"Nobody is dying if you make a mistake" - one of my piano teachers said to me: "Imaging that you're playing at a bar and if you're making a mistake someone will choke"
Thats horrendous advice to be entirely honest it will just make you more nervous and pressured, you should read the book effortless mastery which talks about how to enter a stress-free mindset while playing and how much that will allow you to play better
Adam Neely: Musicians who stay here and are able to survive the grind are just absolutely incredible! *Picture of Obama giving Obama a medal* Edit: I fixed the quote so that it was actually correct.
The fact that the perfect 4th isn't in the harmonic series doesn't hold much water. There isn't a minor 3rd or any kind of 6th either (until you get really high up the series). Yet we consider 3rd and 6ths to be imperfect consonances. In medieval times the perfect 4th was considered highly consonant which maybe implies that it's a learnt thing rather than something intrinsic derived from the harmonic series. David Huron in his book Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation considers there to be 2 different phenomena that are both referred to as dissonant. One is the "discomfort" experienced when hearing a dissonant interval. The other the is the feeling of yearning or tension like when a perfect 4th wants to resolve to a major 3rd. The first is a static dissonance the second a dynamic dissonance. As another example I don't hear a major 7th as wanting to resolve anywhere in particular. It's just statically dissonant. I think you are getting close to this thinking when you say that dissonance is more complex than just ratios. I think, though, that when therorists say that the perfect 4th is dissonant they just mean that it is treated as a dissonance with respect to voice leading "rules". If you tried to treat it as a perfect interval you'd hardly be able to write anything (parallel and direct 4ths not allowed).
Yeah, I mean there's the 3rd harmonic and the 4th harmonic and together they produce a perfect fourth. Right after an octave and a perfect fifth. Starting from 100 hz and going up 200, 300, 400 100/200 = Octave 200/300 = Fifth 300/400 = Fourth
@@mikabjorklund3678 Yes, it doesn't exist with respect to the root but the two notes do have a lot of coincident overtones which is probably what is really important.
in terms of sheet music vs. performers definitely the scariest experience i ever had was page turning for a baroque HIP dude's performance of the royal offering. 6 staves of fugal voices with no articulation or dynamics or anything on them. dude turned a whole note into like 25 notes and i got lost instantly
A couple if ways to teach yourself to push through a mistake on stage: 1.) Play along with records - you can use this technique to set up a performance-like scenario in your mind, but in a low risk setting, like your bedroom. Tell yourself before you start, "no stopping." Then don't stop, regardless of how bad the mistake you might make because nobody's hearing it. Do this a lot. Get into it. Really pretend you're on stage with whatever act you're playing along with. 2. Record every practice and every performance you can - this way, you don't have to critique yourself while you're playing. You can let that go. Train yourself to only criticise on playback. Another reason this is useful is while you're playing, you have no idea what's actually coming across to an audience. You can't physically play and listen with an objective ear at the same time. With a recording of your practice sessions and performances, you have a chance to experience what you did more like the audience. Also, you can listen for what you like, what you don't like, and what you need to tighten up. Also, also, most of the time, you feel your mistakes way more than anyone in the crowd notices them. Upon playback, you're more likely to discover that what seemed like a horrible mistake at the time really wasn't that bad. Hopefully this is helpful. It helped me. Adam is right, too. Perform a lot. Live performance is like any other skill. You gotta practice. I'm saying this on the other side of more than 1000 live performances.
For the next Q&A: Whatever happened to the practice of leaving in little (or not so little) mistakes/"happy accidents" in popular music? For example; Sting sitting on a piano and laughing at the beginning of Roxanne, Paul McCartney saying "Fucking Hell" in the middle of Hey Jude, or the false piano start at the beginning of Bob Seger's Old Time Rock and Roll. Do you believe these mistakes add amusing character to the songs, or are they more of a nuisance for producers and audio engineers?
Or the fluffed chord change in Jean Genie? Maybe they just thought it was funny to leave it in? Maybe the rest of the take was great, and they had to finish soon? Maybe they just didn't care? Maybe all of the above?
Maybe this isn't so recent but I know that some of The Veronicas' songs have some of these mistakes in their studio album recordings. I have heard from other people that producers and sound engineers are pressured to have the recordings be polished much more than they used to be. This was referring to vocals and pitch correction but I would imagine it would also apply to these kinds of small mistakes too.
The perfect fourth absolutely is part of the harmonic series: it is the distance from the 3rd to 4th harmonic. Do not be confused by intervals on the harmonic series and intervals octave-compressed relative to the harmonic root to form scales, which forces the denominator to be a power of 2.
Actually the second inversion of a major/minor triads is the proof that 4ths can be consonant. Also the 4th resulting from the doubling of a triad's root in root position. All intervals in a major or minor triads are consonant, and yes, power chords too as in Smoke on the water.
15:19 - a long time ago, I had a girlfriend who was an excellent musician, and loved Jacqueline Du Pre’s performance of Haydn’s C-major ’cello concerto. My impression was that, yes, it’s a very inspiring and gorgeous performance, but probably not what Haydn was imagining. But, _within reason_ , there’s nothing wrong with a performance outside of the composer’s expectations, as long as you acknowledge that, in this example, “I’ve chosen to interpret this in the style of Brahms or Schumann.”
Are we going to ignore the fact that Andy Rehfeldt (7:33) commented on an Adam Neely video? Am I the only one who got really excited about it? He makes such amazing videos
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand the minor ii-V-i. The progression is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of melodic minor modes most of this harmonic movement will go over a typical listeners head. There’s also the b9 on the V chord which is deftly woven into its subjective audio qualities - this personal philosophy draws heavily from Mark Levine literature, for instance. Bill Evans fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of this harmonic movement, to realise that it’s not just a spooky progression - it says something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who prefer major ii-V-I truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn’t appreciate, for instance, the b5 on the iim7b5 chord, which itself is a cryptic reference to Joseph Kosma’s Autumn Leaves. I’m smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as the minor ii-V-i genius unfolds in their cognitive aural perception. What fools.. how I pity them. 😂 And yes, by the way, i DO have a Blue Bossa tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It’s for the ladies’ eyes only- and even then they have to demonstrate that they’re within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand.
tritone (sqrt(2)/1) is theoretically one of the most dissonant intervals (even slightly worse would be a golden ratio interval), being as far from simple ratios as possible. the simplest ratio that is closer than 5 cent is 17/12 (3 cent off). the easier 7/5 is already 17cents off... so the tritone by itself is quite dissonant, and almost everyone will agree on that :-)
I would like to point out that in the natural harmonic series, a perfect fourth does occur naturally: it is the interval between the third and fourth harmonics for a note. For instance, the interval between F3 and Bb3 on trombone is a perfect fourth, with the latter being played in the same position but one harmonic higher.
This is a fantastic explanation of how intervals work within the context of when it occurs. I studied Music Theory at The University of Memphis (Memphis State back then) & we used the John Baur text. I appreciate your videos because the force me to recall the things I had learned in the past.
For the next Q & A: I’ve slowly become a big fan of your content. It makes me happy to see so many musicians absorbing so much good information. I’d like to ask if you could put together a list of music books that you would recommend for all of us. Bass!
What he means is say in the Bb harmonic series, the fourth fron that is Eb. But that not doesnt occur. Bb, Bb, F, Bb, D, F, Ab, Bb etc. A fourth from the fundamental doesnt show up
The harmonic series has no perfect 4ths of the fundamental is what he means. Yes, there are overtones that are a perfect 4th from each other, but never the fundamental.
@@bigchiefbc but by that logic, neither does the perfect fifth or the major third occur in the overtone series. No harmonic will have a frequency 1.5 (3/2) times the fundamental, just like no harmonic will have a frequency that is 1.333... (4/3) times the fundamental. The 1st harmonic is unison, the 2nd harmonic is an octave, the 3rd harmonic is an octave + a fifth, the 4th harmonic is an octave + a fifth + a fourth, the 5th harmonic is an octave + a fifth + a fourth + a major third, and so on. I think Adam is wrong with his reasoning here, although I agree with the conclusion that it can vary based on context. Consonance is more complicated than just ratios of frequencies. There's culture, the timbre of specific instruments, effects like guitar distortion, and other things that contribute to consonance and dissonance. In the case of a distorted guitar for example, (imo) a fourth is more consonant than a major third, despite it feeling the other way around on a clean piano. I think this is probably because when it comes to distortion on guitar, the simple ratios are much more important than anything else. A heavily distorted major third sounds very messy compared to a fifth, a fourth, or an octave.
