Extreme Math Nerd Music (An Intro to Konnakol)
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- Опубліковано 11 вер 2019
- The South Indian tradition known as Konnakol uses some of the most extreme mathematics to create complex music full polyrhythms, geometric patterns and metric modulations. It's possibly the most Extreme Math Nerd Music there is, and I love it! Special thanks to Rohith Jayaraman :
/ rohithyourboat
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Please submit your attempts at the opening passage in this video to my instagram:
/ davidbrucecomposer - tag davidbrucecomposer or use #indianpolyrhythms
or you can do the same on twitter / davidbruce
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#konnakol #indianmusic #polyrhythms
Research:
KONNAKOL
The History and Development of Solkattu - the Vocal Syllables - of the Mridangam. Lisa Young
lisayoungmusic.com/wp-content...
Ancient Traditions - Future Possibilies by Matthew Montfort
www.amazon.com/Ancient-Tradit...
Introduction to Yati DR. DANIEL SCHNEE
danielpaulschnee.wordpress.co...
This thesis looks amazing, which I only found after a viewer pointed it out
KARNATIC RHYTHMICAL STRUCTURES as a source for new thinking in WESTERN MUSIC by Rafael Reina
bura.brunel.ac.uk/bitstream/2...
I'm told Trichy Sankaran The Art of Konnakkol is very good, but didn't manage to get hold of it.
Videos:
The Main Video of the Intro:
B C Manjunath and Varijashree Venugopal
• B C Manjunath and Vari...
B.C. Manjunath's channel
/ bcmanju
#MESHUGGAH #INSPIRATION #NOSTRUM #COVER
• NOSTRUM BY MESHUGGAH, ...
Rhythm with Konnakol - Mattias Eklundh Guitar Lesson Musicoff
• Rhythm with Konnakol -...
John McLaughlin/S.Ganesh Vinayakram- Gateway to Rhythm
• John McLaughlin/S.Gane...
John McLaughlin & Shakti "Joy" (Live Montreux 1976)
• John McLaughlin & Shak...
#KORVAI in Tishra Gathi
Manjunath B.C
• #KORVAI in Tishra Gathi
Mahavishnu Orchestra - Meeting Of The Spirits/You Know You Know
• Mahavishnu Orchestra -...
Adam Neely's 7/11 Polyrhythms
• 7:11 Polyrhythms
Dear @David Bruce thank you so so much for featuring me on your channel and indulging deep in analysing those videos. Love your explanation. 🙏
Thank you for your amazing work! I'm so glad you liked the video. 🤩
@@DBruce indeed I am humbled and honored
@@ManjunathBC Deepest respect to both of you!
Your mention of "percussion solo is time to take a restroom break" reminds me of a similar joke in jazz circles. I won't repeat it here, but it involves heavy use of the phrase "drums stop, very very bad".
@@mal2ksc thought you was gonna say "oh its the bass solo we can talk now"
"this is an example of a musical spiral"
*Tool wants to know your location*
keep on the spiral...
It'll be a treat if they use this kind of rhythm in the upcoming adaptation of Uzumaki
This is really weird. When I was 15, I played in a bad local metal band, and we had a song that had a similar idea, where we had a phrase in 7/4 that would get shorter in 3/8 steps and then longer again, and our drummer would play 4/4 under all that with accented off-beat quarters. We never managed to play that clean live.
Max Maria Wacholder do you have a recording of the song or do you remember how the song went? It’s a really fascinating idea to say that you thought of it when you were growing up.
@@freyashaw9958 Don't misunderstand me, it wasn't nearly as complex as this. We just wanted to be "prog", so we put a "prog" section after the second chorus. I don't think that I still have a recording, it was 20 years ago, but if I should find one I'll reply again.
@@TheSequentCalculus wow im looking forward to hear that song if you ever find that
I just (for a very loose value of "just" -- at least it's the last thing I posted) did a "math rock" style track in 7/8, but where the looped guitar parts are shortened (in the middle, no dropped notes) by 1/16th and 1/8th note respectively, so they drift out of sync with the rest of the song.
mal-2.bandcamp.com/track/strap-on-tool
@@mal2ksc December of last year is a real loose meaning to "just," my guy xD
Song's actually pretty cool though, good work.
