also Adam was trying to explain how the idea of music as a language is a pretty common one in those tweets that you flashed on screen but you clearly missed that point. Which is a shame because it’s an obvious one. The kind of point that you’d see in a shitty TikTok made by a 3rd party person with no connection to Adam Neely or sideways and think “that’s an good point” before then thinking for another second and saying “actually it’s not that good”. Listen my guy. You clearly know a lot about classical music and you clearly hate Adam Neely. And that’s fine. But you don’t need to make a 40 minute video trying desperately to explain why you hate him with very weak arguments that rest entirely on a foundation of fundamentally not understanding his videos and clipping him saying things out of context. If you have to make your argument in bad faith to make your argument then you should just not make that argument. You can still hate Adam Neely, you don’t need to fabricate stories of him harassing people to not like the guy. And I get that your whole message is that you want there to be good representation for the music theory community on TH-cam, so to end this absurdly long comment (which I am not going to proofread) on a lighter note I am a college student currently in my 4th year as a music ed major and Adam neelys videos helped me a lot. They got me excited about music and help expose me to the culture of music and to theoretical concepts early on in my career. Thank you if you read this I literally spent like two hours watching this video because I had to rewatch like 7 other videos to make sure I got my shit straight
The tone of this video is absolutely unnecessary aggressive considering how respectful Adam is. In no way was be be condescending he just pointed out an observation.
About the plagiarism, I was using this exact same analogy years before 2016. I think I learned it at some point in solfege class in french music school, which was well over 20 years ago. Also this visualisation of the circle of fifth is standard in music theory textbooks. I wouldn't by any means view plagiarism here. The other points are valid though.
Yes I think MY one error with this vid was not emphasizing enough that I am presenting SIDEWAYS claim that he feels he was plagiarized, so I therefore looked into it. But the real general gist is that, it seems slightly messed up to my eye to do to a friend without at least throwing a disclaimer in there. I do believe if this was university setting Adam would be in trouble, but as far as academic threshold for plagiarism? Idk I have my own opinion on the subject but thats why I threw so many disclaimers in this video
@@NAETEMUSICeven if Adam wanted to include a disclaimer/reference to Sideways, im not sure that Vox would put it in one of those clickbaity type videos. doesn't really fit the vibe and the pacing. i do think they should have done it, i just dont think it's necessarily a sneaky attempt from Neely at stealing content.
genuinely, it just feels like he watched Sideways' video one day, learned that analogy, and when doing his part in the Vox video he just remembered the analogy just like he'd remeber any other music theory concept: detached from where he heard it from.
his defense on twitter wasn't super good, but apart from "i didn't remember it was from Sideways" i don't think there's much else he could have said. if you start with the assumption that he purposefully stole that analogy then his defense seems like a cheap attempt at finding excuses, but if he really just forgot the origin of the analogy then what else could he have said?
@@CerealBowlSystem That is most likely the case, yeah.
@@NAETEMUSIC got to agree with Denis. Sometimes people can come up with the same idea without copying it. The circle of 5ths is the same and always will be, and for the languages.. well romantic languages are most commonly known for being related and I can't think of the top of my head of others except for Japanese Chinese Korean. Some people know that English is germanic, but that's about it when it comes to *of the top of your head ideas*. I really think it was parallel thinking. On all the other things I agree though. Adam is a bit smug and condecendying.
@@thediminished98 OT, but: Chinese, Korean and Japanese are in completely separate language families. (There are attempts to demonstrate a common origin of the Japonic and Koreanic families, but AFAICT this is far from consensus.)
The point of confusion is probably that Korean and Japanese _writing systems_ are heavily influenced by Chinese, to the point where a lot of font characters serve double-duty for representing Chinese and Japanese text (albeit with usually completely different meanings and pronounciations).
But despite strong cultural exchange, there is no known common lineage at all between the spoken languages themselves (which date back centuries earlier than the adoption of writing systems) - not the way e.g. French, Hindi, Norwegian, Persian and Russian can all be traced back to a (tentatively reconstructed) Proto-Indo-European.
(Also, languages descended from Latin are called "Romance languages", not "romantic" 🤓 )
Point is, languages are complicated, and I'd agree that Spanish/Portuguese vs. Chinese or Japanese (representing stereotypically """exotic""" cultures) seem like the most obvious examples to use for a US audience.
He's right about "classical musicians " deficiencies in rhythm bro. I was brought up as a "classical" musician , and have noticed the same thing he points out, among many classical musicians. Try not to be butthurt about it, just improve your rhythm , play some funk or something, transcribe a solo. You're right about the conducting thing though.
S1) Other commenters have pointed out that "phase locking" is indeed a thing, but otherwise, this section makes sense. Good rebuttal.
S2) Qualifications problems, sure, but by "meme", he means it's a meme. The supposed "christmas chord" is a meme, and pretending otherwise won't stop trolls from harassing Ragusea. Demanding videos be taken down is also problematic, as it can shield the offender from scrutiny
S3) Two people who spent a lot of time talking about any subject with each other are going to share similar/identical analogies. This is normal.
Ultimately, it seems like the biggest weakness here is one of Neely not doing sufficient research on the topics he discusses, in only two presented examples, which is fewer example than you presented. Combined with the crying mask wojak meme in section 1, it feels as though this video is primarily a way to vent anger towards someone who is (by and large) a valuable music theory resource
Regarding S2, If a journal made a grave factual error, wouldn’t you expect, even demand, it issue a correction, if not a withdrawal? While I’m certainly no lawyer, I wonder if Ragusea could sue Neely for defamation.
Sure, I can agree with the first couple points that Adam should've made those (very old) videos with more care, and should have probably been a bit more understanding to the Christmas song situation, but the last point about plagiarism... I don't think you can fault him for that.
Ask any western person to name two closely related languages and they probably won't name Hindu and Urdu, they'll probably mention Spanish and Portuguese because they're more familiar with those countries. Now ask them to think of the most foreign region, they'll probably answer East Asia as it is geographically and linguistically very remote to the Americas and Europe.
Even if you only focused on the language aspect, languages and cultures are an easy thing to understand for most people. Music has repeatedly been thought of as a way to speak and keys can be thought of like languages to many musicians, including me and many of the viewers.
the 4 languages he listed were not the problem
just that he stole the entire idea.
@@thefriendlydefault9684
What idea did he “steal”? The circle of fifths? Using language as an analogy for playing music?
These are both incredibly old and widespread concepts in music. They predate both Sideways and Neely by such a wide margin that to claim Sideways has any kind of ownership of them is frankly moronic.
