What incorrect rubbish. The piano isn't out of tune, you know it's a compromise so you can actually use all 24 keys George, without a large chunk of them sounding awful.
Yes. But you could tune it better for certain songs. Almost no pieces use all notes so you could adapt the tuning for the song you are playing. Obviously that is only feasible with electronical instruments. But it gives food for thought and experimentation.
This kid in my choir class was having a rlly hard time blending with the rest of the choir, and it turns out he has perfect pitch, and we were all just singing so flat that his in tune notes sounded wrong😭
It honestly made me hate choir. I was the kid with perfect pitch. It was fun when my director would ask me to sing the starting note instead of playing the piano or using a pitch pipe, but when the other kids would get pitchy, it would really confuse me. I had to deliberately sing wrong to match them and it would give me headaches.
All pianos are out of tune. The point of the video is that it is not possible to perfectly tune a piano. If u tune perfectly the A key for example the the G key would sound terrible.
Heh it did sound like that... he's actually the Spanish translator though apologising for not having translated anything for several minutes because he was too entranced by Jacob being Jacob
All pianos are slightly out of tune, otherwise it would only be able to sound good in one key, but with equal temperament every key is off by the same which allows to play all keys kind of well
I was there, and the translator nailed it! He sometimes had to pause for a while to soak in and process all the info, haha. But he managed to translate it to a 95% accuracy, which is a whole lot, knowing how nerdy can Jacob get when he discusses music theory.
It's just incoherent speech. Way more our of tune than the piano is. If he played like that, Interrupting, jumping back two and a half beats sporadically, or just scrapping a phrase and starting all over - that's just unintelligible.
Jacob Collier absolutely has perfect pitch however, this is actually just him using relative pitch and intonation to show the limitations of equal temperament. If you are in a choir or a string ensemble you have most likely done some intonation exercises but if not try what he is doing out at the piano. Although your third might not be as "pure" as Jacob's here, you might actually be surprised that you are a bit flatter than the piano because you sing using "just intonation" and not equal temperament:)
@@carsoncityairsoft no but wikipedia can tell you that equal temperament means that a major third is 14 cents sharper than using just intonation en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_temperament
This makes me think of Adele’s “Easy On Me”. For most of the song she is just a fraction of a cent off tune on random notes, but dang, if you pitch correct it, it completely loses all its soul and emotion. Sometimes being off key is an emotional or stylistic choice.
Hello, I'm new to all of this and am interested to learn more about it. Especially because I love the song "Easy On Me". Can you tell me more about it? Like, where was she off-tune and how did you hear it pitch-corrected?
Can you imagine just how annoying all this must be to Jacob? For us normal mortals, we can't even tell the difference. For him it must be like looking at a fence where every single post is crooked in some way.
"and um... It's interesting how the fence looks when you tilt it 90 degrees from the ground. If you move it, just a little, like this, it's how you make the fence straight, it's insane! Anyways, as far as fences go, they are supposed to line up with the rest so that it does a good job being a fence!"
He's dedicated his life to this, and he's spent an ungodly amount of time honing his skills. You'd be surprised what you could do if you dedicated as much time to something as the people you see doing crazy stuff have. I've spent 10 years working with audio and now I hear overcompression in movies, mixing mistakes in songs, and instantly notice whenever a vocal take is switched out while someone's talking - it's all over UA-cam videos. The more you spend on something the finer detail you get it down to in your brain.
@@CristiNeagu You can hear it with relative pitch as well, which can be trained. Perfect pitch helps a lot but this isn't an exclusive skill you are either born with or without.
He may be right but I grew up relying so heavily on piano that my man Jacob just sounds flat to me. So now we have a dilemma… be right and sound flat? Or be wrong and sound on tune to the average musician’s ears? (I doubt it makes any difference to the average listener though)
"On tune" is subjective; by which I mean: it's dependent on a baseline/standard. Who gets to define that standard? ...don't answer, because I legit don't care about the answer. Whether we call him "on-" or "off-tune", it doesn't change the fact that I like it. ...nor does it change the fact that we all can train our ears and learn to like it. I'm not a musician. But my musician friend forced me to listen to so much complex music that now I love things that used to cause me physically and emotionally painful anxiety.
@scars2remindus I have a bad habit of checking my phone at night and answering stuff when I should be asleep.... >_> Mutant, by Arca, was the first song(?) that came to mind. That's an extreme case, tho. If you can, play it on headphones. You might hate it. But the... specific kind of violence? ...of the sound really satisfies me on a physiological level. Very abrupt (Lol, that's such an understatement that I chuckled irl). Bent Knee is an artist that I found. Again, very violent music in an abrupt, non-metal, non-rock(?) way. The use of silence, man.... (Her rendition of "You Are My Sunshine" gives me chills; the horror fits the lyrics so well; y'all can hate it; it's a masterpiece to me.) Commonality between Arca and Bent Knee: use of silence and super chaotic time signatures. Arca is just ... so ... ....... .. If you want less violent stuff, I've recently fallen in love with the band Beach Chapel. The song Killer is a life anthem of mine. My friend really likes Radiohead and Perfume Genius. He literally listens to over 1000 albums a year. That's not an exaggeration. (He's counted.) I can ask him for recommendations too. Once he's finished publishing his first album, I'll recommend him, cuz he's stupid talented. (He got his dad to invest college savings into producing his first album; he's that good, and that smart, lol.) He hears things in music that I don't. He told me about microtones years ago. Oh, and he's only... 22 this year? Love that kid. Future of Forestry helped me cry back when I was grieving a couple years ago. Love that dude too. Finally, if you want to just discover a bunch of bands, I have multiple 10+hr long playlists on my Spotify based around stories I'm writing. (I also have a playlist called Complexity that... well, it's complex enough for me; it's really just a "personal favorites" playlist that eschews simple music; it might not be THAT complex. My sister can't stand it, and she's a pop-radio and Kpop lover, so take that for what it's worth.) So yeah. I got playlists... that is, if you don't mind Christian stuff. That said, if you WANT quality music by folk who love Jesus, then I gotchu, mate! But yeah. DM me if ya wanna peruse my playlists. Otherwise, happy listening. And, uh, don't blame me.
The piano isn’t out of tune, it’s a synthetic keyboard, it’s impossible for any note to be “out of tune”. That A that he’s talking about is a perfectly in tune A, however, within the confines of the F Major chord, it sounds out of tune because each note within a chord has to be tuned to the root, not to itself. So, the A, as the third, must be tuned flat so it’s in tune with the root, F. If the A is in tune with itself, it will sound ever so slightly out of place. That’s why when you hear a large band or orchestra play a chord perfectly in tune with each other, it sounds so lush and massive, because the notes are tuned to the chord, not each individual note. And the craziest thing is, humans do that naturally. At least, the ones that aren’t tone-deaf do. Our brain naturally wants all the notes in the chord to work with each other, so we will, without realizing it, tune those notes to match the root, instead of being perfectly in tune. I love videos like this, but because there’s such a small portion of it, it can be very easy to misunderstand what he’s trying to say, and I hope some of you actually managed to read all the way here.
@@PiotrBarcz Correct. Equal temperament is a compromise. Harmonics and enharmonics are naturally in tune, but we haven't figured out how to get a piano to play that way without comma pump. (someone correct me if I'm wrong but that's what I've learned seeking pure intonation.)
@@jaconova Dude, talking about music theory is not being pretentious. It is a subject of interest. If you are only interested in listening the music, that is fine, but it isn't a problem to talk about its properties. You are being just like someone who likes to read complaining about people talking about their interest in linguistics.
The problem is that the natural tuning only works for one key. If it sounds fine in C it will sound totally out of place if you try to play it on the same piano in D.
im pretty sure what jacob does when he writes is the root of the chord is always in tune with a piano, then all the harmonies on top of that are based off of actual harmonics he does a lot of cool things with tunings where the same notes are tuned slightly differently depending on how it fits in the chord
@@MrEgorXXX That wouldn't work either since you play on various keys and every key would be out of tune with respect to the other. That's why we have 12-TET.
Also how he explains everything so well, even as someone who barely knows theory I feel like I've learned a LOT from Jacob. Such an inspiring character
i think this is the difference in believing and loving what you do, you just want to share it, doesn't matter if you get praise or not, i hope i can be like this too
Largely he's like a cuddly teddy bear that is down to earth, but sometimes arrogant comments slip out. I did find *one* of his comments quite arrogant when he said "I wrote a song and modulated to G-and-a-half-sharp and nobody noticed" ..... but ... he's not the only one who knows about this high level music theory. Granted, he goes to the effort to compose and produce it, and does so brilliantly, but to say no one noticed is a little arrogant in my book. He also says a few things like "I'm the first person to write this sort of progression" and "I put in a 3/16 bar but no one noticed" and that sounds arrogant to me. Just assuming people can't decipher his music is a display of arrogance. I love him though, and he has every right to think and *know* he's great but I just wish he'd word things differently sometimes. Side note: I've had university lecturers and people with greater knowledge than said lecturers that have the same (if not, *more* ) knowledge the Jacob on harmony/rhythm/composition subjects, yet they never made it as engaging as Jacob did. I still learnt about quarter tones and odd progressions but sort of thought "hmm, interesting". I hear Jacob talk about it and think "nice" and want him to play more. Jacob (via UA-cam videos) is essentially a free university lecturer.... a *top* one at that! We should all be grateful for his gift and he ways he shares it.