Holy Marble Machine X T-shirt Bruce!
Yooo David Bruce watches wintergatan!!
@@AFNacapella I wish! Let's get a petition going. Might have to wait a year or two for him to finish it though (-:
I'm willing to build a VST in Maize Sampler, if there are sample sets to be had. I make these fairly frequently for my own purposes, and have one I'm willing to share.
mal-2.bandcamp.com/album/bjam-demos
I appreciate that David did enough research about konnukol and reached out to actual musicians to do it justice, everything here was spot on and introduced a lot of useful and interesting things to an audience that may not have much exposure to south Indian classical music
Wow! You just went and made a video about my master thesis! I am currently writing it now, and i am actually studying under B.C Manjunath. Great video, thanks!
Erik Vinje hey, well done you, post a link here when you are done!
Same for me, I gave my thesis on paper just today ! But it is not a master's thesis, it is 2 years earlier so my thesis is smaller (25 pages). I'm so thrilled to see more and more people discover Konnakol
He's a professor? nice
@@woah284 Oh, i don't believe he is, but i am studying konnakol with him through online lessons. :)
I also submit papers for B.C. marijuana....
Indian classical music is INSANE!
South Indian especially 😇
I tried telling my professor about this a while back to help his students with polyrhythms and he was like, "that's too complicated you should just count the beats and subdivide that." Some other players were like, "just feel it" and they usually are playing it wrong lmao.
I mean, counting has its advantages as well. You can work on rhythm and keep track of the meter at the same time. If you want to get people up and running right away, it's a good system too. But yeah, if you're intermediate with rhythm, Konnakol is really worth the time and effort, and the intro material is def not "too complicated".
Glad to see Indian music getting some attention; there is a millennia-long classical tradition (actually _two_ classical traditions) so there's so much depth there which seems to be passed over in the West. I hope we will get to hear your take on the Indian conception(s) of tuning and intervals as well.
Speaking as an extreme math nerd, I think we need less basic arithmetic and more category theory.
NEEDS MORE ARROWS
I entertained the thought of finding "missing" harmonic and rhythmic progressions using the Yoneda lemma, but at that point the pub closed.
Lmao there's actually a whole body of ideas about category theory that's used in music. Check out Mazzola's "The Topos of Music".
@@DeGuerre Do you know Guerino Mazzola's Topos of Music?
Brilliant idea. And to think people want to remove music programs.
I think an excellent example for EMNM is microtonal music.
First of all microtonal music deals with frequencies so even if you work in the purest form which is just intonation you need to do some math to see what are the good intervals, what are the relations between them and to which notes you get if you stack them up. Second, if you temper out some commas, which are rational frequency ratios, you get regular temperaments and then you need to do some math (namely number theory and linear algebra) to see which intervals are the same and more math to optimize the temperament - to decide the right size for the generators such that the resulting frequencies will be the best according to some metrics. And then there are equal temperaments, in which you need to do more math (beginning with rational approximations of logarithms) to decide which equal temperaments have the best approximation to some just intervals or a regular temperament. There are also well temperaments which are a whole other mess and perhaps even more stuff, all of which involving a lot of math.
And of course, all of the traditions that existed before Western musicians decided that 12edo was the way to go and dedicated that to the rest of the world (such as Arabic, Indian, Chinese and even European classic and baroque music) include some form of math in the tuning of the music, for example, Indian sruti are a form of just intonation which is also related to 22edo and to regular temperaments such as pajara.
So as a proud math nerd, I think microtonal music is one of the extremest mathematical nerdy music that exist.
I've never quite got my head around this despite having a keen interest - a video by David Bruce on an introduction to Erv Wilson would be very helpful!
This was a major inspiration for my favorite classical composer, Messiaen, and my favorite jazz composer, Don Ellis. It's really neat stuff!
Bro, I say it all the time, you deserve at least 1M subs. You put so much effort into your videos, well, more than your audience deserves anyway. Keep doing what your doing!
That's why Indians are all geniuses in math and computer stuff ;-)
I was searching for such a video over Indian complex rhythms and now I found it. thanks you very much for this.