@@Henry-fv3bc I think that he is correct if you factor in octave equivalence. The third harmonic is a perfect 12th above the fundamental which is a perfect fifth above the octave, so in that sense if the fundamental is a C you do have an interval between a C and G, just not the fundamental C. The same is true for any interval of the form X:2^n, which includes the major third. It does not include the fourth.
Thank you for finally introducing the kitty! Occasionally, you'll be talking about things like harmonic intervals blah blah western notation blah blah, and I'm just watching the kitty chew on his toenails on the couch behind you. :-) Also, regarding recovering from mistakes, I'm reminded of my all-time favorite classical conductor Michael Morgan: "It's just music. No one will die if we stopped in the middle."
Maxi Frini - Let me give you the advice my beginner band teacher told me. (If I'm remembering it even now then it was solid advice.) Mr. Kenner told us "play it wrong, play it strong". Of course there are exceptions to the saying but the premise is basically don't let people know/see that you just messed up. Only those that know the piece/your part might notice it. The other part to this is to not visually indicate you just messed up. I had piano lessons back in the day and I would visibly get upset and the teacher and my mom (a violinist) both told me that people wouldn't know unless I "told" them. So when you couple that with the centering advice that should help you to 'play on'.
Hi, great answer about being 'grounded in the Now'!! I learned this lesson very well being part of a handbell choir a few years ago. You absolutely CAN NOT dwell, ruminate, or self-torture in any way upon your mistakes in that environment because the music rolls on continuously, with or without you; and if you try, it'll be without you sure as Hell. Your next notes are always on the way, don't miss 'em!
Mistakes: I love the way that when you make a mistake Adam, you just shrug it off. I find it a bit dis-heartening when others shred away and appear to never make a mistake. Its nice to know you are human; and it reminds me that I am only human too. Many thanks.
I like what Toch said about the concept of dissonance. He claimed that at some point people would look back at our beliefs in this idea to be quaint but silly. In the book Shaping forces in Music (I think) he gave a lot of examples where things that were thought to be consonant were really dissonant and the dissonant would be consonant. His point is that *everything* is subject 100% to context and it is always different.
Hey Adam, Hey Echo, I'm taking Jazz Studies at a university where there's a heavy 'jazz police' presence. Lots of students (and faculty) around here look down on any music which breaks the mould of the standard repitoire. Do you have any advice for someone trying to play modern-sounding jazz under threat of the Jazz police?
You should play as out-there as you possibly can, honestly. Piss people off. Do good in your work, prove you know your stuff, but try to approach "protest music" in a jazz mindset- people don't want music to change? Fuck em, distort the hell out of your guitar, use a drum machine, play synthesizer, use non-standard instruments... music has no rules and as long as you can prove you know what you need to know for the major, no "jazz police" can fail you for trying to do cool new things.
For the next Q&A: I'm 29 and finally just starting to seriously learn music theory. I can't get enough of it. Do you have a recommended reading list? Perhaps a few selections ranging from entry level to advanced? As a bonus, maybe a few that don't require a ton of technical knowledge but would help increase my general awareness and appreciation for musical concepts I didn't know existed? Awesome channel and thanks so much!
I think your advice about moving to NYC with the goal of being a sideman was pretty phenomenal advice for people thinking about moving to any really big city, especially New York. Merry Christmas!
Great answer on the consonance/dissonance issue. Glad you brought in the more perceptual side of it, context, culture and history, rather than just sticking to the physical and mathematical ideas.
13:20 "performing live as a musician teaches you how to stay grounded in the present...so perform live a lot more" --- I'm paraphrasing a little but, yeah, great answer!
I’ve heard that the perfect 4th is kind of a hybrid between consonant and dissonant, being technically neither. It seems complicated and like it really depends on the time it’s used.
Responding to the the question about not being distracted by mistakes while performing live: I have two observations/suggestions: 1. This is really a class of stage fright. Like many pro musicians I seldom get that because I have built up my sel confidence systematically over the years, starting with many amateur performamances. Otherwise, what are High School band's for, and so on? Note how up and coming classical musician's are restrained from doing too much too soon in case they burn themselves. 2. Part of practice time must be dedicated to simulated performance, with no interruptions. Never just start playing a piece without thinking what am I aiming for, or you will start and stop without knowing what you're doing, and not learn that vital process of "look ahead" properly.
2:22 Without any other context I felt this example to be in the key of F major, with the C-F interval being the tonic and the C-E having a dominant function.
2:00 disclaimer: 2nd vs 3rd harmonic (acoustic) gives a perfect fourth, this however isn't so obvious as easier to notice is 1st vs 2nd harm. (perfect fifth) and 1st vs 3rd harm (octave)... the reason for the perfect 4th to exist in the first place is a complement of the perfect 5th to the octave. To further clarify the "unexistence" of the perf. 4th in terms of harmonic - the harmonic series (musical, not acoustic) is build on 3rds, these result in 5ths. The 4ths are half way between the chord tones resulting producing dissonant 2nds. Also perf 4ths appear in chord inversions which in case of more complex chords (4 voices and more) result in mentioned dissonant 2nds. simple yet not that obvious.
read about the equal temperament and you will understaind. Basicaly, thirds and fifths were improtant for mideval music. Around bach's time though, we started using equal temperament. That means that you devide the octave in equal parts - 12 parts in our case, which is deacent, because the thirds/fifths are really close to being the ratio that they should be (you would need to devide the octave to infinite equal parts to achieve an actual... 3/2 ratio for a fitth and also have correct third intervals), and all of the 12 intervals are useable (it wasn't always like this)
It isn't everything you're asking, but this is the reason we have 12 notes per octave (plus a little bit). Remember that intervals are ratios: you multiply the lower frequency by a number to get the higher frequency, and you divide the higher frequency by the same number to get the lower frequency. Theoretically, every positive number defines a different interval whether it is rational or irrational. It's all based on the circle of fifths, which is based on the harmonic series. The third harmonic (3) is a perfect 12th above the fundamental (1), or a just perfect 5th (3/2=slightly less than 7.02 semitones) above the second harmonic (2, an octave above the fundamental). The perfect fifth was a consonance identified as 3:2 by Pythagoras and was well known throughout the medieval era in Europe. Since they are the most consonant intervals, (and the only recognized consonances for a while,) it is natural that Europeans (as well as many other consonance-liking cultures) would structure their system of pitch with just perfect fifths and octaves. (Our scales repeat every octave so they're based on octaves.) If you take a note like, say, F0, and add a note a just perfect 5th above it (C1+2cents), and then add a note a just perfect fifth above that (G1+4c), the results are: (The Real Circle/Spiral/Line of Fifths) 1: F0 2: C1+2c 3: G1+4c 4: D2+6c 5: A2+8c 6: E3+10c 7: B3+12c 8: F#4+14c 9: C#5+16c 10: G#5+18c 11: D#6+20c 12: A#6+22c 13: F7+23c (23.46 to be more exact, E#7 in a "Pythagorean" tuning) The first twelve notes of this may be transposed to every octave to create one possible "Pythagorean" tuning. Theoretically there are 12 possible 12-note Pythagorean tunings because you could use any of the 12 notes as the starting note. (That's disregarding the fact that you can transposes any of those 12 tunings to any pitch, like A=432hz instead of A=440hz.) Although this 13th note is noticeably sharper than normal F7 (2^7=128, seven octaves above the F0) it is the closest this sequence comes to making a full circle (returning to the same note in a different octave) for a while. This makes it a good place to stop adding notes (for practical reasons if nothing else) which still provides a good sense of continuity across the frequency spectrum, with 12 nearly equal half-steps spanning every octave. (The sequence of adding JP5s is infinite and never repeats a note exactly.) The 23.46 difference between this 13th note (E#7) and F7 is called the Pythagorean Comma and is equal to (3/2)^12)/(2^7)=531441/524288. Nowadays we tune instruments using a system called 12-tone equal temperament. In this system every half-step is the same and is therefore equal to the twelfth root of two (2^(1/12)). This also means that each (ET) perfect fifth is equal as they are all equal to 7 semitones (2^(7/12)). This means that, if you add ET fifths in the same manner as above, the 13th note is exactly 7 octaves above the first note, actually making the full circle I mentioned above (The Circle of Fifths). Another way of looking at it is that the just perfect fifth has been flattened by 1/12 of the Pythagorean comma or about 1.955 cents to create the ET perfect fifth so