Technically, this doesn't actually demonstrate perfect pitch (though Jacob does have it). Perfect pitch is the ability to identify or produce a given pitch without a reference. Here, he had the reference notes of the F and the C, and he sang the justly in tune third (A). What it shows is that Jacob has a very intuitive understanding of just intonation (as opposed to imperfect systems like equal temperament), and also very precise vocal ability. He understands music on a deep level, which is much more impressive than perfect pitch. I have perfect pitch, but I'm nowhere near the musician Jacob Collier is.
@@yamiyo6050 lol, okay. As I said, it's not even an impressive skill, more of a parlor trick really. It's helpful in edge case scenarios in music but not an important skill compared to relative pitch.
@@yamiyo6050 Considering you're in a video where people out of 8 billion from all over the world specifically come to talk about music, yes the chances of "everyone having perfect pitch" is pretty high. Now if you go to a cooking related channel or a farming one, maybe they wouldn't be able to tell what a scale is.
This is not a deep understanding of music. This is actually one of the most basic aspects of music and playing an instrument that anyone learns. Particularly for something like the violin, you learn very early on that chords are tuned differently than single notes. With the exception of perfect intervals, an in-tune chord will be out of tune when played as single notes and vice versa.
This is a good demonstration of relative or absolute pitch. Meaning the ability to sing in tune using other notes as a reference point. Perfect pitch is when you can play or sing any note from memory without a reference. (For example a piano)
Lol like when someone recalls in his/her mind their favorite songs. Ergo: everyone has "perfect pitch". Yes, my friend, perfect pitch is a hoax (in the sense that is not a speciall born with ability, it is trained, developed through experience and memory)
Absolute pitch is a synonym for perfect pitch, not relative pitch. Also to be pedantic (high functioning) absolute pitch is more of an innate function than a memory.
This is why brass ensembles can be incredibly in tune, especially if they're all pitched the same (drum corps). A room of Bb horns playing a Bb major chord is always going to be tuned to harmonic intervals.
Great video! (And love your stuff George). Just putting it out there that this is more about tuning to a given pitch and allowing the joined sonority to dictation intuition, than about perfect pitch in particular (which Jacob also has). But amazing nonetheless. Wish I could sing that accurately!
So, Western music is based on 12 equal semitones (half steps in American). Octaves are double/half frequencies apart, perfect fifths are 1.5 × frequency of the tonic. If you circle up in fifths until you reach the same note, it is NOT the same frequency as though you circled up in octaves. This is called the pythagorean comma. Because we try to tune pianos to equal steps, some key transitions sound off and some chords have a slight twang as the pitch is technically off - for THAT key. This has nothing to do with perfect pitch which is the ability to identify pitches by ear and is a largely inherited skill, though needs some training.
I agree with all of these points except for the "inherited skill" portion at the end. Recent studies have shown that all humans can acquire that level of musical discernment but the training usually has to happen when the brain has high plasticity before the age of 5 or so. After the age of 5 (roughly, don't quote me), it becomes much harder, to the point where some argue whether or not it's possible. To me, it's kind of cool to think that everyone COULD have this skill if they were introduced early enough, instead of thinking that people like Jacob were born with a superpower that's completely inaccessible to me.
@@aceron9143 Whatever the possibility for a newborn, it does vary and not everyone can develop perfect pitch. The percentage of people who develop it is tiny, but higher in areas where the mother language is more intonated, like Chinese dialects. I was told in my childhood that I have perfect pitch but I am buggered if I can recognise an F# or a D# every time, I just remember the open strings of a violin. I have met children who absolutely could not sing a note in tune and others who could name the pitch as soon as they heard it (provided that they had been told what each pitch is called). However, all people seem to have an appreciation of harmony and relative pitch, even if they can't sing in tune themselves. Important to note is that tuning to A=440 has not always been the standard. C=256 is a warmer but slightly lower pitch making A=435. Of course oscillations per second is still predicated on a human defined time period - the second, so there is nothing "natural" about our arbitrary naming of pitches.
@@angrytedtalks there was a Japanese study where they taught kids perfect pitch. 100% of the kids who started before they were 6 learned. So it is now assumed that everyone can learn it during their early life when their brain is more plastic. Kids in tonal languages just have more practice which makes them more likely to learn it. This is all referenced in the book Peak by Anders Erickson
Isn’t it weird how almost everyone’s eyes can see a color and your brain is able to store and recall the light frequency information and say “that’s red.” But most people’s ears can’t learn pitch the way we learn color. Just… why? You know?
It’s more odd than it seems! Look up the tritone paradox. Pick a note - say A 440 and play all its octaves together with amplitudes of the higher and lower octaves attenuated. Then insert the half octaves so D#. You will perceive the new tones as either higher or lower. Say you said higher. Repeat with D# and then A and you will always say the opposite. And you will always answer the same way. If you and I differ we’ll always differ even if neither of us have perfect pitch. We seem to ‘remember’.
Erm… we’re you not around for the black and blue dress? Most eyes will see things absolutely relative to the light around them and it’s not until you whip out a camera or something like that that you realise just how much you were letting things slide
I knew someone would bring that up lol. It kinda makes me wonder if there are people out there with “perfect hue” that can see a color and call out the RGB or HEX value lol
I think we do it's more a cultural phenomenon. Light is more common than music, but music is no less innate. It's like balance. Everyone can balance for instance to walk or run. But if you want to balance like a gymnast you have to live that life. And there are still levels to be sure. But I think we'd be shocked if we saw everyone's actual potential musically.
@@nimblejack there's a lot to this. The language you grow up in determines how well you distinguish colours because different languages accept the existence of different colours so where some languages might use the same word for blue and green, other languages might have multiple blues and greens that are considered basic. Since children are never taught to distinguish the colours in one language then the people that grow up in that language are far less likely to distinguish those colours. The brain will do whatever it is trained to do as a child so there's that one tribe where there is no word for left or right, just north, south, east and west and everybody there is always perfectly oriented because of it. In that same way, if you train a child to listen to complex music (think classical with lots of texture, jazz with lots of chord variety, foreign music that works off different systems) then you are far more likely to get a child with absolute pitch. Similarly, Chinese children, because they have to learn a tonal language as babies, are more likely to have absolute pitch and less likely to be entirely atonal. Of course it's also worth noting that if you do have absolute pitch then it will slip when you're about 50 years old and suddenly the whole world will be half a step off, which I can only imagine would be horrible
If you play the piano in a single key then you can tune it perfectly and all the overtones will make it sound amazing. It’s just the way the harmonic series works. But the issue arises when you start modulating because then all those notes that aren’t part of the harmonic series just don’t fit in. That’s why we compromise and tune each note equally so we have the ability to modulate with having to own 24 different pianos.
There's a related but still dissimilar thing with guitar that's resulted in me designating one guitar for standard tuning and another for Drop D because while you can get away with retuning just the one string, the change in tension means all the other strings aren't quite perfect anymore and you should retune entirely if you're going to record something. There is also the option of tuning a guitar to a key, eg, RHCP's Scar Tissue has John's B string 'out of tune' but it's the right frequency, a little flat.
We tune the piano (and music in general) to irrational ratios (being factors of the twelfth root of 2), because it is easier to work with. This means that all intervals on the piano are out of tune. For example, we hear a perfect fifth as a 3:2 interval, but we can not achieve a *perfect* 3:2 interval when we tune our piano to irrational numbers.
Some tones sounds good together because of physics. But because of the physical limitations of a piano, we have to make compromises. These compromises means that on a piano, the tones don't match up as perfectly as they could. However, the variation is so small, and we are so accustomed to these tiny differences, that we cannot hear them. But if you have an excellent understanding of harmony and the ability to recognise tones perfectly by ear (perfect pitch), you can hear the imperfection. In this video, Jacob hums how the tones should fit together, and then plays it on the piano to show that it is slightly off. A random google search suggests that between 1 and 5% of musicians have perfect pitch.
Basicially x × 2^(n/12) ≈ x × 3/2, 4/3, 5/4, 6/5, 9/8, etc. in which n = the number of notes above the frequence x. The ≈ is what makes it not perfect in tune.