Source: am musician
I lean towards the idea that it's probably _not_ really plagiarism, or at least if it is, it's not a particularly severe form of it. But it's worth noting that plagiarism is not some simple black and white thing. The explanation this video provided did a good job of demonstrating that, I thought. The problem isn't that it used the same languages. Or that it used a clock face. Or that it used languages as a metaphor for musical keys. All of these are, on their own, completely natural ways to explain things that could be arrived at independently. What makes the plagiarism allegations more reasonable is the _synthesis of all these different elements together._
To use some made-up maths, imagine 90% of people talking about keys would show it on the clock diagram. And 90% of people would describe keys as languages. And 90% of people would feel it relevant to point out the connection of nearby keys being like closely-related languages. And 90% of people would pick Spanish and Portuguese as examples of closely-related languages. And 90% of people would choose an East Asian language as the distantly-related language. And 90% of people would put all of those details together in the specific order the Sideways video did. Every one of those steps, on its own, seems completely reasonable. Put them all together and whether or not it would follow the exact same narrative in a video completely independently is basically a coin toss.
And it's that more holistic approach to looking at the question of plagiarism that is missing from so many of the Neely-defending comments. Everything Ethan is alleging looks absurd if you only analyse one thing at a time, but it becomes more reasonable (even if I still ultimately don't think I agree it's _as bad_ as he alleges) if you step back and look at it all holistically.
I have watched Adam for years. I don't always agree with him (or honestly any music theory TH-camr), but that's kind of the point. I remember watching his video on orchestral instrumentalists and, yeah, it matches my limited experience watching and playing in orchestras. I'm a jazz and concert band percussionist and really struggle to play with conductors who conduct ahead of the beat. Even there, I found some of Adam's claims dubious... but again, that's the point.
Second claim is really interesting, especially given that one of Adam's now-famous cliches is the "nostalgia" chord (minor four). My random thought here is that Vox did their guest really dirty here by introducing him as a journalism professor. I mean, I've been in education for the better part of two decades, and I could imagine similar blowback if I was in a high profile video that labeled me as a "music composer." I mean, I am, yes, but that's not the capacity in which I was speaking. Should Adam have done his research before saying the article didn't consult a musician? Sure, but one could be forgiven when Vox didn't do it's job properly. I suspect it was the uproar about Vox hiring a journalism professor to talk authoritatively about music, and getting it so very wrong, that brought it to Adam's attention.
Third thing. To answer your question, if an educational colleague of mine used my analogy, I'd chuckle and be flattered that I taught him something worthwhile. All good ideas in academia are "stolen" and built upon (more accurately "iterated").
If you're looking for the origin of this particular analogy, Victor Wooten has been teaching "Music as a Language" for more than a decade. If you apply this universal concept to the circle of fifths, it's not a huge jump to get to Spanish/Portuguese (two languages known to English audiences as incredibly similar) or Asian languages.
As an educator, it's really impossible for me to "cite my sources" for every phrase, analogy, and educational in-road I use. I certainly do if I can, but the iterations build up and it's difficult to disassemble them all. Honestly, as Adam said, sometimes I don't even remember where I first heard an analogy that I thought was particularly effective, even if it came from a close friend or mentor.
I think the big takeaway here is that we're all human. I certainly hope my life is never held to the degree of scrutiny that some in the public eye are.
he is a parrot. the tells are all over his videos and have been for years. no real knowledge just parroting, who also has a skill for making clickbait.
true, every podcaster I love sometimes says things I don't agree with, however, I"M not going to nitpick every word anyone says. Its simple, I either like a podcaster or I don't. I really like Adam Neely, even if I don't agree with everything he says, most of the time his vids have great content.
@@pocket1684 Probably it will even come out that Adam Neely is a closet MAGA Republican. Who knows.
@@superblondeDotOrg I Think he is. I just saw a vid.. not really
On the second point, I'd add to it that he's framing the whole situation as if Neely himself is responsible for the Ragusea situation, that the whole thing was a dogpile that Neely himself started and that's just not true.
It's not good faith to exaggerate his part in that whole drama.
He's acting as if acknowledging the situation as a meme is the equivalent of kicking a man while he's down, and it's not even similar.
Also, it assumes that Ragusea's ego is so fragile that such a gentle mentioning of the situation is going to hurt him as if the guy isn't a grown man who can overcome the situation. It might suck and I have sympathy for him, but it Neely mentioning it is somehow damaging to a severe degree, that's kinda absurd.
Re phase locking:
* Fractals in Music, Introductory Mathematics for Musical Analysis, Charles Madden 1999 used in reference to tone.
* Intra- and interbrain synchronization and network properties when playing guitar in duets. Saenger, Mueller, Lindenberger 2012, if one think's Neely is referring to neurophysiology which discusses interpersonally shared task, guitarists playing a duet in the study.
* Synchronization of metronomes, James Pantaleone 2002
* The Sounds of Many Hands Clapping, Neda, et. al, 2000.
I do not understand NAETE's definition to be what Neely is describing. Physical metronomes are started at the same tempo but at different times will not be in sync with one another, but if they are somehow coupled, they will eventually phase lock and all beat together. NAETE is just pulling a random other definition to show Neely is wrong rather that even attempting to locate a definition that is even close, such as that of a phase locked loop in electronics.
I found the first half interesting and informative and the second half slanderous. The stuff about Adam Ragusea (big fan of him too) and the "plagiarism" charge are pretty big and really contrast the first second where you harp on about not taking people at their worst. I'd like to see a continued pattern of bullying and plagiarism to really think that Adam is guilty of those things. I find it really hard to believe Neely holds any ill will towards Ragusea, it just feels like you're reading into something you want to be there. Likewise with the plagiarism, just because it isn't anywhere else on TH-cam doesn't mean we don't use the language analogy for the Circle of Fifths commonly among musicians. Wrong about a lot of things? It feels like it's just one thing from a long time ago.
I agree with this comment. The only valid part of this video IMO is the first section on Adam’s notorious “classical musicians can’t feel rhythm” video. As pointed out in this video, Adam himself has responded to some of the shortcomings in his original video. Should Adam have also taken down the original video to avoid misleading further viewers? Maybe. I would be intrigued to know whether Adam has attempted to edit the video at all using the online TH-cam editor to remove any of the more misleading bits, or if the video still stands as it did when first uploaded (as far as I know, there is no way to know whether the video has been edited).
So yeah, Adam made a video at the beginning of his TH-cam career where he overreached with his arguments and was too selective in the examples he gave, to the point that the video is a bit misleading. Perhaps he should take the video down and replace it with a more accurate, revised version. Perhaps not. But I think that is the only thing mentioned in this video that Adam has actually dropped the ball on, so it does feel a little over the top to have a whole 45minute exposé in response.
@@DavidBennettPiano
this is why most music analysis of anything musical is always opinion. Both of you can be right and wrong at the same time.
@@DavidBennettPiano Amazing.
The previous comment completely ignores what was actually shown in the video itself. For example, it's pointed out that Neely still has the video up where he blatantly lies about Ragusea. And the circumstancial evidence about about usage of analogy involved also Neely himself admitting that he has seen videos by the man. Not a big deal, if it wasnt for the fact that he got a big prize.
Yet, apparently a person like you is content with this happening.