Dude, I absolutely love that you have the 'I Believe' shirt on. I should have guessed that you would be as obsessed with the MMX as I am.
Best video yet!
What I found most rewarding in my personal studies of Indian rhythm is the wonderful people I’ve met along the way.
I've loved Indian "classical"/traditional music for a long time, and have often wondered about a number of these practices and systems. Thank you for taking this up and doing a video that attempts to explain some of this. Very informative and very much appreciated.
A song with geometric shape: the Twelve Days of Christmas
Yinchen Xǔ are you talking about twelve DAZE of Christmas for percussion ensemble?
That's actually called a "cumulative" song (or story). Other examples: "The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly," "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," "The Ratlin' Bog."
This video is absolutely wonderful. A friend of mine just sent it to me and I gotta say I really appreciate it. I have kept a very(Emphasis on VERY) basic understanding of konnakol on my toolbelt for the last couple of years and it has always helped me tremendously with the study of rhythm. Sadly, it is not a very widespread accessible subject in it's entirety, and your work has shone light on aspects of it I didn't even know about. It just goes to show how we can all benefit from exchanging information and culture as well as integrating it into our own individual expression. Always with utmost respect and an insatiable hunger for growth and knowledge! Thanks David and all who have been involved in the production and research that made this video possible, sincerely and from the very bottom of my heart. You guys are truly the reason we can keep on pushing the boundaries of the artform and the language that is music.
Thank David for your time and dedication.
Woo hoo so happy! I was waiting for an Indian video on rhythms especially and also the dagga that I saw in the LSO video. Keep up your good work. B.C Manjunath is a master of rhythm. He has been mentioned in many western classical channels like TwoSet Violin,SoundField and now you, David Bruce. 👌🏼👌🏼👌🏼
🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
Regards from India🇮🇳
You keep widening my musical horizons with every video. Thank you so much David. :)
Yes yes yes this video was amazing!
Thank you SOO much got shedding light on one of my favorite genres which doesn't get a lot of attention here in the west. An excellent video on a great topic. Thank you so much and more of this!
Amazingly interesting material! Thanks a lot :)
Wow, konnakol with metal guitar sounds suprisingly awesome!
Brilliant stuff my friend...….Big Shakti fan here (I had the pleasure of seeing them twice back in the day)...just stumbled upon this video. Will subscribe......awesome stuff.
awesome video! mor of this pls !
and props for nailing the 30 syllable surnames of the indian performers lol. (;
Just sifted through the videos in the description, ....so awesome thank you!
I have been following Manjunath for years now. He makes fantastic videos.
I recently subscribed to that guy's channel. I'm obsessed! With the rhythms and her voice 🙏💕
Thank you for this explanation. Your compositions are so wonderful, so interesting, so intellectual, yet emotional and artistic. I just love it. Bravo!
Wow that's such a genius system!!!!! Amazing work! Thank you!!!
That is some great study you've done for us western musicians on this rather amazing cultural tradition. Thank you!
This is an amazing video, flows very well :D
So unbelievably interesting! I knew about this type of music for a few months already but now I understand how it works!
Great way to tie in so many genres and applications across styles!
This is eye-opening! Thank you!
This is probably one of the most interesting channel one UA-cam
So awesome. Great video, David!
Thanks Shawn! I'm expecting you'd have zero problem playing the opening rhythm here (-: Just off to watch your new video.
Awesome video! Funny and VERY instructive! Cheers!
Geek Heaven! Thank you so much for this video, I've been wanting a bridge of some kind for a song I'm writing and this video came up in my recommendations at the perfect time. The song is prog, so this really helps.
Thank you for phenonemal content as always David.
/Elmer
we used konnakol in my intro to music theory courses at my community college, it was a pretty cool way to learn rhythms quickly once you got used to it.
Spent a good portion of my childhood learning the Mirthangam, the two-headed drum that is laidout horizontally on our laps. I find counting the 'western' way of counting difficult to wrap my head around. This is such a good intro, David. Especially for people like me who have lost practice like I have.
