I know it is a lot of work and quite complex, but is there any chance you could analyse Liszt's "La Campanella"? Or if you don't want to do classical music, another Chris Cornell or Soundgarden song? Keep on rockin', though, I love your work!!!
I heard LaMonte play this piece at Dia Art Foundation in 1980 or so. Mesmerizing. Midway through I had shut my eyes to listen, and then felt someone touching my shoulder. I opened my eyes and saw a beautiful young woman looking at me with a face full of tenderness and compassion. "I'm sorry," she said. "You were snoring." "Oh, no! I'm so sorry," I said. "Don't worry," she replied. "This is my job."
I will also add my 100 units, nay, my 100 multifariousnesses in the direction of pursuing a videosimulatious display of explanatory nature regarding the piece to which this video was the rheme.
Re the septimal (or “harmonic”) 7th, with the 7:4 ratio: it’s perhaps more familiar than you suggested. It’s common in barbershop harmony when singing seventh chords, and also is the ratio used to tune the 7th scale degree on the Great Highland Bagpipe (the high G of its A mixolydian scale)-principally because all the notes on the scale from G4 to A5 have to be tuned justly to the A2 and A3 drone that they play over: the septimal minor seventh is actually more consonant than either of the greater or lesser 5-limit minor sevenths (which I presume is the historical reason for the idiosyncratic tuning). Tuning the G a septimal seventh from the root A has the interesting side effect of making septimal intervals from those two Gs of the scale to all of the other notes (which are tuned in 5-limit to A, rather then the 7-limit the Gs are tuned in). This gives the intervals with G (and only G), a rather different flavour than the rest of the diatonic intervals: septimal maj2/min7 to A, septimal thirds/sixths with the E and the B, greater/lesser septimal tritone with the C#, and a septimal chromatic semitone / aug maj7 from G to F# (which is a very narrow and rather gross interval only 85 cents wide!) Fascinating stuff! Well, to me anyways! Great video!
If you use the scale as a pentatonic scale with a couple tuning options for each note, it is a similar idea as some forms of vocal music from India. In which you have a structure to the scale and melody but there is some wiggle room as to what exact frequency each note is. It could be a little flat or sharp. Even the same note sung at different times could be a little bit off of each other, at the singer's discretion.
I also add 100 units of interest (1 year later) for a long follow-up video to this. And shoutout to Kyle Gann for being (perhaps) the greatest underappreciated composer of our time!
I noticed traditional blues and Indian classical music mentioned in the comments. La Monte Young was a disciple of Pandit Pran Nath, and has been performing Kirana style ragas for decades. He also composed "Young's Dorian Blues in G". A live version was released as "Just Stompin'--Live at the Kitchen".
Be careful when using synth piano to generate re-tuned intervals like 7/4 and 9/7. The issue is that a lot of modern sound samples have built into them noise that helps disguise beating that naturally occurs in the simple intervals in equal temperament, but that 'noise' can interfere with actually correctly tuned intervals, to make them sound worse than they should, especially when getting to non-standard intervals like 9/7. Thus, some samples are definitely better than others in this respect.
Andrew, as a non-professional musician (voice), a professional engineer, and an avid audiophile, I find that rather interesting, and have NO IDEA why they would do such a thing. Is it a parasitic of the sampling methods employed or something consciously added? It sounds just plain weird to me. Are you talking, perhaps, about dithering? If so, It seems hard to believe that the least significant bit modulation would influence much of anything. I will go look into this when I have time, but any clarification you have would be welcome. Nice to find YT vids occasionally where the discussion is above a 6th grade level. ;-)
Not all piano plugins are based on samples. Arturia's Piano v3 is quite convincing and is physically modelling the characteristics of a piano. Since you can "build" an entire piano sound from pure tones, it would seem this would eliminate any weird artificating that comes from sampling
I love the harmonic seventh. It has this crisp, somewhat crunchy, but still consonant sound you just can't get in 12. After screwing around in some microtonal scales (46 is my favorite right now) I've realized how many cool intervals we're missing in 12. And there is absolutely interest from me in analyzing the structure. Oh yeah... video idea, not that you need to listen to me it's not like I'm giving you money: The history of meantone and how we ended up with 12edo in the first place.
not even; anyone accustomed to the western tuning system will probably revolt (then again, i do have perfect pitch in the sense of identifying notes, so i can't speak for most people)
The ultimate to that statement in my experience is Jacob Collier. In one video from him I just heard, he plays a piano chord and sings the "perfect" third above it, real time, against the played chord. In another, he says 14 cents or 15 cents sharp out of the blue, picks one, looks at the S/W he's using and pumps his hand to his correct answer...now that's getting pretty close to "perfect" pitch. To the note is impressive, but that is NUTS! He's a machine. Oh yeah, he does microtonal a LOT, along with "multiple keys" at the same time, insane rhythm structure, etc. Probably not a chance you haven't heard his stuff...but if not....
