This is an outstanding technical breakdown of the genre, thinking it’d be a safe bet to say the best out there. Incredibly coherent and to the point, killing it Trevor.
Dude, you should be teaching in UC Berkley with such a knack for quality instruction. As a Maths teacher and guitar enthusiast, I fully appreciate this on all levels. Well done!
@@jery3385 Amazing that you're asking. It's a custom made Bassline Bass, the series is called re:belle. bassline-bass.de/ Did an internship during school 25 years ago there, built my own bass during my diploma thesis there and bought two basses (this re:belle extra long scale and a Black Buster six-string). Needless to say I'm obsessed and guarantee 100% quality and personal support 😁.
you are so unbelievably intelligent, talented and articulate. you speak theory related to mathrock with a musical verbiage, specificity, and finesse. while most people just tap around on the fret board and remember hand shapes. id love to take lessons with you
Trevor, you're awesome. Anyone that has an intermediate music theory knowledge can learn a lot from your videos. Thanks a lot for everything you post!!!
Awesome! I'm hoping to definitely make more videos on math rock and emo harmony. If you're looking for more stuff though, I'd recommend some of my analysis videos on American Football and Tiny Moving parts. There are quite a lot of songwriting / compositional tricks to be mined just from those two groups. Cheers!
Interesting point. I was just watching a video of Yvette Young (of Covet) who mentioned really liking baroque music. I wonder if that's part of the appeal for her, and if her background there is part of what has made her so successful with mathrock.
Music is def a language. Every genre & style has its own vernacular, but don't let anybody tell you to not use (or stray away from) dominant, diminished, or whatever chords. Putting limits on certain things can build creative solutions & broaden your mind, but some "rules" are nonsense.
One thing I feel like I’ve wrapped my head around is that I feel like the dominant or fifth voicing, is used as a transitional voicing in either a note or chord sense. Maybe even that the root can be semi-transitional in use of arpegaatted emo/mathrock melodies.
Oh for sure it can. Avoiding the dominant is just a general observation in this style, but by no means does that make the dominant chord a bad thing. Personally, I think it's really useful and can be used tastefully, even in this kind of music.
Great video. When you say build progressions off the IV, you still mean use a harmonised major scale, right? So in C you'd still draw from a palette of C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am? If so, do you mean IV is more the home chord/is emphasised rather than the I?
thank u so much for ur videos! i don't know music theory at all, and can only read/write tabs and not scores. this is motivating me to learn more on music theory :')
Can someone explain building a chord progression off other scale degrees? If I were to build off of F in the key of C would I want to be in F lydian? I'm new to this so bear with me haha.
I was sort of hinting at this with my own question, so I'll wait for Trevor's official response. But from own my knowledge of modal jazz, it would take much more than a few chord order changes to "break" our ears out of its default setting - major key harmony. To make us truly accept F Lydian as the tonal center, we'd have to heavily feature the #4 on a majority of chords, and not just on one chord (ii) as he did. That's why the key center is still in C major. However, by using the IV as the starting point (and by avoiding the G7), the tonal center gets "blurred" a bit - I wouldn't go so far as to say that it changed completely - which I suspect to be a desired effect for the genre.
This is exactly the concept that I’m having trouble understanding. I get that we need the #4 sound to be accented to really sound Lydian, but I’m unsure how to tonicize the 4 chord instead of the 1 in major harmony.
Glad I'm not alone. :P I was wondering the exact same thing. "C Ionian, but tonicize F" sounds like the definition of F Lydian, but maybe I'm missing something. I think what Trevor is intending to say is that if you hover around F a lot, but still treat it as a subdominant chord gravitating toward C, and all the other chords maintain the function they serve in C Ionian, you will maintain the C Ionian feel but with a lot of tension since you rarely resolve to the actual tonic. On the other hand, if you are truly playing in F Lydian, F serves as a tonic and feels resolved while C is a very tense dominant chord, which defeats the purpose of what he is suggesting. I'm just getting hung up on the word "tonicize," though, since hovering around an F that resolves to a C is still letting C be the tonic. Gotta admit, I'm just now dipping my toe into Math Rock, and I haven't listened to it much yet, so maybe some close listening to what the well known groups are doing will answer the question for me, but I'd also love a follow up from Trevor on this, nitpicky as it may be.
