It's how newspapers and such USED to be. Distill the main points to the headline, then put the most important supporting information in the first paragraph, and flesh it out from there.
Derek Cliff Crane Captain D is so knowledgeable in the world of video *and* puts it in good layman's terms so that anyone can understand what the heck is going on.
In order to survive, all things must adapt... The licc, eternal and immortal as it must be, must also adapt, change; while retaining something of it's essence to still be considered truly immortal. & the new harmonization's pretty sweet, yessss.
5:45 This is beautiful. I'm studying Medieval and Renaissance music right now and it makes so much sense: the other modes gradually get modified through accidentals to avoid tritones and thus converge on Ionian and Aeolian
So, I was trained as a musician on the Suzuki method from a very young age (for those who don't know it is a method of teaching young kids string instruments by starting them playing by ear and then introducing them to written music once they get the fundamentals down). It literally never occurred to me until I watched this video that audiation (sp?) isn't a thing that everyone does. I just innately remember all the parts of a song and when I think back to it or it's stuck in my head, it "sounds" fully realized. I thought everyone does this, but of course, if you haven't been trained to hear music that way, why would you? Wild!
So amazed with the "no tritone" interval thing... I study music for yeeears and never noticed it and I don't remember any of my teachers talking about it. Thank you for the good info!!!!
I’m so glad you mentioned delayed gratification Adam! I just finished my first year of teaching general music and chorus (although I’m an instrumentalist) and I have been preaching those words for years! Technology (and many other factors) have sucked people into an “instant gratification mindset” and I could not agree more that music can break that toxic way of thinking! Thank you for being you man! Love your content!
Yea, that's what I've heard too. The guy who asked that is Finnish like me and I've also noticed the takeover of that particular rhythm in recent Finnish pop music as well. It's the two-dotted-quarters-followed-by-an-eight (Dunn-Dunn-DAH) that seems to be all the buzz. Hell, even "Shape of You" by Ed Sheeran? It really is everywhere.
Question for future Q&A: Why is texture/timbre so closely linked with genre (at least in popular music)? Even subgenres have recognizable textures/timbres distinct from other subgenres in the same main genre.
Probably because these genres are made more electronically than genres that use more traditional instruments. Their instruments are probably made manually on a computer synthesizer, which allows many different timbres.
SafetyOfDaShrub He's talking about any kind of music, not just electronic music. When you think about it, the main difference between thrash metal and death metal is timbre.
oh, I thought (and kind of still do think) he meant Pop music, like (why don't you just meet me in) "The middle" or other song like that (Idk that's the first thing that came to me) Though when I say "electronically made", I don't necessarily mean "electronic music". Lot's of popular music is "electronically made", meaning made with a computer program (DAW) like Ableton Live or Fl studio or Logic.
The Quality of your Videos, both in content and in visualization, are actually incomparable to anything else on this website. Thank you so very much for this.
For a future Q&A: I know you've anwsered the question "does gear matter?" before, but in the world of professional music can you/have you gotten in trouble for having the "wrong" kind of instrument? (A personal example I'll give is the jazz ensemble at the college I attend needed a bassist. I only had a Traben bass at the time, which was very metal based instrument. It ended up working but in an ensamble of 6 people I stood out like a sore thumb and I can see how that would be unwanted on a professional level)
I don't think it really counts, this is more a question of having "fashionable" and cool gear versus double bass and electric bass being two different instruments.
Do you prefer a different instrument or..? Please stick with an instrument, you may regret it later if you quit (i did :c I'm still pretty young so I know I didn't shoot myself in the foot too bad, but I could've made tons of progress by now which sucks a little... For motivation, people are gonna love you if you play something and it'll feel great lol
My dad used to sit me on the piano bench next to him while he played - one of my happiest childhood memories. After my parents divorced, I lived with my mom and she wasn't all that encouraging about music. I hated practicing. My dad never bugged me to practice, but he recorded accompaniment tapes for me. Years later, I still love music and I've finally developed the discipline to practice. I wouldn't have wanted my parents to force me to play, but I'm really glad I was exposed to music in a positive way as a kid.
Question for your next QnA: Hey Adam, I'm a multi-instrumentalist considering music school. How should I choose what instrument to pursue or how can I persue all of them?
Ooodles of really excellent points here; thanks to you and your subscribers for bringing them up! The fact that various harmonies sound different in different pitch ranges (e.g., murkier in the lower range) is one of my “hot-buttons.” I also liked your points about Ionian and Aeolian modes, and about Music teaching delayed gratification. It’s important to note, however, that it’s not entirely _delayed_ gratification; there are incremental points of gratification along the way.
Adam, Question for your next Q&A: I learned just a couple years ago that I have Aphantasia, a condition where I cannot picture things in my mind's eye and in turn, audiate. I've been playing stringed instruments for 15 years, and have played electric and upright for 13 years, and around then I remember being able to visualize. Is there anything that I can do work on or potentially reclaim my ability to audiate? I've always been able to understand chords and how to play within them, because they've always been mathematical and bound by rules, but I've only recently been able to start to grasp how to solo and play melodically and I can't help but feel held back by my inability to hear things in my own head. Thank you for everything that you do, your channel has been a huge inspiration for me to keep pushing forward with my bass playing and become a better musician. Austin
10:02 my answer to this is a bit of both, and I used it with success in an interview recently. Academia is about learning how to use your brain and body in different ways. Why do we teach math? To teach functional thought and the process of using equations. Why do we teach science? Experimental procedure. Why do we teach music? To teach creativity and vocal proficiency. All of these skills are useful outside of each of the subjects they are connected to, and teach students how to use their brains to think without creating gaps in their knowledge and understanding. That's the whole point of education: to teach people to use their brains to THINK about things. Every subject is of equal importance.
This is a great argument for music in schools. High school is still fresh in my mind and I know there were a lot of people who simply did not want to be there; unless you gave them a chance to do their own thing. Music is a fantastic avenue of self expression.
