So funny Shawn! I suppose my fear of nightmares has hindered my progress with this kind of stuff, at least so far. Lol. The final result in the video did sound great though, to my ears. David, it looks like you are might be writing this out by ear at the end of your video. That would be something deep if true, quite a few leaps beyond assembling stuff you discover by manipulating a computer program! I've done the latter with relatively short pieces, just using a combination of a kind of ball-park hearing plus using the visual grid to get a sense of the ebb and flow of density.
Definitely some very exciting rhythmic ideas! A couple of things, I'd like to hear it slowed down significantly. A lot of those rhythms fly by so quickly, and if it were quite a bit slower, I feel like there would be more of a chance to bask in the tension of those truncated tuplets. I'd also like to hear it against a hi hat pulse like the Black Page #1. Looking forward to The Blacker Page #2, The Easy Teenage New York Version.
@@Vossst Another point of Zappa's more complicated compositions was that "statistically dense" rhythms usually aren't that interesting if they don't have a steady pulse to act against.
The most impressive part of Yogev's performance isn't even the technical skill, it's that he could add interpretation and musicality on top of that technical skill. Very cool all around
Yogev made that look easy. So exciting to see a collab between two of my favorite music youtubers, about a topic so close to my own heart. Great work, everyone!
@@xander1052 In some ways yes. It's about pursuing the sound no matter what and having a brain to understand, question, and push the boundaries of what is musical. Which is why this video is so spot on! (Also, Jacob Collier is Zappa if Zappa played with music software instead of mercury as a kid and was raised right).
Q: So electronic media have really freed you to get closer to your ideal, to what you're hearing. FZ: "It's really made that possible. The next question is whether anybody in the audience wants to hear it. That's the big problem, because the further out I get with these timbral combinations and the unusual rhythms, the further away it gets from any possibility of radio play. And without radio play or some kind of advertising for the album, nobody's even going to know it's there, let alone pick it up. Some people, when they hear it, they absolutely don't like it just on principle because it doesn't have that boom, boom, boom on the floor all the time. I'm delighted that I have the opportunity to go wandering around out in the zones of this thing. I would like it if I had some company out there." Doerschuk, R. L., & Aikin, J. (1987). Sample This! Keyboard, (February, 1987).
This reminds me of Glenn Gould, the genius pianist who in his later years would sit in restaurants and listen to the interweaving rhythms--and melodies, too--of the conversations happening around him.
When I saw that I thought about the beginning of Stravinsky's Petrushka, which has to be the earliest piece to rock back-and-forth between 7- and 5-tuplets.
Yeah! I prefer more regular rhythm and the 5/7 is the easiest to feel. (At least compared to the other brutal nested tuplets.) Even with the nested triplet, I'd totally listen to a tame, only 5 and 7 tuplet piece.
It’s really cool! It would be nice to, keeping in the spirit of the original BP, to have the performer keep quarters on the hi-hat with the foot. This is what makes the original so devilishly tricky. It would also be cool to hear it a second time through orchestrated with some sort of unison playing ensemble (or midi realization), which is also what the BP does. I’m loving all the blackness of the page!
I hadn't focussed on this compositionally before but you're right, the fact the hi-hat keeps going is part of what makes it convincing as a performance- you can hear the clock ticking. I shall impart this joyful news to Yogev :-)
@@mjears But that's the beauty of it - you'd hear the steady pulse occasionally skip/jolt. It would make it much more obvious what's going on. Not just "I'm hearing something that sounds rubato but is actually notated". The listener would be experiencing the rhythms much more similarly to the way the performer is experiencing them and the composer conceived of them.
I love that feeling you get when you stumble across a new explanation for some music concept you couldnt put into words before. It's like being given an even bigger box of crayons.
The title of the video made my skepticism kick into high gear, so seeing a well made video that actually appreciates and informs not just about technical analysis but also about Zappa's compositional and play styles (even if I have heard much of it before) is a well-appreciated surprise. Way too many people have the barely-skimming-the-surface level "haha, ugly man makes drug music" take on Zappa. It's also interesting to see that many of the best Zappa analysis videos have come out in the last 10 months...dare I hope we're approaching a Freak Renaissance?
Thank GOD it took Terry a week or two to learn this tune. Sometimes you picture Zappa’s guns as being these computers who could crank out anything within the span of a rehearsal....
This is a good title-thumbnail combination, drove my click right in. Good job on that David! Great editing and very intuitive for non-musicians too. Good stuff!!!