Abi...That is interesting, but just guessing, I expect maybe he was speaking rigorously. I have noticed he is EXCEEDINGLY bright and chooses his wording very carefully to be accurate. There is no such thing as PERFECT anything, in reality, certainly nothing even CLOSE where our senses are concerned as measurement devices. Relative pitches, especially two pitches almost the same can be synched up by anyone that can hear correctly, you just zero the beats. I remember Dad had a catamaran with two old twin Mercury 80's on it, and he built a differential tach....discovered after using the boat the first time it was totally unneeded. ;-) It turns out pitch is one thing you can measure to an extreme degree, given that time is probably the aspect of nature we can now measure to an AMAZINGLY extreme degree, many many digits of precision (about 18 right of the decimal, I think, equates to a loss or gain of about 1 SECOND in the entire time the universe has been around)....still not perfect, but probably the gold standard, I would guess. I'm not even totally convinced that time, or the speed of light has been constant since the "big bang". The clock is atomic, based on a new element, not Cesium, don't remember which one, but you can find is easily enough if interested.
1:10 you wouldn't want your supposedly ingenious and revolutionary methodology to ever be replicated and actually catch on in the broader world, of course.
meme I think Young was more interested in spreading the idea of what the more outré end of just intonation could *do* than boosterism for a specific tuning system. Really, the system itself seems to me something of a conceptual stunt in the vein of his early, John Cage-inspired pieces, with the expression of a single idea or set of ideas being the overriding point and the extremely precise tuning specifications simply being the logical conclusion to how to best express the underlying concept. That said, Ben Johnston produced equally if not more challenging music in a similar vein and was far more transparent about the processes involved, but where Young is a conceptualist at heart, Johnston is more of a classic-issue serialist, so the thought processes are different.
I always love the tuning system videos. Also, that Eb to F# sounded like a minor third (or augmented second) to me than a whole step, but my ear is awful, so that might just be me.
It's not far off: It's 240 cents, so slightly closer to a whole-step but really it's closest to a supermajor 2nd if you want to get into quarter-tone stuff. I think if you heard it by itself it might sound more whole-steppy: Hearing it directly after the other two does make it sound wider.
You may be right about the puzzles/theory connection. I enjoy logic puzzles and know another musician, who I think likes theory, who is absolutely obsessed with puzzles! Fascinating!
The transition of the P5 to the P7 at 2:52 sounds like the intro to Minerva by the Deftones to me. It's not exactly right, I compared them, but it has almost the same feel. Then I went and looked up the well-tuned paino performance, and that is a very Deftones like sound to me. Really interesting.
This was an amazing video that I found immensely fascinating. I love how your channel has a little bit of something for everybody! Wouldn't mind more of this kind of experimental stuff at all!
Unless I'm misinformed, I feel as though the way you defined 7 limit is misleading. 7 limit means that the ratios used can be broken down into primes, of which seven is the largest. That is, the prime factorization of the numerator or the denominator (idk the technical term for each part of a ratio) would have nothing larger than seven. Conversely 3 limit would only have intervals built out of multiples of 2 and 3. Unless any of yall can correct my understanding. Also, le monte's protoge Michael Harrison wrote several pieces that use similar ideas. Revelation is quite the adventure. He focuses on embracing and using the commas (particularly the celestial comma) introduced in JI rather than avoiding them, and he creates many very interesting colors because of it.
I don't remember his exact wording but I think he and you said the same thing. He talked about stacking intervals on top of each other--in effect, multiplying primes as you'd say.
Mr. 12tone could update this a bit. I believe he refers to Young's 1987 5 LP Gramavision release, which was recorded from a 1981 performance, somewhat more than 5 hours long. But around 2000, Young came out with a DVD of a more than 6-hour performance from 1987. Having both versions at home, I favor the latter--mostly because the LP forces you to stop occasionally to flip disks, but the DVD just keeps going continuously. You definitely need a good stereo or headset for the piece, and a bit of patience--some things, especially in the "cloud" sections, reveal themselves only after repeated listening.