Relative pitch rarely lands a vocalist right on the pitch when adjusting a 3rd, this statement is wrong. Many can't distinguish pitches down to the cent, and a perfect 14 cents needs to be exhibited for overtones to audiate, which happens here
@@chrisdudleytrumpet the fact that the audience audibly reacts to his demonstration shows you do not need perfect pitch to learn the difference between a perfect and equal tempered third, just a lot of relative ear training between those two slightly different intervals.
@@coenvalk833 That is technically true, but I think you need a reference pitch to hear the difference between a perfectly tune third and a equal tempered one if you have relative pitch, whereas you don't if you have perfect pitch. I am just a random stranger on the internet though so don't take my word at face value.
I hate it when a microwaves beep sound isn’t an A. Like what the hell man, you had one job. Edit: It's a B. Not an A. I have failed every single last one of you :( they all play a B beep
“humans love to do this thing where they make everything the same: rigid and organized and in a straight line.” thats exactly what Pythagoras did when he created pythagorean tuning
You don't need perfect pitch to sing a major 3rd in tune! Jacob himself will tell you, the base note of your triad already contains a perfect major 3rd harmonic. All that's required is to match the note that you are already hearing. That doesn't require perfect pitch.
That feels correct. I don't have perfect pitch, and I can do it just fine. But then he goes on to do the same to other intervals before playing and hearing the base note on the piano. That's two intervals you have to intuit, one of them infrequent use. I can't quite always do that. It's a failure-prone thing.
Perfect pitch is completely superfluous for everything about intonation. It should be made clear that perfect pitch is an "auditive" skill, not a "musical" one.
Well in this case, perfect pitch just means you can control the frequency your voice is producing very accurately. I'm sure if you pitch analysed Jacob's voice here you would see slight pitch fluctuations. No human has the ability to maintain a perfect frequency.
This isn't a demonstration of perfect pitch. This is a demonstration of relative pitch. Anyone with a good musical grounding can pick out what he's talking about. And pianos are like that for a perfectly good reason. Same with guitars or any musical instrument where notes are played by defined intervals (keys, frets, etc) Only on something like a violin can you fine tune notes to fit any given chord.
Not about perfect pitch. It's about the having a working knowledge of the overtone series and training. Anyone can learn to hear this but the clarity with which he shares this information is delightful. ☺️
@@longbow857 according to you literally everyone on this earth is shallow then haha. It’s a fact that people rate people as more serious and respectable if they have a suit on etc. countless studies on it. You can cry about it or you can just accept reality and adapt.🤷♂️
@@x9147 There is a big difference between being taken ''more serious'' or being taken serious at all. You can try to appear better/smarter, but my point is that if your first thought is to count somebody out because of appearance alone then it is shallow thinking.
@@x9147 well, yes, most people are really shallow.. Cos as you can clearly see in this video one does not need to wear a suit to be serious about what they do..
he’s discussing relative tuning in this video and the difference between that and fixed tuning. a piano needs to be tuned in a way where every note is perfectly in tune with itself for it gives the best results. this is the same with stringed instruments as well. the piano, relatively with itself is not in tune, he is absolutely correct, however, the specific notes hes playing are perfectly in tune. when notes are played in tune relative with other notes, you start to be able to hear harmonics. this is very important for playing with ensembles. so while the notes on the piano are in tune with themselves, theyre not relatively in tune with any other notes other than the octave.
There are different methods of tuning, one of which being that some people used to tune pianos depending on the main key a song would be played in, but that makes all the other keys sound bad. There are many other kinds, like just intonation. Like some of the other comments said, it has to be a compromise for a piano to be able to play every key sounding the most "in tune." If you want to learn more, look up some videos. It's pretty interesting but I'm not an expert in this lol.
imagine a set up with a piano for every key though! I would love to see someone try something like that out. I reckon there's 2 or 3 keyboards stacked for easy access in a circle with a swivel chair in the middle. and jazz pianists have to train away their motion sickness because those key changes are going to be hectic.
And this is relative pitch down to 14 cents precision type of stuff here, which is mindblowing. The video title, not gonna call it clickbait, but it really had that youtube alg and clickthrough rate mindset going on in it. Which is annoying for the real, long-term viewer base that are also most likely musicians
I think this is pretty common knowledge for anyone who plays an instrument. Particularly for stringed instruments like the violin. When you play double stops or chords on the violin so that it is in tune as a chord, then it will be out of tune if played as single notes one after the other and vice versa (with the exception of perfect intervals).
Every day I harmonize with the coffee machine at my job. I love the way it feels when I hum a major 3rd above or below. I try other intervals too, but 3rd is best.
He makes me wish that 25 years ago i was taught this, and not the rigid lessons i got when starting to learn also the "every note goes with every chord, so long as theres relevance ".
I don't know if he actually has real perfect pitch but hes just showing really good relative pitch recognition here. Still incredible he can sing perfect major thirds like that though, i never realised ths difference in equal temperament was that noticable
Funny how this dude says he is sorry that a digital piano is out of tune, when it literally cannot be out of tune. Obviously Jacob is talking about equal temperament that has nothing to do with this particular piano, but rather with every single piano ever. Maybe some day we get a digital piano that can compensate the inadequacies of equal temperament in real time. Although I bet that it would just result in even worse tuning problems, when you try to play a song with multiple key changes.
Interesting thought! But in the real world, I imagine it would probably suck. Imagine playing an e minor, e+g+b. Now chance the b to a c while holding the other keys down - now it’s suddenly a C major chord - should the intonation of the e change then? That would probably sound weird. I dont know how strings handle this situation.
@@OleMikaelSoerensen his song “made me cry” is in D semi flat. And Hideaway has both equal temperament and harmonic tuning (compare the first chord and last chord). Both in D but different D
He is right about the piano being out tune, his definition of the term is just different than yours. You define "out of tune" as imperfections in the playing or instrument that shift the pitches away from their intended values, while he defines "in tune" as the notes being spread apart by specific ratios that are the most musically pleasing. If someone builds a keyboard where every note is spaced apart 60 cents, that keyboard is in a sense technically in tune but most people hearing such keyboard wouldn't agree with that assessment. Equal temperament is considered in tune by people who grew up listening to it, but for those who haven't it probably isn't.
This is just common knowledge to musicians, the third of the major chord is always lowered 13 cents while the third of a minor chord is raised. The piano isn’t out of tune, it’s tuned with equal temperament.
Equal temperament, where everything sounds equally off. The alternative would be a microtonal system or multiple instruments, each tuned to a specific key. And that is just too much effort.
When I tune my guitars, the deep E sounds always wrong to me. If i use an electronic tuner... it sounds still wrong to me. Why??? The A is perfekt, but the E....
Eh, this happens. I don't know what specific compromise in the design of the guitar brings it about but it's probably a temperament thing or possibly to do with how strings have mass and imperfections so they cannot have totally pure harmonic series with no flaws. Probably the fundamental pitch of the string is dead on but a certain overtone is bothering you because your ear expects the mathematically perfect series of harmonics.
@@Technicotop And some frets are inherently out of tune on some strings with regards to equal temperament, as they're a logarithmic scale relative to the scale length of the instrument, not the vibrating length of any individual string.
If your guitars intonation is not PERFECTY set up then the other strings will affect each other through resonant harmonics. If you're playing electric guitar then your pickups may be too close to the strings. When you listen to guitar greats, they don't have this issue. Fruduatv has some of the very best videos on how to properly set up a guitar.
and this is why musicians (like James Taylor) have more than one guitar - they're tuned slightly differently depending on the mood and key of each song. Lovely ... and musically, so much more interesting than one 'standard' guitar tuning for everyyy song.
People talk hate. But ja doing big things. Other sit giving a opinion but yet we don't know who they are. Also hes been around herby and many others if there was a problem they would of spotted it but it hasn't so hes doing something right. To each of their own
I was always just told that the tuning of instruments were not ever exactly in tune, but for the reason that when chords are formed and the correct music theory is applied, they sound good together.
Yeah, 12 notes aren't enough to tune properly, so everything is slightly out of tune on purpose. Just intonation (perfectly in tune) basically requires infinite notes to play correctly in all keys, which is only possible on fretless instruments like the violin. However, there are better aproximations such as 31 or 53 that can still be used with keys or frets. This also unlocks new chords (neutral chord for example) and higher harmonics.
