Except for bells. Those have a minor overtone structure. Though they did experiment with major third bells, which actually made them lose much of their character and sound rather dull and empty. Not a great succes.
The piano is indeed out of tune, in the sense that it can't do perfect intervals which aren't octaves. However, what Jacob doesn't mention is why... or that being slightly out of tune is actually a good thing most of the time. The harmonic series he demonstrated with his voice, the "baby notes inside", are typically stacked together within a single note to create a timbre. To the ear, they fit together so well it sounds like a single, indivisible sound. Meanwhile, the slightly-out-of-tune notes of a piano end up sounding like distinct notes, separate pieces which can be split apart and played individually. Neither method is better or worse, and both are essential to creating songs. Perfect intervals are great for giving us rich-sounding instruments, while imperfect intervals are great for composing notes into songs. I could go into a lot more detail, complete with the math and diagrams and deep dives into microtonal scales and patch design and "icy" digital sounds vs "warm" analog sounds and such, and the practical implications of each ... but I'd be here all night. The short version is: Yes, the piano is out of tune (ish)... but that's a *good* thing. Jacob just likes to thumb his nose at traditional music education, because a lot of tradition is janky elitist woo clearly designed by people who didn't really understand it very well and made it unnecessarily complicated.
Actually, he realised his voice was out of tune after hitting the piano note, so he just blamed the piano for being out of tune, does it all the time Hahah kidding
Why are people always sour at that. It's just a statement of fact. He doesn't suggest it's a bad thing. It's just something interesting that people don't expect and thus worth mentioning.
The things he was talking about here are pretty basic concepts though, especially for people who create patches on synthesizers. He's just explaining one of the elementary building blocks of harmonic sounds. This stuff is really easy and intuitive while using a subtractive-style synthesizer with a resonant filter. Unfortunately though, it's often not taught in music classes.
@@ToyKeeper yes! Had it in highschool physics. It's some of the more basic things when discussing waves and such and if one goes on the wikipedia article, there should even be pictures that can optically showcase the effect (for anyone interested)
A person more musically talented than JC could probably: - sing from 10 to 20.000 Hz - sing 5 notes at the same time - identify a note before it's even played
@@martynconkling8876He spread that kind of jazz influence more into the mainstream, who wouldn't be exposed to that if it were not for him. Which is why most people think it is abnormal but in reality there are plenty of musicians with those abilities. Not to downgrade him though. I think his playing is amazing and waaay past the level I'm at.
...and yes, i agree, that’s his ‘shiny’ angle: passionately sharing his discoveries (while they’ve been out there for millennia, but new to him nonetheless, blowing his exploring mind), making him want to share it with his new/younger [millennial] generation, who probably wouldn’t even look at these things in details if it wasn’t presented & taught in such an original & dynamic way, by a happy & quirkily engaging character such as Mr J. Collier... and as Mr M. Conkling said it, “props to him” for doing so, cuz while we know that what he shares isn’t absolutely ‘novel’, the fact alone that someone his age is showing & demonstrating these cool & amazing facts to the whole world is very rare !..
@@Legominder Just as I was starting to enjoy Collier, I was disappointed to hear his crude explanation. I will chock it up to him trying to 'dumb it down' for a large audience, but your comment captured my thinking exactly. BUT, to be fair, I am confident that Mr. Collier fully knows that his explanation is a bit oversimplified for the sake of being more digestible. At other times, he clearly demonstrates to be genuinely knowledgeable.
We are all capable of this, when we start to use our full abilities and not be distracted anymore. Jacob is extraordinary in the sense that he is showing us how awesome we can be when we are in tune with the universe.
@Felix Pulmano Jacob knows SO MUCH about music theory and how to apply it. I’m merely saying that he is so well versed when it comes to music, it’s almost like he was just born knowing what “super-ultra-hyper-mega-lydian” or other obscure scales.
@@Pip200ne i get what he’s saying I just didn’t realize it’d be taken literally. It’s merely another way to say “this dude doesn’t have talent, talent has him” or however else anyone wants to phrase it.
You should be able to hear it if you listen for a quiet higher pitch above the note that he's singing. Might need headphones if you're watching on a phone or something.
Mongolian throat singing. It's like your throat starts playing the missing fundamental from the harmonic sequence you are trying to hit ... Absolutely amazing
I've heard about Mongolian throat singing, but I don't think what he does matches your description too well. He's making the fundamental just with his regular voice. And then he's forming his mouth so that the wanted frequency resonates and becomes louder. Source: I can sing like that and it looks and sounds the same
This actually has nothing to do with throat singing. This is just using the shape of your mouth and tongue to accentuate a note that is already there. Throat singing involves singing *lower* notes than the fundamental of your vocal cords
This seems really complicated, but it’s actually the entire basis of classical singing - The reason that opera singers don’t use microphones, while others do, is not because they have more breath or power. Classical technique actually manipulates the mouth and tongue to strengthen certain overtones, which allow the sound to carry further and access “ring” in the voice!
Not exactly. The reason opera singers don’t use microphones is the art itself is unmiked singing. The reason they can be heard well is precise breath coordination release and posturing of the body, which allows the vocal cords to vibrate as freely as possible. This also removes unnecessary constriction of the throat, which allows a rounder and longer resonating space. Also, they do train directly their breath capacity and power, the extrinsic tongue muscles (which dilate the throat space for deeper breathing and a bigger resonating space), and also develop the strength of the vocal cords themselves to be able to resist a greater amount of air without being blown apart. So it’s a bit of everything- tuning of vowels and formants, release and depth of breathing and free vibration of the cords, as well as developing raw power. Some old school singers would develop diaphragm power by breathing with weights placed on their bellies for example The fundamental frequency should always be the strongest in opera. Caruso, the best opera singer wrote this in his book. When the harmonics or “ring” dominate, you can have freely vibrating cords, yet a closed throat space. You can learn to amplify those harmonics more than an opera singer does and still not even make 1/3 of the great sound of an opera singer. Opera was never about just amplifying the “ring” in the sound. It was about beauty and fullness, darkness, clearness mellowness and purity in the tone, strength in the fundamental pitch, and some natural ring as a byproduct of everything else
Isn't the reason opera singers don't use microphones because they're authentically practicing an artform that was created before the invention of microphones
@@benharper962 You’re right, but like… I was trying to present people with a fun fact, haha! I didn’t need to whip out my Scott McCoy book and make everyone diagram out a standing wave or sub-glottal pressure or anything 😂.
@@yoosh9034 In a way! I would think that because of the necessity to carry the sound without amplification, vocal technique evolved to be this way. But I don’t think you can separate the acoustics from the history of the artform.
@@benharper962 I do take some issue with your explanation though. For example, I don’t agree that we directly train breath capcity or power. Rather, it is a development of the musculature which serves to suspend the entire breathing apparatus and make efficient use of the air, so that the vocal folds may vibrate freely and without having to regulate air flow. And the diaphragm is an involuntary muscle, so nobody can develop that directly. The perceived breath “power” is actually a result of efficient air speed, not force. I’m trying to dispel the notion that opera singers just force air in and out. It is actually a shaping of air which naturally flows in and out, managing tension along the entire resonating tract. But ALL in pursuit of acoustical “tuning” to the formants. And, of course the fundamental is the loudest, as that is the frequency at which your folds are vibrating and creating sound.