An hour of this piece was played on Kalw's (SF Sunday evening) Music of Other Minds on October 1st, 2023. Did you ever make the additional video? It sounded like a jazz improv backing track, So I listened to Wiki about La Mobte Young using Google read-along, text-to-speech extension.
G# is actually higher than G, but only just noticeably so (1323:1024=443.517 cents, 9:7=435.084 cents), though calling a difference of 8.433 cents "just noticeable" is sort of a fudge because human ears can notice differences far smaller than that (between 500 and 2000 Hz, it is possible, at least theoretically, to notice when the pitch interval is half a cent off what it is naturally supposed to be). But conversely, only 47-51 steps per octave are really necessary if you want to avoid hearing any interval as totally wrong.
In the video it shows that G is defined as 21:16 ("septimal narrow fourth"), which is around 470.78 cents. So G# is lower. the difference is also much more noticeable than a just-noticeable one.
Sometimes this is done to give a more complex tone but this doesn’t change the base temperament/tuning system. That said, for the most part we try and get all three bang on and pure.
From 7'39'' it is soooo difficult to understand! Loved the video at first watch, now I need to watch it some 5 more times in order to get everything, I was taking notes and even stopping the video it was too quick for this old brain.
Too lazy to google it, but there's a site, a guy did spectral analysis and there are some keys tuned out of order (a higher pitch sits to the left ot the next pitch), but it's all been mapped out. Sorry if I killed the magic.
It would be nice if you could talk about "Knocks me off my feet", from Stevie Wonder. Specifically, how to analyze that F/Eb at the very end of the song. I'm having a really hard time trying to make sense of it -- should I see the bass in Eb as a bass movement (F - Eb - D), even the Eb not being part of the scale? Also, doesn't that Eb make the chord dominant (despite not resolving)? I'm really confused...
may you hear terry riley with every keyboars in jus intonztion( excepted th first one record) andthe master piece with a bosendorffer piano ; the new album ( cd double).please
Hi. I love your videos and watched a lot of them, so don't take this wrong but 4:05 "did you hear that?" You were talking over two almost equal tones! No, I did not hear that :-) Seriously, you make awesome videos on weird tuning, but I only manage to comprehend them at an arithmetic level. Please consider repeating the tones a couple of times back and forth. I know: the pace is important and all, but that would help. Thanks and keep on rocking!!!
Ooh, I've long liked La Monte Young but had never listened to any of the Well Tuned Piano. Now I am and I like it. Thanks! If anyone is ever in New York City and likes La Monte Young style high weirdness, check out the Dream House in Tribeca. I think it is still going. It's basically a comfy loft with pillows and such where you are encouraged to lie down or whatever. Special synths connected to giant speakers blare out a never-changing drone of hundreds of sine waves in a very particular La Monte Young style tuning. It's like the engine room of an alien spaceship. The higher pitches interfere with each other in curious ways such that moving your head even slightly changes how you hear the tones. So there can be a glittery scintillation happening as you move around. I think this complex drone has been playing non-stop for decades now.
To me, the G# sounded like a quarter tone between F# and G and the A sounded like Bb. Just intonation might be useful for tuning a cello because it has only 4 strings but with 3 strings per note on the piano and 88 keys, that is just way too many notes for Just intonation to be useful. I mean if both Bb and A sounded like Bb, I definetely would not be happy. I couldn't play anything in A major because my brain would be like "Wait, that sounds more like Bb minor, not A major". So why would anyone try to use Just intonation on a piano when there are just way too many strings on a piano for Just Intonation to be possible to use and sound right? If you want to use just intonation, stick to something like a guitar or a cello, don't try to apply it to the piano.
The point of a just intonation system, though, is that you _don't_ try to change keys. You'll never play anything in Bb with this tuning: It's designed to be played in Eb. If you want to modulate, then JI systems aren't for you, but that wasn't Young's goal with this piece.
@@12tone SUPER LATE. But NO! It's true you usually can't modulate in just intonation, But since we have so many different shades of pitches we actually can. I mean it's actually pivotal to this piece that you can modulate from Eb to D. I mean that's literally the first thing that happens in the piece, the Magic Chord based over Eb modulates to the Magic chord based on D (or, I guess it would be A because that's where the Cadences resolve to) through a series of weird shenanigans. You could theoretically also modulate to C as well.
Interesting! I'm listening to the piece now and I like it. I tend to like things that are novel and different though: I know it's not for everyone. Did you make the follow-up video?