I've been hooked on your videos for the past few days, since first stumbling into the one about black midi (after watching/listening to some stuff about Conlon Nancarrow). i am a self-taught musician with no formal training in music theory other than some reading here and there on the subject, as well as a life-long, enthusiastic lover of all "out-there", different, difficult/challenging forms of music, schooled or otherwise. here's what i think about your material and why: to me, your videos are some of the most informative, thoroughly entertaining, well thought out, clearly presented, digestibly understandable, and just plain old interesting informational or instructional videos online. not just on the subject of music and theory, but on ANY subject matter. period. your answer in this video to the question about utilitarian arguments for keeping music education programs in schools made me stand up and audibly cheer in agreement, almost involuntarily all while watching it by myself, alone in my apartment. it is also what compelled me to write this and tell you how much i appreciate your work. lets just hope this doesn't get totally buried in troll bullshit or whatever. ;) keep up the amazing work. you've just earned yourself another (well deserved) patreon patron and a new, very devoted fan in me. seriously...you fucking rule and you've got a real knack (gift) for making these videos. not sure if there's another level you can take this to beyond youtube, or if you even have any desire to do so, but IMHO, if you can, then you should. time to write a book?? ok...i'm done now.
If lower interval limits are dependent on overtones wouldn't less overtone rich instruments have lower limits? A clean sine subbass could just go down as far as you want.
i read somewhere that it also has to do with how we tune instruments now, as you go lower differences between notes get larger and cause some intonation issues
Also consider that the lower you go, the smaller the difference between two tones becomes: for example, between 440Hz and 880Hz (an octave) there are 440hz of difference, but between 20Hz and 40Hz there are only 20, which makes it difficult to tune properly and distinguish
Neither of those things really matter if the limit is an effect of overtones clashing. Our hearing is logarithmic so the difference between 880 and 440 is gonna be exactly the same as between 40 and 20. I feel like they'd have told me when I learned audio engineering if our ears were somehow worse at distinguishing intervals at low frequency ranges, especially seeing as we had a lot of psychoacoustics in there.
In one of Adam's other vids (no idea which) he mentions that a harmonically rich minor third has an inherent discord because the lower note contains a major third harmonic within it anyway (which clashes with the minor third by a semitone), where as for purer tones (eg low flute) the major third harmonic is reduced / absent. That sounds the same kind of idea to yours. But also I suspect that the absolute time interval between repeats of the combined pattern is an issue for hearing something as harmony.
By that logic, we could build a receiver that decodes audio frequencies "logarithmically", thus allowing us to transmit at 20Hz just as well as 4000Hz. That doesn't happen, because the lower you go, the lower the bandwidth you have. Your brain might make it sound the same, but it will just be it trying to make sense of a signal that's too hard to distinguish from noise.
Man, I’m amazed by the structure and the length of the video. When I got to the last question I was like “well I’m kinda bored but let’s see how it goes” and after you answered it I thought “meh I think I’ve seen enough I’m gonna close” but right there it ended. I value this in all the videos I watch. Well done.
Going hand in hand with learning an instrument is reflecting about the own learning processes and trying to optimize it. In other words you learn how you learn more efficently
For a future Q&A : I'm a classical music student from Switzerland. I'm getting interested in other genre than just classical music, but I've actually got this feeling with jazz that it sometimes sounds good, sometimes not (purely subjectively), but I never quiet understand it. I've sometimes got the impression that jazz harmony is just random chords that magically sound good together, but I can't understand them with just what I know. What could I do, learn, etc., to understand it better? It sometimes scares me a little, I've got like the feeling that jazz is to hard for me, that I couldn't get into it. I would like to see jazz (and other related genres) as natural as classical music is for me. (It's funny, from what I see, some classical musicians are convinced that classical music is the most advanced music in the world, but I'm sure they couldn't understand some music any better than me, and by that I mean, not at all).
Question for the Next Q&A How can an intermediate musician become a hyper technical musician (very odd time signatures, complicated rhythms, and being able to fast licks)? BTW, I love your videos and you were really influential in my decision to buy and start learning bass, thanks.
Ayaan Raza here’s an idea: set the metronome on 15 bpm, count seven subdivisions out loud and snap both your fingers on beat one in sync with the metronome. Do this 4 times. Now shift the counting so the metronome is clicking on beat 2. Snap your right hand fingers on beat 1 and left hand fingers on beat two. 4 times. Shift the counting again and snap your right hand fingers one beat one and left hand fingers on beat 3 in sync with the metronome. 4 times. Shift the counting again... you get the idea. Then do this with 9/11/13/17/19 subdivisions. Try slower tempos as well. It’s quite dull and hardcore practice but the results are unbelievable. Hope it helps.
This is probably not the answer you are looking for, but it's mostly just practice, speed is something you can build, feeling odd time signatures and rhythmic precision are skills that you can work on. Try getting a book filled with rhythm exercises, I've got one named 265 Jazz Rhythms bij Barbara Bleij, but I don't know of it's available internationally. The rhythms in these kind of books often work up to different patterns of sixteenth notes and tuplets, which should give you material to practice for quite a while.
For odd time signatures Adam has an older video with a worksheet for 5/8, which consists of any rythmic pattern with the smallest note 8th notes you can play in a 5/8 bar. If you want to get fluent in 5/8 you can practice these patterns and my suggestion is to break up any odd time signature into counts of 2 and counts of 3, giving you a compound rhythm. With 5/8 you can do this in two ways: 12123 and 12312. If you practice all the patterns while counting in both ways you can get to a point where you can use these rhythmic patterns freely (and then break up the 8ths further, add triplets, etc.).
Adam, how about the maximum "distance" from the "normal" interval that is allowed for that interval to still sound like that interval? To clarify, let's say a major third is 400 cents apart, when does it lose its major thirdy quality? Since the answer is probably that there is obviously no hard border, I think this might be interesting to talk about. It's something that definitely interest me at least. The same can be said for example about (individual) notes in a scale. When do they become noticeable sharp/flat? At what rate, and does this matter, etc
Although I do have a question for the next Q&A, although it has little to no relevance to Musical Theory: Who were your prominent influences that made you want to take up specifically the Bass a sort of a primary instrument in your arsenal?
Although this is a small piece of content I could've lived without knowing to continue my efforts on composition. It helped my piano arrangements drastically. Thank you, Adam. Peace, and love.