He speaks so fluently about music theory. He references so many different topics casually, im not sure if i could follow even 30min of his performances
in very simple English: It is very rare that we only hear one pitch in nature. Most of what we call sounds are made up of many different pitches. Jacob is talking about periodic sound: Periodic sound is what tones are made up of. It is the opposite of aperiodic sound. The difference between these two is: Aperiodic sound is made up of pitches that do not have a specific interval between each of the pitches. In other words, the pitches are arbitrary. Periodic sound is made up of pitches that have the same absolute interval between each of the pitches. This interval is the pitch we perceive the sound to be at. Let's say we have a tone that has four pitches: 100 HZ 200 HZ 300 HZ and 400 HZ. Between each of these pitches, there is 100 HZ, so this is the pitch we perceive for the overall sound. This sound we call the 'fundamental' in acoustics and the 'tonic' in harmonic analysis. In most cases, the fundamental is there in the tone, but we can also leave it out if its 'overtones' are there. 'Overtones' are the pitches above the fundamental that are spaced out by the exact interval that is the fundamental. If this is too abstract, you can think of the fundamental as a lego brick. Adding overtones to the fundamental is just like placing the same type of lego brick on top of the original one (the fundamental). By putting lego bricks on top of each other, we can also see how we get the different intervals of music by adding the overtones to the fundamental pitch: Putting one lego brick on top of another, we increase the size of the lego figure by 100%. This corresponds to the octave. One octave above 100 HZ is 200 HZ. When we add the third brick, we get an increase of 50%. This corresponds to the fifth. One fifth above 200 HZ is 300 HZ. By the fourth brick we get 33,33333333%. This corresponds to a fourth. One fourth above 300 HZ is 400 HZ. (also the second octave of 100 HZ) By the fifth brick we get 25%. This corresponds to a major third. One major third above 400 HZ is 500 HZ. By the sixth brick we get 20%. This corresponds to a minor third. One minor third above 500 HZ is 600 HZ. (also the third octave of 100 HZ) What Jacob also talks about is formants. To know what formants are, you need to know that sounds are made up of two things: 1) vibrations in the air (what we describe in HZ) 2) The space they occur in Formants are a property of the spaces that sounds occur in. Different spaces have different shapes and different shapes amplify different overtones. This is why different instruments sound different. It is also why different vowels sound different. Because the instruments have different shapes and because we change the way our mouth is shaped when say different vowels. Our mouths are like very pliable instruments. It is also why different instruments can play different harmonics. For instance, string instruments can play all the harmonics. Flutes can also do that because they are a tube that is open at both ends. But clarinets can't do that because they close at one end when you play them. Saxophones can also play all the harmonics, but they also close at one end. But they are not cylindrical, they are conical. This is also why saxophones sound different to clarinets and why they blend very well with strings (and flutes when they play more quietly): because they all have all the overtones in their sound. The advantage of the clarinet is that when you blow hard, you actually reach the second overtone instead of the first, and when you blow even harder, you reach the fourth, while on the saxophone you only reach the first and second overtone this way. This means that the range of the clarinet is very large. It can play many, many tones more easily than the saxophone. This is because our tuning system in Western music is built so all the notes have the same distance between them, but this means that the overtones of the notes are not in tune. So the saxophone player has to adjust very high notes a lot because they are based on very high overtones. But in the past when we had not invented keys (the metal bits that are pressed to open holes in the instrument but are closed when unpressed (the opposite of tone holes)), the clarinet was a very limited instrument because a lot of notes were missing because you could not play the octave by blowing hard.
I don't mean to come across as an elitist or anything, but this is FAR from overtone singing mastery (although it is Jacob Collier and I'm sure he could become exceptional at it if he wanted to lol.) If you haven't already, you should check out Mongolian/Tuvan throat singing. There is a technique called "Sygyt" (which means "whistling") which is literally singing using almost exclusively overtones. Fascinating stuff.
There are some sounds that don’t follow the harmonic series, and most of those sounds people would consider harsh and dissonant, despite being almost the same to other similar sounds. Difference is with most sounds they follow a waveform that you can use a Fourier transform to get the harmonics in the harmonic series that you see, but with things that don’t follow the harmonic series don’t follow a simple waveform since it’s mathematically impossible to create one that can’t be simplified into the harmonic series. Instead it has a waveform that changes each cycle by a different cycle that doesn’t match the any power normal waveform. You can actually use amplitude modulation to frequency shift all the harmonics in a sound down by the same amount, ruining all the ratios in a sound, turning a normal sound into something completely different and other worldly. It’s also possible to produce sounds with minor harmonic series instead of major ones, but those also are commonly considered to sound weird. It’s crazy how imprinted the harmonic series is in our minds that any deviation sounds far different and almost wrong to us.
yeah, i take issue with him saying a major chord exists within every sound, that’s far from true, even harmonic sounds can have overtones that don’t strictly correspond to a major triad. i wonder why he chose to say that
When I first watched that Snarky Puppy video, I was in complete shock (and still am each time I re-watch it). I remember thinking "did she just sing a chord? WTF?" I know it was not something new by any means but it felt like she did it so effortlessly and different than anyone I have ever heard before.
There was a time I was singing an F5 in head voice and the note indicator indicated two consistent alternate notes : F5 and F6. I could feel that my vocal chords were producing a dominant lower frequency and a higher overtone at the same time. The harmonics of it gave the note a more "steely edge" I would say
@@benjaminwoodrowmusic6070 The only difference is the technique and the low note which is lower then he portrayed, that's basically the same thing if we speak of the overtones, they master this technique tho..
"The piano is out of tune but that's a different masterclass" You see, he's right, but the way he says it simply means that I didn't know about it at all
I studied the harmonic series a lot in school as a music theory major. Something that blew my mind is that you could select any harmonic above a fundamental, build the harmonic series from that harmonic (as if it’s the new fundamental), and those new harmonics would match up perfectly with the upper, upper harmonics of the original fundamental 🤯
Actually, I don't think that should be right. My logic is this: the harmonic series can be represented like this x, 2x, 3x, 4x ... If you take 2x, it's harmonic series will be 2x, 4x, 6x, 8x ..., which is not what the fundamental's harmonic series is. So like C has C2, G, C3, E3, G3, Bb3 i think, and G has G2 D2 G3 B D F, or something like that. It doesn't match up.
@@vulgaraszleandrosz4105 You’re starting from G1 which is not an overtone of the fundamental C1; the first is C2. Try it from G2 or E3, it’ll line up. Or maybe I’m remembering it wrong, it’ll been like 20 years or so
@@patcupo Same thing just an octave up, sorry for the brainfart. Still none of them lines up (and it shouldn't) C1 C2 G2 C3 E3 G3 Bb3 C4 ... G2 G3 D3 G4 B4 D4 F4....
@@filiusgulielmi4636 @Vulgarasz Leandrosz I'm pretty sure it's accurate, I remember following Hindemith's tables back in the day. I made my own that's color-coded - you can see that everything goes back to the fundamental and its overtones: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JPtNVCpL3EsL6_vYA_JILw00DEPprKW5lv8UHOzgMmo/edit?usp=sharing
I'm beatboxer and we use a double voice usually if someone what can check two-h or stich it's not overtone like Jacob did, it's a different technique that produces more than 2 notes actually
@@cm9241 I mean, people with absolute pitch can become autodidacts because they have a much easier time differentiating and easily recognizing pitches and picking out individual notes comprising chords. I'm pretty sure my high school friend Bryan Koch has absolute pitch as not only did he play several different instruments in high school band and rock bands, but I remember instances of various band members handing him their instrument (he'd never held or played one before), and after a minute or two of figuring out how to get sounds out, he managed to play a scale!... and then play simple tunes. I'm pretty sure that kind of thing only comes that naturally from absolute pitch. Another talented friend on the ragtime scene has absolute pitch and I tested it once by mashing down humongous chord clusters on one piano, whose keyboard was not visible to him. After a second, he was able to mash down / duplicate those same clusters, note for note, just by ear. To me, that s__t is just supernatural. Some extremely talented folks with absolute pitch like John W. "Blind" Boone, Art Tatum, Bob Wright, David Junchen etc were able to reproduce an entire performance just after hearing it once. That is not just absolute pitch, but an extremely high level of musical perception/awareness, memory, and then a high level of technique to reproduce that (piano) performance. But playing any instrument WELL is still a lot of hard work, whether you teach yourself or are taught by someone else. There is a lot of technique involved, and getting advanced level at music requires a great deal of study, whether you learn 'by ear' from listening to lots of recordings / other musicians etc, and/or via sheet music, music teachers, method books etc. No person on earth is born with massive amounts of musical technique... you need to practice in order to obtain it. This guy didn't just pop out of the womb a virtuoso, and neither did Mozart, or Art Tatum etc etc.