Furthermore, your defense is ridiculous. His "shortcomings" aren't only limited to what was mentioned here and he wasn't some rando either in any of the content discussed here. He was already established, making the bucks through TH-cam, just like you are.
@@ilyazaytsev5269Adam Neely lied? I really don't believe that he did. The point that this dude brings in the video is weak, he was talking about Ragusea linkedin but he clearly didnt think that Adam Neely simply didnt looked at Ragusea linkedin to know about he degrees in music. In the vox video Ragusea is framed as a jornaulist, so is expected that most of the people who watch the video will think he is a journalist and dont know about his years in music learning. Adam probably didnt knew about Ragusea music knowledge, it wouldnt make any sense he lie about it.
Also, the whole part of the video that he just tries to put a part of the blame of the bullying on Neely really is just straight messed up
@@alex11v3 I don't know what to tell you. You say "I don't believe he did", yet if we go to the channel of Neely, the video "What makes a song sound like Christmas?" is still there and Neely lies right there in the intro - not even a minute into the video. Saying "Adam Neely just didn't do proper research" isn't no goddamn excuse that suddenly makes you not culpable. The question here isn't whenever Neely lied on purpose or not, the question here is that Neely lied and, to this day, has done nothing about it despite the harassment that Adam Ragusea has received in part because of Neely. No apologies, no nothing. You say it's "straight messed up" to blame Neely, yet in Raguseas own video, Ragusea quite clearly shows a message that he received (while making it - so many years after!) a message that links directly to Neelys video.
Only reason to call the points brought up in this video as "weak" would be that the video simply doesn't go far enough. There is even more to criticize him for. However, the video does make a strong points already as seemingly people here have difficulties refuting any of this stuff.
Since you mention bullying - want to know whats messed up? Neely saying that a girl in TikTok got bullied because of Fux. There's one incredibly messed up argument that makes zero sense. You don't seem to have any problems with that though.
These vids are almost 8 years old tho, how is Adam now?
45 minutes that could have been a TH-cam Short.
I remember the first time I heard one of my music teachers using the foreign language analogy to explain improvisation/modes/modulations, on the literal other side of the planet, in 1996.
Sorry dude, but the video is absolutely excruciating to watch. Seeing a grown man being nitty picky on small and minor details, rewriting history, overblowing interpretation, and the very stupid accusation of "plagiarism" for such a common concept....to me all of this feels very childish and absolutely disconnected.
video comes off in a defensive way. you are sore that a jazz musician said something bad about your ability to do rhythm. but people have to already like you in order to side with you on this. what steps did you take to appear likeable in this video?
Hey man I have just watched the first section of this video, here are my thoughts.
I think you have slightly missed Adam's point. Looking at the Attack-Sustain-Decay-Release diagram for a string instrument and comparing it to drums, they are totally different. The point that Adam was making is, in playing with a drum or kit, you take out all ambiguity as to where the start of the note is Supposed to be. In any pitched instrument if you were to have the note start with a sudden attack instead of fading in, you would always get a front (or "wall") of sound as the note goes from not being played to suddenly being played; this would sound to us like a click sound (like a percussive hit, funny enough), since it happens so fast that your brain can't immediately determine what its frequency is. All of your counter points wherein you point to string pieces that require musical accuracy, still doesn't have the same accuracy that is required when playing with a kit drum.
In your specific example of Haydn's The Seven Last Words of Christ, the music has an awful lot of rhythmic freedom, you actually perfectly show how there isn't this repeated expected rhythm. Take the extract of Haydn and conduct along, you'll find the entry in bar 2 is quite late, you would expect (with no rubato) that bar 2 would start about a 16th note sooner than it does. This is totally fine in the context of classical music, and because musicians communicate with each other and everyone synchronises with repeated practice of that piece and clear communication. It's what the music is intended to sound like.
So the point that Adam was making, is literally just the differences in the types of music require different skills of the players. If you are playing in a jazz or funk context for example, the drummer simply MUST lock in with the rest of the band: you need to be able to confidently feel the pulse of the music and predict every sub-division of any note, the only way you can get it to such a degree of accuracy is by being consistent enough that you can predict the next note. This is where his term Phase-locking comes in. The reason you cannot find anything online about phase-locking is because it's too general of a concept to be confined to just music. Being 'in phase' refers to any group of repeating events that occur simultaneously, or in other words, are synchronised.
The overall point is that classical musicians don't place as much emphasis on the predicting of where the beat will be, using the previous beats. Instead, the music is synchronised using communication of when to play, which will never be as accurate. Just think about it, what will allow you a better reaction time off a starting block in a sprint?
a) "3...2...1...Go!",
or b) "Go!".
If the 3...2...1... are all equally spaced, you can get very very close to starting Exactly when the Go is shouted. In fact, if they're exact, you could get your start time to within 5ms of the actual "Go". However if they weren't equally spaced you may be slightly early or late off the block, and if you aren't given any way of predicting when the "Go" will occur then you rely purely on reaction skills (like when a conductor starts a piece with no warning).
In the case of Bernstein conducting Mahler, the point that Adam was making is not necessarily that they are accidently out of phase with each other. As a trumpet player myself, I am all too aware of the opening to the funeral march. The point Adam is making is that there is no NEED for accuracy. Bernstein is giving a rough idea of when to play but ultimately if the trumpet player was a tiny bit late or early it would make no difference. Also to be clear here I am talking about time frames that are on the order of tens of milliseconds. You may think "surely that's a moot point, of course you don't need to be super accurate like that", but that is precisely the point of the video! You don't in this context, but if you were to be even slightly out when playing jazz or funk (even 10ms) it is jarring and noticeable in the context of grooves.
Here is an article on drummers to back up this claim
www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/04/25/the-possibilian
(just ctrl + f and search "drummer")
I didn't watch past iteration 1, I am simply weighing in on the first section of this video. I also am not sitting here defending slander, to imply that classical musicians have no sense of rhythm is wrong, and yeah I understand that you can interpret his video like that. I just think that you missed the core point he was getting at, he wasn't just saying "Classical musicians are Bad".
Also, I would like to disclaim, I am a classically trained trumpet player who also plays jazz. I have over 10 years of experience playing in a lot of groups of both Jazz and Classical, amongst bands, orchestras, jazz groups of all sizes, studio recordings, choral, and all sorts of other groups. Please do reply to discuss, I'm not in a murderous fit of rage that someone made a critique video, just raising a point.
around 6:21, you keep saying the professor plays through the sequence with absolute accuracy when he's clearly not. He's playing something that's closer to dotted 8th 16th 16th than 8th triplet, and I listened twice very carefully.
phase locking is a mathematical term used to indicate synchronisation in wave forms or other oscilating patterns, used frequently in physics and electronics. phase generally refers to the displacement of a wave form relative to some other point. it is applicable to the thing adam neely is talking about here. I think he is using the term in a natural, linguistic way, not as a technical term. Much the same way that to musical textbook probably won't have a definition of the term "swap" in the glossary, but a musician may very well say "swap those two chordes." It's not a special musical term, it's just a term, and it means what it means.