Electronic pianos are always in key because they produce sound to a frequency, unless it's a sampled library, in which case assuming the original samples are in key, it's all good. If I'm right this is just an issue with regular acoustic tunable pianos :")
The issue with automatically adjusting a pianos tuning like this is that pretty much all music genres play notes out of key constantly and such rapid readjusting would just sound awful. It would also cause issues playing with others since basically all instruments are tuned equal temperament
I have not a clue what this sweet young man is talking about, but I know I can sing in tune. I know minor and major, I can tune a guitar without aid and I can sing like Joan Baez. Written music to me is like a very beautiful, foreign font. But, after 2 years of watching Netflix (because of covid ) I still can’t sing the Netflix opening chord ( which is G-ish) straight out of my head. The musical gift spectrum is soooooooooooooooooo huge!
One of the huge differences between violin, viola, cello, double bass and piano. To make the double stops and chords sound more pleasant, we have to adjust the intonation of certain notes. When playing these notes on its own, it's actually out of tune. One cogent example is A and F#. Since A is an open string, you can't change it. Instead, you flatten the F#.
I know perfect major chords are nice, but the fact that the 12-tone equal temperament scale exists, with all its properties, is nothing short of a miracle.
If anyone knows about rhythm-pitch duality, his point about making intervals as well as beats all the same size (1:14 to the end) is a pretty thought-provoking idea
Many teachers I had have mentioned this, from different perspectives. In a classical music environment it's seen as a desensibilizzazione ( sorry I don't know the english word ) and a threat to the live performative aspect of interpretation, where all subtleties appear and make music 'feelable'. In sound engineering it's ThE fUTurE!!1!1!! and nobody really questions it, from a technical point of view it's just the most logical decision
@@c.l.368 I think that swing feel goes WAY back to at least 30's/40's jazz. Though they are definitely pioneers in merging that feel with hip-hop and soul. Chris Dave too.
The Piano is in equal temperament. He sang the "should be" correct note and claimed the piano is out of tune. Well, the design is that way to fit all 12 notes on ONE instrument.
I'm a bagpipe and hurdy-gurdy player and I'm super used to adapt my instrument's temperament to whatever I'm playing and with whom. If I'm playing alone I use just intonation or tuning by ear to my drones. If I'm playing with guitars or pianos or most modern instruments, I tune to equal temperament.
This is why instruments like the lute have adjustable gut frets. So you can change the temperament of the instrument dependent on the piece you're playing. Early mass production of instruments and new building materials forced instrument manufacturers to choose a permanent temperament. They decided on equal temperament because it sounds best in the widest variety of compositions. Super interesting stuff!
I just posted the same thing in a reply. This is exactly what you would expect, of course - that it would sound weird to us. Especially when a piano is involved, where 99.99% of piano music we've heard is in ET.
The fifths aren't "perfect" either on a piano, though they are better than the thirds. I love Jacob but having this conversation with good piano technicians is infinitely more interesting.
llevo años intentando explicar esto en conversaciones sobre armonia. El clavecin bien temperado ayudo a estructurar pero se perdío algo en el proceso. Las tonalidades realmente armonizadas. Aguante jacob!
You're right; you should absolutely be able to sing exactly 6:5 at 1000 Hz when you've been trained 12TET. Every musician should be able to sound a note that isn't on the piano. /s
Have worked with, listened to, bought music by, many trained musicians. I can say with confidence. You are full of $**t. Not only do you not know what you’re talking about but you wouldn’t recognize a clue if a trained musician bought a clue and gifted you with it.
The magic of that piano and all other modern instruments is that it is equally tempered, meaning all notes are just a bit off allowing you to play in any key. It it were tuned to the ear, which is called just intonation, he would need to play in only one key or have a different piano for each key he played in. That’s what happened back in the day a trumpeter would have a trumpet in c, one in a, one in b flat etc. it’s hard to notice the slightly off intonation and because of that equally tempered instruments are superior.
He's so talented and successful that his shirts don't have to fit perfectly. He can afford to look and be relaxed and not worry about what people think about his shirt fitting or not.
What incorrect rubbish. The piano isn't out of tune, you know it's a compromise so you can actually use all 24 keys George, without a large chunk of them sounding awful.
lol
Whats awful at this point? Everything sounds good to me
Yes. But you could tune it better for certain songs. Almost no pieces use all notes so you could adapt the tuning for the song you are playing. Obviously that is only feasible with electronical instruments. But it gives food for thought and experimentation.
Tell that to any live performer or song with a key change
yeah wtf is he meaning. there is no "in-tune." it's a small change to create equal relationships possible despite transposition.
This kid in my choir class was having a rlly hard time blending with the rest of the choir, and it turns out he has perfect pitch, and we were all just singing so flat that his in tune notes sounded wrong😭
One of the many downsides of having absolute pitch, yeah. I'm very happy sticking with my relative pitch.
Damn, poor kid. He must've felt so bad being the odd one out.
Whoa, how did that info come about in the end? I'm sure it was an interesting moment when someone figured that out!
I'd watch the movie
It honestly made me hate choir. I was the kid with perfect pitch. It was fun when my director would ask me to sing the starting note instead of playing the piano or using a pitch pipe, but when the other kids would get pitchy, it would really confuse me. I had to deliberately sing wrong to match them and it would give me headaches.
Most people use pianos to tune their voices, Jacob uses his voice to tune pianos
Lmao
Nonsense
It’s true he sang a Bb note and played the piano said the piano was out of tune lol
copied comment from another jacob video
@@carteralita5377 did I comment it there too?
Jacob: your piano is out of tune
this man: *genuinely sad and kinda sorry*
All pianos are out of tune. The point of the video is that it is not possible to perfectly tune a piano. If u tune perfectly the A key for example the the G key would sound terrible.
yeah, thats not the point lol
Heh it did sound like that... he's actually the Spanish translator though apologising for not having translated anything for several minutes because he was too entranced by Jacob being Jacob
All pianos are slightly out of tune, otherwise it would only be able to sound good in one key, but with equal temperament every key is off by the same which allows to play all keys kind of well
Why is the man saying sorry tho? It's not his fault pianos are tuned in 12 tone ET
Nightmare of a talk to translate in the moment
Specially when you're a subject of the talk lol
I was there, and the translator nailed it! He sometimes had to pause for a while to soak in and process all the info, haha. But he managed to translate it to a 95% accuracy, which is a whole lot, knowing how nerdy can Jacob get when he discusses music theory.
It's just incoherent speech. Way more our of tune than the piano is. If he played like that, Interrupting, jumping back two and a half beats sporadically, or just scrapping a phrase and starting all over - that's just unintelligible.
@@NGC1433 Incoherent? Do you actually play a "tuned" insrtument?
@@NGC1433 have you listened to any music or just piano notes going up and down?
The piano needs to tune to Jacob
truer words have not been spoken
Jacob tone equal temperament
Yes, a smart piano…
In the same way that David Goggins wakes up his alarm clock.
Jacob Collier absolutely has perfect pitch however, this is actually just him using relative pitch and intonation to show the limitations of equal temperament. If you are in a choir or a string ensemble you have most likely done some intonation exercises but if not try what he is doing out at the piano. Although your third might not be as "pure" as Jacob's here, you might actually be surprised that you are a bit flatter than the piano because you sing using "just intonation" and not equal temperament:)
He is not using relative pitch because relative pitch cannot tell you what is 14 cents sharp, and what 14 cents sharp sounds like.
@@carsoncityairsoft no but wikipedia can tell you that equal temperament means that a major third is 14 cents sharper than using just intonation en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_temperament
Agree
... surprised that you are a bit *flatter* ...
@@carsoncityairsoft HAHAHAHAHAHAHHHA
This makes me think of Adele’s “Easy On Me”. For most of the song she is just a fraction of a cent off tune on random notes, but dang, if you pitch correct it, it completely loses all its soul and emotion. Sometimes being off key is an emotional or stylistic choice.
Hello, I'm new to all of this and am interested to learn more about it. Especially because I love the song "Easy On Me". Can you tell me more about it? Like, where was she off-tune and how did you hear it pitch-corrected?
@@ananyaputhuraya3914thanks a lot
Eddie Vedder too
Blues singers do it all the time, that's what makes it sound so great. As John Mayer says, "bend that shit up a half-step."
Adele just seems out of tune in that song.
Can you imagine just how annoying all this must be to Jacob? For us normal mortals, we can't even tell the difference. For him it must be like looking at a fence where every single post is crooked in some way.
"and um... It's interesting how the fence looks when you tilt it 90 degrees from the ground. If you move it, just a little, like this, it's how you make the fence straight, it's insane! Anyways, as far as fences go, they are supposed to line up with the rest so that it does a good job being a fence!"
I would not mind if every single post is crooked in some way, but God forbid only ONE of them not being perfectly simmetrical!
He's dedicated his life to this, and he's spent an ungodly amount of time honing his skills. You'd be surprised what you could do if you dedicated as much time to something as the people you see doing crazy stuff have. I've spent 10 years working with audio and now I hear overcompression in movies, mixing mistakes in songs, and instantly notice whenever a vocal take is switched out while someone's talking - it's all over UA-cam videos. The more you spend on something the finer detail you get it down to in your brain.