Thanks for writing pieces that are impossible to transcribe! But seriously, does anyone have any software that lets you fit arbitrary grids onto audio to have easier time transcribing arbitrarily nested tuplets and so on? Or tricks for doing that? Now for the rest of the comment... At 12:35 guy talks about triplets being faster eight notes and that they can be "incomplete". And at 13:55 you talk about issues in entering crazy tuplets in sibelius. I'd like to talk about both of those. First of all, there is Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) called LilyPond and Frescobaldi that allows you to write music as text, for example `\tuplet 3/2 { f''8 g a }` would be triplet of eighths in it. It being text I think makes it much easier to do a lot of stuff than in programs like Sibelius, MuseScore, etc, including entering crazy tuplets. It doesn't complain about "incomplete" tuplets, tuplets can go over barline, you can nest tuplets, and so on. Moreover, it doesn't even complain about tuplets that have "a ton" of notes in it. For example, 5 notes in a "triplet"? That's fine! It also generates both midi output and pdf. Second, I'd like to talk about the math part of tuplet. Text below should explain exactly how tuplets work out, and as bonus it gives definitive explantation on BEAMING RULES in tuplets. [ Warning: A lot of text, but it's just simple math with many examples ] 1. Note value basics. 1.1. "Note Value" indicates relative duration of note, that can be converted to "Real Time" given BPM. 1.2. A quarter note has "Note Value" of 1/4, eighth note has "Note Value" of 1/8, and so on (division by 2). Whote note of course having value of 1. 1.3. These common values can be added to get more other possible values. E.g. dotted eight = 1/8 + 1/16 = 3/16. Other additions are of course possible, and any addition can be done with a "tie". 1.4. Such additions can actually approximate pretty much any number. Howerver, there is no way to get real, exact "1/3" like this. Using this example, 1/3 would of course be longer than 1/4, shorter than 1/2. Just for fun, we can approximate it as 1/4 + 1/16 = 5/16. The error of approximation is 1/3 - 5/16 = 1/48. So the error is actually 1.5 times smaller than 32th note, nice. 1.5. However fun approximations are, we want exact 1/3, and tuplets allow us to do it. 2. Introducing tuplet notation 2.1. Every tuplet has a number value. You could think the value is "3" for triplet, but no, its typically 3/2, and is usually written as just 3 for simplicity/laziness/cleanliness reasons. 2.2. The value denotes speedup. This is exactly why in the video you can see changing BPM tempo at 13:55 in sibelius, trying to work "against" program. This is also what the guy at 12:35 mentions, calling the triplet eights "faster eights". 2.3. Using triplet (3/2) as example, speed up of it is 3/2, it means everything you put in it is 3/2 or 1.5 times faster. For example, if you put THE WHOLE piece of music in 60 bpm into a 3/2 triplet you will get same music but at 60*3/2 = 90 bpm (playing 1.5 times faster). Another, yet similar, example: if you play quarter notes at 90 bpm, then switch to 60 bpm and play quarter notes in triplets, you play exact same rhythm, with exact same real time distance. 2.4. Now we are ready to talk about Note Values inside tuplets. Let's think about quarter note (1/4) inside a triplet (3/2). The note is 3/2 times faster, it means its *duration* (note value) is 2/3 times *shorter*. That makes it a 1/4 * 2/3 = 1/6 note value. If you understood everything above, then you pretty much understood everything there is to tuplets on math side. Now let's see some cases. Nested tuplets: every tuplet is a speedup still, they multiply together. E.g. 3/2 inside 7/4 speed up effect is 3/2 * 7/4 = 21/8. Duration (note value) of 1/4 inside there would then be 1/4 * 8/21 = 2/21. Tuplets whose values is less than 1: for example duplets are 2/3. That would make a 1/8 note have value 1/8 * 3/2 = 3/16, and then 2 of 1/8 would have together note value of 3/16 * 2 = 3/8. This lets you fit 2 notes in the space of 3 (eights). Beaming rules: I did say that this will allow you to understand beaming in tuplets definitely. Basically, beaming denotes some Note Value then tuplets modify it further. If you understood text so far, you should understand that you can find "true Note Value" of a note that is inside however many tuplets. Let's do simplest example: fitting 3 equally spaced notes inside of a 1/4 duration. That is a triplet (3/2) then you can see that note values inside it are modified by 2/3 factor. Then 3 quarter notes inside it would last 3 * 1/4 * 2/3 = 1/2 note values, but we wanted inside 1/4 so we of course have to choose 1/8 notes: 3 * 1/8 * 2/3 = 1/4. This way you can verify any beaming. Now let's talk about common tuplet values. 3 commonly denotes 3/2, 5 commonly denotes 5/4, 6 denotes 6/4, 7 denotes 7/4, 9 denotes 9/8. Notice how the denominator here is the largest power of 2 (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, ...) smaller than nominator. This keeps the tuplet value close to 1 which allows for more or less consistent beaming. You *can* make a tuplet with value 5/1, which will speed up notes 5 times, which will make whole notes be 1 * 1/5 = 1/5 note values, but it's awfully short compared to whole note, and closer to 1/4. Using 5/4 tuplet value makes it more balanced, whole note inside is then 1 * 4/5 = 4/5 note values, and you can notice that it is 4 times larger than 1/5, which also means that 1/4 would actually be 1/5: 1/4 * 4/5 = 1/5. So raw, pre-modified note value by tuplet here is much closer than if you used 5:1 tuplet. And that's how you can get any rational number for a note value. Feel free to respond and ask me questions anyone, hopefully youtube will notify me if that happens.
