Is Cb The Same Note As B? (A Response To Adam Neely)
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- Опубліковано 26 січ 2023
- Actually Adam's mostly correct.
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So, recently, Adam Neely decided to use his platform to weigh in on the debate about whether or not Cb and B are the same note, and surprising no one, he got it wrong. Wait, no, that's not true. He got it pretty much entirely right. But! I feel like there are important aspects of the debate that got left out of his video, and while I don't disagree with any of his arguments I found his conclusion unsatisfying, so now I'm making a really long video about why he's only mostly correct. Enjoy? Or I'm sorry? Whichever feels more appropriate to you.
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Adam's video: • Is Cb the same note as B?
The Vsauce3 video: • Could You Survive A QU...
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Some additional thoughts/corrections:
1) One could argue that if there are _any_ contexts where the difference matters, that means they are different, making Adam correct. And… sure, I guess, but I think it's also important to be very clear that a) sometimes the difference is irrelevant, and b) sometimes the difference is actively misleading. All of those can happen, and the "Cb isn't B" argument, including in Adam's video, regularly fails to acknowledge it. They generally wind up implying (or, in some cases, explicitly stating) that you're a worse, less qualified musician if you don't "get" why this distinction needs to be stressed, despite the fact that in many cases it doesn't.
2) In case you're wondering, the complexity of the pivot chord example has nothing to do with the enharmonic nature of the notes. (Or at least, of the roots.) If we move the question up a half-step and try to pivot from F to B, they'd both agree to call the resulting chord C7. This is why I think it's a valid example: If it absolutely required them to have different names, then sure, they'd be different, but as I mentioned in the video, the only reason it does in this case is because no one wants to write in the key of A# major. The whole thing _can_ be spelled consistently. It just shouldn't be.
3) The All By Myself example is interesting to me because, looking it up, in Dion's original version on Falling Into You, it's a whole step higher. There's no Cb anywhere. The pivot note is F, and they move from A major to Db major. The Cb only happens in later live versions where her voice isn't up to that high note, which don't seem like the most obvious reference point, implying that Adam actively sought out a recording that would let him include a digression about Cb? I dunno. Maybe he just wanted to use a clip that he could include a visual for, but the song has a music video, so... yeah.
4) Yes, I know, lambda represents wavelength, not frequency. But frequency is just an f, and wavelengths of light are directly correlated with their frequencies, so cut me some slack please.
5) I'm from Massachusetts, I can say whatever I want about the Patriots.
6) To be fair to Adam, I would probably default to measuring this interval in major 3rds as well: Most of Western harmony is based in 3rds, and it's a relatively simple calculation relative to most of the other options. If we're tuning in the key of Eb, it's probably correct. Although, of course, Eb isn't the only key in which this distinction comes up. These notes are also both potentially relevant in the keys of Bb, Ab, and Db, along with their relative minors, which opens up even more possible definitions. Just for fun, here's a couple more: You could go up a whole-step from Eb to F, then up two 5:6 minor 3rds, giving you a Cb of 504hz. (The B we derive this way is equivalent to the one we got with Adam's method, but the Cb is new.) Or we could break out of 5-limit tuning and go from that F up or down a 5:7 tritone, giving us Cb as 490hz and B as 500hz. The 7:11 and 8:13 ratios are also reasonable direct candidates for the #5/b6 interval, although it's not generally specified which ones they would correspond to so it's not clear whether the resulting frequencies would be B or Cb. But it would still give you even more valid, nameable frequencies within that range.
7) That said, the fact that we default to 3rds is probably a knock against the universality of just intonation, since that system pretty clearly implies that 5ths should be the higher priority, and yet we abandoned pure 5th-based tuning (called pythagorean tuning) pretty early on because we didn't think it sounded good. I don't know how fair an argument that is, though, because in something like quarter-comma meantone the 5th is much closer to the correct ratio than the 3rd would be in straight pythagorean tuning, so you can view that as a compromise between the inherently incompatible 2:3 and 4:5 intervals, rather than an admission that the underlying philosophy is broken. Still, though, the decision to prioritize these specific intervals is a choice, not a mathematical fact, and it's misleading and potentially dangerous to imply otherwise.
8) I cut this out of the Gamelan section because it was getting long and I didn't feel like this part was necessary for the point I was making, but one particularly striking feature of Balinese Gamelan is the concept of ombak, which is basically an intentional detuning between pairs of instruments that play together, creating this really cool acoustic beating effect that most Western musicians would call being out of tune but is actually an essential component of the style. Importantly, these notes differ by a consistent number of _hertz_, no matter the register. It has nothing to do with ratios. Just intonation can't even begin to explain why you would want to do that, and yet clearly people do, and they consider it beautiful. (It is.)
9) Also, that short clip of Balinese Gamelan was from here: ua-cam.com/video/UEWCCSuHsuQ/v-deo.html and I highly recommend listening to the whole thing.
10) As Adam mentions in his video, there were some attempts at making keyboards that had extra keys for additional just-intonation pitches. (or at least meantone pitches, which isn't quite the same thing, but still.) However, to the best of my knowledge these were never the norm, and they certainly didn't last.
11) I claimed the tritone substitution relies inherently on equal temperament, and I stand by that, but it's worth noting that it does have a conceptual ancestor, the augmented 6th chord, that predates the widespread adoption of equal temperament. But while the two rely on similar principles, there are some meaningful distinctions. See this video for more detail: ua-cam.com/video/2_ZhauJMvyU/v-deo.html
12) I should clarify that "equal temperament is merely a harmonic compromise, not a rich musical tradition in its own right" is a significant overstatement of any position Adam took in his video, and I don't think it's a claim he would defend. It is, however, the logical consequence of choosing to prioritize just intonation definitions within an equal-tempered landscape, which is a thing he's doing, (although, again, perhaps unintentionally) so while I don't think it's what he believes, I do still think it's a valid thing to push back on in responding to his argument.
13) Also, I suppose Adam never actually _said_ that B and Cb are always different. He just laid out a bunch of examples where they are and no examples where they aren't, thus heavily implying it. So maybe I'm being too harsh, or overstating his view, when I say he's insisting that one specific vocabulary is always correct, but also, that's very clearly the intended takeaway of his video, so I don't feel too bad.
14) In case you don't believe me that Abbb can have a real function, here's an example. A piece starts in Cb major. (Which, remember, is different from B major.) at some point, it modulates down a whole step to Bbb major, pivoting through the shared Fb chord. Then, it modulates down another whole step to Abb major, and finally one more time to Gbb major. Now Abbb is the b2, a real and valid function. Admittedly, we have to reach for a pretty bizarre key for this to work, but all of the reasoning holds under the set of rules outlined in Adam's argument.
15) Honestly, there is a reason to prefer F# over Gb in many cases: In major key signatures, F# is the first sharp, whereas Gb is the fifth flat, so F# is also more familiar than Gb. Just not to the extent that B is more familiar than Cb.
16) This might seem like a silly thing to argue about. And it is, but I think the conclusion at the end is important: Notation isn't a set of facts. There aren't right and wrong answers, there are simply useful and unhelpful conventions. That's important to remember when you engage with it, even if you happen to find the current standards fairly intuitive for the sorts of music you make.
Thank you for mentioning ombak. My composition instructor has spent many years doing semesters abroad in various parts of the world and would often talk to me about gamelan, specifically about ombak and the detuned nature of everything. My favorite story of this that he would tell is his partner got sick and missed one of the rehearsals. Suddenly not hearing that "dissonance," as our western ears call it, was uncomfortable and disorienting.
Overall wonderful video.
On (15) - I would say that G# and Ab might be a better point of comparison - they're the the third sharp and the third flat respectively in major key signatures, so they're generally about as equally-familiar as they can get.
(Unless you play in a wind band, since those are usually biased towards flats. In that case, maybe C# and Db would be the most comparable in familiarity.)
I love that the end notes are as long as the main video. I think this way too.