@@em.1633 I don't think you can learn perfect pitch.
@@CristiNeagu You can hear it with relative pitch as well, which can be trained. Perfect pitch helps a lot but this isn't an exclusive skill you are either born with or without.
can we talk about how his shirt looks like he is some sort of secret cult leader
LMFAO trueee
It gives me anxiety tbh
It’s pyjamas
The neck hole of the shirt is that big to fit all his extra vocal cords through
Music Jesus
He may be right but I grew up relying so heavily on piano that my man Jacob just sounds flat to me.
So now we have a dilemma… be right and sound flat? Or be wrong and sound on tune to the average musician’s ears? (I doubt it makes any difference to the average listener though)
as an average listener it makes no difference to me,
"On tune" is subjective; by which I mean: it's dependent on a baseline/standard. Who gets to define that standard? ...don't answer, because I legit don't care about the answer. Whether we call him "on-" or "off-tune", it doesn't change the fact that I like it.
...nor does it change the fact that we all can train our ears and learn to like it.
I'm not a musician. But my musician friend forced me to listen to so much complex music that now I love things that used to cause me physically and emotionally painful anxiety.
If you watch the whole video he makes that point.
When a choir sings major 3rds a capella it doesn't sound flat, it sounds different and very harmonious ✨
@scars2remindus I have a bad habit of checking my phone at night and answering stuff when I should be asleep.... >_>
Mutant, by Arca, was the first song(?) that came to mind. That's an extreme case, tho. If you can, play it on headphones. You might hate it. But the... specific kind of violence? ...of the sound really satisfies me on a physiological level. Very abrupt (Lol, that's such an understatement that I chuckled irl).
Bent Knee is an artist that I found. Again, very violent music in an abrupt, non-metal, non-rock(?) way. The use of silence, man.... (Her rendition of "You Are My Sunshine" gives me chills; the horror fits the lyrics so well; y'all can hate it; it's a masterpiece to me.)
Commonality between Arca and Bent Knee: use of silence and super chaotic time signatures.
Arca is just ... so ... ....... ..
If you want less violent stuff, I've recently fallen in love with the band Beach Chapel. The song Killer is a life anthem of mine.
My friend really likes Radiohead and Perfume Genius. He literally listens to over 1000 albums a year. That's not an exaggeration. (He's counted.) I can ask him for recommendations too. Once he's finished publishing his first album, I'll recommend him, cuz he's stupid talented. (He got his dad to invest college savings into producing his first album; he's that good, and that smart, lol.) He hears things in music that I don't. He told me about microtones years ago. Oh, and he's only... 22 this year? Love that kid.
Future of Forestry helped me cry back when I was grieving a couple years ago. Love that dude too.
Finally, if you want to just discover a bunch of bands, I have multiple 10+hr long playlists on my Spotify based around stories I'm writing. (I also have a playlist called Complexity that... well, it's complex enough for me; it's really just a "personal favorites" playlist that eschews simple music; it might not be THAT complex. My sister can't stand it, and she's a pop-radio and Kpop lover, so take that for what it's worth.) So yeah. I got playlists... that is, if you don't mind Christian stuff. That said, if you WANT quality music by folk who love Jesus, then I gotchu, mate! But yeah. DM me if ya wanna peruse my playlists.
Otherwise, happy listening. And, uh, don't blame me.
The piano isn’t out of tune, it’s a synthetic keyboard, it’s impossible for any note to be “out of tune”. That A that he’s talking about is a perfectly in tune A, however, within the confines of the F Major chord, it sounds out of tune because each note within a chord has to be tuned to the root, not to itself. So, the A, as the third, must be tuned flat so it’s in tune with the root, F. If the A is in tune with itself, it will sound ever so slightly out of place. That’s why when you hear a large band or orchestra play a chord perfectly in tune with each other, it sounds so lush and massive, because the notes are tuned to the chord, not each individual note. And the craziest thing is, humans do that naturally. At least, the ones that aren’t tone-deaf do. Our brain naturally wants all the notes in the chord to work with each other, so we will, without realizing it, tune those notes to match the root, instead of being perfectly in tune.
I love videos like this, but because there’s such a small portion of it, it can be very easy to misunderstand what he’s trying to say, and I hope some of you actually managed to read all the way here.
I read the whole thing... even tho I didn't understand half of it...
Interesting point tho... thanks for sharing
its not impossible for an electric piano to be out of tune. most of them allow you to detune each key individually.
Unless it has a barometer, it can be out of tune.
That's the thing, the keyboard is out of tune. All keyboard instruments are tuned to an equal temperament which literally means they are OUT OF TUNE.
@@PiotrBarcz Correct. Equal temperament is a compromise. Harmonics and enharmonics are naturally in tune, but we haven't figured out how to get a piano to play that way without comma pump. (someone correct me if I'm wrong but that's what I've learned seeking pure intonation.)
Piano: Well I guess people like me for my even temperament.
Underrated comment
So, what your saying is i'm actually not a bad singer, the piano has always been off... finally i've been validated
Welcome to temperament. The piano was tuned in a way to make a circle. Life spirals.
th well tempered piano it was buildt to have a convention.Natural harmonics and tune their are a subject to dig.
yes! the circle of fifths should be a spiral, because 12 perfect 5ths will not get you to the root note
A circle doesn't spiral
@@noahmay7708 Warning: many pretentious people above and below me. Just enjoy the music, we are all hearing this "subtleties" and pitch changes.
@@jaconova Dude, talking about music theory is not being pretentious. It is a subject of interest. If you are only interested in listening the music, that is fine, but it isn't a problem to talk about its properties. You are being just like someone who likes to read complaining about people talking about their interest in linguistics.
* goes on FL studio *
Jacob: This note is out of tune
You're using FL wrong then. My FL is never out of tune.
@@baronvonbeandip Congratulations. You got the joke
The problem is that the natural tuning only works for one key. If it sounds fine in C it will sound totally out of place if you try to play it on the same piano in D.
So basically all you need is 12 keyboards, each tuned to it's own note?
@@MrEgorXXX yes, and that’s why we have 12-TET instead. it’s off by the same in all keys
im pretty sure what jacob does when he writes is the root of the chord is always in tune with a piano, then all the harmonies on top of that are based off of actual harmonics he does a lot of cool things with tunings where the same notes are tuned slightly differently depending on how it fits in the chord
Yeah! Jacob talks about this in the video: “Jacob’s Piano is Out of Tune”
@@MrEgorXXX That wouldn't work either since you play on various keys and every key would be out of tune with respect to the other. That's why we have 12-TET.
i love how jacob is so down to earth
he's never arrogant and stuff
Agreed. You can really tell that his passion is sharing music, rather than demonstrating his own skill.
Also how he explains everything so well, even as someone who barely knows theory I feel like I've learned a LOT from Jacob. Such an inspiring character
he's feeling the nature of sound actually.
i think this is the difference in believing and loving what you do, you just want to share it, doesn't matter if you get praise or not, i hope i can be like this too
Largely he's like a cuddly teddy bear that is down to earth, but sometimes arrogant comments slip out. I did find *one* of his comments quite arrogant when he said "I wrote a song and modulated to G-and-a-half-sharp and nobody noticed" ..... but ... he's not the only one who knows about this high level music theory. Granted, he goes to the effort to compose and produce it, and does so brilliantly, but to say no one noticed is a little arrogant in my book.
He also says a few things like "I'm the first person to write this sort of progression" and "I put in a 3/16 bar but no one noticed" and that sounds arrogant to me. Just assuming people can't decipher his music is a display of arrogance.
I love him though, and he has every right to think and *know* he's great but I just wish he'd word things differently sometimes.
Side note: I've had university lecturers and people with greater knowledge than said lecturers that have the same (if not, *more* ) knowledge the Jacob on harmony/rhythm/composition subjects, yet they never made it as engaging as Jacob did. I still learnt about quarter tones and odd progressions but sort of thought "hmm, interesting". I hear Jacob talk about it and think "nice" and want him to play more.
Jacob (via UA-cam videos) is essentially a free university lecturer.... a *top* one at that! We should all be grateful for his gift and he ways he shares it.
I have a hard time getting into his albums but I absolutely LOVE listening to him dissect theory and harmony
He's a knob!!
Technically, this doesn't actually demonstrate perfect pitch (though Jacob does have it). Perfect pitch is the ability to identify or produce a given pitch without a reference. Here, he had the reference notes of the F and the C, and he sang the justly in tune third (A).
What it shows is that Jacob has a very intuitive understanding of just intonation (as opposed to imperfect systems like equal temperament), and also very precise vocal ability. He understands music on a deep level, which is much more impressive than perfect pitch. I have perfect pitch, but I'm nowhere near the musician Jacob Collier is.