As far as "what is the point?" is concerned: inventing new musical difficulties for their own sake is like inventing new technology. Once you have it, you can evaluate what higher-level goals it can be applied in service of. I've always found the music of Paganini a bit stiff, but no doubt the violin scoring of Paganini laid the groundwork for the violin scoring of, say, Richard Strauss.
I was surprised to hear such a musical piece at the end! As complex as it may be, it actually sounded like a fun groove, the fact you were able to explore new and difficult musical concepts and composing an enjoyable piece for the listeners is just thrice as awesome!
You could have added a touch of sadism with a rest at about the seventh note into the first 13thlet, a short accent on the 2nd note of the 2nd 13thlet followed by a legato on the 5th note of that 13thlet, with a rest on the 6th note of the same 13thlet.
Great video David! It is one thing to make something complex...but to make it musical, that is another level. Hats off to you and Yogev for making it complicated, but also making it musical. Very inspirational :-)
Simply amazing great job composting and also playing this crazy but advanced Innovative rythems very cool. This is the next level of understanding rythem .
What an awesome video. For ableton users interested in tuplets: You can make tuplets in ableton by selecting multiple notes on the grid and dragging their size down to even parts that fit within the grid, use the arrows at the top of the piano roll that appear around the selected notes to squash notes into a space
Im BLOWN AWAY. You just keep making golden content like its easy! Honestly man, I feel like this is really inspiring. makes you want to play with those weird time signatures and rhythms. Im waiting for sequoia (I hope im writing that right) to play it :)
Great video, Dave! Just pointing this out as a curiosity, the "guitar" solo on Chunga's Revenge is actually an electric alto sax through a wah pedal (that's right, you heard right) played by the magnificient Ian Underwood!
I love your style and the charming and embracing way of treating these complicated things so easily - thank you so much for your very entertaining educational TV, David! ❤️ so much passion, so much work - I‘m deeply impressed and touched.
I believe there's no room for discussion here, Mr. Bruce, but you're *the* single _coolest_ music youtuber right now. You just take everything that's being done out there in the wild and make it 20% cooler. I believe this spirit of one-upmanship and debauchery is completely in like with who Frank Zappa was, so making this piece is simultaneous an "up yours!" and a high praise of him. And it's always important to bring people like Zappa to the attention of people. There are way too many kids who think Tool and Dream Theater have THE most "complicated" music out there. "Lateralus uses the Fibonacci sequence, man! That's *SO* complex!". Hah, get a load of this, kids.
Being familiar with the original Zappa versions, it was a delight to hear it emerge. To me it was identifiable at the beginning. I look forward to hearing the piano version, I am curious how the original will peak through.
The Law of the Internet dictates that Adam Neely must now compose The BlackEST Page. Absolutely loved this video. The end result reminds me of a Neil Peart drum solo. Stellar work!
At about 13 minutes I was starting to think it just ends up sounding like a lot of short tempo changes. Like someone dropped that FL studio glitch effect onto a lofi track and hit randomize. Then David goes into the scoring software and goes, well I can't write it in traditional methods, so I'm going to do short tempo changes to replicate the rhythm pattern timings. Love it.
When I was in college I was introduced to a time signature system that did away with the bottom number, replacing it with the note that represents the beat. So a 4/4 would become 4/♩ (i.e. "4 by quarter note"), which becomes even more interesting when you replace, say, a 12/8 by a 4/♩. (i.e. "4 by dotted quarter note"). This makes so much more sense to me, but, unfortunately, it's rare to find something using this notation. One such example, though, is Carl Orff's fabulous "Tanz" from "Carmina Burana": en.schott-music.com/shop/media/catalog/product/cache/6/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/e/d/ed_6950-2.jpg
It got a bit better when you explained what the hell it is, but the shock when i saw the second measure at 11:00 was immesurable, holly sh*t, this video just blew my mind hard!!!!
Fantastic! I liked this video, it clarified a lot about rhythm. One quibble though: Steve Vai, in e.g. The Dangerous Kitchen, transcribed Zappa's speech-singing, which he was able to do with fairly conventional notation. I guess your piece does in some way approximate this too. I like it!
I can't say i understood how all the mathematical formulas translate into rhythm, but I found the part about translating speech cadences into rhythmic and melodic lines especially fascinating. Thank you David וכל הכבוד ליוגב, דור וטלי 🌺
Ah, so that's why your nested tuplet excerpt showed up in Music Engraving Tips recently...! ;) Shawn Crowder also brilliantly transcribed a drum and bass piece called "Polyriddim", which is also worth looking up!