This Jacob Adler piece is in the same tuning: ua-cam.com/video/IUePyH2C9Y0/v-deo.html Michael Harrison had a Homage to La Monte: ua-cam.com/video/XYzEtCS8Fu0/v-deo.html Here's a little bit of the ending of Well Tuned Piano: ua-cam.com/video/PuEWK0OsFvQ/v-deo.html My dream is a video of the whole thing with all the chords noted. It is on the band that is camp with a 12 minute excerpt.
People: "Oh boy, what has La Mont Young composed for us?" La Mont Young: *starts banging out harmonic 7ths on a poorly tuned piano for 5 hours straight* People: (walking out of theater after performance) wtf did we just listen to
thats funny i heard someone on youtube say that anything that's been within 500 feet of a piano doesn't use just intonation and hasn't for a long time.. hey wait that was you, you said that just a few days ago!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hello. Could you help me understand the song "Walk of Life" by Dire Straits? I've been trying to create my own version using a looped keyboard, and have been unsuccessful so far. I can't seem to find an exact tempo for the song or time signature. Whenever I play my loop alongside the studio version they never line up quite right.
It might be because of the maths. 3^12 = 531441 which is very close to 524288 = 2^19. This happy coincidence is what makes 12-note equal temperament work. 7^5 = 16806 is very close to 16384 = 2^14. I guess that means you can use 10 out of the 12 notes to make two cycles of 7:4. 5^3 = 125 is quite close to 128 = 2^7. That approximation is exploited in equal temperament. The 5:4 interval is about 1% off. To find a cycle of (major thirds?) 5:4 that is as good as the other two cycles would need a lot more notes. I don't know if that is what the composer was getting at, but it seems to fit.
If you want to hear what the piece sounds like, this is the only full recording I could find: ua-cam.com/video/x07JxSmov1c/v-deo.html
Cheers man.
@@misotanniold787 cheers.
oh hey that’s my video! thanks for giving my channel some traffic, love your stuff!
I know it is a lot of work and quite complex, but is there any chance you could analyse Liszt's "La Campanella"? Or if you don't want to do classical music, another Chris Cornell or Soundgarden song? Keep on rockin', though, I love your work!!!
Well, I'm sure it's better than it sounds.
I heard LaMonte play this piece at Dia Art Foundation in 1980 or so. Mesmerizing. Midway through I had shut my eyes to listen, and then felt someone touching my shoulder. I opened my eyes and saw a beautiful young woman looking at me with a face full of tenderness and compassion. "I'm sorry," she said. "You were snoring."
"Oh, no! I'm so sorry," I said.
"Don't worry," she replied. "This is my job."
I am expressing 100 units of interest in the thing that you said needed to have enough interest for you to make a video about it.
add another 132 from me.
I will also add my 100 units, nay, my 100 multifariousnesses in the direction of pursuing a videosimulatious display of explanatory nature regarding the piece to which this video was the rheme.
WHAT HE SAID
Well that escalated quickly
same here! love videos about structure in music 8]
That G to G# took me so by suprise that I first didn't even believe my ears
Re the septimal (or “harmonic”) 7th, with the 7:4 ratio: it’s perhaps more familiar than you suggested. It’s common in barbershop harmony when singing seventh chords, and also is the ratio used to tune the 7th scale degree on the Great Highland Bagpipe (the high G of its A mixolydian scale)-principally because all the notes on the scale from G4 to A5 have to be tuned justly to the A2 and A3 drone that they play over: the septimal minor seventh is actually more consonant than either of the greater or lesser 5-limit minor sevenths (which I presume is the historical reason for the idiosyncratic tuning).
Tuning the G a septimal seventh from the root A has the interesting side effect of making septimal intervals from those two Gs of the scale to all of the other notes (which are tuned in 5-limit to A, rather then the 7-limit the Gs are tuned in). This gives the intervals with G (and only G), a rather different flavour than the rest of the diatonic intervals: septimal maj2/min7 to A, septimal thirds/sixths with the E and the B, greater/lesser septimal tritone with the C#, and a septimal chromatic semitone / aug maj7 from G to F# (which is a very narrow and rather gross interval only 85 cents wide!)
Fascinating stuff! Well, to me anyways! Great video!
Please make a video on the structure! I would love to see a full scale analysis.
If you use the scale as a pentatonic scale with a couple tuning options for each note, it is a similar idea as some forms of vocal music from India. In which you have a structure to the scale and melody but there is some wiggle room as to what exact frequency each note is. It could be a little flat or sharp. Even the same note sung at different times could be a little bit off of each other, at the singer's discretion.
I also add 100 units of interest (1 year later) for a long follow-up video to this.