This is so nice. Though I do struggle a bit here. I only am familiar with playing open chords and Major/Minor Barchords. I am familiar with music theory so it's not a problem to understand what u say though I can not make it translate to my guitar playing as I don't know where to f´ing start. Any suggestions?
Great video, thanks for presenting this nice analysis of the genre! About point #5, if you base your song off the IV, doesn't that make the mode actually Lydian instead of Ionian?
5:28, when mentioning the types of intervals to play, is this meaning chord intervals/movements? E.g major and minor 3rds and perfect intervals, is this relating to chord movements to use?
Hey man, when u said we should start on the 4th degree of the parent key, say C, the notes stays all natural right? It's just that we start with F right?
Great videos as always Trevor! Is there a video where you demo the final concept you mentioned? I think i didnt understand it. Key of c and building over F thingie :p
so if we're in c major, this means that we're starting mostly from chords derived from that scale (c major, d minor, e minor, f major, going on) to use in our progression. generally speaking, the tonic chord c major feels the most "at home" and is where your chord progression tends to settle. what's trevor's saying to do is to think of f major as your home instead, and build progressions that are chosen based on their relationship to f major instead of c major. . something that may be helpful is to try this on a piano. c major is all white keys, so an easy thing to do is play triads on white keys with your left hand. these will all be derived from C. also using only white keys, explore melody with your right hand. try to improvise - with these limitations its like playing "heart and soul" - impossible to go wrong. be emo with it, and try to keep coming back to F. you might find that eventually coming back to F feels natural. using the piano helps because limiting yourself to white keys helps you visualize and interact with concepts that sometimes can seem obtuse or overwhelming on a guitar neck, so i highly suggest trying it, just for fun.
considering how it takes melodies built around tonicizing the IVmajor of the key then you could also build melodies using the lydian mode which i’m sure could sound cool!
Honestly it usually ends up sounding too spicy. Math rock is really mostly diatonic with some grace notes. Leaning into modes kind of loses the math rock sound. Instead you'll see a lot interesting inversions for bass leading emphasizing the 4 chord. I remember trevor did a video on this as well idk if it got taken down.
What's the tune that plays during the TTNG transcription? Also, awesome video. It's helped me a whole bunch and I only watched it for the first time a week ago.
I’m fairly new to learning music theory but guitar has been my main instrument as a self taught player. When talking about chord progressions you used an example of building off of the IV chord in the key of C, which is F. In the numeric system is it as simple as C (I) D (ii) E (iii) F (IV)?
Math rock is slowly evolving back into jazz.
Everything eventually returns to where it came from, just a little bit different than when it left
Emo jazz the best jazz
paging monobody
literally though! like origami angel
@@AlbinoTuxedoy
Did i understand ? Nope
Did i watch it till the end pretending i'm understand? Hell yes
I felt the same watching Adam neely videos a year or two ago. I've learnt so much in that time just from casually watching youtube
Same. I wish i knew scaling
@@nylro8953 get learning . . .achieve you wish . . .
Yuuppp🤣🤣
Jeez I’m a beginner and I wanna know basic music theory for math rock but Idk where to start or how to understand what they be talking about
Lol. This dude explained math rock with the prowess of an Ivy League professor.
dude I no lie grabbed my music notebook and started taking notes like I'm in a class. this is exceptional information delivery.
@@eddieo6886 tru, manz is epic
I like the way you describbed his way of explaining math rock lol.
heheh, he’s great
this guy looks how midwest emo sounds
now that's a compliment
asian?
@@saturatedneowax shut up bro honestly
@@saturatedneowax every asian nerd know how to play midwest, thats the fact
@@tylord. lol wtf
The Bob Ross of guitar, you're my ASMR fix
hahaha that's great. I'll definitely take that! Cheers Nico!
😂
“This ain’t a scene, it’s an arms race (to find new voicings)” -Trevor Wong, basically
Lol!