To point 3, live recordings are less likely to get copyright strikes on UA-cam
Wtf the fact that this dude is not only off the charts with his musical knowledge, but also happens to be an incredibly articulate writer is insane. Oh and he draws pretty well. Need to donate your brain to science after you die cause something’s interesting about it for sure.
I'm not a music theorist, I'm a chemist, but it's really interesting to me how the same types of arguments crop up in two extremely different seeming fields. For us it's stuff like "what is a chemical bond?" and "does calling this 'formal charge' or 'oxidation state' make sense" or "is this drawing of how a reaction works the best way to represent that reaction?" And...the answers matter in the same way Cb vs B matters - is the model communicating what you want it to communicate and if it's useful for that, cool. If not, well, you have a problem because at the end of the day it's a model.
As a musician with a science background I love the parallel there.
I used to say this little stupid and reductive circle:
All psychology is biology
All biology is chemistry
All chemistry is physics
All physics is math
All math is philosophy
All philosophy is psychology
Round and round we go.😅
Or "is a hotdog a sandwich?"
Music theory isn't real. I'm a composer and a chemist. Of course it has a relative existence, but it's somewhat outdated although not unnecessary. Kind of like Bohrs model of the atom. Kind of true, but electron orbitals are not identical to planetary orbitals. A useful approximation, but not the most accurate.
Instruments have tone. With the right instrument, everything played can sound dark or light. You can use major keys and chords, and still create dark music. What's lost is the idea of sound design and shape. A single musical tone sounds different based off the instrument playing it.
What music theory is useful for as a musician is to convey the musical ideas. This results in a convoluted discussion over semantics because communication is a complex process involving abstract ideas boiled down to linear logic.
Ultimately, a composer and a musician designs and shapes sound. They use all tools available like tempo, timbre, rhythm, etc. Music should be approached from a sound-first perspective, meaning you hear the ideas in your minds eye and use your knowledge and experience to make that sound come to life.
It's not too expensive to buy a digital synth or even a DAW, where you can play around in the sandboxes of sound. You'll come to find that theory is not a rulebook, and can't tell you what to make or how to make it.
It CAN be developed into a personal toolbox for sound design, which is why every musician develops their own music theory that would be the description of their methods for designing music.
I love studying systems because existence is a fractal and all systems have principles and Concepts that apply to other systems and this is a great example thank you for sharing.
@@MichelleHell Correct if I'm wrong; but physically, atoms form electrons clouds around the nucleus and even though there are shapes and areas where electrons are most likely to be found, electrons themselves do not "orbit" around the nucleus.
The Bohr model (to my knowledge) isn't even an useful approximation for atoms, as it doesn't get used or taught past the point of middle school. Futhermore, I think the bohrs model just complicates science education by teaching a significant misrepresentation at a young age.
Fun fact about F#/Gb: In the musical RENT, there's a piece of music in Act I that gets reprised at the end of the show. The vocals differ, but the piano part is identical. But. For reasons I cannot fathom, in Act I, it's written in Gb; while in Act II, it's written in F#. So you get to really test yourself in reading 6 accidentals.
Arrest whoever made that decision not just for their war crimes but simply to ask why
What is the key of the piece just before it? Are they meant to transition one to the other? Perhaps context-wise it makes sense why it would get notated as F# then instead of Gb. Or could it be that was a convenient way to set it up for the piece that follows? Otherwise, it does seem a bit clunky and unnecessary.
Could it be that either version started as F or G natural, then got transposed by half a step after being written? A lot of musical scores that get published for community performances show evidence of alterations being made during the original run - measures being removed or added, etc.
which piece is it?
@@osjos2822bring back waterboarding
I love that this is just descriptivism vs prescriptivism but in music theory instead of linguistics
good pfp
Accurate af
Descriptivism for the win. We analyze the real utilized instance of language in this motherfucker. Prescriptivists take up sensitive ass back to language arts
I love the description of Pythagoras as "everyone's favorite triangle boy" and I hope it lives rent free in me head forever because I'm certainly inviting it to
Does that mean Pythagoras grew up to be Triangle Man?
My favorite triangle boy is Phineas.
@@BalooSJ only if he hates particle man
Come on, it's almost certainly triangle BOI.
He wasn't just a triangle boy, he was also very much a bean boy. Or rather, anti-bean boy.
I love the fact that 2 of my favourite music theorists on UA-cam disagree on these kinds of things. Adam first makes an argument and then 12Tone comes along and is like "Well yes but actually". Two people in the same field who both respect each other is my favourite kind of discourse 😂❤
I'm glad you brought up barbershop quartet. The voice is inherently the easiest instrument to tune, which makes equal temperament less important. What I find interesting is how barbershop songs and tags are notated in sheet music. They still use common tropes from previous eras, most notably ones related to the function of dominant chords, but they also include chords that are less "functional". These can usually be notated approximately with equal temperament, but there's a reason why these chords sound extra spicy in equal temperament. The purpose of these chords is not to be full chords, but rather to focus on the melodies and the relation between different notes. A big trope in the genre is oblique motion, where some notes stay still while others move around, creating harmony that's hard to decipher but nevertheless sounds competent. When transcribed, chromatic notes are often spelled technically incorrect, not because they're trying to make a different function out of it, but because they don't really care about the distinction on paper as long as it sounds right.
"The voice is inherently the easiest instrument to tune". You have not tried to tune my voice. I think guitars/stringed instruments are the easiest instruments to tune.
@@JoeJohnston-taskboy fretted guitars are like pianos, they are inherently built into the equal temperament system. Non fretted string instruments like violin are different, note can easily be played slightly flater or sharper depending on the context.
@@ferusskywalker9167 you can bend notes on fretted guitars, so if you really wanted to focus on getting out of that equal temperament tuning, you can do it on a fretted instrument without changing the actual tuning of the string.
@@smartaleckduck4135 That is a really good point. The difference between instruments that are fixed to a tuning and those can can be smoothly "tuned" while playing.
@@smartaleckduck4135 so it's easier than a piano, but still way harder than the voice or really anything that plays only one note at a time. Bending the strings will also make them less in tune.
Thumbnail kinda looks like it says "fight me bozo adam neely" lmao
That must’ve been intentional
I am a violinist, and we regularly work with at least three tuning systems: just, Pythagorean, and ET. Just intonation is terrible at producing a diatonic scale, but it is an important tool for tuning intervals (especially double stops). Within that context, enharmonic equivalents can definitely have different pitches. When using Pythagorean tuning during diatonic scales, we will also differ from ET, again producing discrepancies between enharmonic equivalents. "Expressive" tuning sometimes involves playing a leading tone higher than standard pitch. Having said all this, the goal is simply to make the notes sound correct in any given context; it is not about C♭ being FIXED at a pitch that is higher or lower than B. We will move the notes around regardless of their spelling; B will be lower when played with D, and higher when played with E. The function of the note is connected to how we tune it, so the functional distinction between enharmonic equivalents can translate into a measurable pitch difference.
Another interesting aspect of violin playing is that the spelling of notes influences the fingerings we choose. For example, a D♭ on the A string would likely be played with 1st or 3rd finger, and a C♯ would most likely be played with a 2nd finger. Any advanced player will be adept at enharmonically converting as needed to find better fingerings, and will be comfortable with less-common positions, but the spelling of a note still affects our natural tendencies when deciding how to play it.
Of course, violinists' fingers rarely strike the same spot twice even when we want them to, so there is always an element of chance despite our best intentions! 😆
I just went down a gamelon rabbit hole and wow! Having never so much as heard the style before, the first three minutes or so, I must admit, ignorant as it may sound, were tough for me. It showed me how locked into looking for familiar pitches I am. But after that obsession wore off and the music took me into what it was doing, not to what my chronically western brain was looking for -- what a joy!! I had a blast with it. The unfamiliar tones became as soothing as major and minor triads, and my ear even started listening for the tonal resolutions within the gamelon framework and getting the same mini dopamine rush when I recognized them as with something in a familiar tuning. Though I'm from the western US I now live in a part of the world where I hear Muslim calls to prayer from around town several times a day, and I realized the initially unfamilar registers have become soothing and musically logical to my ear over the years in much the same way without my explicit awareness that that was happening. I'm surely preaching to the choir here, but familiarizing your ear with different scales is an experience you'll not want to miss, especially if you've trained them to look for certain tonalities. Anyway, sorry for the very self-evident and conceptually basic rant. Thank you for the great video, 12tone!
