Maybe 4 Notes Are All You Really Need
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- Опубліковано 5 лют 2025
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4 note motifs are at the heart of some of the greatest compositions in all of music. Why are they so powerful and how can we think about them deeper and start to understand what makes them so impactful?
Recorded using
Earthworks SV33
Earthworks PM40
Hallet and Davis baby grand piano
Have been following you for years. This 4 note motif idea is a whole new level. I have been replaying Goiding’s creation on Nebula over and over-so hauntingly beautiful. Add to that your 4 note motif creation on this video-wow. Thanks Aimee.
Isn’t it amazing? I’m so glad that you love it. Thank you for the sweet note.
I am seeing this video 10 months after you created it and I am mesmerized. For me, it is clearly the most instructive teaching moment that I have ever seen. This is absolutely a beautiful presentation. Thank you. ❤
Well gosh. Thanks so much 💙
billy joel is one of my musical heroes. 'and so it goes' is one of my favorite songs from him. hearing you sing just a few lines was... it was a gift. thank you.
Yes. Four notes. I earned an M.A. in music composition in the 1970's and wrote mostly classical music (string quartet, etc.) and found "the four note motif" idea to be very helpful. Sort like a classical "hook" as well as a crafted "constraint" to work within. In this popular jazz standards genre, I can think of so many where the tune is identifiable by a short motif: After You've Gone, Alone Together, It's Only a Paper Moon , Let's Fall in Love, Makin' Whoopee, Out of Nowhere, Tea for Two, The Girl from Ipanema, Who Can I Turn To? etc. Love your singing (and your hands and smile). Thanks so much for being you and for what you do.
❤
Her singing sounds great, very pleasant to listen to. Inspires me to want to sing more, too.
WOMAN!!!!!!
Your talent overwhelms my emotions 😢
“ So It Goes” such a beautiful melody. Masterful
Hi Aimee, I've just embarked on learning to play the piano/keyboards as part of my return to music after pretty much three decades (I used play sax and clarinet, mostly), and your channel has been a tremendous inspiration and source of knowledge and techneque.
Thanks also for your Nebula promo which I have now subscribed to. It's awesome!!
It's a very exciting prospect to get back to music, and I'm very much looking forward to more of your content, both here and on Nebula.
Thank you 💚
That’s wonderful! Thank you so much! Make sure that you find the classes tab over on Nebula. Watch my class about motif! Good luck on your journey and I’m so happy to help.
Absolutely, I am a beginner student but four notes will easily get you to a melody that everyone recognizes. “The autumn leaves, and many other show tunes….Thankyou for this video….”four notes and you are invested in the song:”. Brilliant.
This is by far one of your most informative and interesting videos.
Thanks Aimee 😊
Glad you think so!
Thank you Professor Nolte. 👍🎶
You are such a thoughtful musician 🙂 ..just lovely…as a hymn player who has too many hymnals old to newer..I am constantly stunned at how many melodies have been printed…not sure if I’m putting it clearly but in the context of your video you know what I mean. 🙂❤🙏🏼⭐
Love your exploration here. Back on the original Tonight Show Steve Allen had his live studio audience call out three or four random notes with which he immediately created a song on the piano.
You're an outstanding teacher. Thank you 🙏
Beautiful voice! Thank you.
Hi Aimee, your attitude towards music is beautiful.
Great topic, Aimee. And you've touched on the gist of a "game" I've loved playing the past few years: I quickly play any 4 random notes and challenge myself to see if I can think of and play two or three well-known songs that begin with those same 4 notes. I love being reminded of how different the composers' songs are even though they begin with those same notes. Indeed, you put it so well: "It's amazing what four notes can do," particularly when coupled with different chords/harmonies/rhythms. So I found your video especially fun today -- thanks! (And, as always, your singing is beautiful!)
…man, this is gold to a neophytes ear. ❤ Thank you for a great lesson!
Hi everyone! I love making songs up. I’m self taught and this is so nice, thank you. And you’re manner is very inviting ❣️🎶❣️
Merry go, merry go, merry go 'round - boop boop boop. --"Larry" Wild Man Fisher.
What a lovely voice you have (Very nice video here) :)
Thank you Aimee! 🎶😎
Wow ! I do that in my writing and I didn’t realize it, your so awesome Aimee!
Beautiful & inspiring. Loved the gorgeous harmonic flavours you made with 'Beethoven 5th' idea.
On the first listening, I couldn't recognize where any of it came from except for the single fast quote near the end. Amazing!
Had never heard somewhere in time and the billy joel piece.. just soul wrenchingly beautiful.. thankyou!
I take it back on the billy joel piece.. i had heard that melody in ken burn’s documentaries i think.. just didnt know it was a billy joel piece
Deepest thanks for this and every heart full thing you do! And your Nebula content and subscription is so worth it! Deepest thanks always!