I don't disagree with the rest of the assessment here. you mentioned wanting a reference, and as a mathmetician/physicist this is just a possible explanation I thought of off the top of my head.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4224089/
I honestly didn’t even make it 2 minutes into your video, and as a composer, I can confirm that SOME classical musicians (high register sections) tend to struggle with time as a whole, but this isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. When I write string runs for the violin section, I don’t really think about if it’s easy to count because everything is scales, something that is muscle memory for most players. And if anyone want to contest this, I’ve been playing clarinet for… we won’t be discussing how many years… that point aside, time is not the most important thing in classical music, time is going to change in every performance for a litany of reasons, younger ensembles are typically going to take it slower while high school, college, and semiprofessional ensembles will take it a hair fast to show off skillset, while pros will be closer to the recommended tempo… or take it at whatever tempo the conductor/program director decides because that’s just how this works. I’ve had music played by all ranges of musicians and finding what they changed or added is always exciting for me when listening
100% agree. I played classical piano for 13 years before being my high school teacher tried to shove me into a jazz band... it did not work well. The comment about muscle memory is something I never thought about till now but it's absolutely true. I'm awful with sight reading complex rhythms but if I hear it once I can get a feel for it pretty quickly, and over time I feel like you somewhat subconsciously recognise patterns and the overall feel of how things should be played. I would say the process is a lot more interpretive and indirect than a jazz musician or drummer. It's not a bad thing, just highlights the differences in style and philosophy across genre's which I honestly find fascinating.
You know you've made it when others start making videos about you.
Yep, if you want, you can rip anyone apart. I've heard artists I love make statements I don't agree with or say something about musical history that is not correct.
You're using the word thesis wrong. You're using a lot of words wrong. Use better words right
"No one would argue Sideways invented the concept of using languages as an analogy to different key centers and their relationships"
Except Sideways does argue exactly that lol.
"No one would argue he invented this really common analogy, and no one would argue that he invented the Circle of Fifths, but using both at the same time? That's clearly original." --- this is like saying "ok, I'm not saying he invented the piano, and I'm not saying he invented the I - V - vi -IV chord progression, and I'm not saying he invented singing, but doing all 3 at the same time? That's original. No one else can do that now without citing him."
Exactly, this point was such a joke. Kinda ruined the whole video. It was such a reach. It is such a natural analogy to use also, not even like it's something that requires creativity to think of.
This
The video is kind of silly the whole way through, though I do think the general point about not judging other people based on their worst moments is one worth repeating.
ngl adam neely taught me a lot and now i am good thanks to adam EDIT: dis a lot of likes thx
I love how he thinks Adam’s like fucking dr. Evil and just performing some premeditated misinformation campaign. Lol? He’s using content to make example of his pov.
2:41 How many times did anyone else play with classical musicians? I had the same experience with different classical musicians (also including professionals) on a number of occasions.
5:44 If you think the professor had "absolutely zero timing issues" then you obviously don't hear the metronome in the two bars before the triplets.. he is clearly rushing. But yeah, it's just this performance which shouldn't be used to extrapolate. But my experience is the same as Adam's.. and not based on only 1 musician.
1. Since, we are in the space of Anecdotes, I stick by my assessment that most classical musicians handle complex rhythms brilliantly, it does not mean, however that they are instantaneously amazing funk players (they usually aren't) but again, not what Adam argued here
2. All you need to do is grab a baton and conduct through his playing to see that you are wrong.
@@NAETEMUSICWhy should I use a baton to check that he is rushing? There is a metronome for a reason. Of course one can say that he’s playing it “musically” by not following a strict tempo.. but then what should be the point to address the ability to play an exact rhythm in the first place?
@@johnsausage he is following a strict tempo and if you moved your hand in a 4/4 conducting pattern, you would see that. The only deviation is the natural human micro variations in exact tempo that all humans have when playing to click. They are not noticeable enough to be considered "out of time"
@@NAETEMUSICSo obviously we have a different interpretation or lets say threshold (?) for playing “out of time” and “micro variations”. Even in the part where he plays without metronome the eights triplets are not precise (it’s something between 1/8 triplets and one 1/8 + two 1/16). Call it micro variations, I call it just out of time. Every drummer able to play that rhythm will tell you so. Some drummers that can’t play on time just say “well the music needs to live” as an argument for them to not work on their skills 😂. If they can speed up or slow down on purpose it’s a different story of course 😄
@@johnsausage he played in time, if you cannot hear that, or you cannot conduct along with the metronome and realize that I advise you to practice your rhythms and ear training
I'm surprised you couldn't find literature on phase locking in music, because I've found plenty pretty quickly., e.g. Burger et al.(2014) "Hunting for the beat in the body: on period and phase locking in music-induced movement", Front. Hum. Neurosci.8.
Most of the literature I could find would also mention rhythmic entrainment or embodies cognition - both terms come up in a number of Neely videos. It should also be noted that rhythmic phase as a purely musical notion can also be found in the works of Steve Reich, like Piano Phase, Violin Phase and Four Organs.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4224089/
ii-7b5 and iv-6 are the same thing with a different root - the effect is virtually the same. Did people seriously get mad at Ragusea because he inverted a chord?
As he stated in his video, amazingly yes. The twitter harassment was relatively intense given how niche music theory twitter is.
As an amateur musician I have a deep love for music, but a particular fondness for Classical and Jazz. I have a deep respect for both classical and jazz musicians. I am retired now but in my 50 year career in science, I and others were always subject to peer review. That led us to strive for accuracy and kept us humble regardless of the level of expertese we had obtained. I generally found that the more one learned, the more one is of how much they don't know. Being critiqued is healthy as long as it is in the spirit of accuracy. I will add that I don't think Winton Marsalis, Herbie Hanccock or Leonard Berstein (God rest his soul) have or had any crossover rhythmic problems.
While Adam's behavior might be problematic, this video of yours is whiny, and that's worse.
Case closed.
The thing is, if Adam's behaviour is considered problematic, then literally all of Music youtube is problematic. He's just going after Neely because he's one of the biggest channels.
25:08 LMFAO adam ragusea's video you included , has a screen shot of the adam neely chritsmas song you showed as an example of bullying, in the video ragusea uses neelys video as an positive example, you clearly are using this mans struggles as a way to dig at neely.
The lifecycle of youtube. A "genre" of videos become popular, lots of channels start becoming big by making that kind of content. Then the second wave starts, of channels trying to gain viewers by "exposing" those channels.
If I watch Linus tech tips, youtube recommends channels whose only content is to "expose" them. If I watch bass/guitar videos, youtube recommends channels whose only content is to "expose" big guitar/bass channels. When I view music theory channels, ..... you get the idea.
This kind of leeching is extremely annoying. But people love "drama" and the algorithm pushes whatever keeps people engaged.