As a Barbershop singer I tend to find myself in contexts where the kind of distinction between B and Cb is useful, and so I would tend to distinguish them. I have a lot of thoughts on the matter, but that's probably the most pertinent. We also tend to see a note as a collection of pitches, rather than noting a single pitch, and for a good reason: I've been thinking of Barbershop singing less as "just" intonation recently and more of a "physical" intonation system recently, where the correct intonation is the one that feels most right to sing - there's a lot of talk about the concept of "lock and ring", where lock can be considered as the alignment of the pitches into a chord that's working together, and ring is the enhancement of upper harmonics. In this kind of thinking, the specific note doesn't matter so much as chord degree of the note, and function of the chord within your current and destination keys - and indeed a key change isn't so much "from Eb to G" as "up a major third" and enough of them slowly drifts away from equal temperament.
But then again, when I'm playing my guitar, I can do some pitch shifting thanks to bends, but being a fretted instrument, the notes are otherwise where they are, so there's not really much distinction to be made. And does it matter? eh, not really. (and in counter-point to my note about Barbershop singing being what physically feels right contrasts with the simplicity of building a guitar with frets the way we do - "just" fretted guitars have frets on the strings all over the place, but an equal tempered guitar has the nice grid of frets we're all used to, lending a bit of a physical justification for equal temperament to begin with!)
Barbershopper of 10 years here
Same
In the context of a regular diatonic temperament (LLsLLLs, or 5L 2s), the perfect fifth is the generator interval (FCGDAEB gives CDEFGAB). This is a “spectrum” where the diatonic scale can have different ratios of L to s.
On one end of the spectrum, L and s become the same size; the 7 notes are equally spaced, and we get 7-TET, with a perfect fifth of 685 cents;
On the other end of the spectrum, s shrinks to the unison; this results in 5 evenly spaced notes, and we get 5-TET, with a perfect 5th of 720 cents.
Now, the notes Cb and B are part of this circle of fifths (CbGbDbAbEbBbFCGDAEB). In 12-TET, these two notes have the same pitch because the perfect fifth is exactly 700 cents.
However, if the fifth is not exactly 700 cents, the circle of fifths does not close after 12 fifths:
• if the fifth is smaller than 700 cents, B will be lower than Cb.
• if the fifth is bigger than 700 cents, B will be higher than Cb.
For example, 19-TET has a fifth of 695 cents, so in 19-TET, B is lower than Cb; whereas 17-TET has a fifth of 706 cents, so in 17-TET, B will be higher than Cb.
These two notes can also be interpreted as lowering the note C by a chromatic semitone (to get Cb) or a diatonic semitone (to get B). The diatonic semitone is bigger if the fifth is smaller than 700 cents; the chromatic semitone is bigger if the fifth is bigger than 700 cents; and the two semitones are the same size if the fifth is exactly 700 cents.
A straight fret guitar is actually more complicated than either JI or ET if you tune using harmonics. But it sounds really good :)
@@kumoyuki A straight fretted guitar tuned with harmonics (from low to high) to EADGBE is essentially in six copies of 12-TET, offset by 4:3, 16:9, 64:27, 80:27, and 320:81 from the low E string. This can also be seen as a rank-3 tuning with the three intervals 4:3, 5:4, and 1\12, all unable to create each other.
@@ValkyRiver exactly so. and it drives pianists crazy when you tell them they're the one who is out of tune ;)
The part about note names being tools is imo the most important part of this entire video. Music theories are just tools to describe and communicate music. Use whatever tool seems right for the job at hand and for the people involved. Everybody has their own way of theorizing music anyways, so there's always bound to be some amount of confusion and difficulty from time to time, and it might require adjusting what tools you pull out of your toolbox if you can wrap your head around how other people theorize music.
yeah, I've actually gone off note names (mostly) because I am doing so much digital synthesis using tuning structures that don't have (frequency) translational symmetry (although they do have other symmetries that I care more about). I also generally use more defined tones than 12-anything, but that also depends on what device I am mapping to the synth, so
Everyone's favourite triangle boy got me giggling. :) A thought provoking and nuanced argument as always! Thank you. I go back into the teaching studio on Monday and I can't wait until one of my students brings up enharmonics again, because I will come to the question armed with my new "it depends" response. (And direct them to your video for more information haha.)
I gotta' say, the wave diagram for "doesn't have to be consistent" at 21:40 is brilliant. The visuals usually reiterate your copy, but in that instance, the visual enhances the meaning to be more than words. Awesome communication!
Just in case someone wonders, that's the diffraction effect.
I've been binging your videos since I saw your channel a few weeks ago. I love it dude.
The one-note samba showed me that context was everything. Here is the same note, but as the chord changes happen, that same note sounds different. The same goes for scale degrees. If the song is in C, the B is the leading tone, and the maj7. But in G it's the 3rd. Notes are not fixed pitches as our mind perceives it. This shows how important understanding music theory is, either by having a good ear, formal training, or "ear training".
12tone: "How many controversial takes do I have to make so that EVERYONE disagrees with me on at least some points?"
"zero, ill just proceed to be absolutely right about everything for 23 minutes straight"
Everyone: “It depends.”
Super discussion, touching on all the important points (at least those that I can think of) and coming to all the right answers. The last several minutes are the most important, but one has to work his way through the rest of the argument to see why.
This is really one of my favorite videos of yours. It goes so hard. It's like a nice stretch for the musical brain
Love the point about the notes not being real! People tend to get lost in our own inventions and get confused about what is reality and what is just convention or practical. Arguing which made up thing is correct is missing the point: it's about what goal we're trying to achieve and which tools help us to get there. Always glad to hear when people recognise that!
I mean all theory is a construct is created to describe what we hear so in that sense none of it is real. But, when people utilize ideas from that construct to create new music it then becomes very real. The Giant Steps example was excellent.
This is my favorite video you've ever produced. That final line is *excellent* advice.
Nice video! As a professional musician who performs mainly 16th - 18th century music, I pretty much live in tempraments outside of equal. While equal temperament allows for more harmonic possibilities, having a pure third, (when performing in 1/4' meantone, for example) major or minor, is one of the more important aspects for performing this music. The fifths are not pure and don't carry as much importance. As a result, key signatures never ventured outside of more than 2 #'s or 2 b's because of this. While this may be unimportant and boring to you, it matters quite a bit to us. I don't sing or play C# the same as Db as they have different functions in this music. This is also why split-key keyboards were invented, though, as you implied, they are less common, sure. I wouldn't go as far as to say that equal ruined music, but it does ruin the wonderful sonority of cadences that belong to the music in which I chose to specialize.
Videos like this make me miss the "Video Response" feature UA-cam used to have
What’s that?
Omg I forgot about that!
@@jessehammer123 it was a feature that let you effectively post a shortish video as a comment. Most people didn't use the feature, so UA-cam ditched it around 2012 iirc
@@RubyRoks Huh. Never heard of that. Although I suppose I only got into UA-cam around 2014-15, so that makes sense.
@@jessehammer123 It lasted for a little over a year.
Re: the discussion of chromatic runs at 6:13: there was a Andrew Huang piece a while ago that went microtonal in one phrase just so the chromatic run could have an extra note in it. I feel as if that says something about the music theory of chromatic runs.
jacob collier also does this
@@calinguga heck yeah
It certainly reinforces the key idea: Music has an existence above and beyond how we represent it on the page, and naming (or scoring) the notes is necessarily a compromise for legibility's sake.
I just wanted to say that I'm a layperson who's never really played an instrument, let alone delved into the deep dark caverns of musical theory, but I always enjoy your videos, not just because of the fun art, but because I always learn something interesting and get a new appreciation of the music I listen to. And thus, I'd like to say thank you.