Good on ya for giving McLaughlin and MVO lads credit for showing konnakol to the outside world. And really, everyone has to listen to Shaki at least once in their lives. Ear candy of the best sort.
Great video David. After breaking my left hand last year I decided to learn this duet as a way of keeping myself rhythmically challenged. The understanding came first but a long time before I could perform it.
I asked BC if he felt a pulse through this piece, in fact the count-in is just for a tempo and starting reference. I began to learn the first cycle whilst walking down the street at a 1/4 not pulse. I then learned the clapping cycle in the same way. Lots of fun but perhaps a bit of a distraction.
Keep up the good work.
After spending a year with this I think more of it as geometry than a maths puzzle. At no point did I add or subtract any values in working this out. Imagine drawing a perfect square then drawing two lines within the square to crest 4 smaller perfect squares. This process can be but doesn't need to be numerically described as such. So more instead I began to feel the gaps between the notes.
I failed maths GCSE twice. The only time I wrote anything down was to work out her Tal variation.
I believe konnakol should be taught to all freshman in every music school. After only learning the basics through a lesson video many years ago, it’s improved my timing and allowed me to communicate rhythm better to this day.
David, I was just marveling at that video with Manjunath B.C., and attempting to mimic it myself (admittedly with snail-speed progress). Great analysis.
@9:10 I half expected that to end with "I'M THE SCAT MAN!"
Yes!! I have been waiting for this video to happen since the spirals in music vid!! Good to see my favourite Guru Mattias Eklundh in here.
I just realized that my drum teacher 11 years ago thought me a little bit of konnakol. I trained to play triplets with takita and quarter notes with ta ka di mi, but I changed the last one to ta ki de mi (because at the time it help me underlining some beats, with portuguese accent it sounds lower, which for me it helped). Amazing and very informative. Thank you very much.
Weird Rhythms: we are impossible to use.
Bjork: Hold my beer.
Indians: the name is Konnakol
David: *iTs nErD mUsiC*
Great video, and the woman's voice at the beginning is so pure and beautiful
This was so awesome!
Math, an MMX t-shirt, Weird Rythms, I must say this video has it all! My head exploded several times.
Good stuff!!
Thank you for this fascinating piece of Carnatic music! It incorporates many processes that Messiaen used.
Now I know that Messiaen researched Indian music, but until now I thought that the only examples he knew were certain "Hindu rhythms", and that even some of those were the result of his misinterpreting rest-symbols as augmentation-dots. (Paul Griffiths, in "Olivier Messiaen", p.60, refers to the copy, in Lavignac's encyclopedia, of a list of 120 deci-talas copied from Sangīta-ratnākara, and writes "Indeed, it is arguable that the Lavignac list errs in notating as a dotted semiquaver what ought to be read as a semiquaver followed by a semiquaver rest, so that many of the irregularities Messiaen specially cherishes are spurious".)
But in your video you show some other techniques Messiaen also frequently used:
1. following a rhythm by a repetition of it, but augmented somehow
2. setting a repetitive sequence of pitches or chords to a rhythm that does not repeat in the same way, so that ocurrences of the same pitch might get different durations
I had previously thought that Messiaen had learnt the first from Stravinsky and invented the second himself (though he later found out that Guillaume de Machaut had independently had the same idea centuries before). And now I find both of them in Carnatic music, too!
Amazing!!! Thank youuuu
Just stumbled over this. I’ve been referring kids to the virtuosity of Guru Varijashree Venugopal for ages - nice surprise to see you explaining it all and referring to the other virtuosic guru D Bruce and our Kundalee 🙌🏻😘 hope you and the family are all keeping well. Huge love
This whole video gave me the best kind of goosebumps and hearing John McLaughlin play and talk about music gives me chills. I'm excited about this challenge and I know what my band will be working on at our next rehearsal!
Great stuff! Helped me solidify my need to create a deeper ‘rule based’ system for a rule based algorithm I have in the works. One that already has inherent modes that I’ve obsessively cataloged. There were already so many analogies with both northern and southern Indian traditions I’m shocked that I could have missed the ‘connection’. This connection turns what was meant to be a ‘one off’ into something that could be given to other composers to play with.
Wow, we used some of those techniques in high school to help with complex rhythms. Cool to see where they originated!