And shoutout to Kyle Gann for being (perhaps) the greatest underappreciated composer of our time!
I noticed traditional blues and Indian classical music mentioned in the comments. La Monte Young was a disciple of Pandit Pran Nath, and has been performing Kirana style ragas for decades. He also composed "Young's Dorian Blues in G". A live version was released as "Just Stompin'--Live at the Kitchen".
Be careful when using synth piano to generate re-tuned intervals like 7/4 and 9/7. The issue is that a lot of modern sound samples have built into them noise that helps disguise beating that naturally occurs in the simple intervals in equal temperament, but that 'noise' can interfere with actually correctly tuned intervals, to make them sound worse than they should, especially when getting to non-standard intervals like 9/7. Thus, some samples are definitely better than others in this respect.
Andrew, as a non-professional musician (voice), a professional engineer, and an avid audiophile, I find that rather interesting, and have NO IDEA why they would do such a thing. Is it a parasitic of the sampling methods employed or something consciously added? It sounds just plain weird to me. Are you talking, perhaps, about dithering? If so, It seems hard to believe that the least significant bit modulation would influence much of anything. I will go look into this when I have time, but any clarification you have would be welcome. Nice to find YT vids occasionally where the discussion is above a 6th grade level. ;-)
Not all piano plugins are based on samples. Arturia's Piano v3 is quite convincing and is physically modelling the characteristics of a piano. Since you can "build" an entire piano sound from pure tones, it would seem this would eliminate any weird artificating that comes from sampling
I love the harmonic seventh. It has this crisp, somewhat crunchy, but still consonant sound you just can't get in 12. After screwing around in some microtonal scales (46 is my favorite right now) I've realized how many cool intervals we're missing in 12.
And there is absolutely interest from me in analyzing the structure.
Oh yeah... video idea, not that you need to listen to me it's not like I'm giving you money: The history of meantone and how we ended up with 12edo in the first place.
This is definitely a case where knowing what's going on, the meta-information, makes the content itself more interesting.
Or could you say, the grand piano mystery?
Kyle Gann just wrote a microtuning book in 2019, The Arithmetic of Listening.
Ow my perfect pitch
not even; anyone accustomed to the western tuning system will probably revolt (then again, i do have perfect pitch in the sense of identifying notes, so i can't speak for most people)
The ultimate to that statement in my experience is Jacob Collier. In one video from him I just heard, he plays a piano chord and sings the "perfect" third above it, real time, against the played chord. In another, he says 14 cents or 15 cents sharp out of the blue, picks one, looks at the S/W he's using and pumps his hand to his correct answer...now that's getting pretty close to "perfect" pitch. To the note is impressive, but that is NUTS! He's a machine. Oh yeah, he does microtonal a LOT, along with "multiple keys" at the same time, insane rhythm structure, etc. Probably not a chance you haven't heard his stuff...but if not....
@@MrJdsenior I personally asked him if he had the perfect pitch he said that he has solid relative pitch
Abi...That is interesting, but just guessing, I expect maybe he was speaking rigorously. I have noticed he is EXCEEDINGLY bright and chooses his wording very carefully to be accurate. There is no such thing as PERFECT anything, in reality, certainly nothing even CLOSE where our senses are concerned as measurement devices. Relative pitches, especially two pitches almost the same can be synched up by anyone that can hear correctly, you just zero the beats. I remember Dad had a catamaran with two old twin Mercury 80's on it, and he built a differential tach....discovered after using the boat the first time it was totally unneeded. ;-)
It turns out pitch is one thing you can measure to an extreme degree, given that time is probably the aspect of nature we can now measure to an AMAZINGLY extreme degree, many many digits of precision (about 18 right of the decimal, I think, equates to a loss or gain of about 1 SECOND in the entire time the universe has been around)....still not perfect, but probably the gold standard, I would guess. I'm not even totally convinced that time, or the speed of light has been constant since the "big bang". The clock is atomic, based on a new element, not Cesium, don't remember which one, but you can find is easily enough if interested.
made me so uncomfortable
The whole structure would be very interesting! I love the tuning system videos, such a fascinating way to explore the space of pitched sounds
1:10 you wouldn't want your supposedly ingenious and revolutionary methodology to ever be replicated and actually catch on in the broader world, of course.