Dembow is a song by shabba ranks, a dancehall song relevant to the history of reggae Also, Mike Kerr of Royal Blood pitch shifts his second bass signal to achieve distorted guitar tone, allowing him and his mate to make rock with just two people
Adam, thank you for continually making me think about music in a new and exciting way with your videos. When you challenged us to think of the drum, or bass, or etc part of a song it made me see that perhaps I've been focusing too melodically on what I learn in music. As a harmony singer it's too easy to fall into the trap of learning just the melody and my accompaniment, yet still overlooking the considerable depth of other parts.
@@Vojife maybe they're scared because of an insecurity i.e. they may believe they don't teach well enough (or they actually don't by their own or others' standards) and think they'll lose students to online vids. Adam has even said this isn't a replacement for music school lessons, merely supplementary.
I love the idea that music teaches delayed gratification because you're so right. I've been playing for 8 years and I've just now started to become slightly satisfied with my work.. but once you start to become slightly satisfied, you hunger for more (as I do)
(+Zach Rowe) I know this is late, but one of the main reasons for the lower interval limit is because the frequency differences between notes is lower as you get deeper, making it to where the notes become less distinguishable. Since the upper register actually has a higher difference between pitches, then there should be no upper interval limit.
practices auditation for All Star get all the parts down pretty well start to audiate the guitar parts in my head *nice* switch to the bass so I can get that down better a few days pass and I finally get it down really good gets stuck in my head* *wAIT*
when i learned to play a musical instrument, i started in elementary school. i played in the high school orchestra. so as you know your counting measures and paying attention to where you are in the piece in addition to when and what you play. what i have found is that doing this through high school has taught and conditioned me to be able to concentrate and focus on whatever i had to do no matter what i happen to be doing.
Ohhhhhhhh my god the answer to the second question is so satisfying. I always like so much in music is "just because it happened that way" or "it's because thats how 14th century lute players did it" but your explanation of major and minor modes is without a doubt the most sensible theory I've ever heard about music. Ever.
really good responses--just adding re: studying music, was talking with an airman (was teaching an amlit class on airbase) about the difficulties of adapting steppin' out for solo guitar & getting the parts to line up (he'd played trumpet, but gave it up for bball . . . & said, y'know, if i'd stayed with trumpet i probably wouldn't be here), anyway, first thing he said was "music's all about the reps, you practice long enough you'll get there" & then we both agreed that after a while, the delayed gratification process (we didn't call it that) shifts--& there's gratification in the micro-advances that makes practice worthwhile on its own. there was a connection to reading lit, but i'll spare ya that.
"Delayed gratification" is an interesting way of looking at it. Education is essentially about confidence. Learning that you can acquire a skill through practice and your own effort is a liberating insight that make a person float in the world.
Hey adam. You look very healthy in this video. It might just be the hairstyle, but it looks like you got new cameras and/or lights and lost some weight as well. :) Anyway, great video, as always.
Don't the lower interval limits also depend on the instrument? I'm pretty sure I've hear low brass or male choruses sing intervals that sound too muddy on a piano.
Since the "muddiness" is caused by the overtones "clashing", it would mean that instruments with less overtones in their timbre could play these intervals lower than, say, a piano. So yeah good point ! Another example is when a guitar plays with distortion vs clean : there are a lot more overtones in the distorted signal, so it sounds "thicker" when playing chords, especially on the low register. It gives a percussive quality to the music, but it also means that certain intervals that would be harmonically pleasing when playing clean will become much more muddy with distortion.
Adam Neely, I don't know if you ever will see and read this comment, but I have something to tell you. Ive been going thru a wave of depression recently, Ive been sad, unable to sleep until 2-3AM only to go to school on a few hours of sleep, uninspired etc. Ive been watching your videos more and more everyday. I dont know why but your videos make me forget about my sorrows for however long the length of the video is. Thank you Adam Neely, God Bless.
Hey Adam do you find that your choice of bass limits you in any way? Not that there's anything wrong with a p-bass but i'd think that a bass with more features (for example Billy Sheehan's Yamaha bass) would provide for a larger tone pallet.Keep up the great videos! B A S S
Hey Adam. I was only introduced to your youtube channel about 6 months ago, but just wanted to pop in to let you know that I get excited every time one of your vids pops up in my feed and I'm very appreciated for the great work that you do. Keep it up buddy!
Music education is a topic I've thought about for years. I always on the side of it is important in many ways like most talk about. But recently I read and interview with one of the many excellent Jazz musicians on the scene from Israel. I thought all these excellent musicians from Israel they must have good music education in the schools. We in the interview they discussed it and its the opposite they is no music education in the schools in Israel. It the student was to learn an instrument they have to get lessons outside of school. This means the student has to really want to play/write music to pursue it. Now the good thing is there is a lot of music support outside of the schools and young musicians get together more there to play work on music. I kind of see the value in that the student really has to have the drive and be self motivate to get into music, but if they are there is support from the community to guide them. So here in the US there are a few cities with music communities to help mentor young musicians, but we need to get more mentors in cities all over the US. Until the late 70's or 80's that is how music was in the US more about mentors and getting in bands and older players mentored the young. But in then teaching music became a big business and teaching codified so teach music formalized like teaching math or English.
For the octave pedal question, check out the T-Rex Octavius pedal. Mix an octave up and/or down into your signal, handles chords also. What Adam said definitely applies, high octave can sound sterile and less musical so it’s best to mix it lightly.
question for the next Q&A why western music is based on third? there is an historical reason or biological reason ? I mean for chords construction hi mum, i'm on a youtube video
Marcelo Carvalho but you also get things like the harmonic seventh, which is literally not a note on the piano unless you explicitly modify your piano to be able to play it.
Is it based on thirds, though? Arguably it is mostly based on 5ths and for quite some time polyphonic music in the west onyl used the perfect 5th and the ferfect 4th as the inversion (and occassionally octaves). But you can construct a chromatic scale just by going up a 5th each time and going down an octave whenever your new note would fall outside of the octave you started with. And if you do this for just 6 additional notes you get a diatonic scale (so if you started on F for instance, you'd get all the white keys on a piano). Diatonic scales have come up in a variety of cultures, probably in the same way. Thirds start showing up in western music during the renaissance, where they are treated as consonant, but the music does not use chord progressions as a main way to structure itself. That happens in the Baroque and here the construction of triads from scale notes and a notion of functional harmony starts.