@@cm9241 Speaking as someone who comes from a musical family (my father and one of my uncles are both professional musicians, and my mother, both grandfathers, one grandmother, all the rest of my uncles, and one aunt have all played or play some instrument at some time), I can confirm that playing music comes a bit easier to a person if you are SATURATED with music from an early age. I was listening to great live jazz since I was in the womb so I think I have a bit of an unfair advantage over those who did not have this sort of privilege. Yes that's a bit of bragging, but it's also something over which I had no control, but for which I'm grateful. I'm sure there are many others with similar experiences, as I do not think my own life has been any more musically great than other folks'... just maybe more LIVE music exposure to live jazz than the average kid, but one can still hear nearly all of these same musicians on recordings, and so experience a lot of that magic. I'm sure lots of other folks have heard great live musicians that I'll never get to hear, so it goes both ways. But I also am a bit lazy when it comes to practicing and so anyone who is dedicated enough and applies themselves can easily reach my level of accomplishment and beyond, in a shorter time than I reached it, at least in performance if not in composition (for my COMPOSING... I'm not really sure where that s__t comes from... it's a lot of hard work to perfect each piece, spending hours or weeks hammering away at 2 bars in search of a perfect chord or phrase, but the origins of the initial inspiration for tunes are completely mysterious, so it's not really something I COULD teach to others). It is still possible for a person from this kind of musical background to be NOT musical or rather, to not want to choose playing music either as a hobby or a career, even if they enjoy listening to it. It is also possible for a person from a non-musical background to become highly musically talented, especially if they surround themselves with music either live, with recordings, both etc and also practice and play all the time. So while I'm sure his upbringing had a great deal to do with it, it's also him, himself, and his own decision to love music and want to learn more about it / play better etc. This is true of any great musician. It's kind of a combination of "saturation" and "study and discipline", but the personal ENJOYMENT of music must always be there or else there's no point IMO.
This is called "NG-technique". There are also the L-technique (the same as in Tuvan Sygyt Style) and the J-technique. NG is the best for amplifying the lower overtones, while the L and J can make you amplify more than 10 overtones. You can actually climb the overtone series up to the 16th partial (I've made it to the 24th) :-)
I can sing 2 notes at the same time. Its called polyphonia. Its always a fixed interval, (major fourth, i.e. if i sing a F3, i can add a C3 below it) i can't change it, although ive learned to turn it on and off while i sing, and it happened from me breaking smthg in my adam's apple while choking on food when i was younger. Idk if anything actually broke broke, but i felt a loud crack when i finally managed to cough and my voice changed ever since. At first i thought i only lost range - almost half an octave on the high end - but after a few weeks i accidentally did a vocal power chord, and have been exploring and using it ever since
There is an auditory illusion where a tone is played and then another tone and you’re asked if the following tone was higher or lower. If it’s a basic tone and ratio, then it can be perceived as certain things. But the thing about notes for those of us aware of fundamentals and partials is that the fundamental is for the most part the lowest tone of a stack, and that defines the note, not the upper tone. Of course, an exception is if you have a weak additional tone kinda snuck in there. But for the auditory illusion, it’s kind of silly haha
I'm very surprised he got timbre and formants mixed up. Comparing a violin to a xylophone playing the same note and them having different formants is just dead wrong. Formants are phonetic and vocal based sounds. Timbre is the quality and character of a sound.
Question for the musicians: in Spain you learn all this is in the conservatory when you are a teenager (12-18), it's basic harmony... now I leave in another country and they don't teach music theory at all, I have no idea why (!). How is it in your country? Is it really uncommon that musicians know these things? No need to say, I love JC and how he shares all these concepts with music lovers :-)
America does not value arts and music so it’s not taught as in-depth unless the student takes solely art/music electives and that’s IF the school allows students to pick their electives.
I mean in this video he is talking about natural harmonics, not building a harmony. But naw, even in high school music curriculums they don't teach theory, they just show you the noted to play and how to play them. I had to teach a high school senior how chord progressions work....it's probably something he subconsciously known about but was blown away at how much easier it is to break down music or compose with the concept of chord progressions. He was a brass player.
That's so cool! Actually, I am can sing three notes at once, each with similar projection. but the intervals between the notes are always fixed, no matter how low or high I sing. the intervals are something like a half step, and then also a minor third over the first note. (thankfully i also have perfect pitch)
How? Is it double voice (the beatboxing technique that lets you switch between three notes individually) or do you actually produce the illusion of three notes at once?
I mean, doing what Jacob is doing here isn't really all that hard. Just sing with plenty of air support and form vowels ending with a highly arched r in your mouth, pushing a lot of air over your arched tongue. Start with -or and slide up to -eer, and you'll hear the overtones pop right out. Traditional throat singing has a much more pronounced, whistle-y overtone presence.
this is just overtones. khoomei ("Tibetan throat singing" - you) also uses a glottal type undertone which generally is not held as a single note throughout a song, in conjunction with the resonance frequencies that are created with your tongue. this isn't tibetan throat singing, it's overtone singing. he's not using his throat, he's using his tongue to create the "little baby notes" (overtones). Khoomei (Tibetan throat singing) is the combination of glottal deep singing with/without overtones created by the tongue. Overtone singing =/= khoomei.
he’s conflating formants with overtones/timbre here, a formant is a spectral band of high energy, a sound can have many formants which consist of more than one overtone and contribute to the sound’s timbre
@@martynconkling8876 he refers to the overtone structure of a sound as a formant, whereas a formant is generally used to mean concentrated bands of frequency energy, they can contain harmonic overtones but they can also contain noise/inharmonic overtones and there can be more than one of them that contribute to a sound’s timbre
It’s funny hearing people like him say,” and see a harmony is just a major third” and proceeds to play it. Little does he know not one person in the audience has perfect pitch and they just believe him without actually hearing any notes
You don't need perfect pitch to be able to recognize the sound of a major triad. Most musicians (or all of them, depending who you include) could do it.
You could consciously hear 1-3-5 in just 3 days of practicing hearing intervals. You don't even need to be a master of relative pitch to do that. The overtones are a little harder to hear because its subtle but its there.
My pitch isn't that great but I can readily tell like, major and minor thirds. What I CAN'T really hear is for example just intonation vs equal temperament. I can hear two differently-tuned chords (the same chord, just slightly adjusted) demonstrated one after another, and hear some differences, but it doesn't maybe affect me as a "positive-negative" thing as much as it might affect some others. I credit my lack of tuning discrimination as being due to listening to LPs of out-of-tune pianos and organs throughout my childhood :)
I understand that the shape of the wave in addition to the overtones does much to account for the tone. While a flute produces a rounder waveform more similar to a sine wave, a violin will produce something more like a sawtooth wave.
May need tk turn the volume up higher or try with or without headphones. The overtones are much quieter compared to the humming and are higher pitched if you have any hearing problems with higher pitch or hearing loss it may be difficult to hear them; he purposefully sang the first few six or seven because he gets past the harmonic b7,while humming (sang, generated, semantics), the notes get closer together the higher up you go in the harmonic series, What you're listening for are the intervals, the fifth, the dominant tetrad that comes out, listen for the major 3rd, fifth, b7, and octave against his humming pitch
We were drawn to singing in thirds - specifically major thirds - because dissonance is a threat. If you're swimming in the ocean, waves rolling past you on a regular interval are easy to swim in. Even if they get larger, you can handle them much easier if they're coming at you in a regular interval. Having them come at you at seemingly random intervals puts you in danger much more quickly. They'll fatigue you and, if the water is churning enough, they can actually pull you apart after a while. The Earth's atmosphere is a "liquid" just like the oceans but less dense and the cells in your ear that handle hearing are existing in that liquid. Dissonance is when you have sound waves that are not in sync with each other....and that's a threat to the cells in the ear so, we're naturally not going to like intervals that aren't Major.