You did it again!!! Thanks.
An incredible video! BC Manjunath is sooo talented
Thanks Soundy! He certainly is!
*Math nerd music*
Sound like something I would love! 🤓😊
Maybe I'm a bit daft, but the melody, rhythm / counterpoint of the opening piece that you used and highlighted here really reminded me of "Sunday Morning", the second of Benjamin Britten's "Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes".
great as always, glad you put this out there! if you don't mind, I would like to recommend Ben Levin's videos on Indian rhythmic solfege. it's great :)
You should do a video on Brazilian music, specially samba. There's a lot of syncopation and cool rythms.
po não é especificamente sobre samba, mas ele pelo menos toca um pouco no assunto.
ua-cam.com/video/jPcXABJVjI8/v-deo.html
Mate.
I'm part Uruguayan, love samba to death, but you must realise how it doesn't even compare to this sort of thing in terms of rhythmic complexity. This is centuries of mathematics. Not taking anything from samba. Hell, definitely not Brazil, we can talk about bossa nova etc., forever, but they're not nearly as deep rhythmically as konnakol.
@@KiraPlaysGuitar i don't think he was comparing, i think he was just asking for a video on the Samba rhythm.
@@youreright6627 You know what? You might be right. Weird day, all nighter.
Just rewinded the intro about 30 times now, I need to nail this down!
You're musicians are blessed by lingling rhythmic to perform this
That's amazing I enjoy your videos
After focusing so much on the rhythmic side, you should definitely explore the actual melodic side of Hindustani and Carnatic music. It's perplexing how structured and shockingly beautiful their different ragas are.
Also, for uses of equivalents of Yati, Aperghis’ “Recitatios” are a great example :)
18:01 Bootsy Collins had a similar philosophy: whatever happens during the rest of the measure, always land squarely on the downbeat.
This is so cool! I got here from the Rick Beato interview with Mohini Dey. I'm a math nerd so the kind of maths that's relevant here is something called modular arithmetic. For poly rhythms you may want to learn about Euclid's algorithm for computing the greatest common divisor. Then you have the Chinese remainder theorem and Fermat's little theorem. From there you can venture forth to number theory in general. Things like Diophantine equations. Or why not abstract algebra, which is rings (modular arithmetic is a ring), groups, finite fields and so much more...
This really makes me curious about how rhythms are communicated in West African musical traditions. Is there anything similar to konnakol there?
That is a very good point and idea. I hope Bruce will do a video on this subject! African music (in general, there's no such thing as 'african music' of course) is so immensely rich and complicated from a harmonic, melodic and rhythmic point of view, but sadly often looked over or forgotten.
You can check out The Solkattu Manual by Nelson for a gentle introduction. Also, Reina's thesis has been published under the title "applying karnatic rhythmical techniques to western music"
A year or so ago I watched Ben Levin’s video on this concept and wrote a prog rock song using a bastardization of this method plus a “16 tone” matrix haha
I’m glad you’ve made another great video on this concept!
Well,
Rhythm understanding is essential for what I call "the ultimate level of musical freedom" - That is, you no longer are restrained in terms of what kind of beauty you could achieve by being able to perform whatever rhythm you could think of not only to "show off" but to express something beautiful musically and spiritually speaking. When I write this lines, I think of Tigran Hamasyan and so many other great musicians that have used rhythm in such way that, it is really inspiring. Thanks for the video mr. Bruce. You are an excellent mentor. Much love from Ecuador.
It’s so cool ! This idea of rythmic modulation remind me Elliot Carter 8 pieces for timpani (Saëta,March)
Please bring more, people thumbs up! Could you talk about how this influenced Olivier Messiaen's music?
He used various tala and incorporated them into his La Nativité score
I really enjoyed this one. Indian music is super interesting. For a suggestion on other "extreme math nerd music", overtone singing can be pretty interesting. There's folk traditions such as some central Asian styles, and other practitioners in Western styles, plus I'm sure others I'm not aware of. I'd definitely recommend Toby Twining's choral piece "Chrysalid Requiem", which definitely qualifies as virtuosic and mathy, very much in the tradition of Ben Johnston.