It does. That's the point of it. That music has its own "rules" that one shall follow in order to write a song. It's like cueca from Chile or some other styles of music. They all sound the same, for that's the idea.
For audiation practice with writing - write out some small motifs, parts, and/or phrases away from the instrument. Just the basics, slurs aren't always necessary. Then grab your instrument, play what you've written. How close is it to what you have visualized? How far off is it? Try again, but not immediately, wait a few, maybe the later that day or the next. Try again. In time, I started getting closer and closer to writing my ideas only missing a note here and there by 1/2 steps usually. I now keep a notebook open at work in the kitchen all day. My new songs are now crusted in tomato juice and flour, brutal. It looks like blood at times. Metal.
Awesome breaking out the psych science for music! Delayed gratification is way under-appreciated in my book. I think it's how kids learn mental grit. It's kind of like a little motivational speech every time you get better at something in music
The way it was explained to me in college gave a little more "justification" for what those lower interval limits are, and why. 1. The lowest note we can hear as a note is ~16ish Hz. Below that we start to hear it not as a really low pitch but as a really fast rhythm. 2. Intervals sound consonant based on their relationship (or at least proximity) to the overtone series. Each interval can be treated as (approximating) two overtones of some lower note. Thus every interval implies a base note, the pitch that has those two notes in its overtone series. 3. So the first, most basic rule is, avoid playing an interval so low that it implies a pitch lower than 16 Hz. 4. Then you can consider different instruments or instrument families. If you play an interval that implies a note lower than the lowest note that instrument can play, it might not "sound good" in that timbre. So for example, take the lowest note playable by your horn section, build the overtones series from that low note, and that gives you all your lowest interval limits when arranging for them. As a rule of thumb. If you have a decent grand piano, built the harmonic series from low A, and each of those intervals ought to be playable down to about there on the instrument.
I found it really easy to audiate the guitar on that song you did with Gear Gods... mostly because it was doing the exact same as the bass. Video was excellent and informative as always.
For your next Q&A: What's your opinion on New Complexity Music and Composers like Ferneyhough, Xenakis and Finnissy? Also, could you talk a bit about their composing techniques and how they get to write such complex music?
After despacito 2, we need the *LICC* *2* please release it asap
Davie504 make a video involving the LICC
Very impressive, but can you play the LICC by LICCing the strings?
Can you slap the licc?
Despacito 5 Re-confirmed; ua-cam.com/video/v2nT5nmaTGY/v-deo.html
Genius play the LICC by licking the strings and after Jam eith that
I love how you do the opposite of clickbait and literally put the answer in the thumbnail
also it's the first question to get answered
It's meta-clickbait, because you have the question answered, but then you think: "But why?"
And *then* you click on the video
Asmodean Underscore Yeah I see that, it’s much better than normal clickbait imo
It's how newspapers and such USED to be. Distill the main points to the headline, then put the most important supporting information in the first paragraph, and flesh it out from there.
Asmodean Underscore that's the proof of how much of an influencer Vsauce is
i'm loving the anti-clickbait thumbnails
Same
He literally gave the answer to the question in the title in the thumbnail. It is hilariously un-clickbait-like. Not that that's a bad thing.
*reads title*
*reads thumbail*
thanks
Rumdy Adobe
@@GoviaM No! It's Robert get your facts right!
You are a genius Slosh
Fancy meeting you here, habibi.
I never realized the lack of tritone relationships in Major/Minor.... Very cool and thanks again!
Signals Music Studio hey there! Glad to see you here, I'm also subscribed to your channel!
Yo there's only 1 reply to this. I love your vids, Jake! I learn a lot from each one.
Me neither so awesome! I'm amazed by it!! Never noticed!!!
Oh crap, someone just learned how to key in his video editor.
And I shall abuse it
😂
Derek Cliff Crane Captain D is so knowledgeable in the world of video *and* puts it in good layman's terms so that anyone can understand what the heck is going on.
Chad Thompson sorry for my ignorance but what does it mean to key in the video editor?
Esma Karamanci Kirim It means green screen! He learned how to replace green with something else, which he used with that paper in his piano shots
That part about the Ionian and Aeolian modes, and their I chord's absence of tritone with other notes blew my mind!
"The Despacito rhythm that has been popping up the last 2 years" dude i've been hearing that rhythm since i was born
So you're 2?
2 and a half
DAME MAS GASOLIIINNNAAAA
Nick Martinez ROMPE ROMPE ROMPE
I've heard it soooo many times before too but now it's like in every song (on Finnish radio at least) and it's getting a bit overwhelming.
oooo new licc harmonization.
In order to survive, all things must adapt...
The licc, eternal and immortal as it must be, must also adapt, change; while retaining something of it's essence to still be considered truly immortal.
& the new harmonization's pretty sweet, yessss.
misotanni UGH YES
5:45 This is beautiful. I'm studying Medieval and Renaissance music right now and it makes so much sense: the other modes gradually get modified through accidentals to avoid tritones and thus converge on Ionian and Aeolian
I liked the part where your cat walked over the rite of spring.
So, I was trained as a musician on the Suzuki method from a very young age (for those who don't know it is a method of teaching young kids string instruments by starting them playing by ear and then introducing them to written music once they get the fundamentals down). It literally never occurred to me until I watched this video that audiation (sp?) isn't a thing that everyone does. I just innately remember all the parts of a song and when I think back to it or it's stuck in my head, it "sounds" fully realized. I thought everyone does this, but of course, if you haven't been trained to hear music that way, why would you? Wild!
'micro pog'
that octave pedal is ahead of its time
So amazed with the "no tritone" interval thing... I study music for yeeears and never noticed it and I don't remember any of my teachers talking about it.
Thank you for the good info!!!!
i like your hair adam neely
I’m so glad you mentioned delayed gratification Adam! I just finished my first year of teaching general music and chorus (although I’m an instrumentalist) and I have been preaching those words for years! Technology (and many other factors) have sucked people into an “instant gratification mindset” and I could not agree more that music can break that toxic way of thinking! Thank you for being you man! Love your content!