Nice profile pic
f u
meme I think Young was more interested in spreading the idea of what the more outré end of just intonation could *do* than boosterism for a specific tuning system. Really, the system itself seems to me something of a conceptual stunt in the vein of his early, John Cage-inspired pieces, with the expression of a single idea or set of ideas being the overriding point and the extremely precise tuning specifications simply being the logical conclusion to how to best express the underlying concept. That said, Ben Johnston produced equally if not more challenging music in a similar vein and was far more transparent about the processes involved, but where Young is a conceptualist at heart, Johnston is more of a classic-issue serialist, so the thought processes are different.
I always love the tuning system videos. Also, that Eb to F# sounded like a minor third (or augmented second) to me than a whole step, but my ear is awful, so that might just be me.
It's not far off: It's 240 cents, so slightly closer to a whole-step but really it's closest to a supermajor 2nd if you want to get into quarter-tone stuff. I think if you heard it by itself it might sound more whole-steppy: Hearing it directly after the other two does make it sound wider.
Thumbs up for not just focusing on popular music!
Um...why???
He did it boys, he got sponsored
He should be.
Ohhh yesss!! Tuning vids!! It’s all I’ve ever wanted!!! :’D
(It’s me from twitter! Love your stuff dude ❤️)
THERE. IS. INTEREST!
i love that for every minimalist adjacent thing in music Kyle gann is ALWAYS THERE, SOMEWHERE in the plot making something very important happen
You may be right about the puzzles/theory connection. I enjoy logic puzzles and know another musician, who I think likes theory, who is absolutely obsessed with puzzles! Fascinating!
Yes. Yes. Analyze it. Do it. I'll watch and love every minute of it
"Ah look a G is written, then a G#"
*pitch goes down*
*excuse me what the fuck*
The transition of the P5 to the P7 at 2:52 sounds like the intro to Minerva by the Deftones to me. It's not exactly right, I compared them, but it has almost the same feel. Then I went and looked up the well-tuned paino performance, and that is a very Deftones like sound to me. Really interesting.
A lot of the jazzy/bluesy outside harmony translates very well to the 7-limit.
This was an amazing video that I found immensely fascinating. I love how your channel has a little bit of something for everybody! Wouldn't mind more of this kind of experimental stuff at all!
Unless I'm misinformed, I feel as though the way you defined 7 limit is misleading. 7 limit means that the ratios used can be broken down into primes, of which seven is the largest. That is, the prime factorization of the numerator or the denominator (idk the technical term for each part of a ratio) would have nothing larger than seven. Conversely 3 limit would only have intervals built out of multiples of 2 and 3. Unless any of yall can correct my understanding.
Also, le monte's protoge Michael Harrison wrote several pieces that use similar ideas. Revelation is quite the adventure. He focuses on embracing and using the commas (particularly the celestial comma) introduced in JI rather than avoiding them, and he creates many very interesting colors because of it.
I don't remember his exact wording but I think he and you said the same thing. He talked about stacking intervals on top of each other--in effect, multiplying primes as you'd say.
One of my all time favorite pieces of music
Very good video! One of my favorite pieces.
5:01
My ears are getting angry confused by these notes! x.x
Please, continue on this piece.
You brilliant, brilliant youtuber. I love this
Mr. 12tone could update this a bit. I believe he refers to Young's 1987 5 LP Gramavision release, which was recorded from a 1981 performance, somewhat more than 5 hours long. But around 2000, Young came out with a DVD of a more than 6-hour performance from 1987. Having both versions at home, I favor the latter--mostly because the LP forces you to stop occasionally to flip disks, but the DVD just keeps going continuously. You definitely need a good stereo or headset for the piece, and a bit of patience--some things, especially in the "cloud" sections, reveal themselves only after repeated listening.
An hour of this piece was played on Kalw's (SF Sunday evening) Music of Other Minds on October 1st, 2023. Did you ever make the additional video? It sounded like a jazz improv backing track, So I listened to Wiki about La Mobte Young using Google read-along, text-to-speech extension.
G# is actually higher than G, but only just noticeably so (1323:1024=443.517 cents, 9:7=435.084 cents), though calling a difference of 8.433 cents "just noticeable" is sort of a fudge because human ears can notice differences far smaller than that (between 500 and 2000 Hz, it is possible, at least theoretically, to notice when the pitch interval is half a cent off what it is naturally supposed to be). But conversely, only 47-51 steps per octave are really necessary if you want to avoid hearing any interval as totally wrong.
In the video it shows that G is defined as 21:16 ("septimal narrow fourth"), which is around 470.78 cents. So G# is lower.
the difference is also much more noticeable than a just-noticeable one.
Something I never fully understood is how a traditional piano tunes the three strings per note slightly differently. That's what I've heard anyway.