I remember seeing the video about classical musicians at the time and thinking Neely was being a bit unfair to classical musicians. You did a good job of pointing out that his examples were probably not the best to use. However, the examples you cited as tight rhythmically weren't as tight as would be expected from a jazz, r&b, rock, etc. musician nowadays. That might be because I've been involved with electronic music as much as "real" instruments. Younger musicians hear older popular music and think it's "loose" compared to the way that people play now. I think you might have proved his point better than he did. Related point, phase locking comes from music software used to produce electronic music and I'm assuming made it's way into jazz that way.
As a casual listener, my sense is that modern American music (Rock, Jazz, R&B/Funk, Hip Hop, Pop, etc) place a much higher emphasis on groove than pre-1900s European composers did. Listening to Telemann's Rejouissance, the musicians are definitely synchronized in the fast-paced, staccato melodies, but I still wouldn't say that it *grooves*. It might just be the lack of drums, but it feels a long way away from James Brown's Funky Drummer. The criticisms of Adam's specific claims seem fair, but I'd still be interested to see a video that compares & contrasts the way that Classical musicians deal with groove & rhythm vs the way that Rock, Jazz, R&B/Funk, Hip Hop, Pop musicians deal with groove & rhythm.
@@nolaffinmatter go listen to rachminov and then get back to me.
@@nolaffinmatter You'd be wrong but interesting take
12:20 Little correction: Mahler's 5th starts with a trumpet solo, not a french horn solo.
Lmao. Did I say Horn? I did didn't I 😂. In my head I knew I was picturing a Trumpet but I said horn didn't I. Ugh. Thank you for pointing this out
@@NAETEMUSIC No biggie. Stuff like this happens to me all the time.
Why did you leave out the fact that sideways replied to that Twitter thread?
Maybe the reason multiple people use an analogy is because it’s a good analogy
To me, Neely mentioning the Regusea article and saying the article is good comes off as actual praise, not like a jab, maybe even as a much too late defense of Regusea. Also, I read in the comments that you were trying to spotlight Sideways' own claim to have been plagiarized, and that's fine, but to really make the point I think you have to overcome at least three challenges: 1. Is an analogy an idea that can be owned by the person who coined it? 2. Should we be able to use analogies that we have heard without attribution? 3. Is the video in question the type of media where one would normally give this type of attribution in the first place?
Ok, 5 minutes in and you are apparently just nitpicking. Adam is calling it quarter note triplet makes perfect sense if you assume the metronome is clicking beats (which is the most common). triplet against beat like this in such a slow tempo is much more accurately described as quarter note triplet than eight note triplet. Also in the second example of professor Lieberman performing the rhythm (6:20) he doesn't play eight note triplet at all, it is more like eight note and two sixteenth notes. so it supports Adam's argument.
Also and more importantly - for some reason you are kind of misinterpreting Adam's video. He's not saying that classical musicians have 'bad' sense of rhythm. more like that they develop one, that is more appropriate in the contexts in which they are performing, which is not controversial at all. And from my experience it is true. I studied classical guitar for 9 years and later switched to jazz guitar. When studying classical, i practiced with metronome and tried to stay in time, however in a year of studying of jazz guitar i needed to develop much stricter sense of rhythm and i started using metronome in various different ways (e.g. clicking on different places in in order to internalize rhythm better. And studying with other jazz musicians, this is the standard among them - they are much more focused on understanding groove, different time signatures and orientation in them, because they need to navigate through them fluently while improvising.
Noone is saying they are superior - only that they are acquiring different skillset in order to perform well in the situations they are in.
Conduct through that part again my guy.
@@NAETEMUSIC All right, I have to admit I didn't finish the section, when writing that comment, because I felt I need to respond to what you said and I didn't have that much time and you do address the issue I'm talking about. However, my arguments still stand. To me it seems like you are creating a strawman - 7:30 where you say Adam's making generalization based on video of one guy making one mistake. Adam Clearly states that he talks from his experience with classical musicians (who performed otherwise brilliantly) having problem with performing rhythm. The Lieberman clip is neither starting point nor evidence, just illustration.
And I have similar experience - I teach in music school where there are both classically trained and jazz musicians. We had a workshop for the teachers about teaching groove. The classically trained musicians had bigger trouble with performing rhythms against a groove precisely.
Of course it doesn't mean, that every classical musician has worse feeling of internalised rhythm than any jazz musician. But I guess if we were to measure it somehow, and for example gave the rhythm Adam starts with (sixteenth note after sixteenth rest) to groups of classical musicians and jazz musicians, i think generally the jazz musicians would perform with greater precision on average, because they just are constantly in situation playing against precise repeated beat and train for this situation much more rigorously. for example - one excercise that is very common among jazz musicians is playing metronome on different places of the bar (eg. only on second sixteenth note) in order to internalise those. I have never encountered such excercises when studying classical.
Also regarding the Mahler clip - Adam nowhere says the orchestra and conductor are out of sync unintentionally. You also say he ignores that Bernstein and the horns are in the same tempo - ho does not. That's what he's describing with his term phase locking (which i don't know where he took from, I'll give you that) - they are in the same tempo, but out of sync - not "phase locked". Also, Adam nowhere states, that this way of conducting is wrong - only that it may lead to different feeling of rhythm that jazz and popular musicians are used to. I think to musicians used to playing with "groove" this way of conducting would be very confusing and they wouldn't be able to perform.
I am sure you know much more about classical music and orchestral conducting than i do, but to me it seems that you are making up a bunch of strawmen - making Adam's claims much stronger and maybe offensive than they really are. I understand the video as pointing out differences between understanding of rhythm of different groups of musicians. Also it clearly comes from place of trying to make sense of his own experience, not trying to be condescending towards classical musicians
The Adam Ragusea part is really shitty, I agree. However I wouldn't assume it was Neely's intention to bully anyone, you don't address the question whether he knew about the video from Adam R. where he talks about the consequences for him, which is really crutial info when you're accusing him of bullying. So I would assume he didn't know about it when mentioning his name in the subsequent video on Mariah Carey? But yeah, I agree that very influential people like Adam Neely is in the world of music theory should be extra careful when mentioning other people, since it may fuel bullying from other people, who don't have this sense of responsibility.
Regarding the plagiarism case - the plagiarism definitions you offer are about academic writing, which is something very different from popular educational video. And yes, even there it should be standard to mention your sources. But however this language analogy is very nice and useful, I don't see it to be anyhow revolutionary idea to consider it to be a major offence. Language analogies are fairly common when talking about music and I can totally see Adam not remembering the original source of this idea and not considering it such a huge deal to say sorry for that. Also, did Sideways have problem with this? My guess that he does not. You just mention that you would have, but if he doesn't, it seems to me you're creating problem just to throw some shade on Adam. I also consider this critique unfair because in his own video essays Adam has shown huge rigor on almost academixc level when sourcing the ideas he is presenting. So to me it all seems that you have problem with Adam for some reason and you're just magnifying really small issues, that are sure to come up with a channel as huge as Adam is.