At 5:08 to make the tritone sub a true pivot, as if we were in a pedantic 19th century harmony class, you would have ties from B7 to Cflat7 showing that although the pitch is sustained, the "note" changes. But even in classical music it's clear that either spelling is "allowed." (Likewise for the common tone Celine Dion modulation.)
It’s because of all your old videos that I finally understand everything you’re talking about. Thank you!
They are the same note in 12TET, but they are not the same note in other tunings. You are right, it depends.
Nope... they are the same tone, but not the same note. The word note is related to notation and means "the way of writing", so... when you check how "Cb" looks and how "B" looks - they look different, they are not even close to each other. Thats why they are not the same note, but the same tone.
@@pawelmiechowiecki7901 This whole debate seems to come down to different people having different definitions for the word "note" really
@@VOIP4ME I think what they mean is that physically they are the same note, or tone...
But it´s perspective changes depending on who is reading them.
On an instrument tuned for 12TET playing music notated in 12TET they are identical, the same, just different names.
In different tunings or on instruments that don't work with fixed tuning, they might be different.
And in those tunings they aren't the same note either. They will sound different and will be written differently.
That's true. People think it's the same because we use 12TET. But that's is one of the reasons why Cb and B exists. Cb to C sound less sharp than B to C, in 12 TET sound the same. If was the same sound a violin player would play Cb to C and would sound like B to C. But don't sound the same.
You are indeed absolutely correct that choosing to use 12-tone-per-octave equal-temperament (“12TET”) is not _entirely_ about convenience.
Each tuning also has its own distinctive qualities, that are potentially useful in various contexts. Ivor Darreg termed the cumulative effect of these qualities the tuning’s “mood.”
12TET has a certain agitated sensation because its thirds and sixths are unsettled, but that unsettledness also gives the music a certain “zippiness.”
Recently, I’ve been working with 31TET tuning on my Lumatone, and 12TET has taken on a cartoon-like quality: All of the myriads of pitch interrelationships are abstracted into a few simplified relationships. Sometimes cartoon-like simplification is exactly what you want to portray, but sometimes you want to paint your music with all the subtle detail you can get!
its honestly kinda similar to how in visual art the same shade of gray can look red in one part of a painting and blue in another. it makes sense to use different terms for them in context but at the end of the day they both came from the same tube of paint
Really great video and thoughtful response. I saw the Adam Neely video when it came out and watching this response is stirring up some lingering thoughts I had.
I remember an example he improvises to in Eb with a I III IV iv progression. The III is G major with a B for the third and iv is Ab minor with Cb as the third. Because the note is a different member of each chord, it is treated differently and even implies different scales. But really, you don't need differently named notes to demonstrate this. In the same key, I would use a C differently in Cmin chord than I would in an Ab. The chord changes the sound and feeling of the same note. I would also use C differently if it were the minor 3rd in A than the major 3rd in Ab, but since it's the key name changing rather than the note name it doesn't provoke the same argument.
It's not that those arguments are totally wrong, it's just saying that Cb and B are different notes means also saying that C and C are different notes, making the enharmonic irrelevant. Are the two C's "different" because you handle them differently? Or are they the same note in different contexts? Saying they are different notes really feels like the most confusing way of conveying that information. The question itself can start a conversation, but it's framed in a way that makes a good answer impossible.
Just great stuff. Your just intonation breakdown was something I'd never considered before!
This is the same as asking "is 420 nm Blue or is it Violet ?"
It depends on the context, if you put it in front of a 500 nm background it will look more like Violet and if you will put it in front of a 360 nm background it will look more like blue.
It's common use is as Violet but the context matters
Just because WAP smells like fish doesn't mean it's tuna. Just because your brain is subjective doesn't mean reality is.
@@leeow3n Our subjective brains are *part* of reality. And the labels we give colours are entirely based on our biological perception and cultural legacy
I think musical spelling plays pretty well as an analogy for actual spelling. Is C the same as K? Well, in terms of function, it depends. There are times where they're pronounced identically, and times where they're not. But Catherine might take it personally if you spell her name Katherine, because that's not her, even if there's no linguistic difference. That spelling is still part of her identity. An Abm chord is the same way. That Cb in there might sound the same as a B, but the Cb is part of the Abm's spelling, part of its identity, and it's there whether it matters or not.
Careful with the C/Katherine example, since Catherine, as a person, is entitled to decide of their own identity. A note, however, is not a person, so it's identity is of a different nature, one that's assigned.
EDIT: It has more to do with calling a stool a chair. It's not wrong, but it's not right either, and it heavily depends on context.
I would go even further and say that C is the same a S which is the same as Z while Q is the same as K! But then, my native language isn't english and letters are pronounced differently there.
@@HappyBeezerStudios Yeah, I was about to step in and say that which letters are the same is highly dependent on language. In Polish (which I do not speak, so anyone who does can correct me if I'm wrong) c and k have completely different sounds, but ó and u are pronounced the same. And just like in the original Catherine example, that doesn't mean you can spell the city of Łódź "Łudź".
As a Catherine-with-a-C who goes by the nickname Katie-with-a-K, I approve this message.
Ignore the naysayers: this is the correct and only response. It’s part of musical culture and history. So it’s part of “identity”
Great vid, as always. Just wanted to ask if you could put your mastodon handle in your video descriptions? I heard you mention it in the vid and wanted to follow you, but it seems you haven't put it in your links yet.
Loved this video, great topic brought up by you and adam
I've been thinking about this a lot since Adam Neely's video, and a big part of the distinction is in what the question is asking, isn't it? the question "is Cb the same as B" can be referring to between the player and the audience (the same, audience can't hear a distinction, the difference only matters when talking about the music), but also between the composer and the player (distinction matters because they are reading the music sheet). Ironically, these two very distinct questions sound the same.
Different sides of the same coin, yes
Both videos asked "is Cb the same *note* as B," and both were very clear that they are the same *pitch* in 12-TET, but Adam's point is the words have slightly different meaning to many musicians.
Yes, if you just ask "are they the same" it's ambiguous, but that's leaving out the key word
I like how the description says Adam is mostly correct. It gives a sense of, "Yes, but technically..."
I always enjoy your videos and find them very enlightening. You are one of the few theorists who cover a wide variety of topics including the theory of other styles of music.
I watched both this and Adam's video on this topic and you both had a point and I agreed with you both.
Since then, I spoke to a chromatic harpist, who made me rethink about this discussion. Harpists use the pedals to change the pitch of the string from its default: pressing it one way raises it a half step and pressing it the other lowers it a half step. To play Cb, they lower the C string by half step. This results in this B note having a different timbre to the B string in default position. With this in mind, it becomes perfectly reasonable to say that Cb can be a different note to B.
I have thought a lot about this before, and I am a strong proponent of Cb (or E#, Fx etc.). Even if you ignore just intonation, which i for the most part do. Cb does, in my opinion, actually improve readability in the majority of cases where they are justified. As long as(!!) you have actually learned properly how to play and concieve of them. This can of course be quite tricky especially for keyboard instruments, but it's certainly nothing less then what i would expect from a professional classical musician. Like in Gb major, which i would say is far from an esoteric key and is actually very common. Some might say to use sharps instead forgetting that F# major has an E#. Even in something like G# minor where you get Fx all the time adds to the ease of reading (again, provided you are comfortable with double sharps). The reason for this is that when you get beyond a certain level of reading music, you no longer really read pitches but rather intervals. So if I read a G# minor scale, I don't read: G#, A#, B, C# etc.; but I start on G# and then: a step up, a step up, a step up, etc. While adding the neccesary accidentals in my mind at the same time. Reading every single note would be extraordinarily inefficient, and a sudden dimished third in scale would certainly trip me up. This is even more pronounced when it comes to chords. So if you were to get a chord that was C#, F, G# you would likely get tripped up an maybe play F#, or at least have a second of hesitation that would disrupt the flow of reading. Like reading a mispelled word in a text. People don't recognise letters in a text, but whole words; and it's exactly the same with music.