@@werdwerdus You're wrong!!!! I didn't mean to say it, that's why I had liquid in quotes. But I'm being a jerk..... you're absolutely correct in that the fluid dynamics of the atmosphere is what I was actually talking about. I was trying to keep what I was saying as simple as possible and thought "liquid" would be a more widely understood concept than fluid. I was probably wrong about that or, at least being overly cautious.
Overtone singing isn't really singing two notes at once, it's just causing the overtone of the note you're singing to resonate loudly. There ARE techniques to sing two notes at once though. Lalah Hathaway for example, 6:17 of this video th-cam.com/video/0SJIgTLe0hc/w-d-xo.html
This channel does transcriptions. The name of the channel is George Collier. This guy in quite a few of the videos is named Jacob Collier. I don't know if these two entities are related in any way other than by last name. This is all I know. That being said: This Jacob guy, talented as he may be, manages to dress like one hell of a pretentious boi in every video I've seen so far
Western Singers : Lets try singing 2 notes at a time . Eastern Classical Musicians : Are you kidding right ? We can sing 22 Shrutis(Micro Tones) guys 😂
There are two ways to sing two notes at once, overtone singing (this), and polyphonic singing. Unlike this, you can actually speak/sing with polyphonic singing. I'm not sure why it happens or how to do it, but I've seen it and it's very cool.
Mr J. Collier’s ‘shiny’ angle: passionately sharing his discoveries (while they’ve been out there for millennia, but new to him nonetheless) which are blowing his exploring mind, making him want to share them with his new/younger [millennial+] generation that probably wouldn’t even look at these things in details if it wasn’t presented & taught in such an original & dynamic way, by a happy & quirkily engaging character such as Mr J. Collier... As Mr M. Conkling said it, “props to him” for doing so, cuz while we know that what he shares isn’t actually ‘novel’, the only fact that someone his age is showing & demonstrating these cool & amazing things to the whole world is very rare !..
Just to add, some musical instruments have non harmonic overtones too but ti verying degrees depending on the instrument and to different effect. So on a drum the effect is to have almost no tone. Thats because the non harmonic overtones are as strong as the harmonic overtones. A bell has very strong nonharmonic over tones but not as atrong and as spread out as the drum. This goves the bell very weird sounds. An electric guitar has less non harmonic overtones than the bell but still very stong. This creates a very rich sound. The piano has less than the electric guitar but still very rich. The violin has less than the piano. At this point the sound of the violin can be made with jist the harmonic overtones and itwill be clearly a violin sound but maybe not as rich as you would expect a real violin.
Except for bells. Those have a minor overtone structure. Though they did experiment with major third bells, which actually made them lose much of their character and sound rather dull and empty. Not a great succes.
Really?
@@jacobbeat166 really.
Where can I find more information about this?
@@lincolnreddell9405 en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strike_tone
@@erikkrabbenbos4347 Thank you Erik, your efforts are seen and appreciated.
"The piano's out of tune"
- Jacob Collier, every talk ever
i guess you are either not curious, or not a, 'math person.'
The piano is indeed out of tune, in the sense that it can't do perfect intervals which aren't octaves. However, what Jacob doesn't mention is why... or that being slightly out of tune is actually a good thing most of the time.
The harmonic series he demonstrated with his voice, the "baby notes inside", are typically stacked together within a single note to create a timbre. To the ear, they fit together so well it sounds like a single, indivisible sound. Meanwhile, the slightly-out-of-tune notes of a piano end up sounding like distinct notes, separate pieces which can be split apart and played individually. Neither method is better or worse, and both are essential to creating songs. Perfect intervals are great for giving us rich-sounding instruments, while imperfect intervals are great for composing notes into songs.
I could go into a lot more detail, complete with the math and diagrams and deep dives into microtonal scales and patch design and "icy" digital sounds vs "warm" analog sounds and such, and the practical implications of each ... but I'd be here all night. The short version is: Yes, the piano is out of tune (ish)... but that's a *good* thing. Jacob just likes to thumb his nose at traditional music education, because a lot of tradition is janky elitist woo clearly designed by people who didn't really understand it very well and made it unnecessarily complicated.
@@martynconkling8876 It's so that he sounds smart and talks philosophically and people think he knows everything the world has to offer.
Actually, he realised his voice was out of tune after hitting the piano note, so he just blamed the piano for being out of tune, does it all the time
Hahah kidding
Why are people always sour at that. It's just a statement of fact. He doesn't suggest it's a bad thing. It's just something interesting that people don't expect and thus worth mentioning.
Not satisfied with just playing all instruments, Jacob has now decided to play Physics
he’s playing God now
Surely he will soon transcend this dimension entirely...
The things he was talking about here are pretty basic concepts though, especially for people who create patches on synthesizers. He's just explaining one of the elementary building blocks of harmonic sounds. This stuff is really easy and intuitive while using a subtractive-style synthesizer with a resonant filter. Unfortunately though, it's often not taught in music classes.
@@ToyKeeper yes! Had it in highschool physics. It's some of the more basic things when discussing waves and such and if one goes on the wikipedia article, there should even be pictures that can optically showcase the effect (for anyone interested)
@@jaywithacube5619 sounds dangerous. 😥
i dont think me and my trumpet are ready to have baby notes yet.
pitch bending baby
Best comment
Wait doesn't this mean you can only play like 7 notes on it then? I thought trumpets needed baby notes to get higher baby
Masterclass
You could try multiphonics. Try to sing a note while you play a note. Then you'll get 2 notes at the same time
A person more musically talented than JC could probably:
- sing from 10 to 20.000 Hz
- sing 5 notes at the same time
- identify a note before it's even played
So I guess it's Ling Ling
@@martynconkling8876He spread that kind of jazz influence more into the mainstream, who wouldn't be exposed to that if it were not for him. Which is why most people think it is abnormal but in reality there are plenty of musicians with those abilities. Not to downgrade him though. I think his playing is amazing and waaay past the level I'm at.
Martyn Conkling
right on
Clifton Smith
right on too
...and yes, i agree, that’s his ‘shiny’ angle: passionately sharing his discoveries (while they’ve been out there for millennia, but new to him nonetheless, blowing his exploring mind), making him want to share it with his new/younger [millennial] generation, who probably wouldn’t even look at these things in details if it wasn’t presented & taught in such an original & dynamic way, by a happy & quirkily engaging character such as Mr J. Collier... and as Mr M. Conkling said it, “props to him” for doing so, cuz while we know that what he shares isn’t absolutely ‘novel’, the fact alone that someone his age is showing & demonstrating these cool & amazing facts to the whole world is very rare !..
You hear those little baby notes inside? Everyone has those... Thats what makes the universe work, or somethin
-Jacob Collier 2021
Also pretty close to every masterclass ever
As physicist, I would have to say: Unfortunately, his unscientific language makes it at times pretty hard to distinguish from esoteric bullshit.
Its all sine waves in this holographic operating system
Yeah that or something
@@Legominder Just as I was starting to enjoy Collier, I was disappointed to hear his crude explanation. I will chock it up to him trying to 'dumb it down' for a large audience, but your comment captured my thinking exactly. BUT, to be fair, I am confident that Mr. Collier fully knows that his explanation is a bit oversimplified for the sake of being more digestible. At other times, he clearly demonstrates to be genuinely knowledgeable.
Evidence of extraterrestrial life on Earth:
We are all capable of this, when we start to use our full abilities and not be distracted anymore. Jacob is extraordinary in the sense that he is showing us how awesome we can be when we are in tune with the universe.
this is literally terrestial life’s opinion on itself
@@kultw1837 yeah bc we aren’t in touch with ourselves for the most part.
No... You just dont understand vocal frequencies. This is hyper common in musicianship
@Ryandal Gilmore also agree
I’m convinced homie has never learned a thing in his life he’s just always known it all.
@Felix Pulmano re-read what I wrote….
@Felix Pulmano Jacob knows SO MUCH about music theory and how to apply it. I’m merely saying that he is so well versed when it comes to music, it’s almost like he was just born knowing what “super-ultra-hyper-mega-lydian” or other obscure scales.