I honestly didn’t think he was listening to the click during the spoken part of the triplet figure. I work primarily in the studio and that quiet click pretty much disappears to me after a few bars unless I’m playing.
This is exactly what I thought the first time I saw it. It seemed to me he was focused on explaining the rhythm and he wasn't paying attention to the click. When I forget to stop the metronome and go on to explain something I completely stop hearing it as well.
I think the reason why Barry Lieberman sang the triplet rhythm wrong and Adam falsely said "quarternote triplets" is the same. The metronome in the YT clip is set to 8th notes (maybe for more rhythmical feedback) instead of quarternotes. So for Adam there is no reason to check the sheets because the professor is actually playing quarternote triplets, though when singing you can be surprised how different it feels to sing 8th note or 4th note triplets together with a pulse. But it definitly makes no sense generalising Classical musicians. Im a Jazz-Student and hang around alot of Classical musicians and i think the rhythmical capabilities of all students (classical and jazz) vary alot. It depends on your background and what you spend your time doing besides your main study and how you, yourself learn rhythms... through listening, reading, writing, etc. When you spend your time never playing, writing or listening to a song/piece with a straight or repeated pulse, how are you suppose to know what that means in the context of playing alone. Didnt get throught the whole video so far but ill come back :)
Danke.
exactly, when I speak with musicians about bpms the note break down depends on what bpm is happening.
what i took away from this:
- neely was wrong and generalized a diverse group of people from a small set of examples: yeah it sucks, tho it's just about rhythm. i don't wanna be *that* person, but with everything that's happening right now... is this one bit of wrong information from really that important? afaik it doesn't seem to have caused any harm to the classical music scene. there's probably some natural tribalism involved, as it's easy to get tunnel vision and wanting to show your chosen genre as superior in a specific aspect. in short: bro probably just felt like people have better rhythm in jazz and was careless in trying to show it.
- neely probably just saw that Vox indicated "journalist" for the other Adam's title and didn't bother to double check. which is shitty as well, and this time did have horrible consequences. however, i don't think this was malicious. he was under the reasonable assumption that "if Adam is a composer, then the original video would have stated it", because it kinda makes sense. would you invite someone with years of studies in music theory and just say that they're a journalist? as for the "meme" bit, i just think that Neely referenced the fact that this chord is already known for having that christmas-y quality. it would make no sense for him to add oil to the fire, assuming such a remark to be done with the knowledge of the harassment that occurred. the "no shade" probably just means "yes this chord is basically a meme, no shade for this article to just be yet another explanation of that". again, i don't think it's safe to assume that Neely is going out of his way to hurt someone like this
- the Sideways bit just seems like he learned the analogy, found it neat enough that he used it a bunch with people and eventually just forgot its origin. you remember the analogy that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, but you don't know who taught it to you because you only remember it for being a neat analogy.
overall i think this video was made with good intent but ultimately i don't think that forgetting to check someone's resume and using an analogy you happen to remember is enough to constitute a pattern of bullying. i have been following neely for a bit now (yes i am therefore biased), and it doesn't make any sense for him to go out of his way to cause harm to his fellow youtubers on purpose. while it's statistically possible, i think it's highly unlikely since he has shown to respect other music theorists, cultures, and went out of his way to make a 40 minute video about how we totally disregard marginalized composers and non-western schools of music theory. anyways, have a great day y'all
Not to mention that around the time sideways and his girlfriend were calling out the plagiarism on Twitter, Adam made some (very good actually) videos about stuff like accidentally stealing ideas and whether ideas can really belong to anybody framed around copyright law
Child: Mommy, why are the nerds fighting?
Mom: Don't worry, hun. It's just what they do. Noone will be hurt.
Hey man, so the first point was absolutely rock solid and i agree with you completely. The second point much less so, because i don’t think adam neely is out here tryna f** up adam ragusea’s life. Im a fan of both, adam ragusea spread some misinformation himself via vox video, adam neely made a very valid video on it, but totally agree on neely missing ragusea’s credentials which was bad in his part. Criticism of vox video still entirely valid, however, and the information there was not just slightly off, but way too reductive and just inaccurate.
Third point … gotta tell you man, you seem to really have it out for adam neely lol. Its just a language analogy dude. Iv heard it a million times even locally here in an arabic country where i live. Its such a ubiquitous analogy to compare keys to languages. Making a whole section about this, calling it plagiarism, sighing when adam wins an Emmy … come on. Reflect on your attitudes and find out why adam rubs you the wrong way so much. Maybe the classical musicians video pissed you off so much it colored everything else negatively. But no, that wasnt plagiarism, and comparing keys to languages is not such an original idea, and if i was sideways and this had happened to me i would absolutely not think “hey thats my idea!” Because frankly thats ridiculous.
Good first point. Semi good second point. Third point is garbo. Hope you reconsider, cheers and i liked your presentation anyways
I think Adam's bit about the "meme harmony" uses the term meme in reference to psychology and culture studies where it means a concept, practice or an element that's engraved in a particular culture or social consciousness.
6:45 - no. Not everybody would fumble to sing a quarter note triplet against a click on quarters. Somebody in Adam’s circles would nail it upside down, high, hungover, running from a pack of wild dogs. None of which disproves your broader point that it’s a bit of a cheap shot. I may comment farther in, but a lot of newish TH-camrs don’t know the power of their reach when using examples of real people. I used a lot of “real world” examples in earlier videos I now regret. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t punching down, just that it might not be fair to Adam’s whole canon.
I will say that Adam’s videos are probably not always correct on every point, but I think putting all of his mistakes and undermining what he is (in my opinion) really good at, you’re making a hypocritical claim.
I don’t mean to say that either of you are wrong or right, but I just don’t understand why you basically called out Adam for using a few instances of bad examples to generalize a groups abilities, but do the same thing to him to judge his abilities
Overall though, this was an informative video that was conveyed in I think some biased ways. I don’t want to shoot anything down, and honestly, I don’t have some prestigious background to have my point taken seriously, but I just think that a less biased view of Adam might have made this more enjoyable to watch.
Side note, I think that the some reasoning behind why Adam would think that classical musicians would be rhythmically deficient is because he’s in a jazz scene where timing is everything. Even when something seems out of time, it’s usually able to be technically explained in some capacity weather that be odd time signatures, nested tuplets, polyrhythms, etc. it’s just an assumption though. I do not have all of the information so I can’t really speak on his behalf, but I think it tracks.