The name of the Dembow rhythm comes from the name of the song "Dem Bow" by Shabba Ranks
Yea, that's what I've heard too. The guy who asked that is Finnish like me and I've also noticed the takeover of that particular rhythm in recent Finnish pop music as well. It's the two-dotted-quarters-followed-by-an-eight (Dunn-Dunn-DAH) that seems to be all the buzz. Hell, even "Shape of You" by Ed Sheeran? It really is everywhere.
I learned this from Nerdwriter's Rihanna's 'Work' Is Not Tropical House ua-cam.com/video/ljbohB2_WnU/v-deo.html :-)
@@Veepee92 tresillo rhythm- David Bennet has a video on it
Precisely
Delayed gratification is the best argument I've ever heard for music in primary schools. Nice explanation!
Question for future Q&A: Why is texture/timbre so closely linked with genre (at least in popular music)? Even subgenres have recognizable textures/timbres distinct from other subgenres in the same main genre.
Probably because these genres are made more electronically than genres that use more traditional instruments. Their instruments are probably made manually on a computer synthesizer, which allows many different timbres.
SafetyOfDaShrub He's talking about any kind of music, not just electronic music. When you think about it, the main difference between thrash metal and death metal is timbre.
I resent the notion that timbre and texture are the main differences between Thrash and Death metal.
oh, I thought (and kind of still do think) he meant Pop music, like (why don't you just meet me in) "The middle" or other song like that (Idk that's the first thing that came to me)
Though when I say "electronically made", I don't necessarily mean "electronic music". Lot's of popular music is "electronically made", meaning made with a computer program (DAW) like Ableton Live or Fl studio or Logic.
Bøø9 I guess I should've said one of the main differences, or one of the most striking differences.
Adam singing rompe and dame más gasolina was the highlight of my day. Thank you.
I love what you said in the last minute.
Indeed, a fantastic argument.
The Quality of your Videos, both in content and in visualization, are actually incomparable to anything else on this website. Thank you so very much for this.
For a future Q&A:
I know you've anwsered the question "does gear matter?" before, but in the world of professional music can you/have you gotten in trouble for having the "wrong" kind of instrument?
(A personal example I'll give is the jazz ensemble at the college I attend needed a bassist. I only had a Traben bass at the time, which was very metal based instrument. It ended up working but in an ensamble of 6 people I stood out like a sore thumb and I can see how that would be unwanted on a professional level)
He did get fired for not having double bass. Check out Q&A #48. That may count?
I don't think it really counts, this is more a question of having "fashionable" and cool gear versus double bass and electric bass being two different instruments.
I've heard of bass players being sent home from session work because they showed up with something that was obviously not a Fender
At 5:48 into the video, I am absolutely in love that you chose to voice these chords with low interval limits as a flashback!
Adam: What's your opinion on parents who push an instrument on a child to learn that the child has no interest in?
I wish my parents did that.
same, I got into music late in the game and have some catching up to do
i would kill to be forced to play violin as a child
Do you prefer a different instrument or..? Please stick with an instrument, you may regret it later if you quit (i did :c I'm still pretty young so I know I didn't shoot myself in the foot too bad, but I could've made tons of progress by now which sucks a little... For motivation, people are gonna love you if you play something and it'll feel great lol
My dad used to sit me on the piano bench next to him while he played - one of my happiest childhood memories. After my parents divorced, I lived with my mom and she wasn't all that encouraging about music. I hated practicing. My dad never bugged me to practice, but he recorded accompaniment tapes for me. Years later, I still love music and I've finally developed the discipline to practice. I wouldn't have wanted my parents to force me to play, but I'm really glad I was exposed to music in a positive way as a kid.
The answer about ionian and aeolian brought so much meaning to my life Adam, thank you so much
Question for your next QnA:
Hey Adam, I'm a multi-instrumentalist considering music school. How should I choose what instrument to pursue or how can I persue all of them?
Ooodles of really excellent points here; thanks to you and your subscribers for bringing them up!
The fact that various harmonies sound different in different pitch ranges (e.g., murkier in the lower range) is one of my “hot-buttons.”
I also liked your points about Ionian and Aeolian modes, and about Music teaching delayed gratification. It’s important to note, however, that it’s not entirely _delayed_ gratification; there are incremental points of gratification along the way.
Adam, Question for your next Q&A:
I learned just a couple years ago that I have Aphantasia, a condition where I cannot picture things in my mind's eye and in turn, audiate. I've been playing stringed instruments for 15 years, and have played electric and upright for 13 years, and around then I remember being able to visualize. Is there anything that I can do work on or potentially reclaim my ability to audiate? I've always been able to understand chords and how to play within them, because they've always been mathematical and bound by rules, but I've only recently been able to start to grasp how to solo and play melodically and I can't help but feel held back by my inability to hear things in my own head.
Thank you for everything that you do, your channel has been a huge inspiration for me to keep pushing forward with my bass playing and become a better musician.
Austin
Hmm, just curious.....are you able to sing on key, or tell when someone is playing a song you know out of tune?
10:02 my answer to this is a bit of both, and I used it with success in an interview recently. Academia is about learning how to use your brain and body in different ways. Why do we teach math? To teach functional thought and the process of using equations. Why do we teach science? Experimental procedure. Why do we teach music? To teach creativity and vocal proficiency. All of these skills are useful outside of each of the subjects they are connected to, and teach students how to use their brains to think without creating gaps in their knowledge and understanding. That's the whole point of education: to teach people to use their brains to THINK about things. Every subject is of equal importance.
appreciate you giving the answer to the question in the thumbnail
This is a great argument for music in schools. High school is still fresh in my mind and I know there were a lot of people who simply did not want to be there; unless you gave them a chance to do their own thing. Music is a fantastic avenue of self expression.
Those chord examples on the piano sound really good.