This is really fascinating! Having no music theory background or education, this is something that I've never noticed before now.
Thank you for remembering John Barry, John Williams is mentioned often (and justifiably so) but John Barry wrote so many timeless ‘ear worms’!
Sleepwalk was the first thing that came to my mind.
So glad you included that example!
I appreciate your most analytical and musical intellect. This was a great video.
Shine on you crazy diamond, Pink Floyd. Most Iconic 4 notes motif to me. Si bémol Fa Sol Mi (Bb F G E) let ring with a G pedal.
What? Way more than four notes. Four notes just in "diamond".
@@jasonmunley4295they don’t mean the main motif, obviously, but the very prominent, angular one at 3:55 into the track. Can’t miss it really, if you go and listen again.
I forget "And So It Goes"; brilliant piece. In my favorite version of "What'll I Do?" Harry Nilsson and Gordon Jenkins flattened one note of the melody compared to how you're singing it (I don't know how Irv wrote it.) It's magnificent, and reminds me how four notes are not only enough, but sometimes, plenty. I've been watching @RyanLeach teach orchstration, and he, perhaps unintentionally, led me to thinking of melody as 4-note segments.
I could hear the beautiful chime from your piano harmonies on this one. Compliments to the tuner!
Just starting and been a FAN of you & Adam Nealy since I chose music to help me recover, as I have no premonition of what will come out. Nebula will be SO Fun.
Wishing you a quick recovery and I’m glad to make it a bit easier 💙
🙏❤️☝️ music is the best medicine
I love your channel and all the investigation into how music works. I have played Bass in bands in the UK since 1978 and I'm proud of the fact that so many amazing ideas, songs, tunes, melodies etc came from a group of slightly sedated young lads, a bit like, me with little knowledge of the technical terminology they were dealing with. It sounded good and that was all we needed to know.
Magifique et avec lartition you are the BEST ❤ merci
What a coincidence! I'm currently reading "harmony from melody" and had just finished their chapter on motives. So your video came as a perfectly timed conclusion to that chapter.
One thing that I always like in motives, is when the motive seems to have words to it even when the words are never spoken. Like how we can all agree that the "superman" motive is saying "superman"
First time I watched you on smart tv. Looks and sounds great. Thank You
Thank you for your cover of *And So it Goes* I love notes about it. Four notes go a long way ❤
Wow, I am a new subscriber and really was captivated with the content. I am a near newbie to guitar but man this was really moving... and hearing music ... music to my ears ... ... never it irritating. 🙂 pat
you’ve found a diamond in a coal mine 🔭🐥 it was meant to be ☝️❤️🙏
Yes I totally agree. Very perceptive.
Excellent! Thank you ✨✨
Amazing, as usual. Thank you Aimee.
Awesome! Thank you.
I really enjoyed watching this video!
Gosh this is good -
Now I miss our lessons more than ever....
Hope you are well Aimee!
Awesome as usual, Aimee!
❤ great video , wasn’t there a line in Amadeus the movie, the guy said: “too many notes”
Thanks for sharing !
You are the best!
You made me cry.
Those are my four notes.
A Horse With No Name, by America: four notes and two chords (the bass line plays the base of three). It's probably the most simple hit in pop music.
"So It Goes" is such a haunting song from Billy Joel who is a master of the key change.
I love the Kings Singers version arranged by Bob Chilcott…it kept me company during Covid lockdowns.
very inspiring - thanks Aimee - off to my keyboard now :)
great video... my beats have this same 4 note formula... that piano is sweeeet
U got a beautiful jazz singing voice Aimee
As far as two note motifs go the theme from jaws is my personal favorite, ok back to your great video
It's the rest of the song that makes the motif memorable . . . It's all it takes to trigger the memory and the emotion the song created. I remember watching a TV pop music program in the 1960's (maybe the Loyd Thaksten Show) and teens could name a song by hearing only two notes . . . and on rare occasion only one note.
name that tune?
@@marfaxa That was a separate entire show on both Radio and TV starting in the 1950's with adult contestants but the one I'm thinking of was just a 5 minute segment of either Lloyd Thaxton or Dick Clark's American Bandstand.
Thank you🎵🎶
As a youngster, I loved the heavy guitar playing 1 3 5 6 in Joe Cocker's Beatle cover at Woodstock.
I heard a thread of "I remember Clifford in your improvisation on Beethoven's 5th. Very beautiful ❤️
Theme to Jaws starts with one or two notes, depending on how you slice it. Also, the William Tell Overture starts with one note played 4 times that’s pretty recognizable, I suppose because of the timbre of the trumpets and the rhythm. Funny what sounds stick in our heads.
Wonderful
Cool very interesting. Funny just been learning about period and sentence form and how fragments can form new ideas. So strange I then saw this. I like its about practical things to.