@@Timbo360 he’s saying that you’re undercutting the effort he’s put into learning
@@Pip200ne i get what he’s saying I just didn’t realize it’d be taken literally. It’s merely another way to say “this dude doesn’t have talent, talent has him” or however else anyone wants to phrase it.
I'm convinced after reading this comment section homie has never heard a joke before.
Jacob: "Hear all those baby notes inside?"
Me: "I'll trust you."
You should be able to hear it if you listen for a quiet higher pitch above the note that he's singing. Might need headphones if you're watching on a phone or something.
He is not good singing in diphonic. Check this out, you will hear it ;) th-cam.com/video/vC9Qh709gas/w-d-xo.html
Mongolian throat singing. It's like your throat starts playing the missing fundamental from the harmonic sequence you are trying to hit ... Absolutely amazing
I feel like I've also burped in a certain way while speaking and gotten multiple tones at once by accident as well, lol.
I've heard about Mongolian throat singing, but I don't think what he does matches your description too well. He's making the fundamental just with his regular voice. And then he's forming his mouth so that the wanted frequency resonates and becomes louder. Source: I can sing like that and it looks and sounds the same
This actually has nothing to do with throat singing. This is just using the shape of your mouth and tongue to accentuate a note that is already there. Throat singing involves singing *lower* notes than the fundamental of your vocal cords
@@Jodabomb24 throat singing involves shape of mouth and tongue too. What Jacob is doing is basically throat singing.
@@namelol1033 only difference is that throat singing also uses the false vocal cords
This seems really complicated, but it’s actually the entire basis of classical singing - The reason that opera singers don’t use microphones, while others do, is not because they have more breath or power. Classical technique actually manipulates the mouth and tongue to strengthen certain overtones, which allow the sound to carry further and access “ring” in the voice!
Not exactly. The reason opera singers don’t use microphones is the art itself is unmiked singing. The reason they can be heard well is precise breath coordination release and posturing of the body, which allows the vocal cords to vibrate as freely as possible. This also removes unnecessary constriction of the throat, which allows a rounder and longer resonating space. Also, they do train directly their breath capacity and power, the extrinsic tongue muscles (which dilate the throat space for deeper breathing and a bigger resonating space), and also develop the strength of the vocal cords themselves to be able to resist a greater amount of air without being blown apart.
So it’s a bit of everything- tuning of vowels and formants, release and depth of breathing and free vibration of the cords, as well as developing raw power. Some old school singers would develop diaphragm power by breathing with weights placed on their bellies for example
The fundamental frequency should always be the strongest in opera. Caruso, the best opera singer wrote this in his book. When the harmonics or “ring” dominate, you can have freely vibrating cords, yet a closed throat space. You can learn to amplify those harmonics more than an opera singer does and still not even make 1/3 of the great sound of an opera singer. Opera was never about just amplifying the “ring” in the sound. It was about beauty and fullness, darkness, clearness mellowness and purity in the tone, strength in the fundamental pitch, and some natural ring as a byproduct of everything else
Isn't the reason opera singers don't use microphones because they're authentically practicing an artform that was created before the invention of microphones
@@benharper962 You’re right, but like… I was trying to present people with a fun fact, haha! I didn’t need to whip out my Scott McCoy book and make everyone diagram out a standing wave or sub-glottal pressure or anything 😂.
@@yoosh9034 In a way! I would think that because of the necessity to carry the sound without amplification, vocal technique evolved to be this way. But I don’t think you can separate the acoustics from the history of the artform.
@@benharper962 I do take some issue with your explanation though. For example, I don’t agree that we directly train breath capcity or power. Rather, it is a development of the musculature which serves to suspend the entire breathing apparatus and make efficient use of the air, so that the vocal folds may vibrate freely and without having to regulate air flow. And the diaphragm is an involuntary muscle, so nobody can develop that directly.
The perceived breath “power” is actually a result of efficient air speed, not force. I’m trying to dispel the notion that opera singers just force air in and out. It is actually a shaping of air which naturally flows in and out, managing tension along the entire resonating tract. But ALL in pursuit of acoustical “tuning” to the formants. And, of course the fundamental is the loudest, as that is the frequency at which your folds are vibrating and creating sound.
“The piano is out of tune. That’s another masterclass.”
Piano be like: “sign me up cap.”
He speaks so fluently about music theory.
He references so many different topics casually, im not sure if i could follow even 30min of his performances
"You can't sing two notes at once"
**Mongolian throat singing has entered the chat**
thanks to u i have now searched this up
*Tuvan throat singin as well.
Came here to say that lol
in very simple English:
It is very rare that we only hear one pitch in nature. Most of what we call sounds are made up of many different pitches.
Jacob is talking about periodic sound:
Periodic sound is what tones are made up of. It is the opposite of aperiodic sound. The difference between these two is:
Aperiodic sound is made up of pitches that do not have a specific interval between each of the pitches. In other words, the pitches are arbitrary.
Periodic sound is made up of pitches that have the same absolute interval between each of the pitches. This interval is the pitch we perceive the sound to be at.
Let's say we have a tone that has four pitches: 100 HZ 200 HZ 300 HZ and 400 HZ.
Between each of these pitches, there is 100 HZ, so this is the pitch we perceive for the overall sound.
This sound we call the 'fundamental' in acoustics and the 'tonic' in harmonic analysis.
In most cases, the fundamental is there in the tone, but we can also leave it out if its 'overtones' are there.
'Overtones' are the pitches above the fundamental that are spaced out by the exact interval that is the fundamental.
If this is too abstract, you can think of the fundamental as a lego brick. Adding overtones to the fundamental is just like placing the same type of lego brick on top of the original one (the fundamental).
By putting lego bricks on top of each other, we can also see how we get the different intervals of music by adding the overtones to the fundamental pitch:
Putting one lego brick on top of another, we increase the size of the lego figure by 100%. This corresponds to the octave. One octave above 100 HZ is 200 HZ.
When we add the third brick, we get an increase of 50%. This corresponds to the fifth. One fifth above 200 HZ is 300 HZ.
By the fourth brick we get 33,33333333%. This corresponds to a fourth. One fourth above 300 HZ is 400 HZ. (also the second octave of 100 HZ)
By the fifth brick we get 25%. This corresponds to a major third. One major third above 400 HZ is 500 HZ.
By the sixth brick we get 20%. This corresponds to a minor third. One minor third above 500 HZ is 600 HZ. (also the third octave of 100 HZ)
What Jacob also talks about is formants.
To know what formants are, you need to know that sounds are made up of two things:
1) vibrations in the air (what we describe in HZ)
2) The space they occur in
Formants are a property of the spaces that sounds occur in.
Different spaces have different shapes and different shapes amplify different overtones.
This is why different instruments sound different. It is also why different vowels sound different. Because the instruments have different shapes and because we change the way our mouth is shaped when say different vowels. Our mouths are like very pliable instruments.
It is also why different instruments can play different harmonics. For instance, string instruments can play all the harmonics. Flutes can also do that because they are a tube that is open at both ends. But clarinets can't do that because they close at one end when you play them. Saxophones can also play all the harmonics, but they also close at one end. But they are not cylindrical, they are conical. This is also why saxophones sound different to clarinets and why they blend very well with strings (and flutes when they play more quietly): because they all have all the overtones in their sound.
The advantage of the clarinet is that when you blow hard, you actually reach the second overtone instead of the first, and when you blow even harder, you reach the fourth, while on the saxophone you only reach the first and second overtone this way. This means that the range of the clarinet is very large. It can play many, many tones more easily than the saxophone. This is because our tuning system in Western music is built so all the notes have the same distance between them, but this means that the overtones of the notes are not in tune. So the saxophone player has to adjust very high notes a lot because they are based on very high overtones. But in the past when we had not invented keys (the metal bits that are pressed to open holes in the instrument but are closed when unpressed (the opposite of tone holes)), the clarinet was a very limited instrument because a lot of notes were missing because you could not play the octave by blowing hard.
This was such a fucking cool comment. Thank you.