Sometimes this is done to give a more complex tone but this doesn’t change the base temperament/tuning system. That said, for the most part we try and get all three bang on and pure.
From 7'39'' it is soooo difficult to understand! Loved the video at first watch, now I need to watch it some 5 more times in order to get everything, I was taking notes and even stopping the video it was too quick for this old brain.
Too lazy to google it, but there's a site, a guy did spectral analysis and there are some keys tuned out of order (a higher pitch sits to the left ot the next pitch), but it's all been mapped out.
Sorry if I killed the magic.
I love this
super super super well-made, researched video!
1:41 and now I have La Campanella stuck in my head
Please make another video on the piece, never heard of it until now and it sounds really interesting unique.
Love the vids on more esoteric stuff like this
The Well-Tuned Piano, also known as the Weirdly-Tuned Piano.
Another video, please! There isn't enough info out there about Young's work
would love to watch the breakdown of the piece's structure
The 3:2 ratio at 2:17 instantly made me hear “One Final Effort” from halo, like instantly hear that
Man, I don't understand a word, but you are so cool! :)
So good!
It would be nice if you could talk about "Knocks me off my feet", from Stevie Wonder. Specifically, how to analyze that F/Eb at the very end of the song. I'm having a really hard time trying to make sense of it -- should I see the bass in Eb as a bass movement (F - Eb - D), even the Eb not being part of the scale? Also, doesn't that Eb make the chord dominant (despite not resolving)? I'm really confused...
Please make a follow up video on this piece!
Please make a video going over the structure of the piece
Can you do a video on Canto Ostinato by Simeon ten Holt?
Did u ever do a video about the structure? I would love to know about that, please do it!
I believe I have found my new composer moniker 'Justin Tonation'
may you hear terry riley with every keyboars in jus intonztion( excepted th first one record) andthe master piece with a bosendorffer piano ; the new album ( cd double).please
Hi.
I love your videos and watched a lot of them, so don't take this wrong but 4:05 "did you hear that?"
You were talking over two almost equal tones! No, I did not hear that :-)
Seriously, you make awesome videos on weird tuning, but I only manage to comprehend them at an arithmetic level. Please consider repeating the tones a couple of times back and forth. I know: the pace is important and all, but that would help. Thanks and keep on rocking!!!
I'm interested. Please make a video about the structure
Ooh, I've long liked La Monte Young but had never listened to any of the Well Tuned Piano. Now I am and I like it. Thanks!
If anyone is ever in New York City and likes La Monte Young style high weirdness, check out the Dream House in Tribeca. I think it is still going. It's basically a comfy loft with pillows and such where you are encouraged to lie down or whatever. Special synths connected to giant speakers blare out a never-changing drone of hundreds of sine waves in a very particular La Monte Young style tuning. It's like the engine room of an alien spaceship. The higher pitches interfere with each other in curious ways such that moving your head even slightly changes how you hear the tones. So there can be a glittery scintillation happening as you move around. I think this complex drone has been playing non-stop for decades now.
To me, the G# sounded like a quarter tone between F# and G and the A sounded like Bb. Just intonation might be useful for tuning a cello because it has only 4 strings but with 3 strings per note on the piano and 88 keys, that is just way too many notes for Just intonation to be useful. I mean if both Bb and A sounded like Bb, I definetely would not be happy. I couldn't play anything in A major because my brain would be like "Wait, that sounds more like Bb minor, not A major". So why would anyone try to use Just intonation on a piano when there are just way too many strings on a piano for Just Intonation to be possible to use and sound right? If you want to use just intonation, stick to something like a guitar or a cello, don't try to apply it to the piano.
The point of a just intonation system, though, is that you _don't_ try to change keys. You'll never play anything in Bb with this tuning: It's designed to be played in Eb. If you want to modulate, then JI systems aren't for you, but that wasn't Young's goal with this piece.
@@12tone SUPER LATE. But NO! It's true you usually can't modulate in just intonation, But since we have so many different shades of pitches we actually can. I mean it's actually pivotal to this piece that you can modulate from Eb to D. I mean that's literally the first thing that happens in the piece, the Magic Chord based over Eb modulates to the Magic chord based on D (or, I guess it would be A because that's where the Cadences resolve to) through a series of weird shenanigans. You could theoretically also modulate to C as well.
ABSOLUTELY AMAZING CHANNEL, KEEP GOING!
Please continue!
yes pleeassse do a video on the structure!
That G# sounds like a G that's getting out of tune in the middle of the note. I think Goron City from BotW might have been inspired by it.