that 12 ET perfect fifths equals 7 octaves. (3/2)/(2^7/12)=(531441/524288)^(1/2) ((log[(3/2)/(2^7/12)=(531441/524288)^(1/2)]/log[2])x1200=about 1.955) (There are 1200 cents per octave.) Many different tuning systems were used from the 16th to 19th centuries and many of them were made by altering the fifth by a certain amount to create a desired effect like making thirds more consonant. You may notice that the first 7 notes form a diatonic scale (lydian if F is the tonic, this has something to do with why it's the brightest), and the first 5 notes form a pentatonic scale (Major Pentatonic if F is tonic. Ironically this is the theoretical darkest pentatonic mode based on how low the notes are in the scale) In medieval Europe, only diatonic modes were used, with occasional accidentals being added over time to avoid tritones and create leading tones. I'm not sure, but believe that the twelve note system was largely the result of trying to theorize and play chromatic notes such as leading tones, and eventually modulations. It is possible to create a 35-note extended Pythagorean tuning spanning every writable note from Fbb to Bx stacked in (just) perfect fifths like below. Fbb, Cbb, Gbb, Dbb, Abb, Ebb, Bbb, Fb, Cb, Gb, Db, Ab, Eb, Bb, F, C, G, D, A, E, B, F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E#, B#, Fx, Cx, Gx, Dx, Ax, Ex, Bx The appropriate Pythagorean tunings for every major and minor key (and more) are found in this system, and so this and similar 35-note systems may be useful to think about when reading about tuning systems. (You might also find it bizarrely satisfying used as a more modern xenharmonic (microtonal) tuning. ua-cam.com/video/sm-_Uvw2nBM/v-deo.html) It is a rather odd scale as a whole the though, because each of the 12 traditional notes is split into a cluster three close together notes such as Dbb, C, and B#, or Gb, F#, and Ex. (Except that Ab/G# is only a 2-note cluster because it is a tritone away from D which is the center note) It is also a little bizarre that notes with more sharps are higher than their enharmonic counterparts and notes with more flats are lower, meaning that, when looking at a cluster of enharmonic notes, the ones written lower on the staff actually sound slightly higher in Pythagorean tuning. Also, medieval pitch theory was based on interlocking hexachords, which are the first six notes of a major or mixolydian scale. These can be made by taking the first six notes of a the circle of fifths and transposing them all into one octave. (Medieval theorists thought of notes in different octaves as different notes.) Harmonically, medieval hexachords are also identical to minor 11 chords as well as diatonic clusters (all the notes) and perfect quartal hexachords (stacks of 5 perfect fourths). Also, you can find that sus chords and double sus chords come from the first 3 and 4 notes of the circle of fifths. It just goes to show how useful the circle of fifths is in structure music.
Thanks. Still can't get why the system works with that specific number of frenquency intervals. Why not a "macrotonal" (?) system of 9 notes or a microtonal system of 27 or 100 notes? (That related to the micro bends question).
Nicolás Bascuñán I said that the tuning we use is "deacent", by which I mean it isn't the best, but it works. If you would instead use 7 equal notes, you wouldn't really have a perfect fifth and a third. That being said, the 24 note system would have more acurrate fifths & thirds, but there are alot more notes now. 12 is just a deacent aproximation that works good enough without having a whole lot of notes.
Hey Adam, I have a very band specific question... I’ve noticed while going through the Beatles’ discography that some songs have these incredibly dense sonic textures in comparison to others. But then, when I try to compose something with the same chord progressions/harmonies, or even just loosely mimic the way they write, it doesn’t sound so “thick”. What is it about these certain songs (Think “Boys”, “Don’t Bother Me”, “Yes it Is”, “I’ve Just Seen a Face”, “You Won’t See Me”, and a personal favorite “Love You To”) that makes them so dense sonically? And how, if possible, can this be mimicked? Thanks Adam!!!
1:43 If the rule you're going with is whether an interval ever appears between two pitches of the series, then there is a perfect fourth, between the third and fourth harmonics. If instead you go with the rule that, modulo an octave, an interval never appears between the fundamental and another harmonic, then not only is there no perfect fourth, there is also no minor third - only intervals whose denominators are powers of two are included. I haven't heard minor thirds characterized as as or more dissonant than the perfect fourth. I feel like the reason we sometimes treat perfect fourths as dissonances is *strictly* at the level of the systems of harmony we built on top of acoustics rather than at the level of acoustics itself.
Question for your next Q&A: I struggle to wrap my head around the concept of when something is a song. I can play all these chords, notes, melodies, and whenever I compose I sometimes can't seem to choose what to do next. There are so many options and sometimes none of them feel 'right'. Other times the chords are just there and the songs seems 'done' or 'complete'. Is there any theory on this subject? Love your video's. Super informative. Keep up the good work!
"Jesu Rex Admirabilis" by Palestrina, for everyone wondering what that "holy music" was when he read from 20th Century Harmony book :D - I love that piece, how did you come up with that, Adam?
If you think about a mistake you're going to make it again. That's the past. Put it behind you as quickly as you can. Worry about the present and the future. I'm been playing with my bandmates for 25 years. When someone makes a mistake, no one gives them a "knowing look" for a few bars. No need to call attention to it, everyone on stage knows. When I get inside my head and start to mess myself up it's usually about feel and note choices - conceptual things like that. The mechanics of the part are pretty much under control. Go to jam sessions where you don't know what's going to be thrown at you and you really have to do your best to make the unknown sound like music. Thanks Adam!
Okay I'm confused - maybe somebody can clear this up - I was certain that the perfect fourth DOES appear in the harmonic series. Namely as the ratio between the 2nd and 3rd harmonic of any fundamental frequency. Example: if the fundamental frequency is 200Hz 1st harmonic is 400Hz 2nd harmonic 600Hz 3rd harmonic 800Hz As you can see, the ratio between the 3rd and the 2nd harmonic, is 4:3, aka a perfect fourth. So the perfect fourth does appear in the harmonic series. I hope this comment doesn't get drowned away in the comments because I'd love for somebody to clear this up for me.
His explanation got a little confusing. What he means is that, even though 4:3 does appear in the series, you never get a 4:3 ratio in relation to the fundamental note. That is, if the fundamental is C, you never get an F in the harmonic series. But this only makes sense if you think that notes an octave apart correspond to the "same note", which is just Western tradition. If you take the harmonic series on its own, that doesn't make any fucking sense.
Excellent disquisition. Over the last few days I've been playing over the score of Keith Emerson's Tarkus and the principles expressed here make so much sense. The fourth has a sense of tension as well as openness and Emerson exploits that to the full in all the various ways he deploys fourths, both harmonically and melodically.
Here's a question I'm curious about. I don't know if you answered this already but... Do you believe in tonewoods in electric guitars/basses? There's a whole debate on this on the internet with rather strong arguments on both ends. And if you believe it's true, what tonewoods do you prefer/use?
One of my professors at the University of Victoria had an approach that I find very helpful for dealing with mistakes. He always emphasized playing musically above everything else with the understanding that wrong notes, botched rhythms, etc. will happen. There was a story that went with this that I can't really remember, but the moral is that if you're playing musically and something goes wrong, the correct response is, "How Wonderful!" To make a mistake while playing musically and with conviction is far better than to avoid make no mistakes if it means playing timidly and in an uninspired manner. Now this obviously takes practice, but by making a point of embodying this sentiment when things go wrong while practising, the reaction becomes automatic and makes staying centred in performance much easier.
Hey Adam! I was talking to a musician friend the other day about instrumentation and how that affects the style/genre of music that is produced. For example, if you have typical “metal” instrumentation of guitar, bass, and drums, but the guitar is completely clean, or the drums are bongos, etc. is it even “metal” anymore? Could you have a metal band that was just brass instruments? What are your thoughts on this?
15:19 - the harmonic series does not include a perfect fourth _above the root pitch_, but the P4 does appear in the harmonic series, especially between the 3rd and 4th harmonics. The same is true of the minor third. (You somewhat alluded to that, but I think it’s a worthwhile clarification.)
Did you put a really subtle Wilhelm Scream after saying "nobody's dying if you make a mistake"? It sounds like it to me but it's so quiet that I can't quite tell Edit: nevermind, it's from the outro song lol. I paused right after hearing it and wrote/posted the comment before resuming
Dylan.j.fisher he listens to metal, or at least he has listened to metal. He's mentioned metal bands, and when people send in more metal submissions to How To Not Suck you can tell he's a little bit familiar.