2:58 I cracked up at your version of Somewhere in Time 😂 Not that it was bad. It was kinda cute, but I laughed.
Have you listened to Dan Fogelburg’s song Same old lang syne? It’s a sped up version of a classic. I saw him in concert and he admitted that he had used it. It’s a beautiful song that takes you back to a moment of serendipity. The same way Harry Chapin used Taxi. Niagara Falls (if you get the reference from the movie Scrooged, 1988)
What is the original that he took it from? I love that song
...and yes you are magic! (going to the piano now ;-)
Thank you!! I wonder how many computers you have created today? This definitely reveals a key concept to creating lovely melodies!! Big hugs for you!! too
Those first four notes in the Billy Joel tune are the same as “Jerusalem” by Hubert Parry.
I knew the four-note guitar intro was going to be "And I Love Her". What else could it be?
Some four-note motifs from TV themes: Dragnet (originally on radio, but it still applies), the Addams Family, Star Trek (the four notes before, "Space, the final frontier.")
This is fascinating! Four notes… 💜
Brilliant
According to.a story I read many years ago- and I hope this is right- George Gershwin was playing with those four Beethoven notes, trying to give them an upturn- >one>two>three-^FOUR- to see what he could get from them as a sort of Beethoven parody, when Ira complained that a couple more notes would make it much easier to put a lyric to. So George added those two notes: "The>way>you>wear>your^HAT..."
Funny, as you played the opening notes of "And So It Goes," I was hearing the "Jerusalem" hymn tune ("And did those feet [in ancient times]"): the suspended chords that follow fit that vibe, too. Who'd'a thought of BJ as a member of the WI?
Unrelated, but did anyone notice how unhappy and how much pain was on Judy's face in that short singing clip?
Beethoven Concerto 1 in C. One note an octave below the same note repeated 2 times. Total 3 if you count rhythm, 2 if you count the octave. Otherwise 1 note.
Came for the notes…stayed for the singing❤
You should sing more often, Aimee. Your voice is lovely.
I have albums out! Ha much thanks to you!
yes!
My brain at 0:35: "The Mandalorian" is a solid example!
There are at least 708 songs that use Pachabel's Progression from Canon in D.
Even Pachabel wasn't the first to use it.
So, don't worry if someone else has used "these four notes".
Because there's only 7 notes in an octave, and they've all been used for thousands of years.😊
Sergei Prokofiev’s etude No.1 is basically a 2-note interval motif and quite powerful.
My favorite 3 notes- Johnny Mandel’s Em-i-ly
Another great video! My only complaint is that it wasn't 2 hours long. And just you singing "What'll I Do".
Hi. Love your teaching. Question. As a sax player ( have a piano just for voicing chords , no ability to play it ) would your chord course ( nebula ) make sense to me ? Keep up the great work.
Yeah for sure. It’s two parts - about an hour each. Here’s my code for a 45% discount go.nebula.tv/aimeenolte
Also amazing what people can do with the same four notes. Billy Joel's "And So It Goes" is so similar to Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors" and yet totally different.
(Actually, not sure who wrote "True Colors" --- always assumed it was Lauper.
It’s also the same as the hymn “Jerusalem”
the four notes of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond"!!!!!
"Well, technically it's a motif used to build a theme." Or so I learned from Professor Peter Schickele's color man so long ago.
what about the one note samba.
I live for major7 chords!!!!!
The shirt reminded me of an album cover I guess it was "Soap Opera" kinks is the closest
What is C jam blues? 2 notes. Or 8?
fantastic that you did not come up with smoke on the water like your teaching
Layla and Smoke on the Water both play around with 4 notes in their intro riffs
I invented a Progression I've never seen used before. It's in Phryg Dom.
It goes. III, iii, ii, I.
I call it the Descending Sus.
I was plugging notes into a Midi. Until I created something I liked. I didn't want Fives because they rush you to Resolve. When you play in Phrygian Dominant, you have access to the minor third AND major third at the same time.
You can use Fives ofcourse. But make sure it's inside a Chord.
Very nice thanks
Do you Do lessons?
No I’m afraid not. But I’ve made hundreds of videos on so many topics! :)
@@AimeeNolte thanks for responding
God bless you
Keep the good work going
Thanks again
Hard to do a 2 note motif but I can think of one famous one...JAWS!! DUN-DUN...DUN-DUN...
Mahler 5 opening?
You should really feature your voice more. It is so beautiful and unique.
I have several albums on Spotify. :-) Thanks for your nice comment.
I prefer Arnold Schwarzenegger’s definition of a motif, which is the interval required for someone fleeing successfully into a helicopter.
GET.
TO.
THE.
CHOPPA
The opening four notes that proceeds "Space the final frontier ..."
Shine on you crazy diamond : Bb F Bb E over a Gm chord