Everyone has perfect pitch on the internet
@@yamiyo6050 lol, okay. As I said, it's not even an impressive skill, more of a parlor trick really. It's helpful in edge case scenarios in music but not an important skill compared to relative pitch.
@@yamiyo6050 Considering you're in a video where people out of 8 billion from all over the world specifically come to talk about music, yes the chances of "everyone having perfect pitch" is pretty high. Now if you go to a cooking related channel or a farming one, maybe they wouldn't be able to tell what a scale is.
wrdgaf
This is not a deep understanding of music. This is actually one of the most basic aspects of music and playing an instrument that anyone learns. Particularly for something like the violin, you learn very early on that chords are tuned differently than single notes. With the exception of perfect intervals, an in-tune chord will be out of tune when played as single notes and vice versa.
This is a good demonstration of relative or absolute pitch. Meaning the ability to sing in tune using other notes as a reference point. Perfect pitch is when you can play or sing any note from memory without a reference. (For example a piano)
You understood the point of the video! Congratulations!
@@LordOfFlies And you misunderstood the point of my comment so congratulations to you!! 👏 👏 👏
@@LordOfFlies Allan was making a point independent of the video about the video’s nonsensical title
Lol like when someone recalls in his/her mind their favorite songs. Ergo: everyone has "perfect pitch". Yes, my friend, perfect pitch is a hoax (in the sense that is not a speciall born with ability, it is trained, developed through experience and memory)
Absolute pitch is a synonym for perfect pitch, not relative pitch. Also to be pedantic (high functioning) absolute pitch is more of an innate function than a memory.
I swear his shirts get baggier with every video
This is why brass ensembles can be incredibly in tune, especially if they're all pitched the same (drum corps). A room of Bb horns playing a Bb major chord is always going to be tuned to harmonic intervals.
G bugles is always the answer. 😉
Great video! (And love your stuff George). Just putting it out there that this is more about tuning to a given pitch and allowing the joined sonority to dictation intuition, than about perfect pitch in particular (which Jacob also has). But amazing nonetheless. Wish I could sing that accurately!
So, Western music is based on 12 equal semitones (half steps in American).
Octaves are double/half frequencies apart, perfect fifths are 1.5 × frequency of the tonic.
If you circle up in fifths until you reach the same note, it is NOT the same frequency as though you circled up in octaves. This is called the pythagorean comma.
Because we try to tune pianos to equal steps, some key transitions sound off and some chords have a slight twang as the pitch is technically off - for THAT key.
This has nothing to do with perfect pitch which is the ability to identify pitches by ear and is a largely inherited skill, though needs some training.
I agree with all of these points except for the "inherited skill" portion at the end. Recent studies have shown that all humans can acquire that level of musical discernment but the training usually has to happen when the brain has high plasticity before the age of 5 or so. After the age of 5 (roughly, don't quote me), it becomes much harder, to the point where some argue whether or not it's possible. To me, it's kind of cool to think that everyone COULD have this skill if they were introduced early enough, instead of thinking that people like Jacob were born with a superpower that's completely inaccessible to me.
@@aceron9143 Whatever the possibility for a newborn, it does vary and not everyone can develop perfect pitch. The percentage of people who develop it is tiny, but higher in areas where the mother language is more intonated, like Chinese dialects. I was told in my childhood that I have perfect pitch but I am buggered if I can recognise an F# or a D# every time, I just remember the open strings of a violin.
I have met children who absolutely could not sing a note in tune and others who could name the pitch as soon as they heard it (provided that they had been told what each pitch is called).
However, all people seem to have an appreciation of harmony and relative pitch, even if they can't sing in tune themselves.
Important to note is that tuning to A=440 has not always been the standard.
C=256 is a warmer but slightly lower pitch making A=435.
Of course oscillations per second is still predicated on a human defined time period - the second, so there is nothing "natural" about our arbitrary naming of pitches.
@@angrytedtalks there was a Japanese study where they taught kids perfect pitch. 100% of the kids who started before they were 6 learned. So it is now assumed that everyone can learn it during their early life when their brain is more plastic. Kids in tonal languages just have more practice which makes them more likely to learn it. This is all referenced in the book Peak by Anders Erickson
@@tsummerhays Do cite that research, because all other researchers have found a big variation in birth abilities.
@@tsummerhays japanese language isn't intonated as far as I know
Isn’t it weird how almost everyone’s eyes can see a color and your brain is able to store and recall the light frequency information and say “that’s red.” But most people’s ears can’t learn pitch the way we learn color. Just… why? You know?
It’s more odd than it seems! Look up the tritone paradox. Pick a note - say A 440 and play all its octaves together with amplitudes of the higher and lower octaves attenuated. Then insert the half octaves so D#. You will perceive the new tones as either higher or lower. Say you said higher. Repeat with D# and then A and you will always say the opposite. And you will always answer the same way. If you and I differ we’ll always differ even if neither of us have perfect pitch. We seem to ‘remember’.
Erm… we’re you not around for the black and blue dress? Most eyes will see things absolutely relative to the light around them and it’s not until you whip out a camera or something like that that you realise just how much you were letting things slide
I knew someone would bring that up lol. It kinda makes me wonder if there are people out there with “perfect hue” that can see a color and call out the RGB or HEX value lol
I think we do it's more a cultural phenomenon. Light is more common than music, but music is no less innate. It's like balance. Everyone can balance for instance to walk or run. But if you want to balance like a gymnast you have to live that life. And there are still levels to be sure. But I think we'd be shocked if we saw everyone's actual potential musically.
@@nimblejack there's a lot to this. The language you grow up in determines how well you distinguish colours because different languages accept the existence of different colours so where some languages might use the same word for blue and green, other languages might have multiple blues and greens that are considered basic. Since children are never taught to distinguish the colours in one language then the people that grow up in that language are far less likely to distinguish those colours.
The brain will do whatever it is trained to do as a child so there's that one tribe where there is no word for left or right, just north, south, east and west and everybody there is always perfectly oriented because of it. In that same way, if you train a child to listen to complex music (think classical with lots of texture, jazz with lots of chord variety, foreign music that works off different systems) then you are far more likely to get a child with absolute pitch. Similarly, Chinese children, because they have to learn a tonal language as babies, are more likely to have absolute pitch and less likely to be entirely atonal.
Of course it's also worth noting that if you do have absolute pitch then it will slip when you're about 50 years old and suddenly the whole world will be half a step off, which I can only imagine would be horrible
If you play the piano in a single key then you can tune it perfectly and all the overtones will make it sound amazing. It’s just the way the harmonic series works. But the issue arises when you start modulating because then all those notes that aren’t part of the harmonic series just don’t fit in. That’s why we compromise and tune each note equally so we have the ability to modulate with having to own 24 different pianos.
Thank you
There's a related but still dissimilar thing with guitar that's resulted in me designating one guitar for standard tuning and another for Drop D because while you can get away with retuning just the one string, the change in tension means all the other strings aren't quite perfect anymore and you should retune entirely if you're going to record something. There is also the option of tuning a guitar to a key, eg, RHCP's Scar Tissue has John's B string 'out of tune' but it's the right frequency, a little flat.
I didn't understand anything he said but I enjoyed the video anyways lol
We tune the piano (and music in general) to irrational ratios (being factors of the twelfth root of 2), because it is easier to work with. This means that all intervals on the piano are out of tune. For example, we hear a perfect fifth as a 3:2 interval, but we can not achieve a *perfect* 3:2 interval when we tune our piano to irrational numbers.
Some tones sounds good together because of physics.
But because of the physical limitations of a piano, we have to make compromises.
These compromises means that on a piano, the tones don't match up as perfectly as they could.
However, the variation is so small, and we are so accustomed to these tiny differences, that we cannot hear them.
But if you have an excellent understanding of harmony and the ability to recognise tones perfectly by ear (perfect pitch), you can hear the imperfection.
In this video, Jacob hums how the tones should fit together, and then plays it on the piano to show that it is slightly off.
A random google search suggests that between 1 and 5% of musicians have perfect pitch.
Basicially x × 2^(n/12) ≈ x × 3/2, 4/3, 5/4, 6/5, 9/8, etc. in which n = the number of notes above the frequence x. The ≈ is what makes it not perfect in tune.
@@Laugk only 1 to 5%, damn Im lucky then, but maybe it also has to do with when you started playing an instrument? Idk
I think I got it, thanks y'all!
Not really perfect pitch being shown here, more like a good relative pitch and knowledge of equal temperament
Both the title of video and the description doesn't make any sense at all for this content
Relative pitch rarely lands a vocalist right on the pitch when adjusting a 3rd, this statement is wrong. Many can't distinguish pitches down to the cent, and a perfect 14 cents needs to be exhibited for overtones to audiate, which happens here
@@chrisdudleytrumpet the fact that the audience audibly reacts to his demonstration shows you do not need perfect pitch to learn the difference between a perfect and equal tempered third, just a lot of relative ear training between those two slightly different intervals.