I've been hooked on your videos for the past few days, since first stumbling into the one about black midi (after watching/listening to some stuff about Conlon Nancarrow). i am a self-taught musician with no formal training in music theory other than some reading here and there on the subject, as well as a life-long, enthusiastic lover of all "out-there", different, difficult/challenging forms of music, schooled or otherwise.
here's what i think about your material and why:
to me, your videos are some of the most informative, thoroughly entertaining, well thought out, clearly presented, digestibly understandable, and just plain old interesting informational or instructional videos online. not just on the subject of music and theory, but on ANY subject matter. period. your answer in this video to the question about utilitarian arguments for keeping music education programs in schools made me stand up and audibly cheer in agreement, almost involuntarily all while watching it by myself, alone in my apartment. it is also what compelled me to write this and tell you how much i appreciate your work. lets just hope this doesn't get totally buried in troll bullshit or whatever. ;)
keep up the amazing work. you've just earned yourself another (well deserved) patreon patron and a new, very devoted fan in me. seriously...you fucking rule and you've got a real knack (gift) for making these videos. not sure if there's another level you can take this to beyond youtube, or if you even have any desire to do so, but IMHO, if you can, then you should. time to write a book??
ok...i'm done now.
If lower interval limits are dependent on overtones wouldn't less overtone rich instruments have lower limits? A clean sine subbass could just go down as far as you want.
i read somewhere that it also has to do with how we tune instruments now, as you go lower differences between notes get larger and cause some intonation issues
Also consider that the lower you go, the smaller the difference between two tones becomes: for example, between 440Hz and 880Hz (an octave) there are 440hz of difference, but between 20Hz and 40Hz there are only 20, which makes it difficult to tune properly and distinguish
Neither of those things really matter if the limit is an effect of overtones clashing. Our hearing is logarithmic so the difference between 880 and 440 is gonna be exactly the same as between 40 and 20. I feel like they'd have told me when I learned audio engineering if our ears were somehow worse at distinguishing intervals at low frequency ranges, especially seeing as we had a lot of psychoacoustics in there.
In one of Adam's other vids (no idea which) he mentions that a harmonically rich minor third has an inherent discord because the lower note contains a major third harmonic within it anyway (which clashes with the minor third by a semitone), where as for purer tones (eg low flute) the major third harmonic is reduced / absent. That sounds the same kind of idea to yours. But also I suspect that the absolute time interval between repeats of the combined pattern is an issue for hearing something as harmony.
By that logic, we could build a receiver that decodes audio frequencies "logarithmically", thus allowing us to transmit at 20Hz just as well as 4000Hz. That doesn't happen, because the lower you go, the lower the bandwidth you have. Your brain might make it sound the same, but it will just be it trying to make sense of a signal that's too hard to distinguish from noise.
This is my favourite Adam Neely video. I don't know why. It just is.
Joke's on you, I remember every single aspect of All Star off by heart
I'm not even kidding when I say same
I have heard so many remixes and mashups of all star I know it better than the back of my hand.
Man, I’m amazed by the structure and the length of the video. When I got to the last question I was like “well I’m kinda bored but let’s see how it goes” and after you answered it I thought “meh I think I’ve seen enough I’m gonna close” but right there it ended. I value this in all the videos I watch. Well done.
stop getting cuter, I do NOT want to develop a crush on you.
ean too late for me....
Feel like it is already too late for a lot of his viewers...
Accept it
Too late for me.
I will allways be a sucker for the bald Adam look
Going hand in hand with learning an instrument is reflecting about the own learning processes and trying to optimize it. In other words you learn how you learn more efficently
Oh man, I missed the classic Adam Neely Schooling and information! Great video my friend!
Also that Lick composition tho
For a future Q&A :
I'm a classical music student from Switzerland. I'm getting interested in other genre than just classical music, but I've actually got this feeling with jazz that it sometimes sounds good, sometimes not (purely subjectively), but I never quiet understand it. I've sometimes got the impression that jazz harmony is just random chords that magically sound good together, but I can't understand them with just what I know.
What could I do, learn, etc., to understand it better?
It sometimes scares me a little, I've got like the feeling that jazz is to hard for me, that I couldn't get into it. I would like to see jazz (and other related genres) as natural as classical music is for me.
(It's funny, from what I see, some classical musicians are convinced that classical music is the most advanced music in the world, but I'm sure they couldn't understand some music any better than me, and by that I mean, not at all).
Question for the Next Q&A
How can an intermediate musician become a hyper technical musician (very odd time signatures, complicated rhythms, and being able to fast licks)?
BTW, I love your videos and you were really influential in my decision to buy and start learning bass, thanks.
Ayaan Raza here’s an idea: set the metronome on 15 bpm, count seven subdivisions out loud and snap both your fingers on beat one in sync with the metronome. Do this 4 times. Now shift the counting so the metronome is clicking on beat 2. Snap your right hand fingers on beat 1 and left hand fingers on beat two. 4 times. Shift the counting again and snap your right hand fingers one beat one and left hand fingers on beat 3 in sync with the metronome. 4 times. Shift the counting again... you get the idea. Then do this with 9/11/13/17/19 subdivisions. Try slower tempos as well. It’s quite dull and hardcore practice but the results are unbelievable. Hope it helps.
This is probably not the answer you are looking for, but it's mostly just practice, speed is something you can build, feeling odd time signatures and rhythmic precision are skills that you can work on. Try getting a book filled with rhythm exercises, I've got one named 265 Jazz Rhythms bij Barbara Bleij, but I don't know of it's available internationally. The rhythms in these kind of books often work up to different patterns of sixteenth notes and tuplets, which should give you material to practice for quite a while.
For odd time signatures Adam has an older video with a worksheet for 5/8, which consists of any rythmic pattern with the smallest note 8th notes you can play in a 5/8 bar. If you want to get fluent in 5/8 you can practice these patterns and my suggestion is to break up any odd time signature into counts of 2 and counts of 3, giving you a compound rhythm. With 5/8 you can do this in two ways: 12123 and 12312. If you practice all the patterns while counting in both ways you can get to a point where you can use these rhythmic patterns freely (and then break up the 8ths further, add triplets, etc.).
it may take dozens of times re-watching this to absorb the knowledge. thank you.
Adam, how about the maximum "distance" from the "normal" interval that is allowed for that interval to still sound like that interval? To clarify, let's say a major third is 400 cents apart, when does it lose its major thirdy quality? Since the answer is probably that there is obviously no hard border, I think this might be interesting to talk about. It's something that definitely interest me at least. The same can be said for example about (individual) notes in a scale. When do they become noticeable sharp/flat? At what rate, and does this matter, etc
Thank you Adam, for the explanation on delayed gratification! It made my day.