Fantastic video as always. Random but do you think you would ever be interested in making a video on the history of Dutch music. I recently visited Holland and discovered the fascinating musical history. Such as, Dutch jazz and even the flamenco conservatory in Rotterdam.
love it!!
Love the video, can’t wait to get back and practice. But it would be great if you could soften the harshness in some of the clips and calls. Maybe a multi and comp or de easer. Thanks so much for your work!
Fantastic video, thanks for posting! As someone who loves Mahler to Steve Vai the most and also loves Metallica, Dream Theatre, Mastadon, Tool, Messugana, Animals as Leaders, I wouldn't know where to start for examples of nerd math music, so 'll start at the beginning: Stravinsky for it's lowest common Multiple poly/multi time signatures towards the end of both Rite of Spring movements; (especially the 2nd.) Chronologically what comes next that's in any way popular is the "rhythmic turnaround" John Paul Jones wrote for Led Zeppelin in the song Black Dog. Let';s also not forget Frank Zappa!
Cool stuff! I'm in a prog metal band, and we've done a countdown-countup and inverse in one of our songs, as in 7/8 6/8 5/8 4/8 3/8 2/8 1/8 (implied 0/8) 1/8 2/8 3/8 4/8 5/8 6/8 7/8, but not polyrythmically.
We're going to have try that now.
Hey David! Love your videos! I would just recomend a better leveling of volumes - sometimes things are way too loud and sometimes I can't hear it fully without turning up the volume. Keep it up!
wonderful stuff really, interesting! but hey.... throwing these video gems at us like that gets us easily bruce'd
So nice to see! This system is used slightly eased down, in the method of Kodaly!
I've only just found Varijashree a month ago when I came across the video of her carnatic skatting along with Coletranes Giant Steps. Amazing then that she's featured here! Im kind of obsessed with her and would love to work with both her and Manjunath someday. I reckon some magical spiritual jazz could happen
Interesting, thanks.
I would like to hear your take on Nik Bärtsch's music, I think he manages to develope polyrhythms in a very enjoyable manner.
Great video as always!
This reminds me of how Joseph Schillinger would work with rhythm through what he called the interference of polynomial periodicities (aka polyrhythms: a against b or a against b against c, etc.), which he would map out on graph paper and use as the basis of rhythmic, melodic, harmonic, and/or contrapuntal invention strategies (see his Encyclopedia of Rhythms as well as his System of Musical Composition). His students George Gershwin and Glenn Miller used his system in their compositions (see Gershwin’s I Got Rhythm Variations and Miller’s Moonlight Serenade). Carnatic music theory in its complex use of rhythm provides a fascinating independent meditation on what can be achieved when we approach music through mathematical lenses.
Love the T-shirt!
I love odd tuplets and odd time signatures, I cannot get enough of them.
Was kinda hoping you’d talk about how you incorporated it into your commission by Chroma. Either way, great video!
14:40 also reminds me of “Recitations” by Georges Asperghis
Hey Bruce. Thanks for fantastic analysis. I like them a lot. Im a musician myself and it's astonishing how many different approaches can show you so many different aspects music has ben crafted and so. Anyhow would you make something about Os tincoãs from Brazil, Mystery of Bulgarian Voices and D'Angelo's Unshaken. I think their approach to rhythms and harmonies is quite amaizing. Greetings from Andrija
Thanx!
Heyy some love for the Mahavishnu Orchestra
Always
Brilliant act
I love the group and the concept...I just personally wish McLaughlin put more focus into the melodic elements of his improvisation with the Mahavishnu Orchestra along with the rhythmic elements
SonSauvage I see where you’re coming from, but a lot of his music already has such beautiful melodies within them. So I can appreciate his focus on rhythm during some improvisation, although I think he focuses more on melody in his later work if I remember correctly
@@aidangallagher8703 any tracks/videos you could recommend?
i found about bc manjunath through jacob collier, you seem to hit spot on on your audience's interests every time
Exactly! I found out through Jacob too!
Oh snap, when did Collier talk abt Manjunanth?
@@sammypark333 I found it in his liked videos playlist. That place is a treasure trove lol