@@12tinycorgis15 Thank YOU!
Formants!! I needed that word to look more into the concept! Thank you.
Just a curious amateur here, self-directed study
tldr
@@Mr850man ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Anyone else also lowkey found it impressive when he casually sang the same note in two different timbres to imitate a Vibraphone and Violin
I found it annoying actually
"There are an infinite number of harmonics" - Jacob Collier
obviously still believes in Newtonian physics
Man explains and demonstrates the basics of timbre and teases the concept of just intonation
Like the intonation when he explains how to play a violin? - 0:39
@@charlieheath943 no that’s timbre
"Genius demonstrates the concept of just intonation with impeccable overtone singing technique"
There, I fixed it for you :)
“And this concludes my presentation of your planet.”
- Alien Musician
Of course he also masters overtone singing...
I don't mean to come across as an elitist or anything, but this is FAR from overtone singing mastery (although it is Jacob Collier and I'm sure he could become exceptional at it if he wanted to lol.) If you haven't already, you should check out Mongolian/Tuvan throat singing. There is a technique called "Sygyt" (which means "whistling") which is literally singing using almost exclusively overtones. Fascinating stuff.
@@PersianPlatypus I think "masters" was more of a translation error, I looked that word up 😅
@@nils2868 Ahh alright, I gotcha hahah. No worries :P
@@PersianPlatypus It's fairly impressive that he's able to do it at all TBH.
@@mosley3485 yeah, i know hes amazingly talented, but never would i thought he can actually sings overtones
There are some sounds that don’t follow the harmonic series, and most of those sounds people would consider harsh and dissonant, despite being almost the same to other similar sounds. Difference is with most sounds they follow a waveform that you can use a Fourier transform to get the harmonics in the harmonic series that you see, but with things that don’t follow the harmonic series don’t follow a simple waveform since it’s mathematically impossible to create one that can’t be simplified into the harmonic series. Instead it has a waveform that changes each cycle by a different cycle that doesn’t match the any power normal waveform. You can actually use amplitude modulation to frequency shift all the harmonics in a sound down by the same amount, ruining all the ratios in a sound, turning a normal sound into something completely different and other worldly. It’s also possible to produce sounds with minor harmonic series instead of major ones, but those also are commonly considered to sound weird. It’s crazy how imprinted the harmonic series is in our minds that any deviation sounds far different and almost wrong to us.
what are you talking abt lol
I’m talking about the topic discussed in the video...?
@@LogansDarling Very interesting explanation, thank you mate
yeah, i take issue with him saying a major chord exists within every sound, that’s far from true, even harmonic sounds can have overtones that don’t strictly correspond to a major triad. i wonder why he chose to say that
also, some is a bit of an understatement, there are many many sounds which don’t follow the harmonic series
This man is a musical alien
He was tired of our lack of musical knowledge.
"You can't sing two notes at once."
Lalah Hathaway: _"And I took that personally."_
😂😂😂
When I first watched that Snarky Puppy video, I was in complete shock (and still am each time I re-watch it). I remember thinking "did she just sing a chord? WTF?" I know it was not something new by any means but it felt like she did it so effortlessly and different than anyone I have ever heard before.
That's the comment I was looking for.😂😂😂 I kept thinking about Lalah harmonizing with herself on "Something" with Snarky Puppy!
The point of the video is that everyone sings MORE than two notes at the same time.
Stitch and multiple other beatboxers: *laughing in polyphonic in the background*
That piano’s like “wtf bruh, I thought we were cool…”
There was a time I was singing an F5 in head voice and the note indicator indicated two consistent alternate notes : F5 and F6. I could feel that my vocal chords were producing a dominant lower frequency and a higher overtone at the same time. The harmonics of it gave the note a more "steely edge" I would say
Sound like Huur-Huut Tu or other bassthroat/mongolian song, i love those baby notes!
*Huun-Huur-Tu
It doesn't lol. They're doing tuvan throat singing
@@benjaminwoodrowmusic6070 The only difference is the technique and the low note which is lower then he portrayed, that's basically the same thing if we speak of the overtones, they master this technique tho..
@@VexyGuitar sorry I just meant its very different. I've got a video of me doing it on my channel. I know what you mean 👍
@@VexyGuitar There are different types of throat singing with different textures and height of base note such as kargyra, khöömei, sigit.
I heard a person sing a normal note, a throat note, and add a note with harmonics it to it. It was chilling.
Did this person happen to be David Khan or some other bass?
"Oh, this is how the universe works. Neat. Anyway ... the piano is out of tune." - Jacob probably.
Arent these just called overtones
Edit: Title change 👍
yes
Technician: Tunes Piano
Jacob: I'ma 'bout to end this mans whole career
"The piano is out of tune but that's a different masterclass" You see, he's right, but the way he says it simply means that I didn't know about it at all
I studied the harmonic series a lot in school as a music theory major. Something that blew my mind is that you could select any harmonic above a fundamental, build the harmonic series from that harmonic (as if it’s the new fundamental), and those new harmonics would match up perfectly with the upper, upper harmonics of the original fundamental 🤯
Actually, I don't think that should be right.
My logic is this: the harmonic series can be represented like this
x, 2x, 3x, 4x ...
If you take 2x, it's harmonic series will be
2x, 4x, 6x, 8x ..., which is not what the fundamental's harmonic series is.
So like C has C2, G, C3, E3, G3, Bb3 i think, and G has G2 D2 G3 B D F, or something like that.
It doesn't match up.
@@vulgaraszleandrosz4105 You’re starting from G1 which is not an overtone of the fundamental C1; the first is C2. Try it from G2 or E3, it’ll line up. Or maybe I’m remembering it wrong, it’ll been like 20 years or so
@@patcupo Same thing just an octave up, sorry for the brainfart. Still none of them lines up (and it shouldn't)
C1 C2 G2 C3 E3 G3 Bb3 C4 ...
G2 G3 D3 G4 B4 D4 F4....
@@vulgaraszleandrosz4105 Patrick is correct; here's how it matches up :)
C1 C2 G2 C3 E3 G3 Bb3 C4 D4 E4 ~F#4 G4 ~Ab4 ~Bb4 B4 C5 ~C#5 D5 etc
G2 G3 D4 G4 B4 D5 etc
@@filiusgulielmi4636 @Vulgarasz Leandrosz I'm pretty sure it's accurate, I remember following Hindemith's tables back in the day. I made my own that's color-coded - you can see that everything goes back to the fundamental and its overtones: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JPtNVCpL3EsL6_vYA_JILw00DEPprKW5lv8UHOzgMmo/edit?usp=sharing
"you can't sing two notes at once"
Anna-Maria Hefele: *triggered*
This guy is like an extra eccentric version of a music Bob Ross.
You mean pretentious, not eccentric
@@cm9241 extremely pretentious
@@sprocastersprocaster Smarter than me = pretentious.
My cat found this video very interesting.
Thank you for your explanations for this video and others and ones to come. Inspiring.
Jacob: you cant sing two notes at once
Beatboxer: what do you mean? We do polyphonic all the time.
I'm beatboxer and we use a double voice usually if someone what can check two-h or stich it's not overtone like Jacob did, it's a different technique that produces more than 2 notes actually
The first 6 seconds is such an amazing demonstration of harmonics!!
I don’t think Jacob has ever taken a music class in his life and he just pushed keys on a piano until he achieved nirvana
😂😂😂
Hate to burst your bubble but I see people constantly claiming he's an "autodidact" which isn't true. Both of his parents are professional musicians.
@@cm9241 I mean, people with absolute pitch can become autodidacts because they have a much easier time differentiating and easily recognizing pitches and picking out individual notes comprising chords.
I'm pretty sure my high school friend Bryan Koch has absolute pitch as not only did he play several different instruments in high school band and rock bands, but I remember instances of various band members handing him their instrument (he'd never held or played one before), and after a minute or two of figuring out how to get sounds out, he managed to play a scale!... and then play simple tunes. I'm pretty sure that kind of thing only comes that naturally from absolute pitch.