Interesting! I'm listening to the piece now and I like it. I tend to like things that are novel and different though: I know it's not for everyone. Did you make the follow-up video?
MORE! sympathetic strings
This Jacob Adler piece is in the same tuning: ua-cam.com/video/IUePyH2C9Y0/v-deo.html Michael Harrison had a Homage to La Monte: ua-cam.com/video/XYzEtCS8Fu0/v-deo.html Here's a little bit of the ending of Well Tuned Piano: ua-cam.com/video/PuEWK0OsFvQ/v-deo.html My dream is a video of the whole thing with all the chords noted. It is on the band that is camp with a 12 minute excerpt.
Holy wow, Batman. Now I have to hear this piece.
i had to check at least 3 times if the playback speed for this video was the normal one... brilliant explanation though :)
LaMonte is my great uncle on my moms side. Fun to read some of the comments
I'm so used to the standard tuning that it all just sounds detuned to me
Same here.
I"m in the process of teaching myself cello, so it all sounds incredibly consonant to me.
It sounds detuned but smooth and clear to me, and I like that effect.
Kyle gann is a god
Are there similar demonstrative pieces that composers created to show off new notation systems or instruments?
Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier
Yeah, I'd like to know about the structure of the composition.
How do you play the quarter tones? Do you use a micro tonal piano or software of some sort?
I use Reason and then automate the pitch bends.
Thanks you
You can use Scala or any software synth that takes tuning files in .scl or .tun format.
People: "Oh boy, what has La Mont Young composed for us?"
La Mont Young: *starts banging out harmonic 7ths on a poorly tuned piano for 5 hours straight*
People: (walking out of theater after performance) wtf did we just listen to
My God, talk about a wolf interval...
4:35 ... Robocop/Terminator Elephants ... crime rates would plummet!
Please tell me I haven’t been mispronouncing “Clavier” my entire life.
1:43 Did anyone else hear La Campanella?
Someone else think it sounds like a piano with bells?
I got to 2:21 before completely losing you x No idea what you're talking about in this one buddy x I'm sure it's great though!
i just looked at the screen for 8 minutes understanding nothing
Hm interesting. I wonder if I can tune my old E Piano to that.
@@misotanniold787 sorry my flat isn't big enough for such a piano.
@@misotanniold787 sharp observation
thats funny i heard someone on youtube say that anything that's been within 500 feet of a piano doesn't use just intonation and hasn't for a long time.. hey wait that was you, you said that just a few days ago!!!!!!!!!!!!
want to know Euler-Fokker genus
Do you speed up your speech at the end? :D
You mean in the outro? Nah I just try to talk as fast as I can for fun 'cause I assume no one's watching at that point anyway.
I am neither a music major, not (really) a piano player... but wouldn't learning how to play this break you for playing, y'know, normal piano?
my brain
Why do you call Bach "Back"? The "ch" sounds like the h in "heart" or "hello".
No, it doesn't.
It doesn't sound anything like that
Yes it does, it's pronounced like this: ua-cam.com/video/XAmHbH0Ew0I/v-deo.html
Yes, that is how 'Bach' is pronounced.
Hello is not pronounced with that sound.
Well, it's still way closer than "Back" :D
No it isn't.
That's even *further* away
No-one pronounces 'Bach' with the same 'H' sound from 'heart' or 'hello'
I don't think there's any evidence to suggest Bach wrote Das Wohltemperierte Klavier specifically to advocate well temperament.
wow.
my pitch pipe is having a strok
Hello. Could you help me understand the song "Walk of Life" by Dire Straits? I've been trying to create my own version using a looped keyboard, and have been unsuccessful so far. I can't seem to find an exact tempo for the song or time signature. Whenever I play my loop alongside the studio version they never line up quite right.
At what point does something shift from musical experimentation to just fucking about?
Nice :-)
i dont get it
Why would you leave out 5:4? That's a really simple one, if you were going off mathematical ratio
It might be because of the maths.
3^12 = 531441 which is very close to 524288 = 2^19. This happy coincidence is what makes 12-note equal temperament work.
7^5 = 16806 is very close to 16384 = 2^14. I guess that means you can use 10 out of the 12 notes to make two cycles of 7:4.
5^3 = 125 is quite close to 128 = 2^7. That approximation is exploited in equal temperament. The 5:4 interval is about 1% off.
To find a cycle of (major thirds?) 5:4 that is as good as the other two cycles would need a lot more notes.
I don't know if that is what the composer was getting at, but it seems to fit.
Thirds aren't bluesy enough! Too happy sounding.