I 'm pretty sure that the "guitar solo" grab (9:07) is in fact Ian Underwood "..blowin' his nose" (as Zappa once goaded) on an electrified alto (saxophone) with a wah-wah pedal. Maybe someone could fact check that ...'cause my LP was nicked a few decades ago.
Wonderful job to both of you! Although i manage to understand only a tiny part of the theory behind it, I love the idea of exploring the vastness of rhythm and music. Makes me wonder what piece of music could come out by bringing other musicians to fill their part... Like Adam on bass, Nare on piano, Jacob with his voice maybe?
Dear David, incredible video. I recommend looking at what Mono Neon has been doing with his videos where he playes over clips of people talking. Very much in the vein of this topic. :)
Mention of Nestup is very useful. It will work with several notation systems and DAWs. Takes a little bit of figuring out - try the Presets first maybe. A little bit of arithmetic helps, and pasting straight into most DAWs will almost certainly give something in 4/4. If that's not what's required, make sure the total number of segments in Nestup is a related multiple of what you want, then change the time signature in the target software package. Each Nestup segment seems to correspond to a crotchet = quarter note, so if you create a rhythm with 9 segments it can be imported in as a 9/4 rhythm. Import the same in 9/8 and it will create two bars each with eighth note beats. Import into a 3/8 notation and notes will very likely be tied across bar lines. Fairly easy - when you know how. Go figure.
Great video, as always. I also think that guy's suggestion of trying to write the world's easiest to play piece of music would be an interesting video. Although, I guess 4'33 already exists, so I can't imagine a piece easier than that to play. Maybe not writing the EASIEST piece, but rather just writing a piece which is designed to be incredibly easy. Maybe a piece that could be played by people who can't play instruments and only have an hour to rehearse, or something like that.
Great job David and Yogev and everyone! I’ll be having nightmares about this for weeks to come
Yoooooo!! You should take the challenge of the blacker page.
That's too easy for Shawn Crowder!
take the challenge!
I can confirm all your nightmares about this are %100 accurate!
So funny Shawn! I suppose my fear of nightmares has hindered my progress with this kind of stuff, at least so far. Lol. The final result in the video did sound great though, to my ears.
David, it looks like you are might be writing this out by ear at the end of your video. That would be something deep if true, quite a few leaps beyond assembling stuff you discover by manipulating a computer program! I've done the latter with relatively short pieces, just using a combination of a kind of ball-park hearing plus using the visual grid to get a sense of the ebb and flow of density.
Definitely some very exciting rhythmic ideas!
A couple of things, I'd like to hear it slowed down significantly. A lot of those rhythms fly by so quickly, and if it were quite a bit slower, I feel like there would be more of a chance to bask in the tension of those truncated tuplets. I'd also like to hear it against a hi hat pulse like the Black Page #1. Looking forward to The Blacker Page #2, The Easy Teenage New York Version.
As I understand it, Bozzio added the hi hat pulse himself for timekeeping purposes.
Give it a listen at 0.75 playback speed!
Did you listen to the 0.5 and 0.75 UA-cam playback speed! It doesn't lose musicality. And it make me think of Rubber Shirt another Zappa masterpiece.
@@Vossst Another point of Zappa's more complicated compositions was that "statistically dense" rhythms usually aren't that interesting if they don't have a steady pulse to act against.
@Zolar Czakl I just tried double speed, that was fun! 😅
The most impressive part of Yogev's performance isn't even the technical skill, it's that he could add interpretation and musicality on top of that technical skill. Very cool all around
This is so inspiring and exciting! Great animations and graphics too!
Ben you are the most composer ever
@Firstname_ Lastname So much composer! Very write music! Such wow!
@@firstname_lastname3507 he’s the composerest!
Yogev made that look easy. So exciting to see a collab between two of my favorite music youtubers, about a topic so close to my own heart. Great work, everyone!
Please make a video on Zappa as well, a score study maybe? Love your analysis :)
yes! we all need more Brian Krock!
Linus & only4crap: be careful what you wish for... muah hah hah hah...
@@BrianKrock I'm excited!
Yogev makes everything look easy. Dude can turn a six-string guitar into a seven-string guitar by -drawing a line-.
I love how it sounded like an expression and not a complicated mess of notes or even a robotic rhythm. Good job!
It actually sounded sick af.
For me it sounded like a mess, exactly. Probably you need to be in drums to enjoy this.
"Bruce did 9/11" is something I did not expect to note today
Love that you have Ben reading the Zappa quote, very fitting 9:15
This felt like an acknowledgment of the aesthetic and intellectual legacy that Ben has inadvertently inherited.
@@tristankline6676 LOL aesthetic legacy. Nice way of putting it.
It is fitting, I see Ben like a modern day Zappa in many ways.
@@xander1052 In some ways yes. It's about pursuing the sound no matter what and having a brain to understand, question, and push the boundaries of what is musical. Which is why this video is so spot on! (Also, Jacob Collier is Zappa if Zappa played with music software instead of mercury as a kid and was raised right).