For your next Q&A: Why do we "start" at C? (C major having no sharps or flats, middle C on piano, etc.) Is it completely arbitrary? And if it is, then why didn't we choose A since it's the beginning of the alphabet and we tune to A = 440? Perhaps we designated note names to certain pitches before we came up with the major scale, but that raises the question - why did we decide that the interval between B-C and E-F would be half steps when all the other intervals are whole steps?
Adam, you played on the Apartment Sessions performance of Empire Liquor Mart by Gabriel Kahane. It’s a beautiful piece with a mesmerizing guitar passage at 3:16. I think it’s 7/8+11/8+4/8. Could you explain whats happening harmonically here, please? Especially as it goes through Eb-GbMaj11-Bb9-Dm-GMaj7-Eb-Db (I think). Is this modulation, modal mixing, etc.? I’m largely self taught, so if you could dumb it down, that would be appreciated. Thanks for your channel. Cheers.
13:07 This is 4 and a half years late, but the very first thing I was taught about playing music, is that when you make a mistake, if you don't react, then nobody will know. It's very unlikely anybody will notice, and there's nothing you can do about it, so move on to the next part and keep going, and just act like nothing happened.
I prefer the closeness to a harmonic argument so much more than the "simple ratios" argument. In the spirit of transitioning from talking about "nice" or "good" or "pleasant" intervals to using labels like "consonant" or maybe even better: "cohesive." The fact of the matter being that any note, to varying degrees, even if a perfect sine wave generated by a computer, will produce harmonics by the time it has to be physically realized as waves in a vibrating medium or the air or even if it doesn't, will eventually have off-peak resonances with the cochlea in our ears! When you add one of the harmonics of a note over it, you are *accentuating* structure that already exists in the frequency spectrum. When you play a C4, you can hear a little bit of that C5, that G5, etc. It's already in there (usually)!
Hey adam I play a traditional string instrument from were i live which has a non-symmetrical tuning. There are two types of this instrument. One of them is tuned "b a e B A D" but i play the one that is tuned a full tone lower (a g d A G C). It's called portuguese guitar and it's great for folk and trad music and shit ( of course). Lately, i've been going further in my jazz theory knowledge because i'd like to get better in my improv skills. I'm reading a book that an ex-berklee student told me to read. The non-symmetrical tuning makes it really hard to sketch scales and some chords. However, there are things that i can do with this instrument that i can´t do with others and this is the one that gives me THAT feeling the bass gives to you. Do you think it is absolutely impossible and non-sense to expand my harmony and improv skills in this and eventually play jazz? or creativity and lots of hard work will get me there? I really don't know so i decided to ask the wisest musical geek on the web what he thinks. Hope you answer
If it can play the same notes then it's obviously not "impossible" for you to get there. It might be much more difficult but with enough practice I'm confident you can live the dream.
thanks, man! i've always thought that if, for example, trumpet players can do all they do with 3 fingers, i can go somewhere to. But people around me have been kinda discouraging me and saying it's to crazy. Thanks a lot for cheering me up! hope you can live the dream as well!
Plenty of people play jazz on a standard-tuned guitar, which isn't symmetrical either. Maybe I'm not understanding your question correctly, but I don't see how that would hinder your playing if you're learning the actual notes that make up the chords and scales, rather than relying on shapes and patterns.
what are the notes in that tuning? I Know that a regular guitar is not completely symmetrical but almost every distance between strings is an ascending perfect 4th. In my case i have a perfect 5th, a major 2nd, two perfect 4ths and a major 2nd again. It makes it really hard to map scales. However, I understand what you are saying and you are right
A standard-tuned guitar is E A D G B E, fourths, with the exception of the 2nd and 3rd strings, tuned in a major-third. But yes, I see why your particular tuning would make scale patterns very difficult. You might have to tune your instrument to a more consistent set of intervals to make scales and chords more manageable, although this would also entail relearning what you already know based on the current tuning intervals.
Some of the best recordings ever made were done in one take with everyone playing together on a four track analog machine. The Beatles are a great example. Even if there is a mistake, the take is the take. Even on a complicated multi track recording like Bohemian Rhapsody with was dozens of tracks, overdubs and if there was a glitch or strangled note, it was on the final mix. It makes your music so much more organic and natural sounding.
Do you know insaneintherainmusic/Carlos Eiene? If so, do you enjoy his arrangements and playing? If not, check him out and give us your thoughts! He is (primarily) a saxophonist who arranges video-game tracks into jazz covers and arrangements. In my opinion, he is really talented and his projects deserve more attention.
About getting out of your head when you make a mistake playing live. In my case I find that mistakes usually come from loss of focus,or at least,loss of focus comes from thinking about the mistake after it happens. losing focus by thinking about a mistake is the absolute worst think you can do. You just sharpen your focus,move on and never give it a second thought. Let any mistake slide by,don’t acknowledge it it any way and 99% of the audience will never know. If they do notice they don’t care and those that care will forgive you. Trust me it is not a big deal except in your head. Anyway you can’t do a thing about it after it happens! Just be thankful you get paid for doing something you’d do for free any way,because you love it.
Hey Adam! For the next Q&A: I have a pretty big problem finding reliable material on how to notate accidentals in terms of melody. Now, chords are no problem: if it's a triad, stack up 3 notes and add accidentals to define the type of triad if it's not in key, if it's a seventh chord, stack up 4 notes and add accidentals to define the type of the seventh chord (there is some variation in terms of inversions but you get me, right?). But what do I do with melody? Which accidentals to use when the melody steps out of key?
Hi Adam :) For your next Q&A Why is a 7th chord considered a "dominant 7th"? Let me give you some background. When I was in music school and, later, conservatory, in the written music theory tests we usually had an exercise where you had to identify chords. The chords were not related to one another, not related to a key, not related to anything, they were just random. You had to tell if they were Major, minor, Aug, dim, etc. For the 7th chords (C E G Bb, for example) I always had to say it's a DOMINANT 7th, not just a 7h chord, but never actually understood why. If you give me an harmonic context, or a key, I can identify a certain chord as a V7. But random chords?? Any idea why? Thanks, and have a nice year!! :)
PCanas Because when you construct a 7th chord from the dominant (5th) degree on a major scale, the resultant chord is a dominant 7th. I guess that the name has more of a historical meaning rather than a "logical" meaning.
PCanas It's because there's a tritone between de 3rd and the 7th of the chord. Every key contains only 2 notes that are a tritone apart (the 4th and the 7th) so whenever you hear a tritone it's stablished that you are in a specific key.
I understand that, and I wrote that. But if you're given a RANDOM 7th chord, with no more information about harmonic context or the key you're in, how can you say its a dominant 7th? Example: D7. Why is it a dominant 7th?
PCanas D7 contains the notes F# and C. If you check all other 11 keys (besides G, the key D7 is dominant to) you'll notice that no other key contains both notes. So when you hear F# and C you know you are in the key of G, and since D7 is dominant to G, then you can assume it works as a dominant chord. Hope I explained myself properly
I'm a 15 y/o piano student and with what you said about live performances is absolutely right, I started playing at a restaurant on Friday evenings 2 years ago and when I started that was something I really had trouble with but the best thing to over coming it is to just play live more and more
Of course the perfect 4th occurs in the harmonic series. If you have a fundamental of 100 Hz, the third and fourth overtone are 300 and 400 Hz, which makes a perfect 4th.
If you go by that logic, technically every interval is included in the harmonic series (technically, because they are getting really silent at some point in most sounds). For our ears though, it is more important how the overtones relate to the fundemental note, because it is the lowest (the second lowest too) and, in most cases, the loudest perceived frequency.
I don't have a copy of Persichetti but I do have Walter Piston's "Harmony" and I was just reading his position on perfect 4ths - I think he said they're dissonant when they are the lowest interval but consonant in upper voices. To me that would fit with the idea of notes being in the harmonic series of the fundamental bass, but not necessarily with other notes that they form consonances with. Then again, by this reasoning minor thirds are dissonant too!
"If you go by that logic, technically every interval is included in the harmonic series" Well, almost. The harmonic series is infinite, so it does include every possible rational interval (if any math inclined person can correct me on this, please do!). Irrational intervals are absent, though. You don't have the interval 1:e in the harmonic series--which is exactly why we should be using that *more* in our music. The real question here is: does it even matter if our intervals are "included in the harmonic series"? We still believe in the lie that the seventh degree of the harmonic series represents the minor seventh, when it doesn't. The minor seventh is the perfect fourth of the perfect fourth, that is, it's 3/4 * 3/4 = 9/16, which is "more complex" i.e. "more dissonant" than the 7/4 of the harmonic series; yet we perceive 9/16 as being in tune and 7/4 as being out of tune. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?