This is an outstanding technical breakdown of the genre, thinking it’d be a safe bet to say the best out there. Incredibly coherent and to the point, killing it Trevor.
Articulate, thorough, intelligible, and structured.
This video is incredibly helpful to a beginner, like myself.
Thank you so much, Trevor.
Dude, you should be teaching in UC Berkley with such a knack for quality instruction. As a Maths teacher and guitar enthusiast, I fully appreciate this on all levels. Well done!
Love that warm tone of your Fender 🥰.
Hey, question dude, what's the bass in your pfp, looks sick.
@@jery3385 Amazing that you're asking. It's a custom made Bassline Bass, the series is called re:belle. bassline-bass.de/
Did an internship during school 25 years ago there, built my own bass during my diploma thesis there and bought two basses (this re:belle extra long scale and a Black Buster six-string). Needless to say I'm obsessed and guarantee 100% quality and personal support 😁.
@@quietri0t sick
This is a ridiculously good explanation of a difficult and opaque subject.
you are so unbelievably intelligent, talented and articulate. you speak theory related to mathrock with a musical verbiage, specificity, and finesse. while most people just tap around on the fret board and remember hand shapes.
id love to take lessons with you
Trevor, you're awesome. Anyone that has an intermediate music theory knowledge can learn a lot from your videos. Thanks a lot for everything you post!!!
Thank you for this, I hope you keep making videos on harmony as I find them really helpful in my songwriting
Awesome! I'm hoping to definitely make more videos on math rock and emo harmony. If you're looking for more stuff though, I'd recommend some of my analysis videos on American Football and Tiny Moving parts. There are quite a lot of songwriting / compositional tricks to be mined just from those two groups. Cheers!
Dude is the most humble guitar god 🙌🏼
Baroque music also has alot of these large leaps. Though more represented as counterpoint rather than horizontal harmony.
Interesting point. I was just watching a video of Yvette Young (of Covet) who mentioned really liking baroque music. I wonder if that's part of the appeal for her, and if her background there is part of what has made her so successful with mathrock.
i love that the chon riff you chose is the song that introduced me to the genre, and my favorite chon song lmao
dude idk if utr gonna ses this but just 2 mins in and i got inspo from u playin and ended up jammin for like 30 mins
Your chord knowledge is truly amazing.
Feels like I just took a free college class on math rock, awesome video!
great video. i know so little music theory but this was totally easy to digest you break everything down so simply this was fantastic
Thank you for this, Trevor
I'm not hugely into math rock but I still find your videos to be the most helpful.
Awesome! That's great as I also want my stuff to be applicable to a general music audience
Same for me. I try to move more to a Dream Rock / Shoegaze sound and so much of the videos are still really useful. For example the Harmony
I just wanted to say that the like to dislike ratio on this video makes me incredibly happy. Also thank you for the tutorial.
Man what a beautiful tone ❤️
Love this work, thanks a lot for the clear explanation. Will delve deeper into your chanel.
First video I've seen by you amazing stuff man
opening up that emoath hole wide enough now I'm getting tutorials. I love this
i line where this is going
Thank you for this explanation. Concise and complete.
Nice Trevor!!!!
Your teaching is great! I play in a math band and am teaching, and I can tell you this is super well rehearsed, concise and to the point. Love it.
Brilliant video. Thank u!!!
Thanks for the video, Trevor
No problem, glad you enjoy it!
Trevor is my hero
Thank you for making your channel
Honestly this was a very helpful video I’ve been wanting to get into Math rock but didn’t know the style well enough thanks!
Helps immensely
Good shit as always my dude. Keep it up
Thanks Jonathan!
Ive been looking for this! Hopefully i'll understand it lol
These vids are great mate love it
This man has the personality of a textbook
youre good at this, and i thank you
11:48
Look at that person just stomping through the puddles in the background lmao
great explanation as always, thanks man
Music is def a language. Every genre & style has its own vernacular, but don't let anybody tell you to not use (or stray away from) dominant, diminished, or whatever chords. Putting limits on certain things can build creative solutions & broaden your mind, but some "rules" are nonsense.