@@tristankline6676 100% agreed
Q: So electronic media have really freed you to get closer to your ideal, to what you're hearing.
FZ: "It's really made that possible. The next question is whether anybody in the audience wants to hear it. That's the big problem, because the further out I get with these timbral combinations and the unusual rhythms, the further away it gets from any possibility of radio play. And without radio play or some kind of advertising for the album, nobody's even going to know it's there, let alone pick it up. Some people, when they hear it, they absolutely don't like it just on principle because it doesn't have that boom, boom, boom on the floor all the time. I'm delighted that I have the opportunity to go wandering around out in the zones of this thing. I would like it if I had some company out there."
Doerschuk, R. L., & Aikin, J. (1987). Sample This! Keyboard, (February, 1987).
We have youtube nowadays. Zappa would embrace it I guess
This reminds me of Glenn Gould, the genius pianist who in his later years would sit in restaurants and listen to the interweaving rhythms--and melodies, too--of the conversations happening around him.
I feel like Zappa would have LOVED the fact that you did this
That part with alternating 7- and 5-tuplets is pretty groovy
Yes thats the best part! Outstanding
When I saw that I thought about the beginning of Stravinsky's Petrushka, which has to be the earliest piece to rock back-and-forth between 7- and 5-tuplets.
Yeah! I prefer more regular rhythm and the 5/7 is the easiest to feel. (At least compared to the other brutal nested tuplets.) Even with the nested triplet, I'd totally listen to a tame, only 5 and 7 tuplet piece.
It’s really cool! It would be nice to, keeping in the spirit of the original BP, to have the performer keep quarters on the hi-hat with the foot. This is what makes the original so devilishly tricky. It would also be cool to hear it a second time through orchestrated with some sort of unison playing ensemble (or midi realization), which is also what the BP does. I’m loving all the blackness of the page!
I hadn't focussed on this compositionally before but you're right, the fact the hi-hat keeps going is part of what makes it convincing as a performance- you can hear the clock ticking. I shall impart this joyful news to Yogev :-)
@@DBruce I’m sure he’ll jump for joy at the news!
The trouble with the idea is that a steady pulse won’t fit with the incomplete tuplets.
@@mjears Dang it!
@@mjears But that's the beauty of it - you'd hear the steady pulse occasionally skip/jolt. It would make it much more obvious what's going on. Not just "I'm hearing something that sounds rubato but is actually notated". The listener would be experiencing the rhythms much more similarly to the way the performer is experiencing them and the composer conceived of them.
Is there anything Yogev can't play? Sheeeesh what a beast
At the beginning of the video I was upset you didn't ask me to participate in this one.
At the end I was relieved.
God damn man
That’s bollocks man, you’re the queen of tuplets!
I love that feeling you get when you stumble across a new explanation for some music concept you couldnt put into words before. It's like being given an even bigger box of crayons.
The title of the video made my skepticism kick into high gear, so seeing a well made video that actually appreciates and informs not just about technical analysis but also about Zappa's compositional and play styles (even if I have heard much of it before) is a well-appreciated surprise. Way too many people have the barely-skimming-the-surface level "haha, ugly man makes drug music" take on Zappa.
It's also interesting to see that many of the best Zappa analysis videos have come out in the last 10 months...dare I hope we're approaching a Freak Renaissance?
Thank GOD it took Terry a week or two to learn this tune. Sometimes you picture Zappa’s guns as being these computers who could crank out anything within the span of a rehearsal....
This is a good title-thumbnail combination, drove my click right in. Good job on that David!
Great editing and very intuitive for non-musicians too. Good stuff!!!
This is great! I have been writing my guitar solos in Sibelius then exporting the MIDI file to Ableton to get my tuplets. Nice to have an alternative!
Thanks for writing pieces that are impossible to transcribe! But seriously, does anyone have any software that lets you fit arbitrary grids onto audio to have easier time transcribing arbitrarily nested tuplets and so on? Or tricks for doing that? Now for the rest of the comment...
At 12:35 guy talks about triplets being faster eight notes and that they can be "incomplete". And at 13:55 you talk about issues in entering crazy tuplets in sibelius.
I'd like to talk about both of those. First of all, there is Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) called LilyPond and Frescobaldi that allows you to write music as text, for example `\tuplet 3/2 { f''8 g a }` would be triplet of eighths in it. It being text I think makes it much easier to do a lot of stuff than in programs like Sibelius, MuseScore, etc, including entering crazy tuplets. It doesn't complain about "incomplete" tuplets, tuplets can go over barline, you can nest tuplets, and so on. Moreover, it doesn't even complain about tuplets that have "a ton" of notes in it. For example, 5 notes in a "triplet"? That's fine! It also generates both midi output and pdf.
Second, I'd like to talk about the math part of tuplet. Text below should explain exactly how tuplets work out, and as bonus it gives definitive explantation on BEAMING RULES in tuplets. [ Warning: A lot of text, but it's just simple math with many examples ]
1. Note value basics.
1.1. "Note Value" indicates relative duration of note, that can be converted to "Real Time" given BPM.