I love to explore the math to ridiculous extremes, but I think what sounds "consonant" comes down to how we hear things. My ears have an "uncanny valley" encompassing all intervals too big to be considered a unison and too small to be considered a third. When any pair of strong overtones between two notes falls in that uncanny valley, there's a possibility for it to sound dissonant. We can use math to avoid the uncanny valleys and find the "tolerance" of consonance rather than a "perfect" consonance. Let me know when you make your 1:e music, Fernie... I'd love to hear it :) John Chowning's "Stria" uses the golden ratio as an interval... www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/comj.2007.31.3.26
There are an infinite amount of rational numbers (Just Intonation, or JI), AND an infinite amount of real numbers. There are MORE real numbers, though, because they can't all be listed. JI gives a framework for consonance in closed form that's historically relevant and mathematically consistent, so that's a big part of its usefulness.
another way to look at a perfect 4th is that it is a red herring - it can be seen as a tonic above its 5th; this explains the phenomenon of consonance, because the reference note is not the one we think of when referencing the fourth. Think of the interval as an inversion where the note we want to call the fourth is "really" best understood as the tonic and the note we are referencing as the tonic is the fifth.
Question for next Q&A: Do you have any thoughts on the use of words in music? I feel like this is an underrepresented aspect of the musical craft, especially in terms of academic discussion. As far as I understand it there are 3 primary factors that combine to form good lyrics; 1) The literal content 2) The lyrical/poetic value 3) The musical qualities I'm especially interested in hearing your thoughts on the 3rd factor (What makes words musical, why do some words work better than others, the rhythmic qualities of language) and why this is generally neglected from music education programs when everything else is being hyperanalyzed. Thanks!
Your last sentence there was really inspired. There's this ridiculous fear that the audience would outrage if we make mistakes, but what I found out is that 9 out of 10 times, they don't even notice, and when they do, at least in my experience, they were very forgiving, because, you know, they're there to chill!
Can't unsee the hexagon.
Same, bro. "Adam Neely hexa-head support group?"
I see a Pentagon. Could it be a counting sides problem ? Check your math.
Same, maan
Late-ass comment, but I feel like he wore the beanie to accentuate it.
Whoever asked that is the equivalent of an LSS.
"Is a perfect 4th dissonant?" Nes, possibly yo.
ting ting Yes, but actually no
r/woooosh?
TinCan not even a little bit...
Is a perfect 5th dissonant?
F/Ab
"This cat is technically my girlfriend...
o_O
...'s cat"
*phew
That is exactly my experience.
Thank you.
Raised my eyebrow too before the apostrophe kicked in.
Shane Dawson?
The syntonic comma has nothing on that apostrophe.
adam neely has a cat fursona
"Say hi Echo!"
"Kill Me"
"Alright"
#ShoutoutToEcho
I was about to comment the same thing! But I'm incredibly late anyways so nvm....
F
A perfect fourth is just an inverted perfect fifth, change my mind
no, i won't. You're totally correct thinking that way
I'd rather request you educate me in this matter.
@@boris3866 F's perfect fifth is a C if we move the F up an octave it becomes the perfect fourth.
Proof: 4/3 * 3/2 = 2
Clock diagrams are wack
"Nobody is dying if you make a mistake" - one of my piano teachers said to me: "Imaging that you're playing at a bar and if you're making a mistake someone will choke"
Thats horrendous advice to be entirely honest it will just make you more nervous and pressured, you should read the book effortless mastery which talks about how to enter a stress-free mindset while playing and how much that will allow you to play better
@@aitorcazalis2307 it was more about "play in a speed you can keep consistently" 😂
You ever killed a man, Adam?
Valid question. Next Q&A: how to kill people with music.
Can we get this to the top so Adam answers it next please
He kills me every time.
To quote Adam: "I'm glad, that my audience is asking the important question."
I mean, he murdered Ted Nugent at 7:37
Adam Neely: Musicians who stay here and are able to survive the grind are just absolutely incredible!
*Picture of Obama giving Obama a medal*
Edit: I fixed the quote so that it was actually correct.
*shoutouts to echo*
touts to echo
s to echo
s to echo
echo...
*Echo runs in scares from all the shouting*
The fact that the perfect 4th isn't in the harmonic series doesn't hold much water. There isn't a minor 3rd or any kind of 6th either (until you get really high up the series). Yet we consider 3rd and 6ths to be imperfect consonances.
In medieval times the perfect 4th was considered highly consonant which maybe implies that it's a learnt thing rather than something intrinsic derived from the harmonic series.
David Huron in his book Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation considers there to be 2 different phenomena that are both referred to as dissonant. One is the "discomfort" experienced when hearing a dissonant interval. The other the is the feeling of yearning or tension like when a perfect 4th wants to resolve to a major 3rd. The first is a static dissonance the second a dynamic dissonance. As another example I don't hear a major 7th as wanting to resolve anywhere in particular. It's just statically dissonant. I think you are getting close to this thinking when you say that dissonance is more complex than just ratios.
I think, though, that when therorists say that the perfect 4th is dissonant they just mean that it is treated as a dissonance with respect to voice leading "rules". If you tried to treat it as a perfect interval you'd hardly be able to write anything (parallel and direct 4ths not allowed).
There is a minor 3rd (from G to Bb). And minor 6th is kinda considered a little bit dissonant anyway.
Yeah, I mean there's the 3rd harmonic and the 4th harmonic and together they produce a perfect fourth. Right after an octave and a perfect fifth.
Starting from 100 hz and going up 200, 300, 400
100/200 = Octave
200/300 = Fifth
300/400 = Fourth
@@mysteriev7071 Yes, of course but we are talking about with respect to the root here.
@@mikabjorklund3678 Yes, it doesn't exist with respect to the root but the two notes do have a lot of coincident overtones which is probably what is really important.
in terms of sheet music vs. performers definitely the scariest experience i ever had was page turning for a baroque HIP dude's performance of the royal offering. 6 staves of fugal voices with no articulation or dynamics or anything on them. dude turned a whole note into like 25 notes and i got lost instantly
u q 6 voice fugue from bwv 1079, not sure whose arrangement or what exact part of it it was
So I'm guessing there can't be much left that does scare you anymore. :)
"If you've ever wondered why TN sucks, there is your answer." absolutely brilliant, AN.
It's certainly one of the reasons Ted Nugent sucks
Actually, I never wondered. I thought the many reasons were fairly evident.
"Is the perfect fourth a dissonance?"
Me, just coming from a counterpoint class: y e s
A couple if ways to teach yourself to push through a mistake on stage:
1.) Play along with records - you can use this technique to set up a performance-like scenario in your mind, but in a low risk setting, like your bedroom. Tell yourself before you start, "no stopping." Then don't stop, regardless of how bad the mistake you might make because nobody's hearing it. Do this a lot. Get into it. Really pretend you're on stage with whatever act you're playing along with.
2. Record every practice and every performance you can - this way, you don't have to critique yourself while you're playing. You can let that go. Train yourself to only criticise on playback. Another reason this is useful is while you're playing, you have no idea what's actually coming across to an audience. You can't physically play and listen with an objective ear at the same time. With a recording of your practice sessions and performances, you have a chance to experience what you did more like the audience. Also, you can listen for what you like, what you don't like, and what you need to tighten up. Also, also, most of the time, you feel your mistakes way more than anyone in the crowd notices them. Upon playback, you're more likely to discover that what seemed like a horrible mistake at the time really wasn't that bad.
Hopefully this is helpful. It helped me.
Adam is right, too. Perform a lot. Live performance is like any other skill. You gotta practice. I'm saying this on the other side of more than 1000 live performances.
For the next Q&A:
Whatever happened to the practice of leaving in little (or not so little) mistakes/"happy accidents" in popular music?
For example; Sting sitting on a piano and laughing at the beginning of Roxanne, Paul McCartney saying "Fucking Hell" in the middle of Hey Jude, or the false piano start at the beginning of Bob Seger's Old Time Rock and Roll.
Do you believe these mistakes add amusing character to the songs, or are they more of a nuisance for producers and audio engineers?
Not really pop but Vulfpeck does it all the time
Or the fluffed chord change in Jean Genie? Maybe they just thought it was funny to leave it in? Maybe the rest of the take was great, and they had to finish soon? Maybe they just didn't care? Maybe all of the above?