Some seriously good educational material here. Really refreshing in the general pool of youtube education. Subscribed!!!
amazing video
awesome video, thank you!
This is an amazing video thank you
this was very informative! thank you!
This was great! thank you!
This entire video went right over my head... but I enjoyed every second anyways.
thank you so much for making this informative video. 🖤
god your tone is phenomenal
This is great. Fantastic seeing an in-depth theory analysis of a niche genre’s harmony! Please keep it up!
Awesome video Trevor thank you. Is the photo at the end Spanish banks?
Thank you for the video! Very informative and entertaining:)
One thing I feel like I’ve wrapped my head around is that I feel like the dominant or fifth voicing, is used as a transitional voicing in either a note or chord sense. Maybe even that the root can be semi-transitional in use of arpegaatted emo/mathrock melodies.
Oh for sure it can. Avoiding the dominant is just a general observation in this style, but by no means does that make the dominant chord a bad thing. Personally, I think it's really useful and can be used tastefully, even in this kind of music.
Great video. When you say build progressions off the IV, you still mean use a harmonised major scale, right? So in C you'd still draw from a palette of C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am? If so, do you mean IV is more the home chord/is emphasised rather than the I?
Idk bout yall but that minor 9 chord he played around the 2:49 mark was just serotonin
Wow finally everything is much clearer!
great vid
This is cool.
In some way, it's very similar to Modal Music, avoiding any way of Dominant or Tensions.
thank u so much for ur videos! i don't know music theory at all, and can only read/write tabs and not scores. this is motivating me to learn more on music theory :')
See the thing is I’d like to play music like this but I’m not sure how to get started. I already learned majors and minors
Can someone explain building a chord progression off other scale degrees? If I were to build off of F in the key of C would I want to be in F lydian? I'm new to this so bear with me haha.
I was sort of hinting at this with my own question, so I'll wait for Trevor's official response. But from own my knowledge of modal jazz, it would take much more than a few chord order changes to "break" our ears out of its default setting - major key harmony. To make us truly accept F Lydian as the tonal center, we'd have to heavily feature the #4 on a majority of chords, and not just on one chord (ii) as he did. That's why the key center is still in C major. However, by using the IV as the starting point (and by avoiding the G7), the tonal center gets "blurred" a bit - I wouldn't go so far as to say that it changed completely - which I suspect to be a desired effect for the genre.
This is exactly the concept that I’m having trouble understanding. I get that we need the #4 sound to be accented to really sound Lydian, but I’m unsure how to tonicize the 4 chord instead of the 1 in major harmony.
Glad I'm not alone. :P I was wondering the exact same thing. "C Ionian, but tonicize F" sounds like the definition of F Lydian, but maybe I'm missing something. I think what Trevor is intending to say is that if you hover around F a lot, but still treat it as a subdominant chord gravitating toward C, and all the other chords maintain the function they serve in C Ionian, you will maintain the C Ionian feel but with a lot of tension since you rarely resolve to the actual tonic. On the other hand, if you are truly playing in F Lydian, F serves as a tonic and feels resolved while C is a very tense dominant chord, which defeats the purpose of what he is suggesting. I'm just getting hung up on the word "tonicize," though, since hovering around an F that resolves to a C is still letting C be the tonic.
Gotta admit, I'm just now dipping my toe into Math Rock, and I haven't listened to it much yet, so maybe some close listening to what the well known groups are doing will answer the question for me, but I'd also love a follow up from Trevor on this, nitpicky as it may be.
@@302_Dave Use the chords of c major but try to resolve it to F. Use slash chords with F in the bass.
I don't know how to play guitar but I liked this
What's the title of the background music played from 1:58 to 2:07? The guitars sound yummy.
This was so amazing!!!!
Thank you for this. And thank you for being groovy
Dope stuff. Do you have a video on the Harmonized Scale? That'd help a lot with showing how to choose your chords.