There is of course a lot of people who hate these enharmonics with a passion, and I think this often comes from learning to play as a child. Of course explaining to a child the nuances of spelling and function is not exactly an easy task, so most of the time the teacher might just say that it's a B natural, or whatever. I think this really damages their understanding of music in the future, and of course composers who write for beginner to intermediate ensembles avoid Cb's like the plague, thus they never even learn to play them, and then they get thrust in to the scary world of Cb's and double sharps when they enter the "real" world. So they might just convert to a B natural, or a Fx to G in their heads every single time. This damages their reading ability, because it always takes an extra second to read the notes, and they maybe never properly learn to read them because they don't try. And thus you have created a strong dislike for Cb's and E#'s. And now they might pass this on to their students one day, saying that it is "just a B natural, but composers you know...". Never realising that if they just took the time to learn (or their teachers took the time to teach) them properly that it would strongly improve their understanding of the music and their ability to read it.
It's interesting why this never happens with e.g. F# and Gb. I get it of course, but it is basically in every way the exact same thing. One note with two names. It's just that it's a white note instead. It's even more interesting that say a trumpet player would have the same amount of trouble with it as there is none of the visual element. They just learn a fingering for each note, so why not just learn that Cb is the 2nd finger? A teacher should of course explain that a Cb and B sound the same, as they do with F# and Gb; but they should never say that a Cb IS a B.
There are of course many, many examples where you have to compromise, like the Giant steps example or A# major🤮. And of course you get essentially paradoxes sometimes, like a whole-tone scale which really doesn't have a nice solutions. This is only my opinion of course, and I am not an experienced teacher. I am however an experienced musician, and I think Cb's are good. They are maybe sligthly trickier than most other notes my in my personal experience they are 10 times better then an augmented second or diminished third.
Sorry for the long rant. I'm sure I forgot some points, but here are some of my thoughts anyway.
I'm no musician or music theorist, but this gets to the core of what confused me about my grade 1 music theory class - I just couldn't quite see the logic in the 12 tone system and at that early stage was basically told to just learn it. Thank you!
Western music basically uses two interlocking systems for pitch. There's the 7 note scales (for the letter names), and the 12 semitones in an octave. It's the accidentals that bridge the gap between these two systems.
This is why the circle of fifth is... A CIRCLE. At one point F# major magically turns into Gb major, thus allowing us to end up on C soon after. There IS common sense to that important difference.
Otherwise it would be a never ending spiral of fifths😵💫
I am so glad that I understand just enough about music theory that I can understand the rationale for most choices, but not enough to get into these arguments. I typically want to understand everything, but as much as I enjoy music, this is never something I've wanted to be an expert in. Considering how I tear apart stories based on identifying basic tropes, I think this is probably for the better regarding my enjoyment of music in general.
Hell yeah dude, I was thinking both about the "why are we working off of just intonation as our framework anyway" and gamelan both before you brought them up. Glad to be on the same wavelength.
How long can a video about B vs. Cb be?
12Tone: Yes.
As someone with both perfect pitch and excellent colour vision, your point on how, technically speaking, Cb and B aren't "real" even if the frequencies they refer to objectively are immediately reminded me of a disagreement my brother and I had a while back. We were arguing on whether a particular hue was yellow or green (it looked like a vibrant highlighter yellow to me but he was adamant that it was clearly green and I was nuts). Eventually we settled on chartreuse, but the fact that we needed to do that at all stuck with me. A while later I happened upon a post which used similar arguments to assert that orange juice was actually yellow, not orange, and the name was a misnomer, but the image they used as evidence still looked orange to me. That made me think back to our chartreuse argument and I realised how arbitrary colour distinctions are, which was a bit of a wake-up call for me 'cause I'd been known to be a bit of a snob about using the proper names for them in the past. It's really interesting that music is basically the same in that regard!
TLDR; Insisting on inflexible, starkly defined names and separations between colours or notes, while often helpful, is really kinda silly when you think about it. They're just labels we give to vague points on a spectrum for ease of communication, and while they can be important in context, they don't always matter.
Also apparently no-one can agree on what yellow is :P
"Chartreuse" has at least two distinct meanings on the colour wheel. But I'm glad that you and your brother decided on one. ... At the risk of sounding impertinent, are you on the spectrum?
@@benjaminsagan5861 I sure am! Linguistics and colour theory are very much special interests of mine ^^
And like, yeah, chartreuse can refer to a whole spectrum of different hues, but so can literally every named colour in existence. When you're trying to communicate a particular colour to someone, I figure picking a more specific name that's in the ballpark of what you're looking to convey is generally more helpful than just lumping it in with the nearest primary colour; chartreuse is a lot less vague than just green, y'know?
@@cbmagus49 Fair enough... My mother has tetrachromatic vision, so I was raised in a milieu of color precision that I can, at best, only approximate. But my hearing is reasonably acute.
Quite a while back, the author of a science-ish comic XKCD held a survey on color names and published the data. People later turned it into a handful of gradient charts and interactive pages. You may want to check them out, it's fascinating!
I think communication is important. I didn't get the concept of notating the same pitch on the piano differently until I started to play pieces that use that kind of notation, which helps with readability a lot. On the other hand, I basically treat them as the same note when I am improvising. I guess at least in the case of the piano, the notes are considered different mainly because it is useful to do so in certain cases. One example can be found in Db major and C# major. Db and C# have the same pitch. However, since it is easier to read in Db major rather than C# major, most composers and publishers would notate the same music in Db major. The reason why Db major is the so-called better way to write isn't because Db major and C# major are anything different, but because Db major is just more convenient for people who write or read sheet music.
Thank you for making this video. After watching Adam's video, I felt something was missing. I couldn't say he was wrong, but the video itself probably was insufficient to explain the whole picture. But thanks to your video, I finally feel the whole debate is presented accurately.
The skeleton on 'just leave' is a fantastic reference, I love it
Speaking of Coltrane, The New Real Book transcribes the 1st chord in the B section of Naima as Bmaj7/Bb, and shows the sax and bass parts as Bb notes. It makes a lot of liberties throughout the transcription, for the purposes of being easy to read rather than “correct”.
Both 12tone and Adam's videos make fair, well demonstrated points throughout, so I am actually happy to agree with both positions - and that is not even a contradiction.
Did I hear some sarcasm in calling Celine Dion's "All by myself" modulation / transposition the "most elegant key change"? Because I can relate to that quite well... 😆
I find the digression into gamelan interesting but perhaps irrelevant. Is there a point to discussing the difference in those tuning systems when they wouldn't even use the note names we're arguing about?
That said, we typically use just intonation in bands and orchestras, simply because we can. But there, it's not so much that there needs to be a difference between B and C-flat, but that the B you play in measure 20 isn't always going to be the same frequency as the B you play in measure 200 depending on what's going on around you.
Lastly, speaking of the "what if" scenario for Celine Dion, to me that is exactly why enharmonics exist and why, when you're performing the music, the "it depends on what's going on around you" matters more than anything else. If I wanted to write that correctly but also usefully for the people playing the music, I would write the modulation in A-double flat so that people could understand what was going on, then change keys to G at the downbeat so people don't lose their minds.
Okay, Major props for the Futurama 'technically correct' reference at around 5:45.
Also, thanks for the amazing breakdown of why it does and doesn't matter... :)
As you alluded later in this video, B and Cb are enharmonically equivalent _in a 12-tone-per-octave framework_ . Not so in 19TET, 22TET, 31TET, etc. They sound “normal” if you use the “correct” note name and sound “exotic” (not necessarily “wrong”) if you use the “wrong” one.
I've studied music in college for a few years now but plan on going to law school. There's a joke that a lawyers answer to everything is "it depends". Well, I've noticed that's pretty common for music too.
So glad I stuck around to the end. Made me laugh out loud. Careful, perceptive, and pleasingly broad in scope. Thank you for this discussion.
Here is my explanation, as a microtonal musician.
In the context of a regular diatonic temperament (LLsLLLs, or 5L 2s), the perfect fifth is the generator interval (FCGDAEB gives CDEFGAB). This is a “spectrum” where the diatonic scale can have different ratios of L to s.