@@chrisdudleytrumpet if you have some experience singing in harmony then you can learn to do what Jacob does here in a couple minutes, it's not hard
@@coenvalk833 That is technically true, but I think you need a reference pitch to hear the difference between a perfectly tune third and a equal tempered one if you have relative pitch, whereas you don't if you have perfect pitch. I am just a random stranger on the internet though so don't take my word at face value.
I hate it when a microwaves beep sound isn’t an A. Like what the hell man, you had one job.
Edit: It's a B. Not an A. I have failed every single last one of you :( they all play a B beep
thanks now i'm going to pay attention to this for the rest of my life
@@chopholtz4950 My god. I was wrong, it isn´t an A. It's clearly a B! Sorry for that
The most legit and fair humble brag I’ve ever seen. Mad respect✊
Omg this is amazing 😍
“humans love to do this thing where they make everything the same: rigid and organized and in a straight line.”
thats exactly what Pythagoras did when he created pythagorean tuning
You don't need perfect pitch to sing a major 3rd in tune!
Jacob himself will tell you, the base note of your triad already contains a perfect major 3rd harmonic. All that's required is to match the note that you are already hearing. That doesn't require perfect pitch.
fair point, you need very sharp ears but not perfect pitch
That feels correct. I don't have perfect pitch, and I can do it just fine.
But then he goes on to do the same to other intervals before playing and hearing the base note on the piano. That's two intervals you have to intuit, one of them infrequent use. I can't quite always do that. It's a failure-prone thing.
Perfect pitch is completely superfluous for everything about intonation.
It should be made clear that perfect pitch is an "auditive" skill, not a "musical" one.
This.
Well in this case, perfect pitch just means you can control the frequency your voice is producing very accurately. I'm sure if you pitch analysed Jacob's voice here you would see slight pitch fluctuations. No human has the ability to maintain a perfect frequency.
amaaaaaazine!!!!! love it!!!
This isn't a demonstration of perfect pitch. This is a demonstration of relative pitch. Anyone with a good musical grounding can pick out what he's talking about. And pianos are like that for a perfectly good reason. Same with guitars or any musical instrument where notes are played by defined intervals (keys, frets, etc) Only on something like a violin can you fine tune notes to fit any given chord.
Not about perfect pitch. It's about the having a working knowledge of the overtone series and training. Anyone can learn to hear this but the clarity with which he shares this information is delightful. ☺️
You know you're a genius in your field when you can dress like that and still be taken seriously.
You know you are shallow if some clothes design makes you judge someone to that extent.
@@longbow857 according to you literally everyone on this earth is shallow then haha.
It’s a fact that people rate people as more serious and respectable if they have a suit on etc.
countless studies on it.
You can cry about it or you can just accept reality and adapt.🤷♂️
@@x9147 There is a big difference between being taken ''more serious'' or being taken serious at all. You can try to appear better/smarter, but my point is that if your first thought is to count somebody out because of appearance alone then it is shallow thinking.
ʟᴏʟ
@@x9147 well, yes, most people are really shallow.. Cos as you can clearly see in this video one does not need to wear a suit to be serious about what they do..
And yet intonation between instruments or voices are what gives music it's richness and depth.
So liberating to hear this...
he’s discussing relative tuning in this video and the difference between that and fixed tuning. a piano needs to be tuned in a way where every note is perfectly in tune with itself for it gives the best results. this is the same with stringed instruments as well. the piano, relatively with itself is not in tune, he is absolutely correct, however, the specific notes hes playing are perfectly in tune. when notes are played in tune relative with other notes, you start to be able to hear harmonics. this is very important for playing with ensembles. so while the notes on the piano are in tune with themselves, theyre not relatively in tune with any other notes other than the octave.
Nah no need for this because people who have perfect pitch always find a way to bring it up
I never understand what he's talking about, but I always enjoy listening to him. He's so smart and such a passionate person, ilhsm
This is actually an example of relative pitch, not perfect pitch.
There are different methods of tuning, one of which being that some people used to tune pianos depending on the main key a song would be played in, but that makes all the other keys sound bad. There are many other kinds, like just intonation. Like some of the other comments said, it has to be a compromise for a piano to be able to play every key sounding the most "in tune." If you want to learn more, look up some videos. It's pretty interesting but I'm not an expert in this lol.
imagine a set up with a piano for every key though! I would love to see someone try something like that out.
I reckon there's 2 or 3 keyboards stacked for easy access in a circle with a swivel chair in the middle. and jazz pianists have to train away their motion sickness because those key changes are going to be hectic.
Blowing minds, taking hearts
That was amazing.
This has nothing to do with perfect pitch. Perfect pitch has to do with recognizing a note without a reference. This is all relative pitch stuff.
And this is relative pitch down to 14 cents precision type of stuff here, which is mindblowing.
The video title, not gonna call it clickbait, but it really had that youtube alg and clickthrough rate mindset going on in it. Which is annoying for the real, long-term viewer base that are also most likely musicians
I think this is pretty common knowledge for anyone who plays an instrument. Particularly for stringed instruments like the violin. When you play double stops or chords on the violin so that it is in tune as a chord, then it will be out of tune if played as single notes one after the other and vice versa (with the exception of perfect intervals).
Every day I harmonize with the coffee machine at my job. I love the way it feels when I hum a major 3rd above or below. I try other intervals too, but 3rd is best.
Bravo! My ear (brain) is my greatest gift.
He makes me wish that 25 years ago i was taught this, and not the rigid lessons i got when starting to learn also the "every note goes with every chord, so long as theres relevance ".
lol he was singing 16 cents flat, not 14 as he claimed.
Okay Dave
And it still sounded so much nicer than the piano
the smallest difference in pitch an average person can detect is only about 5 cents
thats incredible
ive listened to Pachelbes Canon in D once in the "normal" tuned version and in the D tuned version. boy such a difference!!!
I don't know if he actually has real perfect pitch but hes just showing really good relative pitch recognition here. Still incredible he can sing perfect major thirds like that though, i never realised ths difference in equal temperament was that noticable
Funny how this dude says he is sorry that a digital piano is out of tune, when it literally cannot be out of tune. Obviously Jacob is talking about equal temperament that has nothing to do with this particular piano, but rather with every single piano ever. Maybe some day we get a digital piano that can compensate the inadequacies of equal temperament in real time. Although I bet that it would just result in even worse tuning problems, when you try to play a song with multiple key changes.
Interesting thought! But in the real world, I imagine it would probably suck. Imagine playing an e minor, e+g+b. Now chance the b to a c while holding the other keys down - now it’s suddenly a C major chord - should the intonation of the e change then? That would probably sound weird. I dont know how strings handle this situation.
@@OleMikaelSoerensen his song “made me cry” is in D semi flat. And Hideaway has both equal temperament and harmonic tuning (compare the first chord and last chord). Both in D but different D
He is right about the piano being out tune, his definition of the term is just different than yours.
You define "out of tune" as imperfections in the playing or instrument that shift the pitches away from their intended values, while he defines "in tune" as the notes being spread apart by specific ratios that are the most musically pleasing.
If someone builds a keyboard where every note is spaced apart 60 cents, that keyboard is in a sense technically in tune but most people hearing such keyboard wouldn't agree with that assessment.
Equal temperament is considered in tune by people who grew up listening to it, but for those who haven't it probably isn't.
His voice is relaxing 😌
I learned more from the discussion thread than the video. Strange title aside, at least it got me to the valuable thread.
This is just common knowledge to musicians, the third of the major chord is always lowered 13 cents while the third of a minor chord is raised. The piano isn’t out of tune, it’s tuned with equal temperament.
That's what he was saying.
Equal temperament, where everything sounds equally off.
The alternative would be a microtonal system or multiple instruments, each tuned to a specific key. And that is just too much effort.
dude....you're unbearable. Do you hear how smug you sound? 😂
As an average listener, I'm just happy to be here
This guy is incredible... just a fascinating mind
He doesn’t have perfect pitch. He has, PERFECT pitch
People in the audience: *laughing because something isn't right*
Me: *sitting here having no clue why they're laughing 🙃*
Me too. Also reading all the comments and marveling at how smart all these debaters sound, but not entirely sure what they're saying.
@@pinkette for real 😂
When I tune my guitars, the deep E sounds always wrong to me. If i use an electronic tuner... it sounds still wrong to me. Why??? The A is perfekt, but the E....