1.2. A quarter note has "Note Value" of 1/4, eighth note has "Note Value" of 1/8, and so on (division by 2). Whote note of course having value of 1.
1.3. These common values can be added to get more other possible values. E.g. dotted eight = 1/8 + 1/16 = 3/16. Other additions are of course possible, and any addition can be done with a "tie".
1.4. Such additions can actually approximate pretty much any number. Howerver, there is no way to get real, exact "1/3" like this. Using this example, 1/3 would of course be longer than 1/4, shorter than 1/2. Just for fun, we can approximate it as 1/4 + 1/16 = 5/16. The error of approximation is 1/3 - 5/16 = 1/48. So the error is actually 1.5 times smaller than 32th note, nice.
1.5. However fun approximations are, we want exact 1/3, and tuplets allow us to do it.
2. Introducing tuplet notation
2.1. Every tuplet has a number value. You could think the value is "3" for triplet, but no, its typically 3/2, and is usually written as just 3 for simplicity/laziness/cleanliness reasons.
2.2. The value denotes speedup. This is exactly why in the video you can see changing BPM tempo at 13:55 in sibelius, trying to work "against" program. This is also what the guy at 12:35 mentions, calling the triplet eights "faster eights".
2.3. Using triplet (3/2) as example, speed up of it is 3/2, it means everything you put in it is 3/2 or 1.5 times faster. For example, if you put THE WHOLE piece of music in 60 bpm into a 3/2 triplet you will get same music but at 60*3/2 = 90 bpm (playing 1.5 times faster). Another, yet similar, example: if you play quarter notes at 90 bpm, then switch to 60 bpm and play quarter notes in triplets, you play exact same rhythm, with exact same real time distance.
2.4. Now we are ready to talk about Note Values inside tuplets. Let's think about quarter note (1/4) inside a triplet (3/2). The note is 3/2 times faster, it means its *duration* (note value) is 2/3 times *shorter*. That makes it a 1/4 * 2/3 = 1/6 note value.
If you understood everything above, then you pretty much understood everything there is to tuplets on math side. Now let's see some cases.
Nested tuplets: every tuplet is a speedup still, they multiply together. E.g. 3/2 inside 7/4 speed up effect is 3/2 * 7/4 = 21/8. Duration (note value) of 1/4 inside there would then be 1/4 * 8/21 = 2/21.
Tuplets whose values is less than 1: for example duplets are 2/3. That would make a 1/8 note have value 1/8 * 3/2 = 3/16, and then 2 of 1/8 would have together note value of 3/16 * 2 = 3/8. This lets you fit 2 notes in the space of 3 (eights).
Beaming rules: I did say that this will allow you to understand beaming in tuplets definitely. Basically, beaming denotes some Note Value then tuplets modify it further. If you understood text so far, you should understand that you can find "true Note Value" of a note that is inside however many tuplets. Let's do simplest example: fitting 3 equally spaced notes inside of a 1/4 duration. That is a triplet (3/2) then you can see that note values inside it are modified by 2/3 factor. Then 3 quarter notes inside it would last 3 * 1/4 * 2/3 = 1/2 note values, but we wanted inside 1/4 so we of course have to choose 1/8 notes: 3 * 1/8 * 2/3 = 1/4. This way you can verify any beaming.
Now let's talk about common tuplet values. 3 commonly denotes 3/2, 5 commonly denotes 5/4, 6 denotes 6/4, 7 denotes 7/4, 9 denotes 9/8. Notice how the denominator here is the largest power of 2 (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, ...) smaller than nominator. This keeps the tuplet value close to 1 which allows for more or less consistent beaming. You *can* make a tuplet with value 5/1, which will speed up notes 5 times, which will make whole notes be 1 * 1/5 = 1/5 note values, but it's awfully short compared to whole note, and closer to 1/4. Using 5/4 tuplet value makes it more balanced, whole note inside is then 1 * 4/5 = 4/5 note values, and you can notice that it is 4 times larger than 1/5, which also means that 1/4 would actually be 1/5: 1/4 * 4/5 = 1/5. So raw, pre-modified note value by tuplet here is much closer than if you used 5:1 tuplet.
And that's how you can get any rational number for a note value. Feel free to respond and ask me questions anyone, hopefully youtube will notify me if that happens.
Wow lol crazy composition Bruce and even crazier performance Yogev. You make it sound so smooth!
Wish I could double-like! Mind-expanding and packed with educational information. Also loved the buildup on Zappa's work.
As far as "what is the point?" is concerned: inventing new musical difficulties for their own sake is like inventing new technology. Once you have it, you can evaluate what higher-level goals it can be applied in service of. I've always found the music of Paganini a bit stiff, but no doubt the violin scoring of Paganini laid the groundwork for the violin scoring of, say, Richard Strauss.