On one end of the spectrum, L and s become the same size; the 7 notes are equally spaced, and we get 7-TET, with a perfect fifth of 685 cents;
On the other end of the spectrum, s shrinks to the unison; this results in 5 evenly spaced notes, and we get 5-TET, with a perfect 5th of 720 cents.
Now, the notes Cb and B are part of this circle of fifths (CbGbDbAbEbBbFCGDAEB). In 12-TET, these two notes have the same pitch because the perfect fifth is exactly 700 cents.
However, if the fifth is not exactly 700 cents, the circle of fifths does not close after 12 fifths:
• if the fifth is smaller than 700 cents, B will be lower than Cb.
• if the fifth is bigger than 700 cents, B will be higher than Cb.
For example, 19-TET has a fifth of 695 cents, so in 19-TET, B is lower than Cb; whereas 17-TET has a fifth of 706 cents, so in 17-TET, B will be higher than Cb.
These two notes can also be interpreted as lowering the note C by a chromatic semitone (to get Cb) or a diatonic semitone (to get B). The diatonic semitone is bigger if the fifth is smaller than 700 cents; the chromatic semitone is bigger if the fifth is bigger than 700 cents; and the two semitones are the same size if the fifth is exactly 700 cents.
Spectacular @AdamNeely and @12Tone you both are two of my favorite theorists on UA-cam and I always enjoy your discussions and I always learn something even when I know a fair amount about the topic already. A different perspective can yield a multitude of concept. In this context often wondered about the difference between a440 HZ and a432 HZ. Are they not both a? This reminds me of that mystical note the key of Strawberry Fields is it. And ironic issue to dispute given its semantics and this is not Linguistics or literature, simply nomenclature we have only concocted in a matter of being able to communicate with each other. But doesn't the whole world have that problem? Communication. We have people raging debates about things that they read on a meme with their best friends antisocial media because just like politics becoming like WrestleMania, we don't have the time to look into the second source of information like the journalist would we read it out of me so it has to be true and I'm willing to stop talking to my best friend for the rest of his life because he disagrees with what I read on that meme which was probably put together by some dude in middle school. Forgive me I'm rambling I just wanted to give you guys both to opposable thumbs up. Communication plus Unity equals community. And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.\
Now I'm reminded on Adam Neely's video on the key of Sweet Home Alabama, and the end result that it can be in two keys at the same time.
It comes down to the fact that modern pop music works different then classical composition, often relying on a chord loop that can have two keys at opposite ends that are both right.
Absolutely outstanding video. Well done. I was surprised you didn’t talk more about pitch vs. note - the way I look at it, in 12TET, B and Cb are the same pitch, but different notes. For example, in the key of Gb major, that pitch would be the note Cb, but in the key of G major, the same pitch would be the note B. You did talk about this, but not as much as I expected. Anyway, I really enjoyed it. Thanks! Keep on rockin’!
One could argue that they are the same note, but with different notations (the same way in maths, sometimes it's more useful to write 4, and sometimes it's actually better to write 2²… same number, different notations).
@@Erlewyn sure, that’s another way to look at it! It’s largely a semantic argument, depending on how you define the word “note”. I would have said “pitch” in your statement above instead of “note”. Ultimately, the lack of standardization in music theory leads to a lot of confusion like this!
Great video. I think things start to get more confusing when we work with a very chromatic harmony. Then I think it's worth considering what is most common in each musical context and treating enharmonics by what is most used by musicians in practice, checking what they find more easier to read. Since we use the tempered system all this discussion of Cb and B has no effect in practice.
Never did I ever expect Riemann's zeta function in a music theory video my mind is melting
12 Tone: "What would happen, if we played it down a Major 3rd?"
Me: "It becomes Cher?"
My comment on Adams video, although I’m glad you actually touched on these subjects in a way-
My favorite scale is C Major, but with every note spelled as C. Root=C, 2=C double sharp, 3=C quadruple sharp, 4=C quintuple sharp, 5=C septuple sharp, 6=C nonuple sharp, 7=C undecuple sharp, 8=duodecuple sharp.
Modern theory really overcomplicates things when you find out that everything is in C if you add enough accidentals to your frame of mind.
Seriously though, Music Theory is descriptive, not prescriptive. Language is for communicating, and spelling C flat in the wrong context is a lesser of the same sort of failing as trying to spell out a C quintuple flat first inversion add 13.
Lol at the point with the C’s, but I like it
Love that scale
12tone: Makes 23 minute long video about the debate between B & Cb to tell everyone it's not worth their time to get involved in the debate. Love it
When we talked about this sort of thing in class, another student got so fed up, asking "if i hit a key on the piano, how can it possibly be different if i just hit the same key again?!"
The only important distinction I personally have for Cb and B is direction of writer’s intent. You can write it either way but for an experienced musician they’ll understand the melodic implications differently and that’s really the only remotely useful purpose of a firm distinction I have
In the context of a regular diatonic temperament (LLsLLLs, or 5L 2s), the perfect fifth is the generator interval (FCGDAEB gives CDEFGAB). This is a “spectrum” where the diatonic scale can have different ratios of L to s.
On one end of the spectrum, L and s become the same size; the 7 notes are equally spaced, and we get 7-TET, with a perfect fifth of 685 cents;
On the other end of the spectrum, s shrinks to the unison; this results in 5 evenly spaced notes, and we get 5-TET, with a perfect 5th of 720 cents.
Now, the notes Cb and B are part of this circle of fifths (CbGbDbAbEbBbFCGDAEB). In 12-TET, these two notes have the same pitch because the perfect fifth is exactly 700 cents.
However, if the fifth is not exactly 700 cents, the circle of fifths does not close after 12 fifths:
• if the fifth is smaller than 700 cents, B will be lower than Cb.
• if the fifth is bigger than 700 cents, B will be higher than Cb.
For example, 19-TET has a fifth of 695 cents, so in 19-TET, B is lower than Cb; whereas 17-TET has a fifth of 706 cents, so in 17-TET, B will be higher than Cb.
These two notes can also be interpreted as lowering the note C by a chromatic semitone (to get Cb) or a diatonic semitone (to get B). The diatonic semitone is bigger if the fifth is smaller than 700 cents; the chromatic semitone is bigger if the fifth is bigger than 700 cents; and the two semitones are the same size if the fifth is exactly 700 cents.
After 7 years of school band and 4 years of being a music major I took some acid a few times. I'd often play my saxophone and improvise with friends or to a drone. Playing on acid a few times was eye opening because the concept of scales and notes and music theory melted away and I could really focus on the visceral experience of the sound. I'd completely lose focus on attempting things through a conscious awareness of notes or any music theory and harmonic concepts I'd learned. Yet I felt like 500 years of western tonality surged through my body and oddly I was an innocent witness to it all. I was watching music happen like I had nothing to do with it. Of course I was just on a drug and it debilitated me in other ways. But i always felt that experience opened my eyes to what making music really is. What is a song? A melody? Ultimately it's an experience of sound in a moment, an activity, a piece of being human, an emotion and expression, NOT dots on a page that they taught us. Those are just a tool, an important one, but not the music itself.
yessss
make a video about 5-limit tuning though? That sounds super interesting. I miss your tuning theory vids 😢
The ending was as amazing and useful. Almost Wittgenstein's 'What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence'. Great Video.
Man I have a lot of respect for you both! I'll tell you like I commented Adam. (You would think 12 tone would get this.)
The question doesn't just stop there. So let's take in account all the possible double flats and double sharps (sometime more)
That some scales do contain. Enigmatic for example. All 12 keys. (Yes 12 not 15 haha)
Thats 40-50-60 some notes.
NO! THERE'S JUST 12!
If B and Cb are both thier own identity then so is F# and Gb also Db and C#. But why stop there???
Abb Ebb Bbb
No there's double flats in some scales. What about the double sharps? Maybe we can just use every letter of the alphabet! Why not 3rd mode of Persian has 2 double flats.