Eh, this happens. I don't know what specific compromise in the design of the guitar brings it about but it's probably a temperament thing or possibly to do with how strings have mass and imperfections so they cannot have totally pure harmonic series with no flaws. Probably the fundamental pitch of the string is dead on but a certain overtone is bothering you because your ear expects the mathematically perfect series of harmonics.
Old strings may cause some fluctuation in notes, your E string may be in-tune when played empty and untuned when playing the 5th fret (or reversed).
@@Technicotop And some frets are inherently out of tune on some strings with regards to equal temperament, as they're a logarithmic scale relative to the scale length of the instrument, not the vibrating length of any individual string.
If your guitars intonation is not PERFECTY set up then the other strings will affect each other through resonant harmonics. If you're playing electric guitar then your pickups may be too close to the strings. When you listen to guitar greats, they don't have this issue. Fruduatv has some of the very best videos on how to properly set up a guitar.
@@georgeparkins777 ua-cam.com/video/yKKTVocXxso/v-deo.html
and this is why musicians (like James Taylor) have more than one guitar - they're tuned slightly differently depending on the mood and key of each song. Lovely ... and musically, so much more interesting than one 'standard' guitar tuning for everyyy song.
When people start rambling from the heart like this, you know you've found a master.
People talk hate. But ja doing big things. Other sit giving a opinion but yet we don't know who they are. Also hes been around herby and many others if there was a problem they would of spotted it but it hasn't so hes doing something right. To each of their own
I was always just told that the tuning of instruments were not ever exactly in tune, but for the reason that when chords are formed and the correct music theory is applied, they sound good together.
That's a very good way to put it without having to lecture on all the scientific details behind it! :)
Yeah, 12 notes aren't enough to tune properly, so everything is slightly out of tune on purpose.
Just intonation (perfectly in tune) basically requires infinite notes to play correctly in all keys, which is only possible on fretless instruments like the violin.
However, there are better aproximations such as 31 or 53 that can still be used with keys or frets.
This also unlocks new chords (neutral chord for example) and higher harmonics.
So many smart electronic pianos…why can’t they adjust their own tuning to match a key on the fly while it’s being played?
Electronic pianos are always in key because they produce sound to a frequency, unless it's a sampled library, in which case assuming the original samples are in key, it's all good.
If I'm right this is just an issue with regular acoustic tunable pianos :")
That being said, there are guitars with automatic in built tuning - maybe we'll get pianos with that too?
@@johnadithya8507 This is an issue with (basically) all pianos. Read the wikipedia page on "equal temperament" if you'd like to learn about it.
The issue with automatically adjusting a pianos tuning like this is that pretty much all music genres play notes out of key constantly and such rapid readjusting would just sound awful. It would also cause issues playing with others since basically all instruments are tuned equal temperament
You can do it with a violin…
"what key are we playing in"
"Uh, the key of Jacob"
I have not a clue what this sweet young man is talking about, but I know I can sing in tune.
I know minor and major, I can tune a guitar without aid and I can sing like Joan Baez. Written music to me is like a very beautiful, foreign font.
But, after 2 years of watching Netflix (because of covid ) I still can’t sing the Netflix opening chord ( which is G-ish) straight out of my head.
The musical gift spectrum is soooooooooooooooooo huge!
One of the huge differences between violin, viola, cello, double bass and piano. To make the double stops and chords sound more pleasant, we have to adjust the intonation of certain notes. When playing these notes on its own, it's actually out of tune.
One cogent example is A and F#. Since A is an open string, you can't change it. Instead, you flatten the F#.
What do orchestras do when there's a piano? You can't very well avoid the piano's intonation choices?
I know perfect major chords are nice, but the fact that the 12-tone equal temperament scale exists, with all its properties, is nothing short of a miracle.
Спасибо дедушке Иоганну Себастьяну Баху за равнотемперированный клавир.
What? I don't get your inept logic behind this
Jacob's a gift for the world
love it
If anyone knows about rhythm-pitch duality, his point about making intervals as well as beats all the same size (1:14 to the end) is a pretty thought-provoking idea
The general principle is contrast, and it applies in all domains
Check out J Dilla, the roots and d'angelo for the real pioneers in this realm in western music.
quantization is how you make music lose its humanity
Many teachers I had have mentioned this, from different perspectives. In a classical music environment it's seen as a desensibilizzazione ( sorry I don't know the english word ) and a threat to the live performative aspect of interpretation, where all subtleties appear and make music 'feelable'. In sound engineering it's ThE fUTurE!!1!1!! and nobody really questions it, from a technical point of view it's just the most logical decision
@@c.l.368 I think that swing feel goes WAY back to at least 30's/40's jazz.
Though they are definitely pioneers in merging that feel with hip-hop and soul. Chris Dave too.
The Piano is in equal temperament. He sang the "should be" correct note and claimed the piano is out of tune. Well, the design is that way to fit all 12 notes on ONE instrument.
Yeah without this we could not play in different keys on one piano which is much better than a boring perfect harmony for one key only
There is the note, the top of the note, the bottom of the note, etc. It's really quite fun learning this in a performing ensemble.
Amen. What the world has been waiting for.
So have 12 pianos in a concert and everytime you modulate to another key, just jump to the next piano
YES
Equal temperament is the solution.
A major on your guitar:
I'm a bagpipe and hurdy-gurdy player and I'm super used to adapt my instrument's temperament to whatever I'm playing and with whom.
If I'm playing alone I use just intonation or tuning by ear to my drones. If I'm playing with guitars or pianos or most modern instruments, I tune to equal temperament.
Whatever he's doing it sound really good.
In b4 a wave of "wait I can do this but I don't have perfect pitch I'm just a decent musician THE TITLE IS A LIE" comments
This is like eddy flexing his perfect pitch while Brett slowly suffering at the corner
P.S. ling ling is watching u go practice lah!
I've done my 40 hours today. What next? :P
this dude is Living So Dreamy
This is why instruments like the lute have adjustable gut frets. So you can change the temperament of the instrument dependent on the piece you're playing. Early mass production of instruments and new building materials forced instrument manufacturers to choose a permanent temperament. They decided on equal temperament because it sounds best in the widest variety of compositions. Super interesting stuff!
Nah... the 'pure' major 3rd sounds wrong to my well-tempered ears
I just posted the same thing in a reply. This is exactly what you would expect, of course - that it would sound weird to us. Especially when a piano is involved, where 99.99% of piano music we've heard is in ET.
If you spent even a few minutes just playing and listening to pure chords, the well-tempered ones will immediately sound sour
@@lach4874 could you recommend me some videos where I can listen to pure chords? I'd really like to try this out!
@@vocal_lilly9799 There's stacks out there. Here's one I just found that makes it pretty clear.
ua-cam.com/video/gI9FZhmwKLg/v-deo.html
The fifths aren't "perfect" either on a piano, though they are better than the thirds. I love Jacob but having this conversation with good piano technicians is infinitely more interesting.
Tell me you dont know how to prove you have perfect pitch without telling me you dont know how to prove you have perfect pitch 😂
llevo años intentando explicar esto en conversaciones sobre armonia. El clavecin bien temperado ayudo a estructurar pero se perdío algo en el proceso. Las tonalidades realmente armonizadas. Aguante jacob!
This is relative pitch. Anyone who had the opportunity to sing in a choir can tune a just intonation major third.
agreed - not perfect pitch
This particular instance although I thought I saw in another video where he does have perfect pitch but I can’t remember for sure
he does have perfect pitch tho
@@theoofsweden He does, but this video doesn't really prove it, as the title suggests.
@@ruebene2223 fair enough
Being able to sing an interval in tune has nothing to do with perfect pitch, any musician should both know this and be able to do this.
Exactly
You're right; you should absolutely be able to sing exactly 6:5 at 1000 Hz when you've been trained 12TET. Every musician should be able to sound a note that isn't on the piano. /s
Have worked with, listened to, bought music by, many trained musicians. I can say with confidence. You are full of $**t. Not only do you not know what you’re talking about but you wouldn’t recognize a clue if a trained musician bought a clue and gifted you with it.
The magic of that piano and all other modern instruments is that it is equally tempered, meaning all notes are just a bit off allowing you to play in any key. It it were tuned to the ear, which is called just intonation, he would need to play in only one key or have a different piano for each key he played in. That’s what happened back in the day a trumpeter would have a trumpet in c, one in a, one in b flat etc. it’s hard to notice the slightly off intonation and because of that equally tempered instruments are superior.
I'm so happy I found this.
why his shirt so stretched out
It's sad that Jacob can't afford a shirt that fits him even with as talented and successful as he is.
Wait I thought he was wearing a robe
He's so talented and successful that his shirts don't have to fit perfectly. He can afford to look and be relaxed and not worry about what people think about his shirt fitting or not.
God be with yall
Slight imperfections feel more pleasing to the ear than mechanically "perfect" notes.