Another talented friend on the ragtime scene has absolute pitch and I tested it once by mashing down humongous chord clusters on one piano, whose keyboard was not visible to him. After a second, he was able to mash down / duplicate those same clusters, note for note, just by ear. To me, that s__t is just supernatural.
Some extremely talented folks with absolute pitch like John W. "Blind" Boone, Art Tatum, Bob Wright, David Junchen etc were able to reproduce an entire performance just after hearing it once. That is not just absolute pitch, but an extremely high level of musical perception/awareness, memory, and then a high level of technique to reproduce that (piano) performance.
But playing any instrument WELL is still a lot of hard work, whether you teach yourself or are taught by someone else. There is a lot of technique involved, and getting advanced level at music requires a great deal of study, whether you learn 'by ear' from listening to lots of recordings / other musicians etc, and/or via sheet music, music teachers, method books etc. No person on earth is born with massive amounts of musical technique... you need to practice in order to obtain it.
This guy didn't just pop out of the womb a virtuoso, and neither did Mozart, or Art Tatum etc etc.
@@andrewbarrett1537 autodidact means he taught himself music. He didn't.
@@cm9241 Speaking as someone who comes from a musical family (my father and one of my uncles are both professional musicians, and my mother, both grandfathers, one grandmother, all the rest of my uncles, and one aunt have all played or play some instrument at some time), I can confirm that playing music comes a bit easier to a person if you are SATURATED with music from an early age.
I was listening to great live jazz since I was in the womb so I think I have a bit of an unfair advantage over those who did not have this sort of privilege. Yes that's a bit of bragging, but it's also something over which I had no control, but for which I'm grateful. I'm sure there are many others with similar experiences, as I do not think my own life has been any more musically great than other folks'... just maybe more LIVE music exposure to live jazz than the average kid, but one can still hear nearly all of these same musicians on recordings, and so experience a lot of that magic. I'm sure lots of other folks have heard great live musicians that I'll never get to hear, so it goes both ways.
But I also am a bit lazy when it comes to practicing and so anyone who is dedicated enough and applies themselves can easily reach my level of accomplishment and beyond, in a shorter time than I reached it, at least in performance if not in composition (for my COMPOSING... I'm not really sure where that s__t comes from... it's a lot of hard work to perfect each piece, spending hours or weeks hammering away at 2 bars in search of a perfect chord or phrase, but the origins of the initial inspiration for tunes are completely mysterious, so it's not really something I COULD teach to others).
It is still possible for a person from this kind of musical background to be NOT musical or rather, to not want to choose playing music either as a hobby or a career, even if they enjoy listening to it.
It is also possible for a person from a non-musical background to become highly musically talented, especially if they surround themselves with music either live, with recordings, both etc and also practice and play all the time.
So while I'm sure his upbringing had a great deal to do with it, it's also him, himself, and his own decision to love music and want to learn more about it / play better etc. This is true of any great musician.
It's kind of a combination of "saturation" and "study and discipline", but the personal ENJOYMENT of music must always be there or else there's no point IMO.
Truly interesting content, but too short video...
You can find the whole masterclass on TH-cam
@@thomasology In fact, it’s in the description!
@@thomasology Oh thanks! Didn't know that
@@gradyking4739 Ups
This guy might be the most genius musician that has ever existed.
He read one or two Wikipedia pages on music theory and now he's a genius?
This is called "NG-technique". There are also the L-technique (the same as in Tuvan Sygyt Style) and the J-technique.
NG is the best for amplifying the lower overtones, while the L and J can make you amplify more than 10 overtones. You can actually climb the overtone series up to the 16th partial
(I've made it to the 24th) :-)
I can sing 2 notes at the same time. Its called polyphonia. Its always a fixed interval, (major fourth, i.e. if i sing a F3, i can add a C3 below it) i can't change it, although ive learned to turn it on and off while i sing, and it happened from me breaking smthg in my adam's apple while choking on food when i was younger. Idk if anything actually broke broke, but i felt a loud crack when i finally managed to cough and my voice changed ever since. At first i thought i only lost range - almost half an octave on the high end - but after a few weeks i accidentally did a vocal power chord, and have been exploring and using it ever since
I want to be inside this man's mind just to take a look at how it works.
Scribbles of a lunatic and formulas of a genius are often indistinguishable. - Unifying Theory
I’ve actually learned how to do overtones and they are super fun
There is an auditory illusion where a tone is played and then another tone and you’re asked if the following tone was higher or lower.
If it’s a basic tone and ratio, then it can be perceived as certain things.
But the thing about notes for those of us aware of fundamentals and partials is that the fundamental is for the most part the lowest tone of a stack, and that defines the note, not the upper tone. Of course, an exception is if you have a weak additional tone kinda snuck in there. But for the auditory illusion, it’s kind of silly haha
When aliens come to Earth in the year 5000+, Jacob's literature/music would be the start of how we understood the aliens.
I'm very surprised he got timbre and formants mixed up. Comparing a violin to a xylophone playing the same note and them having different formants is just dead wrong. Formants are phonetic and vocal based sounds. Timbre is the quality and character of a sound.
Question for the musicians: in Spain you learn all this is in the conservatory when you are a teenager (12-18), it's basic harmony... now I leave in another country and they don't teach music theory at all, I have no idea why (!). How is it in your country? Is it really uncommon that musicians know these things?
No need to say, I love JC and how he shares all these concepts with music lovers :-)
America does not value arts and music so it’s not taught as in-depth unless the student takes solely art/music electives and that’s IF the school allows students to pick their electives.
I should specify American SCHOOLS not America in general
I mean in this video he is talking about natural harmonics, not building a harmony. But naw, even in high school music curriculums they don't teach theory, they just show you the noted to play and how to play them. I had to teach a high school senior how chord progressions work....it's probably something he subconsciously known about but was blown away at how much easier it is to break down music or compose with the concept of chord progressions. He was a brass player.
Here's the answer, the vast majority of students don't attend "conservatories."
beatboxers: HOLD MY BEER
I have no idea about the music creation whatsoever with no exception to this man - still got recommended his videos and keep them watching.
It's not that complicated guys, it's just the way he presented it
was expecting him to sing two notes at once
Jacob saying the piano is out of tune is like my dad saying he was the only one who wasn't out of step in his high school marching band.
That's so cool!
Actually, I am can sing three notes at once, each with similar projection. but the intervals between the notes are always fixed, no matter how low or high I sing. the intervals are something like a half step, and then also a minor third over the first note.
(thankfully i also have perfect pitch)
How? Is it double voice (the beatboxing technique that lets you switch between three notes individually) or do you actually produce the illusion of three notes at once?
His majesty starts discussing music, shifts into biology with a touch of geography, and finally into philosophy
Of course, if anyone outside of Tibet (or the Harmonics Choir) can emulate Tibetan throat singing, it’s Jacob. This guy is a musical badass.
I mean, doing what Jacob is doing here isn't really all that hard. Just sing with plenty of air support and form vowels ending with a highly arched r in your mouth, pushing a lot of air over your arched tongue. Start with -or and slide up to -eer, and you'll hear the overtones pop right out. Traditional throat singing has a much more pronounced, whistle-y overtone presence.
Unlimited potential lol…
Mongolians
this is just overtones. khoomei ("Tibetan throat singing" - you) also uses a glottal type undertone which generally is not held as a single note throughout a song, in conjunction with the resonance frequencies that are created with your tongue. this isn't tibetan throat singing, it's overtone singing. he's not using his throat, he's using his tongue to create the "little baby notes" (overtones). Khoomei (Tibetan throat singing) is the combination of glottal deep singing with/without overtones created by the tongue. Overtone singing =/= khoomei.
I've seen so many people on TH-cam do tuvan throat singing for fun. It isn't hard.