Alt Alt has 3 double flats
(Locrian nat 7 mode 7)
1 b2 bb3 b4 b5 bb6 bb7
ENIGMATIC MINOR mode 2
1 2 #3 #4 ##5 #6 7
ENIGMATIC mode 2
1 #2 #3 ##4 ##5 #6 7
Great examples. I could do more.
I know that 2 pros like you and Adam are aware of this.
It's no contest or we have 60 some notes in music. I haven't done the exact math. Which is it?
It depends???
If you take away names, and only have your ears, it's all meaningless. The notes are the same whether it's B natural or C flat, or anything else anyone wanted to call it. Mathematically, the frequency is the same, as long as we agree on the tuning, which again, doesn't rely on names.
Edit: nevermind, we got there in the end.
"There's another factor to consider..." The Riemann zeta function. I guess you got me there. I certainly wasn't considering how the Riemann zeta function comes into the picture. (7:46)
I made it through your video. And I am still alive and (hopefully) sound. Well. Or at least not much more crazy than I was before. Still I love the way you are dancing with these words, images, sounds, messing around with ideas and making it all seem so simple and relevant. Keep rocking you too. I do.
Yes, learning about the development of the modern orchestra and how much it depended on equal temperament was fascinating to me. Before that, there were string orchestras, and it was pretty hard to add brass. When brass instruments began to be made with tempered scale notes, it stopped sounding like trash, and basically made the full orchestra and chromatic music possible. No equal temperament, no Beethoven, etc.
I also tend to believe that equal temperament causes composers to subconsciously write different music (not just because you can change keys, but because of the slight differences in pitch even if you stay in the same key).
@@lyznav9439 I’d suspect slight differences in pitch are less important than what “puns” a tuning allows. Each (equal or unequal) temperament has their own commas they temper out, tempering out each comma allows for a related pun, like tempering out syntonic comma 81/80 (which is what you do to get meantone and all EDOs that support it, like 12edo, 19edo, 31edo…) exactly means that two P4 are the same as P5 + m3; equally, the fifth harmonic is equated to a stack of four fifths. We’re well accustomed to meantone puns in diatonic 12edo music of today, and to added “chromatic puns” possible because of identifying diatonic semitone with a chromatic one; but other tunings allow for other puns which are no less wonderful than those enabled by 12edo.
Another matter is that 12edo is a very good compromise between many things and note count per octave, so it’s pretty stuck-on: despite there being infinitely many commas to temper out, each allowing its own vocabulary, many temperaments aren’t that usable with low note counts if you care for classic consonance, equalness of tuning (which is very desirable e. g. to allow fixed-pitch instruments to transpose).
But despite virtues of 12edo, non-12edo music lives and doesn’t going away anywhere soon.
BRB, tuning my five string bass to Cb1 standard.
That closing line: ...Ask why they need to know" So good.
I just love that "the most elegant key change in all of pop music" reference
The fact that Cory and Adam both decided to cover this makes me extremely happy in a way I am physically incapable of describing 🤣🥰😍❤️
Not sure what the issue is here... YES it is the same note. The frequency and pitch is the same... The literal only difference comes in notation and understanding of the 7 note scale using one of each letter A-G for simplification purposes.
.
But yea, let's make a 23 minute video on it.
This was a decent little debate. It seems to make little difference on an instrument with fairly fixed tunings like a piano, however, on strings or horns or woodwinds, just intonation is only one approach. Add in certain synthesizers and you end up with all kinds of variable tunings that are context dependent. The prime example that comes to mind is what is called Hermode Tuning, and it retunes intervals based on the previous note/s playing.
If I'm playing a guitar, when playing a major chord, I will sharpen the root to align with the major third. With a minor, I will slightly sharpen the third, bringing it into effective harmonic alignment. We have become rather acclimated to the beat tones and dissonance. Once you start listening to music without dissonance, even temperment doesn't sound quite as nice. In that context, B, and Cb are different from one another.
Not a music player myself, but I find this music theory stuff quite interesting, so my questions might sound too obvious to some people in the audience. This whole video brought me up two questions: 1) At 4:38, in your example, the tritone within F7 (A and Eb), in a V7 to I resolution (F7 to Bb), resolves inwards to Bb and D, respectively. However, in a tritone substitution, the enharmonic tritone within Cb7 (Eb and Bbb, in a bII7 to I resolution, resolves outwards. Does this resolution in a motion contrary to that expected from a resolution of a dominant chord to a tonic have any implication on the listening or feeling of that resolution in any way? 2) At 2:22, given the key of Bb major, wouldn't the Bbb in Cb7 be an alteration of Bb (bI?), and thus wouldn't it be expected for it to resolve downwards towards G(?) instead of upwards towards Bb?
Another context that I had commented about on Adam's video is the context of like-sounding instruments. I saw a video from MALINDA where she said she used a lot of autotune for her vocals specifically tuned to the just intonation of the root of whatever chord she was singing harmony on. In most cases you'd want to avoid using 2 tuning systems simultaneously. However, with vocals being different significantly from many other instruments timbre-wise, she pointed out how she could sound extremely "in tune" to her own harmonies because of those pretty whole number ratios, yet sing on top of instruments that were tuned in equal temperament. Basically, she trades tuning with the other instruments for sounding very harmonious vocally. And since the timbres between vocals and instruments differ enough, one experiences a sort of sonic "trickery" that makes the song sound "more in tune" simply because the "out-front" timbre-matching main carrier of melodic harmonies (her voice) is tuned to just intonation. So you don't really perceive the "out of tune-ness" between the vocals and the other instruments. It's definitely a neat way of viewing tuning especially since her use of just intonation is switching to accommodate the root of each chord rather than the root of a single key. But like, whatever works, man! :)
You get two tuning systems with the organ if the instrument utilizes mixtures or mutations. Even if the organ is tuned in 12 tone ET, mutations (usually a 5th or a 3rd, though you occasionally get the seventh) are tuned pure. The same goes for mixtures, whether or not they include the third.
When I hear the question "is Cb the same note as B" my first reaction is usually "who cares?" There's just so many more interesting questions out there. There isn't a single right or wrong answer and while beginners may get hung up on questions like this, any mature musician will know it's not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things.The question of whether Cb and B are the same note isn't a question about underlying musical truth, it's a question about how we label music. And which label you use is all about what's more useful in that moment.
Who cares is right. There are any number music theoreticians who can tell you in excruciating detail the technical names for the various changes that take place in a piece (e.g., "That's a Neapolitan sixth, followed by a Tristan chord"). But does that make them better musicians, in the sense of actually producing music that anyone cares to hear?
As a student learning classical piano decades ago, and as someone who still digs out the classical stuff from time to time, (now I mostly play by ear or from lead sheets) I still wonder why things like double sharps and flats exist. Sure, I understand the theoretical reasons for them, but do they actually help a 9 year old student hit the right notes, or just make him "afraid of the black keys" and scare him away from some of the most beautiful music ever written?
But as I am following this with interest, obviously I do care, although I have no idea why
It’s not about “caring”. I find music theory interesting on an intellectual level. Isn’t that reason enough?
That's accurate
uh, obviously the person asking cares? and if a question doesn't have a single right or wrong answer, that makes it a MORE interesting question, not the contrary. and no, the label isn't just about what's more useful, it's about what's more accurate. calling the 7th note in a Db minor scale 'Cb' is useful AND accurate. calling it B is literally incorrect and therefore literally useless. and this DOES represent some underlying musical truth, namely our (and other culture's) gravitation towards heptatonic scales, hence why we use 7 letters. none of this is really that complicated. people are just lazy and always looking for reasons not to learn. and then they try to denigrate the truth to make their ignorance seem more acceptable.
@@philmann3476 yes, let's neuter the entire system, making it completely inconsistent and therefore basically useless, to make it easier for 9 year old piano students. they're the priority here.