Although I do have a question for the next Q&A, although it has little to no relevance to Musical Theory:
Who were your prominent influences that made you want to take up specifically the Bass a sort of a primary instrument in your arsenal?
Although this is a small piece of content I could've lived without knowing to continue my efforts on composition. It helped my piano arrangements drastically. Thank you, Adam. Peace, and love.
Hairdam Neely looks cuter by the video :)
Every time I hear you answer these questions during your Q+A's I realise how little I know with regards to music theory. Great stuff!
Dembow is a song by shabba ranks, a dancehall song relevant to the history of reggae
Also, Mike Kerr of Royal Blood pitch shifts his second bass signal to achieve distorted guitar tone, allowing him and his mate to make rock with just two people
I was shocked he didn't mention Royal Blood at all.. Can it be he s never heard of the band??
megaman13able must be, although, he may know them but doesn't approve of their work. Not every one loves modern hard rock
Adam, thank you for continually making me think about music in a new and exciting way with your videos. When you challenged us to think of the drum, or bass, or etc part of a song it made me see that perhaps I've been focusing too melodically on what I learn in music. As a harmony singer it's too easy to fall into the trap of learning just the melody and my accompaniment, yet still overlooking the considerable depth of other parts.
that silent memes ... beautiful editing on this one !!!
Definitely agree with that last point! I've been practicing cello for over half my life and I'm still waiting for the gratification!
my music teacher hates your videos lol but I love them keep it up dude
rae cyn Did (s)he say why?
@@Vojife maybe they're scared because of an insecurity i.e. they may believe they don't teach well enough (or they actually don't by their own or others' standards) and think they'll lose students to online vids. Adam has even said this isn't a replacement for music school lessons, merely supplementary.
Omg that explaination of the using of Ionian and Lydian! And omg that cat and you are both so cute! Easily one of my fave channels on the whole UA-cam
L I C C IFICATION SQUAD
I love the idea that music teaches delayed gratification because you're so right. I've been playing for 8 years and I've just now started to become slightly satisfied with my work.. but once you start to become slightly satisfied, you hunger for more (as I do)
Your eyes suddenly look blue
One of your best videos in a while. Thank you.
Is there an upper interval limit?
No. I guess the limit would be how high your ear can hear
Zach Rowe ASKING THE REAL QUESTIONS.....
(+Zach Rowe) I know this is late, but one of the main reasons for the lower interval limit is because the frequency differences between notes is lower as you get deeper, making it to where the notes become less distinguishable. Since the upper register actually has a higher difference between pitches, then there should be no upper interval limit.
@@GogiRegion No i dont think thats true. Its because lower notes have more overtones compared to high notes
highest note you can hear and lowest note you can hear would be the limit i think
A Q&A that's CONCISE and to the point and doesn't devolve into random personal bullshit. Rare gem in today's UA-cams.
practices auditation for All Star
get all the parts down pretty well
start to audiate the guitar parts in my head
*nice*
switch to the bass so I can get that down better
a few days pass and I finally get it down really good
gets stuck in my head*
*wAIT*
when i learned to play a musical instrument, i started in elementary school. i played in the high school orchestra. so as you know your counting measures and paying attention to where you are in the piece in addition to when and what you play. what i have found is that doing this through high school has taught and conditioned me to be able to concentrate and focus on whatever i had to do no matter what i happen to be doing.
Of course I can remember the bassline to All Star!
Even if I visualize it with Shrek instead of Smash Mouth???
Ohhhhhhhh my god the answer to the second question is so satisfying. I always like so much in music is "just because it happened that way" or "it's because thats how 14th century lute players did it" but your explanation of major and minor modes is without a doubt the most sensible theory I've ever heard about music. Ever.
"The Lick" now has a grace note.
really good responses--just adding re: studying music, was talking with an airman (was teaching an amlit class on airbase) about the difficulties of adapting steppin' out for solo guitar & getting the parts to line up (he'd played trumpet, but gave it up for bball . . . & said, y'know, if i'd stayed with trumpet i probably wouldn't be here), anyway, first thing he said was "music's all about the reps, you practice long enough you'll get there" & then we both agreed that after a while, the delayed gratification process (we didn't call it that) shifts--& there's gratification in the micro-advances that makes practice worthwhile on its own. there was a connection to reading lit, but i'll spare ya that.
the fact that adam knows a lot of reggaeton amazes me
"Delayed gratification" is an interesting way of looking at it. Education is essentially about confidence. Learning that you can acquire a skill through practice and your own effort is a liberating insight that make a person float in the world.
Hey adam. You look very healthy in this video. It might just be the hairstyle, but it looks like you got new cameras and/or lights and lost some weight as well. :)
Anyway, great video, as always.
I really liked your explanation for why the Ionian and Aeolian scales are the major and minor scales how stable they are.
Time to get educated.
I feel like I see you on everywhere
It is rare to find a comment by Justin Y that doesn’t have over 500 likes
ily
Justin Y. you have good taste in UA-camrs
I see you fuckin everywhere
Thank you Adam for your videos. I learn and get to know much from them. I love that you love making them, that can be seen.
Greetings from Argentina.
Monday is my favorite day
Truth
Niko ck Yesterday I told my friends how much I love Mondays. When they looked at me funny I was just like “New Adam Neely videos”
I'm liking the new visual motif of the scraps of paper that you've been doing recently, it's very hip and fits into your style nicely
Don't the lower interval limits also depend on the instrument? I'm pretty sure I've hear low brass or male choruses sing intervals that sound too muddy on a piano.
Since the "muddiness" is caused by the overtones "clashing", it would mean that instruments with less overtones in their timbre could play these intervals lower than, say, a piano. So yeah good point !
Another example is when a guitar plays with distortion vs clean : there are a lot more overtones in the distorted signal, so it sounds "thicker" when playing chords, especially on the low register. It gives a percussive quality to the music, but it also means that certain intervals that would be harmonically pleasing when playing clean will become much more muddy with distortion.