Maybe this isn't so recent but I know that some of The Veronicas' songs have some of these mistakes in their studio album recordings. I have heard from other people that producers and sound engineers are pressured to have the recordings be polished much more than they used to be. This was referring to vocals and pitch correction but I would imagine it would also apply to these kinds of small mistakes too.
you should listen to my band's album, it's full of mistakes
Daniel Weddell To be honest, unless your David Bowie or Paul McCartney, that kind stuff usually comes off pretty corny.
The perfect fourth absolutely is part of the harmonic series: it is the distance from the 3rd to 4th harmonic. Do not be confused by intervals on the harmonic series and intervals octave-compressed relative to the harmonic root to form scales, which forces the denominator to be a power of 2.
Smoke on the water is the proof that 4ths can be consonant.
Because they are functionally inversions of prefect fifths.
Thanos Psaridis They're almost like power chords in that song.
I don't know are you sure about that, because whenever I hear that song my ears bleed
They are used as the perfect fifths
Actually the second inversion of a major/minor triads is the proof that 4ths can be consonant. Also the 4th resulting from the doubling of a triad's root in root position. All intervals in a major or minor triads are consonant, and yes, power chords too as in Smoke on the water.
15:19 - a long time ago, I had a girlfriend who was an excellent musician, and loved Jacqueline Du Pre’s performance of Haydn’s C-major ’cello concerto. My impression was that, yes, it’s a very inspiring and gorgeous performance, but probably not what Haydn was imagining.
But, _within reason_ , there’s nothing wrong with a performance outside of the composer’s expectations, as long as you acknowledge that, in this example, “I’ve chosen to interpret this in the style of Brahms or Schumann.”
Are we going to ignore the fact that Andy Rehfeldt (7:33) commented on an Adam Neely video? Am I the only one who got really excited about it? He makes such amazing videos
Such a great UA-camr
Is it actually THE Andy Rehfeldt???
Well
the profile picture is the right one
So it seems that it is the one and only
Ritvik Karra I literally came to the comment section to see if anyone else got excited when they noticed that 😅
He's a legend
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand the minor ii-V-i. The progression is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of melodic minor modes most of this harmonic movement will go over a typical listeners head. There’s also the b9 on the V chord which is deftly woven into its subjective audio qualities - this personal philosophy draws heavily from Mark Levine literature, for instance. Bill Evans fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of this harmonic movement, to realise that it’s not just a spooky progression - it says something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who prefer major ii-V-I truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn’t appreciate, for instance, the b5 on the iim7b5 chord, which itself is a cryptic reference to Joseph Kosma’s Autumn Leaves. I’m smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as the minor ii-V-i genius unfolds in their cognitive aural perception. What fools.. how I pity them. 😂 And yes, by the way, i DO have a Blue Bossa tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It’s for the ladies’ eyes only- and even then they have to demonstrate that they’re within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand.
Lmao, well memed
Mate Mišo Mesić 420 “Anyways, here’s the Dorian mode”
r/imsmart gold right here
@@ethantamales ok so first of all it's r/iamverysmart
secondly, it's supposed to be a rick and morty copypasta reference
Eatham Tamales copypasta lmao stfu
Clever use of the Willhelm scream. I appreciate it.
When?
Outro music
why is it clever?
Probably because it wasn't "supposed" to be used that way, but he did it anyways and it doesn't sound half-bad.
oh, i was wondering if i was was missing some obvious theory joke :p
T R I T O N E
Nailed it
tritone (sqrt(2)/1) is theoretically one of the most dissonant intervals (even slightly worse would be a golden ratio interval), being as far from simple ratios as possible. the simplest ratio that is closer than 5 cent is 17/12 (3 cent off). the easier 7/5 is already 17cents off...
so the tritone by itself is quite dissonant, and almost everyone will agree on that :-)
@@deinauge7894 but 7/5 is resonant with a consonant quality.
@@deinauge7894 You're the first one who describes Tritone as sqrt(2)/1
And I like that.
I fucking love this channel so much
same. he gets a lot of unnecessary hate.
Wait what? Why does he get hate ?
I would like to point out that in the natural harmonic series, a perfect fourth does occur naturally: it is the interval between the third and fourth harmonics for a note. For instance, the interval between F3 and Bb3 on trombone is a perfect fourth, with the latter being played in the same position but one harmonic higher.
Not all intervals are created equally
Petter Houting Perfect Fourth’s lives matter!!
He sounds really, like, honest or heartfelt. Feels like he's actually giving *really* good and relatable advice.
This is a fantastic explanation of how intervals work within the context of when it occurs. I studied Music Theory at The University of Memphis (Memphis State back then) & we used the John Baur text. I appreciate your videos because the force me to recall the things I had learned in the past.
For the next Q & A:
I’ve slowly become a big fan of your content. It makes me happy to see so many musicians absorbing so much good information. I’d like to ask if you could put together a list of music books that you would recommend for all of us. Bass!
Don't the third and fourth notes in a harmonic series create a perfect 4th, by definition?
yeah i still dont understand this. its literally right there in the harmonic series, so im not sure why he's saying it isnt there.
What he means is say in the Bb harmonic series, the fourth fron that is Eb. But that not doesnt occur. Bb, Bb, F, Bb, D, F, Ab, Bb etc. A fourth from the fundamental doesnt show up
The harmonic series has no perfect 4ths of the fundamental is what he means. Yes, there are overtones that are a perfect 4th from each other, but never the fundamental.
@@bigchiefbc but by that logic, neither does the perfect fifth or the major third occur in the overtone series. No harmonic will have a frequency 1.5 (3/2) times the fundamental, just like no harmonic will have a frequency that is 1.333... (4/3) times the fundamental. The 1st harmonic is unison, the 2nd harmonic is an octave, the 3rd harmonic is an octave + a fifth, the 4th harmonic is an octave + a fifth + a fourth, the 5th harmonic is an octave + a fifth + a fourth + a major third, and so on.
I think Adam is wrong with his reasoning here, although I agree with the conclusion that it can vary based on context. Consonance is more complicated than just ratios of frequencies. There's culture, the timbre of specific instruments, effects like guitar distortion, and other things that contribute to consonance and dissonance.
In the case of a distorted guitar for example, (imo) a fourth is more consonant than a major third, despite it feeling the other way around on a clean piano. I think this is probably because when it comes to distortion on guitar, the simple ratios are much more important than anything else. A heavily distorted major third sounds very messy compared to a fifth, a fourth, or an octave.
@@Henry-fv3bc I think that he is correct if you factor in octave equivalence. The third harmonic is a perfect 12th above the fundamental which is a perfect fifth above the octave, so in that sense if the fundamental is a C you do have an interval between a C and G, just not the fundamental C. The same is true for any interval of the form X:2^n, which includes the major third. It does not include the fourth.
Thank you for finally introducing the kitty! Occasionally, you'll be talking about things like harmonic intervals blah blah western notation blah blah, and I'm just watching the kitty chew on his toenails on the couch behind you. :-)
Also, regarding recovering from mistakes, I'm reminded of my all-time favorite classical conductor Michael Morgan: "It's just music. No one will die if we stopped in the middle."
Maxi Frini - Let me give you the advice my beginner band teacher told me. (If I'm remembering it even now then it was solid advice.)
Mr. Kenner told us "play it wrong, play it strong". Of course there are exceptions to the saying but the premise is basically don't let people know/see that you just messed up. Only those that know the piece/your part might notice it.
The other part to this is to not visually indicate you just messed up. I had piano lessons back in the day and I would visibly get upset and the teacher and my mom (a violinist) both told me that people wouldn't know unless I "told" them.
So when you couple that with the centering advice that should help you to 'play on'.
Bingo. The main thing I had to learn when first playing live back in the 80's was, "Mean what you play, even when you don't play what you meant."
Hi, great answer about being 'grounded in the Now'!! I learned this lesson very well being part of a handbell choir a few years ago. You absolutely CAN NOT dwell, ruminate, or self-torture in any way upon your mistakes in that environment because the music rolls on continuously, with or without you; and if you try, it'll be without you sure as Hell. Your next notes are always on the way, don't miss 'em!
lol Andy Rehfeldt is the Radio Disney guy
matsomo Andy is a genius
Andy is god!
I LOVE his stuff
Yep, paused the video to say the same thing. Andy is god.
I was like why does that name and UA-cam channel picture look so familiar 🤔🤔
Mistakes: I love the way that when you make a mistake Adam, you just shrug it off. I find it a bit dis-heartening when others shred away and appear to never make a mistake. Its nice to know you are human; and it reminds me that I am only human too. Many thanks.
well, maybe not in relation to the fundamental but it occurs early in the harmonic series, between 3rd and 4th harmonic
I like what Toch said about the concept of dissonance. He claimed that at some point people would look back at our beliefs in this idea to be quaint but silly. In the book Shaping forces in Music (I think) he gave a lot of examples where things that were thought to be consonant were really dissonant and the dissonant would be consonant. His point is that *everything* is subject 100% to context and it is always different.