This is the best reply I've seen
I think a more interesting point about the timing of classical music is about how sound travels in a large space and it's not as possible to just lock in with musicians that are playing an acoustic instrument 40 feet away from you. I think Neely even mentions this in a video on IEMs? I could be miscrediting though. But there would obviously be a huge difference in how the feeling of playing to a conductor or to a click would be for the player. In college I had a research paper and performance project on walking bass. This was during our lockdown so for months a large amount of times I was playing bass was solely in playing transcribed Paul Chambers lines. for a performance exam later that year We were assigned come on come over and was struggling a lot with the continuous 16th notes which 5 or 6 years prior were just second nature or a non issue. But since it wasnt what I had been doing it did require momentary rewiring (of a few weeks lol). I think if you were to pluck musicians from an orchestra that typically plays to a conductor in this very reactionary style it would be more than understandable that suddenly giving them a click and no visual cue would have the same type of feeling, and once we fuck up we tend to get in our heads about it more. I don't feel that Neely's video tried to imply they were inferior but moreso that there was a difference practice for cueing the pulse that is more reactionary as opposed to as someone mentioned above, the grid-like synchrony of what we're accustomed to in contemporary music.
For the Adam Rageusa part, as a content writer sometimes a deadline overrules our best intentions even if we try to get everything as accurate as possible. I am familiar with the Vox fallout and Rageusa's response video, I don't in any way think he deserved the pile on, mostly because Vox videos are accessible but largely sensationalized bullshit though I do feel that from his response video it seemed like a lot of it seemed like for someone with a lot of experience in a creative discipline and who is a successful content creator that he cane across as not having the thickest of skin. I completely understand how this can happen to people in creative disciplines to the extent that they leave and it is unfortunate and that online bullying can have negative effects on our mental health but I feel the stress of the fallout is in some way due to an unresolved issue that could be spoken about in a therapy session as opposed to a moany TH-cam video. I can get behind having an explainer video but so much of it is very much a "every year Christmas is ruined because..." And including photos of his injured child in a hospital bed. I dunno, I don't have kids but I feel in that position I would have much bigger fish to fry than people telling me I'm wrong about my analysis on Mariah Carey. I feel like I probably wouldn't care at all.
As for plagiarising Sideways, from teaching students of my own, I have found myself using analogies and explainers from countless sources that I can no longer even recall where they're from or what is my own independent thought lol. I think the only part that stands up in any way is the specific choice of Spanish and Portuguese, but there aren't many languages that are commonly known by a majority of western viewers. Like you could have used Dutch and Africaans but I don't think the analogy would have been as strong. I think it's incredibly likely that Neely had adopted this as a solid analogy and used it so much with freelance teaching away from TH-cam that it kinda just stuck and became part of the 'explaining tonal centres to laypeople' script. In that regard, it's not hugely valid to say "Spanish and Portuguese are Similar", and "English and this common Asian language are wildly different" are original ideas that should be due attribution to Sideways. I think it's more a testament to the strength of Sideways' video that the analogy stuck rather than doing him dirty while collecting the cheque and the Emmy.
This was a super enjoyable video though and I really feel that all your points warrant discussion. There are habits of communities like this where sometimes someone is latched onto and their word at face value becomes inflated to some level of gospel, and sometimes we need to take a step back and realize that this is just a video created for a social platform to appeal to people who love learning about music with the hope that they'll be entertained and not a peer reviewed academic journal, so acknowledging misinterpretations and misrepresentations should always be encouraged.
TLDR: enjoyed this video, enjoy Neely's work, don't feel like there has been intentional wrongdoing but I'm just a person on the internet so you probably shouldn't care what I think too much.
Absolute KING BDE in this response & counteroffer literally has me wet
To counter your point about Ragusea being "moany" and "not having the thickest of skin" I'd like to remind you that as a content creator and public figure, he has to spend a fair amount of time on social media to keep up his presence. Also, years of insane, anonymous backlash from complete strangers about something you're already insecure about (hence his mention of impostor syndrome) would wear anyone down. Like yeah, they're just internet comments, but that shit still stings because it's still coming from a real person (most of the time) and when you hear people make the same stupid fucking joke or reference over and over year after year it gets really old. Take it from someone whose name is easily made into puns by mispronouncing it based on the spelling, having a bunch of random jabronis that you've never met make a the same shit-tier low-hanging fruit jokes about something a million other random jabronis have made before is absolutely emotionally exhausting.
6:12 To be fair, the professor didn't play that triplet correctly. It was closer to an 8th note and two 16th notes than to a triplet.
Anyway, interesting video. I've seen a few of Neely's videos, and while the information is usually (but not always) good, I just can't get past his delivery. I don't know if it's an affect he puts on for his videos, or if that's just how he talks, but it makes him seem smug to me. And it may not actually happen all that often, but in my mind, I picture him with a perpetually furrowed brow and narrowed eyes, lol. It does seem like he cares too much about his bottom line to do the right thing and take down those videos, which makes me dislike him even more.
He's shifted to a more friendly tone in more recent years, but I can see what you mean.
The professor definitely doesn't play them as triplets when he plays the part without a metronome. It's kind of odd that Naete used that example...
why does the general music theory parts have such a tart, somewhat bitter atmosphere when it comes to discussion? This is why I just listen for entertainment and not take information seriously
A side note: do not go create a video about a music educator and take isolated moments and then use it as a basis to generalize about that educator - let alone turn it into a TH-cam video for clicks. It's not good etiquette. Don't do this.
YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
So I wanted some really hard hitting facts, but he's been wrong a couple times, less than 10, compare that to the percentage of useful information he's a net possitive to music education as a whole. He does get a little pompous at times and has an ego, but it's not enough to truly hate him. As far as the language circle of fifths analogy, that's an extremely common music teacher analogy. I had a trumpet teacher tell me something identical in 2007. A lot of musical ideas are shared. I think you had some good points in the first half of the video, but wasn't enough to truly discredit him, then you repeated the same 2 clips and same points for nearly 10 entire minutes never expanding on that point. I want to give you more credit on this, but it turned into a hit piece with not so relevent information.
Sounds like you're more upset at Vox than Neely
I have tried to record classically trained musicians over rock or pop and 90% of them do not even know how. On the other hand if you quantize classical music is sounds terrible so is just two different worlds.
Ah, I feel for Ragusea. My university’s college of music was super gatekeepy, too. You’d be surprised how many seemingly brilliant musicians lack any soul in their playing, meanwhile forming cliques and making folks like Ragusea feel unwelcome. It hurts to see this behavior from Neely, as a fan of his, and I hope he can collab with, or at least apologize to Ragusea.
The whole thing happened 7 years ago, and Neely has addressed it multiple times in QnA videos.
These are my views on the bullying segment:
1) while you argued that the video about classical musicians was still relevant enough to be worthy of critique as it has a lot of views, (i dont entirely agree with that but im not gonna go into it) the same can not be said of the original response to the vox video. Its 6 and a half years old now, and although it has a few hundred thousands views by now, its not in the millions like some of his other videos. Im guessing a lot of those views also came in the aftermath of ragueseas video about it.