10:11 could you please elucidate on how to build progressions off of F? I’m really new😭
Watching this guy makes me realise I don't know how to play guitar...I just know how to read tabs
"stay away from these chords you've never heard of and know nothing about". I'll try my best 👍🏼
broo that tone is soooo shimmery. whats your effects chain? post and pre am;p
This is so nice. Though I do struggle a bit here. I only am familiar with playing open chords and Major/Minor Barchords. I am familiar with music theory so it's not a problem to understand what u say though I can not make it translate to my guitar playing as I don't know where to f´ing start. Any suggestions?
you should first try to learn math rock riffs
@@paradiis_ Any suggestions on ´beginner´friendly riffs to choose from?
This guy is serious
Great video, thanks for presenting this nice analysis of the genre!
About point #5, if you base your song off the IV, doesn't that make the mode actually Lydian instead of Ionian?
great tone
Thought at first the title said Meth Rock. i kinda want that now
Trevor is the Adam Neely of midwest emo.
5:28, when mentioning the types of intervals to play, is this meaning chord intervals/movements? E.g major and minor 3rds and perfect intervals, is this relating to chord movements to use?
What do you mean when you say build your chord progressions off of the 4?
Hey man, when u said we should start on the 4th degree of the parent key, say C, the notes stays all natural right? It's just that we start with F right?
Is there a “For Dummies” version of this?
Cheers
Honestly I'm gonna be using dominant and diminished chords in my emo progressions
Great videos as always Trevor! Is there a video where you demo the final concept you mentioned? I think i didnt understand it. Key of c and building over F thingie :p
so if we're in c major, this means that we're starting mostly from chords derived from that scale (c major, d minor, e minor, f major, going on) to use in our progression. generally speaking, the tonic chord c major feels the most "at home" and is where your chord progression tends to settle. what's trevor's saying to do is to think of f major as your home instead, and build progressions that are chosen based on their relationship to f major instead of c major. .
something that may be helpful is to try this on a piano. c major is all white keys, so an easy thing to do is play triads on white keys with your left hand. these will all be derived from C. also using only white keys, explore melody with your right hand. try to improvise - with these limitations its like playing "heart and soul" - impossible to go wrong. be emo with it, and try to keep coming back to F. you might find that eventually coming back to F feels natural. using the piano helps because limiting yourself to white keys helps you visualize and interact with concepts that sometimes can seem obtuse or overwhelming on a guitar neck, so i highly suggest trying it, just for fun.
10:52 to 10:57 is one of those math rock leaps he was talking about but instead of chord tones my guy leaped time lines XD
considering how it takes melodies built around tonicizing the IVmajor of the key then you could also build melodies using the lydian mode which i’m sure could sound cool!
Honestly it usually ends up sounding too spicy. Math rock is really mostly diatonic with some grace notes. Leaning into modes kind of loses the math rock sound. Instead you'll see a lot interesting inversions for bass leading emphasizing the 4 chord. I remember trevor did a video on this as well idk if it got taken down.
@@Isaiah_McIntosh ooh okay thanks.
Improvisation and phrasing on melodic Rock please
Will you reupload the DADF#AE vid? That one was super useful
Yes! I just need to perform some minor surgery on it!
is that beach at the end of the video Spanish banks ? Or in Vancouver
What's the tune that plays during the TTNG transcription? Also, awesome video. It's helped me a whole bunch and I only watched it for the first time a week ago.
I’m fairly new to learning music theory but guitar has been my main instrument as a self taught player. When talking about chord progressions you used an example of building off of the IV chord in the key of C, which is F. In the numeric system is it as simple as C (I) D (ii) E (iii) F (IV)?
in the key of C yeah
That's about right, yes. Old-fashioned scale degrees.
Also if you didn't pick it up, capital numerals mean major, and lowercase mean minor
@@bcan5512 I did not quite notice until you mentioned it. Thanks!
@@cyandell3 it's useful because in a major key, the I IV and V will always be major, and the ii iii iv will always be minor! The bvii is diminished
What tuning is it set in? Also any tips for ear training?
can you teach scales that use in math rock?
😲 what's a great vid!
What guitars would you reccomend for Japanese maths rock?
It should have one or more strings
A pickup a neck... Also should be able to be tuned have fun!
@@kommunismusarbeiterjonny waiting for the laugh track...oh will you look at that I don't hear shit
i like it
Thanks Conor!