Hey Adam,
Hey Echo,
I'm taking Jazz Studies at a university where there's a heavy 'jazz police' presence. Lots of students (and faculty) around here look down on any music which breaks the mould of the standard repitoire. Do you have any advice for someone trying to play modern-sounding jazz under threat of the Jazz police?
I hope that for modern jazz sound you do not mean a fucking guitar distortion
How do you mean by modern jazz?
You should play as out-there as you possibly can, honestly. Piss people off. Do good in your work, prove you know your stuff, but try to approach "protest music" in a jazz mindset- people don't want music to change? Fuck em, distort the hell out of your guitar, use a drum machine, play synthesizer, use non-standard instruments... music has no rules and as long as you can prove you know what you need to know for the major, no "jazz police" can fail you for trying to do cool new things.
*Insert Jazz Police by Leonard Cohen here*
Almost unrelated, but it's still a great song.
"They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art." -Charlie Parker
For the next Q&A:
I'm 29 and finally just starting to seriously learn music theory. I can't get enough of it. Do you have a recommended reading list? Perhaps a few selections ranging from entry level to advanced? As a bonus, maybe a few that don't require a ton of technical knowledge but would help increase my general awareness and appreciation for musical concepts I didn't know existed?
Awesome channel and thanks so much!
Hi Adam!!!
For next Q&A. How do you prefer composing? Melody and later harmony or the opposite?
Rhythm as well^
This was maybe the richest and wisest Q&As you've done from my perspective. The folks who decide to not watch these don't know what they're missing.
subbed just for the cat
I subbed for his Hexagon head.
I think your advice about moving to NYC with the goal of being a sideman was pretty phenomenal advice for people thinking about moving to any really big city, especially New York. Merry Christmas!
Is your girlfriend a musician?
Great answer on the consonance/dissonance issue. Glad you brought in the more perceptual side of it, context, culture and history, rather than just sticking to the physical and mathematical ideas.
You featured a question from Andy Rehfeldt and didn't acknowledge him as the remix mastermind of our time.
That man is a legend, I saw his name and had to do a double take. Love his work
13:20 "performing live as a musician teaches you how to stay grounded in the present...so perform live a lot more" --- I'm paraphrasing a little but, yeah, great answer!
I’ve heard that the perfect 4th is kind of a hybrid between consonant and dissonant, being technically neither. It seems complicated and like it really depends on the time it’s used.
Responding to the the question about not being distracted by mistakes while performing live: I have two observations/suggestions: 1. This is really a class of stage fright. Like many pro musicians I seldom get that because I have built up my sel confidence systematically over the years, starting with many amateur performamances. Otherwise, what are High School band's for, and so on? Note how up and coming classical musician's are restrained from doing too much too soon in case they burn themselves. 2. Part of practice time must be dedicated to simulated performance, with no interruptions. Never just start playing a piece without thinking what am I aiming for, or you will start and stop without knowing what you're doing, and not learn that vital process of "look ahead" properly.
Shoutouts to simpleflips
Ethan H. Eediot
Ethan H. Shoutflips to simpleouts.
2:22 Without any other context I felt this example to be in the key of F major, with the C-F interval being the tonic and the C-E having a dominant function.
More important than the hexagon question is the following question: What's with the hat? Apartment too cold?
Aesthetics come in all shapes and sizes
Viktor Kaganovich he pulled his hair out with frustration over the hexagon question....
hair reveal soon
The hat makes your head look MORE hexagonal. Cool!
Adam Neely next time make sure the hat and your hair are in the SAME KEY
i admire the way that beanie compliments your strikingly hexagonal head, as well as giving off some serious tyler joseph vibes
Can you talk about your gear? What are the specs on your bass? What brand of a instruments/amps do you use?
2:00 disclaimer: 2nd vs 3rd harmonic (acoustic) gives a perfect fourth, this however isn't so obvious as easier to notice is 1st vs 2nd harm. (perfect fifth) and 1st vs 3rd harm (octave)...
the reason for the perfect 4th to exist in the first place is a complement of the perfect 5th to the octave.
To further clarify the "unexistence" of the perf. 4th in terms of harmonic - the harmonic series (musical, not acoustic) is build on 3rds, these result in 5ths.
The 4ths are half way between the chord tones resulting producing dissonant 2nds. Also perf 4ths appear in chord inversions which in case of more complex chords (4 voices and more) result in mentioned dissonant 2nds. simple yet not that obvious.
The Ted Nugent answer killed me... xD xD xD
Thank you for this Q+A, 7:44 is something I've been looking into a lot regarding violin performances. Thanks for your take on it
Why just 12 notes? Then, why micro-tonal bends make sense?
Thanks
read about the equal temperament and you will understaind. Basicaly, thirds and fifths were improtant for mideval music. Around bach's time though, we started using equal temperament. That means that you devide the octave in equal parts - 12 parts in our case, which is deacent, because the thirds/fifths are really close to being the ratio that they should be (you would need to devide the octave to infinite equal parts to achieve an actual... 3/2 ratio for a fitth and also have correct third intervals), and all of the 12 intervals are useable (it wasn't always like this)
Nicolás Bascuñán *fretless*
It isn't everything you're asking, but this is the reason we have 12 notes per octave (plus a little bit). Remember that intervals are ratios: you multiply the lower frequency by a number to get the higher frequency, and you divide the higher frequency by the same number to get the lower frequency. Theoretically, every positive number defines a different interval whether it is rational or irrational.
It's all based on the circle of fifths, which is based on the harmonic series. The third harmonic (3) is a perfect 12th above the fundamental (1), or a just perfect 5th (3/2=slightly less than 7.02 semitones) above the second harmonic (2, an octave above the fundamental). The perfect fifth was a consonance identified as 3:2 by Pythagoras and was well known throughout the medieval era in Europe. Since they are the most consonant intervals, (and the only recognized consonances for a while,) it is natural that Europeans (as well as many other consonance-liking cultures) would structure their system of pitch with just perfect fifths and octaves. (Our scales repeat every octave so they're based on octaves.)
If you take a note like, say, F0, and add a note a just perfect 5th above it (C1+2cents), and then add a note a just perfect fifth above that (G1+4c), the results are:
(The Real Circle/Spiral/Line of Fifths)
1: F0
2: C1+2c
3: G1+4c
4: D2+6c
5: A2+8c
6: E3+10c
7: B3+12c
8: F#4+14c
9: C#5+16c
10: G#5+18c
11: D#6+20c
12: A#6+22c
13: F7+23c (23.46 to be more exact, E#7 in a "Pythagorean" tuning)
The first twelve notes of this may be transposed to every octave to create one possible "Pythagorean" tuning. Theoretically there are 12 possible 12-note Pythagorean tunings because you could use any of the 12 notes as the starting note. (That's disregarding the fact that you can transposes any of those 12 tunings to any pitch, like A=432hz instead of A=440hz.)
Although this 13th note is noticeably sharper than normal F7 (2^7=128, seven octaves above the F0) it is the closest this sequence comes to making a full circle (returning to the same note in a different octave) for a while. This makes it a good place to stop adding notes (for practical reasons if nothing else) which still provides a good sense of continuity across the frequency spectrum, with 12 nearly equal half-steps spanning every octave. (The sequence of adding JP5s is infinite and never repeats a note exactly.)
The 23.46 difference between this 13th note (E#7) and F7 is called the Pythagorean Comma and is equal to (3/2)^12)/(2^7)=531441/524288.
Nowadays we tune instruments using a system called 12-tone equal temperament. In this system every half-step is the same and is therefore equal to the twelfth root of two (2^(1/12)). This also means that each (ET) perfect fifth is equal as they are all equal to 7 semitones (2^(7/12)). This means that, if you add ET fifths in the same manner as above, the 13th note is exactly 7 octaves above the first note, actually making the full circle I mentioned above (The Circle of Fifths). Another way of looking at it is that the just perfect fifth has been flattened by 1/12 of the Pythagorean comma or about 1.955 cents to create the ET perfect fifth so that 12 ET perfect fifths equals 7 octaves.
(3/2)/(2^7/12)=(531441/524288)^(1/2)
((log[(3/2)/(2^7/12)=(531441/524288)^(1/2)]/log[2])x1200=about 1.955)
(There are 1200 cents per octave.)