2) the fact he didnt refer to raguesa to a musician might just have been because he didnt bother to check ragueasas credentials. I cant watch the vox video, as it is unavailable in my country, but in the clips shown in the video, he wasnt listed as a musician, but as a journalist. Furthermore, adams video was just a few minutes long, rushed out in a few days in order to capitalize on current events. He may just have gotten sloppy on his research. To me, nlt refering to him as a musician just seemed like a fuck up. Raguesa and the vox video was not even really the main focus of the video. He mostly just talk about what he thinks make christmas nostalgia. Not that much about the points raised in the vox video.
3) i dont really think the video was any 'cruel'. While i do think its fucking stupid that raguesa has been subjugated to this much for suffering for what was just a harmless clickbaity vox video, adam really didnt really attack him as a person or anything like that. As previously stated, he didnt really talk that much about the vox video at all after the first 30 seconds of the video, until he brings it up again closer to the end of the video where he even compliments the video for a song comparison made in it. Plus, adam was probably not aware of how stressed raguesa was during the making of the video. How would adam have known about the child in the hospital, or the garage band piano stuff when he released the video? And why would it matter when adam pointed no harsh critiscism at raguesa in his video?
4) why do you think "no shade, this is a good article" is adam being a bully? Even within the context of the "meme" segment it was brought up, i cant figure how that could be seen as an act of bullying.
Yeah, ragueasa suffered unnecessarily much for something so stupid like a vox christmas video. And I dont think adam is a saint or anything.
Particularily in his older videos. there have been many times where ive watched old q+a videos, and felt like he was unnecessarily harsh, edgy, or downright mean, but i really do think hes gotten infinately better since those old 2015, 2016 or earlier videos. I learnt most of the music theory basics like scales, intervals, and chord symbols by watching his videos, and i do think, at large he is an asset to the online music community.
tl;dr
Mob mentality is the real villain at play here, and i dont feel like adam neely did anything to strengthen it.
Forgive my spelling, and clunky phrasing.
Yeah I think for point 4 Adam included the "no shade" comment to clarify that he wasn't calling the article a meme and was strictly talking about the music, since the cut to that image happened right as he said "meme quality".
45 minutes to make 3 relatively weak points against a guy who has been online for nearly, if not more than, a decade?
The biggest injustice in this video is you using the words “a lot” in the title lmfao.
I agree with you a bit. But also Adam hasn’t really claimed to be the end all be all of music theory, and in his more recent videos he seems more humble and states that he gets things wrong sometimes
So he does get things wrong sometimes but never corrects ill guided videos of his own? What a contradiction.
@@niemand7811 making videos takes effort and i think adam would appreciate not dying of starvation
This video is so extra. He’s not bashing classical musicians, classical musicians feel rhythms differently and aren’t used to very difficult contemporary rhythms. This whole video is just like “nO wE dOnT”
Typical classical musicians lmao
"Aren't used to very difficult contemporary rhythms" Tell me you know nothing about classical music without telling me. Go listen to any of Thomas Ades works incl the Tempest or Asyla and then I would recommend deleting this embarrassingly dumb comment.
@@NAETEMUSIC if you think Tempest has harder rhythms than contemporary jazz you’re absolutely useless arguing with lol. Way to prove my point of you just being offended
@@andrewconti8846 yeah I am guessing you don’t even know what I am talking about and don’t even know who Thomas ades is
@@NAETEMUSIC so I’ve played his music, as well as John Adams and Joseph Schwantner. I am a university musician, a percussionist, and I have played in wind ensembles, orchestras, and percussion ensembles, as well as a few combo gigs. What me and my fellow percussionists noticed about the strings in orchestra was that they all sound phenomenal, but could not play the rhythmic figures in Adams’ _Lollapalooza_ throughout the entire rehearsal cycle. Our wind ensemble performed From a Dark Millennium by Schwantner, and the slow rhythmic figures were unplayable for a while. Keep in mind, this is the UNCG wind ensemble, an internationally recognized and acclaimed ensemble, and they struggled to play these rhythms. They also played _La Ville d'En-Haut_ by Messiaen, with much of the same struggle. Adés’ _Lieux Retrouves_ I performed with a community orchestra. This was not a professional, but many of the performers currently or in the past played in professional orchestras. The rhythms never came together.
This is a commonly understood concept. Focus in many professional and community orchestras is put on phrasing and expression and balance, given that the performers are more often than not extremely capable. And so often, rhythm falls by the wayside. This semester, I performers Moncayo’s _Huapango_ and there are many isolated eighth notes and syncopated rhythms that strings AND winds could not play.
Yet, at combo and jazz gigs, the performers could play all the rhythms the orchestra couldn’t. It’s pretty common knowledge that all kinds of musicians feel rhythm differently.
Editing to add: the rhythms in much of contemporary jazz are far harder than those in the music of Adés or Adams. Furthermore, the music of Drum Corps and Drum Corps International contains the hardest rhythms I’ve ever seen. As a percussionist, the drumline music contains the hardest rhythms I’ve ever seen. And many of the percussionists I know feel the same way, but we can figure them out pretty quickly. I showed some of these to my string friends and they straight up told me they were impossible. When I showed them, they still didn’t believe me.
String players cannot comprehend rhythm in the same way jazz musicians or even percussionists can.
Sideways had/has an unlisted video in which he went into detail about the Adam Neely situation and how it affected him. I came across a link to it a couple years ago. I wouldn't know how to find it now.
I find it hard to digest that during your first point you said something in the lines of: Don't take a musician worst moment and turn it into a TH-cam video for clicks, and then proceeded to collect what you consider Adam Neely's "worst moments" and turned them into a TH-cam video for clicks.
I mean, if Neely does it why can't he?
@@stordoy I'd assume that one that criticizes a behaviour understand that it's the wrong thing to do. Following the behaviour he just criticized makes him a hypocrite.
If memory serves me right, i believe in music (rather than medicine), phase-locking is the act of preventing musicians phasers from being set to "kill", and is used when they have shown signs of aggression. Not 100%, but im pretty sure.
It don't mean a thing unless you set them phasers to "funk-funk".
36:10 Just a quick heads up: I was a bit confused about what you meant when you said "Franz Schubert's legendary [later] The Erlkönig". The subtitles there do not make any sense either, maybe you can update those. Through your mention at 36:33, I was able to piece together that you were talking about "Lieder".
As a native German speaker, I would like to point out that the pronunciation is very close to the English word "leader" and thus quite far from the word "later". Also, it is plural, meaning that if you want to mention a specific song, the grammatically correct word is "Lied" (pronounced like "lead" in English).
I write this comment not to join the lines of overly correct internet bullies who have led Adam Ragusea to suffer, but because I was genuinely confused about what you meant. You, especially in the context of the video, come across as someone who is highly knowledgeable in the field of (classical) music and I think it would be great if you used the correct pronunciation in your videos.
Also, people who are not as well versed in academic music terminology might be a bit put off, as they won't know that "Lieder" simply is the German word for "songs" and will have no chance of finding it out due to the subtitles being incorrect.