Q: What's harder than Zappa.
A: definitely not your husband.
Fascinating composition, but shout out to Yogev for the amazing orchestration. And what a great feel/touch!
I was surprised to hear such a musical piece at the end! As complex as it may be, it actually sounded like a fun groove, the fact you were able to explore new and difficult musical concepts and composing an enjoyable piece for the listeners is just thrice as awesome!
The sevens/fives trade offs at 18:48 are especially dope
A lot of the grove feeling comes from the drummer choice, because in the score there just one note, the drummer composed where to hit them
Very elegant solutions, and a masterful execution! Bravo!
That drum sequence was amazing!
Wow. Just wow. You just opened up my ears to even appreciate zappa even more. Thank you!
Yogev's expression at the end just said "David, you're a monster"
fake obviously
Your videos are just getting better and better and better.🙏
You could have added a touch of sadism with a rest at about the seventh note into the first 13thlet, a short accent on the 2nd note of the 2nd 13thlet followed by a legato on the 5th note of that 13thlet, with a rest on the 6th note of the same 13thlet.
Amazing episode. Loved the DOR stuff
That was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the explanation of the fractional time signatures. Well done!
This was a good watch. Does anyone know what Richard Devine tune was played in the video?
Great video David! It is one thing to make something complex...but to make it musical, that is another level. Hats off to you and Yogev for making it complicated, but also making it musical. Very inspirational :-)
Truly masterful playing! What a joy to watch :)
Simply amazing great job composting and also playing this crazy but advanced Innovative rythems very cool. This is the next level of understanding rythem .
What an awesome video. For ableton users interested in tuplets:
You can make tuplets in ableton by selecting multiple notes on the grid and dragging their size down to even parts that fit within the grid, use the arrows at the top of the piano roll that appear around the selected notes to squash notes into a space
You are so underrated. I love your content, David. Keep on the incredible work
So glad to see Yogev back on this channel!
Really really amazing! Incredible composition and incredible performance! You and Yogev are awesome! :)
Zapileo Zapilei :-)
Awesome performance, and it had the feel of a virtuoso improvisation. Kudos!
Incredible channel, congrats man!
Bravo! I love the original (in its many guises). Good to see DB taking up the baton!
Im BLOWN AWAY. You just keep making golden content like its easy! Honestly man, I feel like this is really inspiring. makes you want to play with those weird time signatures and rhythms. Im waiting for sequoia (I hope im writing that right) to play it :)
Yogev is freakin great! Thanks, David!
Wow. This is some deep cosmological exploration going on here! The postbeat salutes you x
Thanks for helping to expand our musical universe David.
Great video, Dave! Just pointing this out as a curiosity, the "guitar" solo on Chunga's Revenge is actually an electric alto sax through a wah pedal (that's right, you heard right) played by the magnificient Ian Underwood!
@pap There is a guitar solo in Chunga's Revenge. It starts after the sax solo at 4:16 in the song.
@@Frunobulax74 yeah! The snippet in the video comes from the sax solo, though.
The ability to write/play this is next level! Lots of cool concepts, I’ll have to try to implement some of them into my own writing.
As a percussionist myself, I’m super glad you tried something like this.
When you showed isolation I automatically thought of approximate. I was so glad it was the next in the video
I love your style and the charming and embracing way of treating these complicated things so easily - thank you so much for your very entertaining educational TV, David! ❤️ so much passion, so much work - I‘m deeply impressed and touched.
I believe there's no room for discussion here, Mr. Bruce, but you're *the* single _coolest_ music youtuber right now. You just take everything that's being done out there in the wild and make it 20% cooler.
I believe this spirit of one-upmanship and debauchery is completely in like with who Frank Zappa was, so making this piece is simultaneous an "up yours!" and a high praise of him. And it's always important to bring people like Zappa to the attention of people. There are way too many kids who think Tool and Dream Theater have THE most "complicated" music out there. "Lateralus uses the Fibonacci sequence, man! That's *SO* complex!". Hah, get a load of this, kids.
Nerdiness level: off the charts! ;)
Huge Zappa fan here appreciating this particular Video
Being familiar with the original Zappa versions, it was a delight to hear it emerge. To me it was identifiable at the beginning. I look forward to hearing the piano version, I am curious how the original will peak through.
A video about The Black Page, featuring Dor Levin??? Love it
Nicely done. Great concepts here. I love the TNT bit too! 🧨
The Law of the Internet dictates that Adam Neely must now compose The BlackEST Page. Absolutely loved this video. The end result reminds me of a Neil Peart drum solo. Stellar work!
It's always a great pleasure to see Ruth Underwood play. Love to all things Zappa and to all things David Bruce.
At about 13 minutes I was starting to think it just ends up sounding like a lot of short tempo changes. Like someone dropped that FL studio glitch effect onto a lofi track and hit randomize.