Hey I have an off topic question:
The music system used can limit the styles/genres you can put in a song? For example is it possible to make a funk song with the arab music system?
i always thought about it like the notes on a sax that are the same tone despite having different fingerings. those notes have a different timbre though, and some musicians will even trill between the two fingers making a weird subtle fluttering effect. but you arrive at the different fingerings by playing in different contexts, which is also how i would arrive at thinking about Cb vs B. i was never great at theory though, and i only knew enough to be allowed to keep playing in the band
This is actually a great way to think about it! It even has some of the same root causes, because the physics of the saxophone gives it so much flexibility
I'm probably alone in this, but because I was never formally taught music theory and just picked it up over the past 8ish years of making music; I don't see 7 notes with 5 sharps/flats, I see all 12 tones (ayyy). No but for real, a professional musician or music theorist will be adamant about using a single note letter in each key for communication clarity on sheet music, but because I don't have that restriction (thanks to pianoroll), I'm comfortable going C, C#, D, D#, etc. This evaporates the need for the distinction of B/Cb because they ARE the same note to me. Cb doesn't exist for me, and in a situation where you have something like A#/Bb, I will always use the sharp, even if the note letter A is already taken. It reduces confusion for me a great deal
I go even further and don't really care about the name of a note, just where it sits on a scale and how that relates to the notes played around it. And yes, piano roll!
If the wonderfully elegant modulo 12 arithmetic was more natural to us (say, because we had six fingers on each hand and used base-12 instead of the inferior decimal system all our lives) I'm convinced the standard musical alphabet would be 12-symbol, and the concept of accidentals wouldn't even exist. With an internalized base-12 mental model in place, it'd be easier to think about notes and scales in absolute terms from the get go.
The diatonic scale would've of course still been discovered and used, but it wouldn't have crossed anyone's mind to dedicate a separate, incongruent alphabet to it, let alone view the remaining notes as their modifications instead of members of a 12-tone cycle in their own right. We wouldn't need the spelling crutches because patterns and relationships in the full 12-tone cycle would be familiar and trivial in the first place.
It doesn't help anyone to think about June as "May plus" or "July minus" if June already has its place and identity in their mental model.
@@jkommah I don't think so, because the pervasive use of base ten in English speaking culture happened _only in my lifetime._ It was still shillings and pence and food sold by the dozen when I was a kid. Twelve dozen to the gross. (The US decimalised its currency earlier, but inexplicably still uses feet and inches.) So _not_ thinking at least some of the time in twelves is the innovation, but the major scale predates that change.
I'm in a similar boat. I always think of the octave (which is a bad term to begin with) as twelve notes. In fact, I even refer to them as the months of the year instead of ordinal numbers to avoid confusion.
@@stephenspackman5573 That's an interesting point, but even in the Anglosphere dozenal adoption was way too limited to be second nature and the primary way to think about numbers. You were fifteen years old and not dozen-three, your village had seven hundred people and not five gross, the year was 1967 instead of 117↋. Currency wasn't dozenal either, it was 12 pence to the shilling and 20 shillings to the pound, a hybrid hodgepodge.
I'm so happy I never ever have to deal with such things. The band-internal language is the most important thing even if it's theoretically wrong in 90% of all things communicated, but that's irrelevant as long we play the notes we are supposed to play. And of course we can never communicate with trained musicians, or do studio session jobs that require such knowledge, or play sheet music, etc. but I don't care, we only doing our thing. We just have to be aware of that limitation.
Cb vs B is also interesting in terms of transposition. I'm an alto player and when I write my own charts, if I want to use a B7#11 for example, transposing up a major 6th to alto key gives me G#7#11 which is okay, but not as nice to deal with as Ab7#11 in most situations. So in the concert pitch parts I will leave it as a B7#11, but when I copy the chord symbols across to the alto part I will change the B7#11 to Cb7#11 (transposing Ab7#11) for the sake of being easier to interpret.
When you brought up 5-limit I was like “OMG someone’s gonna explain this well finally”
Excellent video. I lacked the expertise, but you succinctly verbalized and resolved the cognitive dissonance I felt from watching Adam Neely's video.
i think neely's a little past providing useful insight, and a little into farming content, so it should be expected that his takes are spicy (such as mine here)
Collect your "1st hour" tickets here.
Collected
Bb = A#
@@InventorZahran yeah
Here
Ok
Overall an excellent video; the central thesis of "there has to be an arbitrary line somewhere, and the only real question is onto which side of that line Cb should fall" is great. However, I feel you understate Cb's case somewhat. You take for granted that F# and Gb are equally valid, but why? It's not because they're both equally useful (F# is much more useful than Gb), so I'd argue it's because they're both necessary in our Western music notation system. Being based upon diatonic music (for good or ill), our system requires Gb to write in a handful of less common keys. And while there are alternatives to the keys that require Gb, they require notes even more extreme notes (E# and B#). But by that same logic, then either Cb or E# becomes a necessity. If we wanted to argue that only one of those two is needed and that everything else should be respelled, we could do so. But at minimum, we need one or we cannot write simple diatonic music in each of the 12 tones of 12-ET. So while I completely agree that the correct answer to "Is Cb the same note as B?" is "it depends", for the related question of "Do we need Cb?" I feel the answer is definitively "yes".
With Phantom, I do think it is weird not to write a Cb because if you write a B-nat, in the next measure, they are likely going to notate the Bb just to remind players of key signature. While you don't see much music written in the key of Cb, I think you see Eb minor a good bit. It's a piano friendly key. It's much more palatable than D# minor plus it saves notational headaches to write a D natural in Eb minor vs a C double sharp in D# minor. A guitar player is probably just going to put a capo on to play in Eb minor and the bass player will just have to weep and not have time to worry whether Cb=B.
Asking whether or not B and Cb are the same, is like asking, 'Are things we define to be the same, the same?', and at the same time asking, 'Are things that we define to be different, different?'.
Your point at the end mirrors my position: We read and write notes, but we play pitches. Cb and B are different, because they are written differently, end of story, they just happen to have the same pitch most of the time. Its no different to asking if e and u are different letters, even if they are pronounced the same in the words "the" and "mug".
Great, nuanced video that covers all the bases. I agree that "it depends" is the only answer. Other than satisfying music theory concepts, it makes no difference on a piano sound-wise, but as a violinist, I try to adjust B natural and C flat based on context (melodically, C flat being lower than B natural, but harmonically as part of a chord, sometimes the other way around). Fully acknowledging that the unintentional error of playing "out of tune" is easily as large as any of these nuances.
6:20 I just got back from my 5th performance of phantom so that made me rly happy :)
2:20 No, just no. That's what you most often see, but Cb can absolutely resolve up to C (Life On Mars, Where Is My Mind, The Imperial March, etc) and B can absolutely resolve to Bb (Nostalgia/So Far So Long by Joshua Lee Turner, Le chanteur by Daniel Balavoine, and any other song which goes III-I and I know I've seen them). Truly the only real difference is intonation. B just sounds better in a G chord than Cb would, and Cb just sounds better in an Abm chord than a B would. Their functions are still the same, because why wouldn't they be?
As a music teacher and educator, this comes up often, particularly at the keyboard, and not just Cb/B, but why sometimes it's Db, and sometimes C#, and why we should bother at all, because, in their words, "it would just be simpler". And they're right, at the very beginning, when everything is hard, and they're looking at ways to overcome the challenge in front of them. However, allowing the edge case concessions to ease them into it, inevitably comes back to bite them later in their musical journey(in a western centric tradition. I also think the Gamalan digression is unnecessary, because I don't think anyone in the argument space surrounding enharmonic equivalency think applies to other, different, but equally important, musical traditions, with their own tunings and aesthetics). If I would allow my to not be concise about naming(Db/C#), and just pick one or the other, they would learn mistakes they'd have to correct later, because C# major isn't the dominant in Gb, Db is. There's also instruments that rely on how music is written out for their mechanical playing, like harp, where Cb and B are different strings altogether. I feel like the argument "it doesn't matter!" always comes from a space of frustration over how it's difficult to learn, and I think it would be a disservice to the musical tradition, and the context and nuance it gives to abandon it for the sake of simplicity alone, when there are clear benefits to sticking to it(most of the time).
I'm glad "spicy harmony" seems to be catching on
Ok, great video but I just have one question: what would Giant Steps arranged for barbershop quartet sound like?