That's so weird but also so cool, damn I need more overtone singing content
I discovered how to do this when I was little; I think most people could probably do it if they just knew about it but it’s really fun
he’s conflating formants with overtones/timbre here, a formant is a spectral band of high energy, a sound can have many formants which consist of more than one overtone and contribute to the sound’s timbre
@@martynconkling8876 he refers to the overtone structure of a sound as a formant, whereas a formant is generally used to mean concentrated bands of frequency energy, they can contain harmonic overtones but they can also contain noise/inharmonic overtones and there can be more than one of them that contribute to a sound’s timbre
It’s funny hearing people like him say,” and see a harmony is just a major third” and proceeds to play it. Little does he know not one person in the audience has perfect pitch and they just believe him without actually hearing any notes
You don't need perfect pitch to be able to recognize the sound of a major triad. Most musicians (or all of them, depending who you include) could do it.
As pointed out, you don't need perfect pitch. Relative pitch rules.
You could consciously hear 1-3-5 in just 3 days of practicing hearing intervals. You don't even need to be a master of relative pitch to do that.
The overtones are a little harder to hear because its subtle but its there.
@@clotho5437 more like an hour
My pitch isn't that great but I can readily tell like, major and minor thirds. What I CAN'T really hear is for example just intonation vs equal temperament. I can hear two differently-tuned chords (the same chord, just slightly adjusted) demonstrated one after another, and hear some differences, but it doesn't maybe affect me as a "positive-negative" thing as much as it might affect some others. I credit my lack of tuning discrimination as being due to listening to LPs of out-of-tune pianos and organs throughout my childhood :)
Jacob always comes across as a guy who went to Nepal for a year, but instead of learning to meditate he played the piano
Mind blowing. I remember Avi from PTX achieving this God Tier vocal skill.
I understand that the shape of the wave in addition to the overtones does much to account for the tone. While a flute produces a rounder waveform more similar to a sine wave, a violin will produce something more like a sawtooth wave.
Not me trying this and miserably failing.
There is also consideration that there are non sinusoidal elements to a fundamental frequency and harmonic series that influences the tone.
I like to watch him explain things I completely don't understand yet
A major chord exists within every sound. 🤯
The piano is out of tune, I’m not
Jacob's the worst nightmare of every piano tuner
No. The piano cannot be tuned "perfectly" because the division of the octave in 12 notes doesn't follow nature.
Lloyd: hey wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world?
***sings harmonics**
I don’t hear it. Is there a way to learn to hear overtones?
May need tk turn the volume up higher or try with or without headphones. The overtones are much quieter compared to the humming and are higher pitched if you have any hearing problems with higher pitch or hearing loss it may be difficult to hear them; he purposefully sang the first few six or seven because he gets past the harmonic b7,while humming (sang, generated, semantics), the notes get closer together the higher up you go in the harmonic series,
What you're listening for are the intervals, the fifth, the dominant tetrad that comes out, listen for the major 3rd, fifth, b7, and octave against his humming pitch
th-cam.com/video/UHTF1-IhuC0/w-d-xo.html
We were drawn to singing in thirds - specifically major thirds - because dissonance is a threat.
If you're swimming in the ocean, waves rolling past you on a regular interval are easy to swim in. Even if they get larger, you can handle them much easier if they're coming at you in a regular interval. Having them come at you at seemingly random intervals puts you in danger much more quickly. They'll fatigue you and, if the water is churning enough, they can actually pull you apart after a while.
The Earth's atmosphere is a "liquid" just like the oceans but less dense and the cells in your ear that handle hearing are existing in that liquid. Dissonance is when you have sound waves that are not in sync with each other....and that's a threat to the cells in the ear so, we're naturally not going to like intervals that aren't Major.
i think you mean to say "fluid". the atmosphere is certainly a mixture of gases, not liquids.
@@werdwerdus You're wrong!!!! I didn't mean to say it, that's why I had liquid in quotes.
But I'm being a jerk..... you're absolutely correct in that the fluid dynamics of the atmosphere is what I was actually talking about. I was trying to keep what I was saying as simple as possible and thought "liquid" would be a more widely understood concept than fluid. I was probably wrong about that or, at least being overly cautious.
"owwwaaaanhhh" - plays the piano note "nah, mine is correct, the piano is out of tune, i can't be"
"Hey Jacob what DAW do you use?"
"All of them"
Overtone singing isn't really singing two notes at once, it's just causing the overtone of the note you're singing to resonate loudly. There ARE techniques to sing two notes at once though. Lalah Hathaway for example, 6:17 of this video th-cam.com/video/0SJIgTLe0hc/w-d-xo.html
Guys. Follow darktangent10's link. That woman's performance is otherworldly and deserves your time.
Is subharmonic singing considered as singing 2 notes at the same time too?
This is amazing
Also Stitch does it even more effortlessly in his beatbox wildcard here th-cam.com/video/UilVHqQxe8Q/w-d-xo.html
The piano is actually out of tune 😂😂😂
Yeah what?!
@@AugustZabladowski read about equal temperament
It is out of tune. . it's called equal temperament.
Meanwhile: Two.H, Stitch and lot of other beatboxers are doing polyphonics :)
I love how he called overtones "baby notes", I'm gonna use it now
He sounds like he's yawning every time he speaks, no offense.
his voice reminds me of a wind instrument
and when he’s singing
This channel does transcriptions.
The name of the channel is George Collier.
This guy in quite a few of the videos is named Jacob Collier.
I don't know if these two entities are related in any way other than by last name.
This is all I know. That being said:
This Jacob guy, talented as he may be, manages to dress like one hell of a pretentious boi in every video I've seen so far
Listen to Avi Kaplan’s overtones if you want to hear really cool ones. He can do the lion sleeps tonight
Western Singers : Lets try singing 2 notes at a time .
Eastern Classical Musicians : Are you kidding right ? We can sing 22 Shrutis(Micro Tones) guys 😂
There are two ways to sing two notes at once, overtone singing (this), and polyphonic singing. Unlike this, you can actually speak/sing with polyphonic singing. I'm not sure why it happens or how to do it, but I've seen it and it's very cool.
0:47 i cannot get enough of his violin impression 😂😂😂
0:01 when you're 6 years old at the doctors, and he needs to check your throat
😂😂😂 underrated
I love watching this guy try to put an acid trip into words…
You can do this with your phones speaker by playing the music in to your mouth and harmonizing by changing the shape of your mouth.
“That’s what makes the universe work or something”
My new favourite quote
This guy always look like he is a spiritual guide or leader of a hippie cult and he is just giving music theory expos lol.
Mr J. Collier’s ‘shiny’ angle: passionately sharing his discoveries (while they’ve been out there for millennia, but new to him nonetheless) which are blowing his exploring mind, making him want to share them with his new/younger [millennial+] generation that probably wouldn’t even look at these things in details if it wasn’t presented & taught in such an original & dynamic way, by a happy & quirkily engaging character such as Mr J. Collier... As Mr M. Conkling said it, “props to him” for doing so, cuz while we know that what he shares isn’t actually ‘novel’, the only fact that someone his age is showing & demonstrating these cool & amazing things to the whole world is very rare !..
i had to check my guitar, which i tune by ear... bro's natural C note was spot on in tune with mine. Astounding...
I guess figuring this out comes more naturally to those with absolute pitch than to the rest of us without it.
I cant learn from a guy like this. He is so smart he cant say things in simple
Just to add, some musical instruments have non harmonic overtones too but ti verying degrees depending on the instrument and to different effect. So on a drum the effect is to have almost no tone. Thats because the non harmonic overtones are as strong as the harmonic overtones.
A bell has very strong nonharmonic over tones but not as atrong and as spread out as the drum. This goves the bell very weird sounds.
An electric guitar has less non harmonic overtones than the bell but still very stong. This creates a very rich sound. The piano has less than the electric guitar but still very rich. The violin has less than the piano. At this point the sound of the violin can be made with jist the harmonic overtones and itwill be clearly a violin sound but maybe not as rich as you would expect a real violin.
This man is beyond our time.
Listen to the album "Hearing Solar Winds" by David Hykes And The Harmonic Choir for a much better understanding of what JC is saying here.
Imagine when he starts singing microtonal overtones and defies physics
Philosophy under music, love it!