Then David goes into the scoring software and goes, well I can't write it in traditional methods, so I'm going to do short tempo changes to replicate the rhythm pattern timings.
Love it.
That was EPIC! Thanks David ❤️
Side note... Yogev is a beast!!
awesome video david
wonderful video... inspiring and exciting...
wow im proud of you and shoutout to yogev my man
When I was in college I was introduced to a time signature system that did away with the bottom number, replacing it with the note that represents the beat. So a 4/4 would become 4/♩ (i.e. "4 by quarter note"), which becomes even more interesting when you replace, say, a 12/8 by a 4/♩. (i.e. "4 by dotted quarter note"). This makes so much more sense to me, but, unfortunately, it's rare to find something using this notation. One such example, though, is Carl Orff's fabulous "Tanz" from "Carmina Burana": en.schott-music.com/shop/media/catalog/product/cache/6/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/e/d/ed_6950-2.jpg
It got a bit better when you explained what the hell it is, but the shock when i saw the second measure at 11:00 was immesurable, holly sh*t, this video just blew my mind hard!!!!
MORE THINGS ABOUT ZAPPA
This is extremely inspiring!
Fantastic! I liked this video, it clarified a lot about rhythm. One quibble though: Steve Vai, in e.g. The Dangerous Kitchen, transcribed Zappa's speech-singing, which he was able to do with fairly conventional notation. I guess your piece does in some way approximate this too. I like it!
1:10 Aubrey Plaza time travel confirmed?
It was surprisingly musical. Shouldn't have been surprising, most of your stuff is great.
I see I'm not the only one saying this.
I can't say i understood how all the mathematical formulas translate into rhythm, but I found the part about translating speech cadences into rhythmic and melodic lines especially fascinating.
Thank you David
וכל הכבוד ליוגב, דור וטלי 🌺
Incredible performance!
Nice! Looking forward for the melodic version, I would love to play it on the flute
So glad to hear Zappa getting some attention!
Ah, so that's why your nested tuplet excerpt showed up in Music Engraving Tips recently...! ;) Shawn Crowder also brilliantly transcribed a drum and bass piece called "Polyriddim", which is also worth looking up!
If it would have been only the drum performance, I wouldn’t have recognised all the messy weirdness going. Amazing
Your visuals get more interesting by the day, Sir.
I 'm pretty sure that the "guitar solo" grab (9:07) is in fact Ian Underwood "..blowin' his nose" (as Zappa once goaded) on an electrified alto (saxophone) with a wah-wah pedal. Maybe someone could fact check that ...'cause my LP was nicked a few decades ago.
Wonderful job to both of you! Although i manage to understand only a tiny part of the theory behind it, I love the idea of exploring the vastness of rhythm and music.
Makes me wonder what piece of music could come out by bringing other musicians to fill their part... Like Adam on bass, Nare on piano, Jacob with his voice maybe?
Around min 14, that sent me on a bit of a nostalgic dream thinking back to trying to get tuplets to work on finale notepad, good times lolol
Fantastic vid as always! Pls analyze Dutilleux’s orchestration soon! 🙏
Anyone knows the name of the song at min 19:30 ??? It reminds me to an old game called Ristar and a mix with Digimon World 4
Glad to see the AriaProII bass there!
14:35 is basically 5:4 (five in the space of four) where you multiply x-tempo. In this case, it is 80. So, 5/4 * 80 = 400/4 = 100 bpm :)
Ben as Frank is excellent casting
Dear David, incredible video. I recommend looking at what Mono Neon has been doing with his videos where he playes over clips of people talking. Very much in the vein of this topic. :)
Mention of Nestup is very useful. It will work with several notation systems and DAWs. Takes a little bit of figuring out - try the Presets first maybe. A little bit of arithmetic helps, and pasting straight into most DAWs will almost certainly give something in 4/4. If that's not what's required, make sure the total number of segments in Nestup is a related multiple of what you want, then change the time signature in the target software package. Each Nestup segment seems to correspond to a crotchet = quarter note, so if you create a rhythm with 9 segments it can be imported in as a 9/4 rhythm. Import the same in 9/8 and it will create two bars each with eighth note beats. Import into a 3/8 notation and notes will very likely be tied across bar lines. Fairly easy - when you know how. Go figure.
Thank you! That was great:-)
Now here’s an even greater challenge: use these rhythms to create a piece that is pleasing to the average listener
Ben Levin cameo at 9:15?
wondering the same thing.
Yup, check the description!
Great video, as always. I also think that guy's suggestion of trying to write the world's easiest to play piece of music would be an interesting video. Although, I guess 4'33 already exists, so I can't imagine a piece easier than that to play. Maybe not writing the EASIEST piece, but rather just writing a piece which is designed to be incredibly easy. Maybe a piece that could be played by people who can't play instruments and only have an hour to rehearse, or something like that.
This loopery is what we are here for
can't wait for the piano version!
Bravo Yogev!!
Having 2 Levin lunatics in one video is amazing