Adam Neely, I don't know if you ever will see and read this comment, but I have something to tell you. Ive been going thru a wave of depression recently, Ive been sad, unable to sleep until 2-3AM only to go to school on a few hours of sleep, uninspired etc. Ive been watching your videos more and more everyday. I dont know why but your videos make me forget about my sorrows for however long the length of the video is. Thank you Adam Neely, God Bless.
Hey Adam do you find that your choice of bass limits you in any way? Not that there's anything wrong with a p-bass but i'd think that a bass with more features (for example Billy Sheehan's Yamaha bass) would provide for a larger tone pallet.Keep up the great videos! B A S S
Hey Adam. I was only introduced to your youtube channel about 6 months ago, but just wanted to pop in to let you know that I get excited every time one of your vids pops up in my feed and I'm very appreciated for the great work that you do. Keep it up buddy!
O dad your hair is beautiful.
Music education is a topic I've thought about for years. I always on the side of it is important in many ways like most talk about. But recently I read and interview with one of the many excellent Jazz musicians on the scene from Israel. I thought all these excellent musicians from Israel they must have good music education in the schools. We in the interview they discussed it and its the opposite they is no music education in the schools in Israel. It the student was to learn an instrument they have to get lessons outside of school. This means the student has to really want to play/write music to pursue it. Now the good thing is there is a lot of music support outside of the schools and young musicians get together more there to play work on music. I kind of see the value in that the student really has to have the drive and be self motivate to get into music, but if they are there is support from the community to guide them. So here in the US there are a few cities with music communities to help mentor young musicians, but we need to get more mentors in cities all over the US. Until the late 70's or 80's that is how music was in the US more about mentors and getting in bands and older players mentored the young. But in then teaching music became a big business and teaching codified so teach music formalized like teaching math or English.
You look different somehow...
HAAAIIIIRRR
he looks like hes getting younger..
He also got rid of that dumb goatee
He's looking fucking fine. By which I mean handsome.
He's not wearing the licc t-shirt
I always learn something new when i watch one of your videos.
B A S S
For the octave pedal question, check out the T-Rex Octavius pedal. Mix an octave up and/or down into your signal, handles chords also. What Adam said definitely applies, high octave can sound sterile and less musical so it’s best to mix it lightly.
question for the next Q&A
why western music is based on third? there is an historical reason or biological reason ?
I mean for chords construction
hi mum, i'm on a youtube video
alex santini overtones... every time we hear a note we also hear the third and fifth in its overtones
Marcelo Carvalho but you also get things like the harmonic seventh, which is literally not a note on the piano unless you explicitly modify your piano to be able to play it.
Cocky
Is it based on thirds, though? Arguably it is mostly based on 5ths and for quite some time polyphonic music in the west onyl used the perfect 5th and the ferfect 4th as the inversion (and occassionally octaves). But you can construct a chromatic scale just by going up a 5th each time and going down an octave whenever your new note would fall outside of the octave you started with. And if you do this for just 6 additional notes you get a diatonic scale (so if you started on F for instance, you'd get all the white keys on a piano). Diatonic scales have come up in a variety of cultures, probably in the same way. Thirds start showing up in western music during the renaissance, where they are treated as consonant, but the music does not use chord progressions as a main way to structure itself. That happens in the Baroque and here the construction of triads from scale notes and a notion of functional harmony starts.
Marcelo Carvalho good point, so you are saing that is a "biological" reason...maybe there is more
He looks so much younger now, the hair and the clearer skin. Love learning more about music theory Adam!
10:00 yeah. Because "La Gasolina" and "Despacito" are the same song and their author is Daddy Yankee LMAO. All reggaeton sounds the same.
It does. That's the point of it. That music has its own "rules" that one shall follow in order to write a song. It's like cueca from Chile or some other styles of music. They all sound the same, for that's the idea.
Go eat a cheeseburger and revel in your ignorance else where.
Adam I absolutely love this channel. Your content is quality affffff
I got 600 likes and wasnt featured in yiay
For audiation practice with writing - write out some small motifs, parts, and/or phrases away from the instrument. Just the basics, slurs aren't always necessary. Then grab your instrument, play what you've written. How close is it to what you have visualized? How far off is it? Try again, but not immediately, wait a few, maybe the later that day or the next. Try again. In time, I started getting closer and closer to writing my ideas only missing a note here and there by 1/2 steps usually. I now keep a notebook open at work in the kitchen all day. My new songs are now crusted in tomato juice and flour, brutal. It looks like blood at times. Metal.
cool
Did you just rekt djent as a whole?
Awesome breaking out the psych science for music! Delayed gratification is way under-appreciated in my book. I think it's how kids learn mental grit. It's kind of like a little motivational speech every time you get better at something in music
Great job with your ongoing Q&A series, Adam. Thank you!
As soon as you started talking about the bass, I just kept hearing the bass line in my head. Then the little clean arpeggio. Damn it.
The way it was explained to me in college gave a little more "justification" for what those lower interval limits are, and why.
1. The lowest note we can hear as a note is ~16ish Hz. Below that we start to hear it not as a really low pitch but as a really fast rhythm.
2. Intervals sound consonant based on their relationship (or at least proximity) to the overtone series. Each interval can be treated as (approximating) two overtones of some lower note. Thus every interval implies a base note, the pitch that has those two notes in its overtone series.
3. So the first, most basic rule is, avoid playing an interval so low that it implies a pitch lower than 16 Hz.
4. Then you can consider different instruments or instrument families. If you play an interval that implies a note lower than the lowest note that instrument can play, it might not "sound good" in that timbre. So for example, take the lowest note playable by your horn section, build the overtones series from that low note, and that gives you all your lowest interval limits when arranging for them. As a rule of thumb. If you have a decent grand piano, built the harmonic series from low A, and each of those intervals ought to be playable down to about there on the instrument.
4:58 Personally, I think this is a more satisfying explanation of "why is major happy" than your "why is major happy" video
I found it really easy to audiate the guitar on that song you did with Gear Gods... mostly because it was doing the exact same as the bass. Video was excellent and informative as always.
For your next Q&A: What's your opinion on New Complexity Music and Composers like Ferneyhough, Xenakis and Finnissy? Also, could you talk a bit about their composing techniques and how they get to write such complex music?