Many different tuning systems were used from the 16th to 19th centuries and many of them were made by altering the fifth by a certain amount to create a desired effect like making thirds more consonant.
You may notice that the first 7 notes form a diatonic scale (lydian if F is the tonic, this has something to do with why it's the brightest), and the first 5 notes form a pentatonic scale (Major Pentatonic if F is tonic. Ironically this is the theoretical darkest pentatonic mode based on how low the notes are in the scale) In medieval Europe, only diatonic modes were used, with occasional accidentals being added over time to avoid tritones and create leading tones. I'm not sure, but believe that the twelve note system was largely the result of trying to theorize and play chromatic notes such as leading tones, and eventually modulations.
It is possible to create a 35-note extended Pythagorean tuning spanning every writable note from Fbb to Bx stacked in (just) perfect fifths like below.
Fbb, Cbb, Gbb, Dbb, Abb, Ebb, Bbb, Fb, Cb, Gb, Db, Ab, Eb, Bb, F, C, G, D, A, E, B, F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E#, B#, Fx, Cx, Gx, Dx, Ax, Ex, Bx
The appropriate Pythagorean tunings for every major and minor key (and more) are found in this system, and so this and similar 35-note systems may be useful to think about when reading about tuning systems. (You might also find it bizarrely satisfying used as a more modern xenharmonic (microtonal) tuning. ua-cam.com/video/sm-_Uvw2nBM/v-deo.html) It is a rather odd scale as a whole the though, because each of the 12 traditional notes is split into a cluster three close together notes such as Dbb, C, and B#, or Gb, F#, and Ex. (Except that Ab/G# is only a 2-note cluster because it is a tritone away from D which is the center note) It is also a little bizarre that notes with more sharps are higher than their enharmonic counterparts and notes with more flats are lower, meaning that, when looking at a cluster of enharmonic notes, the ones written lower on the staff actually sound slightly higher in Pythagorean tuning.
Also, medieval pitch theory was based on interlocking hexachords, which are the first six notes of a major or mixolydian scale. These can be made by taking the first six notes of a the circle of fifths and transposing them all into one octave. (Medieval theorists thought of notes in different octaves as different notes.)
Harmonically, medieval hexachords are also identical to minor 11 chords as well as diatonic clusters (all the notes) and perfect quartal hexachords (stacks of 5 perfect fourths). Also, you can find that sus chords and double sus chords come from the first 3 and 4 notes of the circle of fifths. It just goes to show how useful the circle of fifths is in structure music.
Thanks. Still can't get why the system works with that specific number of frenquency intervals. Why not a "macrotonal" (?) system of 9 notes or a microtonal system of 27 or 100 notes? (That related to the micro bends question).
Nicolás Bascuñán I said that the tuning we use is "deacent", by which I mean it isn't the best, but it works. If you would instead use 7 equal notes, you wouldn't really have a perfect fifth and a third. That being said, the 24 note system would have more acurrate fifths & thirds, but there are alot more notes now. 12 is just a deacent aproximation that works good enough without having a whole lot of notes.
Yo Adam! I want to thank you for creating this channel. I don't understand every thing but I am learning a lot. Peace!
Hey Adam, I have a very band specific question...
I’ve noticed while going through the Beatles’ discography that some songs have these incredibly dense sonic textures in comparison to others. But then, when I try to compose something with the same chord progressions/harmonies, or even just loosely mimic the way they write, it doesn’t sound so “thick”. What is it about these certain songs (Think “Boys”, “Don’t Bother Me”, “Yes it Is”, “I’ve Just Seen a Face”, “You Won’t See Me”, and a personal favorite “Love You To”) that makes them so dense sonically? And how, if possible, can this be mimicked?
Thanks Adam!!!
1:43 If the rule you're going with is whether an interval ever appears between two pitches of the series, then there is a perfect fourth, between the third and fourth harmonics. If instead you go with the rule that, modulo an octave, an interval never appears between the fundamental and another harmonic, then not only is there no perfect fourth, there is also no minor third - only intervals whose denominators are powers of two are included. I haven't heard minor thirds characterized as as or more dissonant than the perfect fourth. I feel like the reason we sometimes treat perfect fourths as dissonances is *strictly* at the level of the systems of harmony we built on top of acoustics rather than at the level of acoustics itself.
would be good to mention that major sevenths were considered too dissonant during a lot of western music history
Question for your next Q&A:
I struggle to wrap my head around the concept of when something is a song. I can play all these chords, notes, melodies, and whenever I compose I sometimes can't seem to choose what to do next. There are so many options and sometimes none of them feel 'right'. Other times the chords are just there and the songs seems 'done' or 'complete'. Is there any theory on this subject?
Love your video's. Super informative. Keep up the good work!
"Jesu Rex Admirabilis" by Palestrina, for everyone wondering what that "holy music" was when he read from 20th Century Harmony book :D - I love that piece, how did you come up with that, Adam?
saschamuecke seems Monteverdi Choir - pilgrimage to santiago
If you think about a mistake you're going to make it again. That's the past. Put it behind you as quickly as you can. Worry about the present and the future. I'm been playing with my bandmates for 25 years. When someone makes a mistake, no one gives them a "knowing look" for a few bars. No need to call attention to it, everyone on stage knows. When I get inside my head and start to mess myself up it's usually about feel and note choices - conceptual things like that. The mechanics of the part are pretty much under control.
Go to jam sessions where you don't know what's going to be thrown at you and you really have to do your best to make the unknown sound like music.
Thanks Adam!
“Is the perfect 4th disonant?”
*Well no but actually yes*
I appreciate you passing on some of your knowledgeable through your weekly videos. Thanks
Okay I'm confused - maybe somebody can clear this up - I was certain that the perfect fourth DOES appear in the harmonic series. Namely as the ratio between the 2nd and 3rd harmonic of any fundamental frequency.
Example:
if the fundamental frequency is 200Hz
1st harmonic is 400Hz
2nd harmonic 600Hz
3rd harmonic 800Hz
As you can see, the ratio between the 3rd and the 2nd harmonic, is 4:3, aka a perfect fourth.
So the perfect fourth does appear in the harmonic series. I hope this comment doesn't get drowned away in the comments because I'd love for somebody to clear this up for me.
His explanation got a little confusing. What he means is that, even though 4:3 does appear in the series, you never get a 4:3 ratio in relation to the fundamental note. That is, if the fundamental is C, you never get an F in the harmonic series. But this only makes sense if you think that notes an octave apart correspond to the "same note", which is just Western tradition. If you take the harmonic series on its own, that doesn't make any fucking sense.
That clears it up, thanks mate :)
Excellent disquisition. Over the last few days I've been playing over the score of Keith Emerson's Tarkus and the principles expressed here make so much sense. The fourth has a sense of tension as well as openness and Emerson exploits that to the full in all the various ways he deploys fourths, both harmonically and melodically.
Here's a question I'm curious about. I don't know if you answered this already but...
Do you believe in tonewoods in electric guitars/basses? There's a whole debate on this on the internet with rather strong arguments on both ends. And if you believe it's true, what tonewoods do you prefer/use?
One of my professors at the University of Victoria had an approach that I find very helpful for dealing with mistakes. He always emphasized playing musically above everything else with the understanding that wrong notes, botched rhythms, etc. will happen.
There was a story that went with this that I can't really remember, but the moral is that if you're playing musically and something goes wrong, the correct response is, "How Wonderful!" To make a mistake while playing musically and with conviction is far better than to avoid make no mistakes if it means playing timidly and in an uninspired manner.
Now this obviously takes practice, but by making a point of embodying this sentiment when things go wrong while practising, the reaction becomes automatic and makes staying centred in performance much easier.
Hey Adam! I was talking to a musician friend the other day about instrumentation and how that affects the style/genre of music that is produced. For example, if you have typical “metal” instrumentation of guitar, bass, and drums, but the guitar is completely clean, or the drums are bongos, etc. is it even “metal” anymore? Could you have a metal band that was just brass instruments? What are your thoughts on this?
Brass is a metal (an alloy, actually).
bmoremike God dammit...
Depends on the vocal style in most cases. Scream over brass instruments and you got Brass Metal. There you go.
15:19 - the harmonic series does not include a perfect fourth _above the root pitch_, but the P4 does appear in the harmonic series, especially between the 3rd and 4th harmonics. The same is true of the minor third. (You somewhat alluded to that, but I think it’s a worthwhile clarification.)
Did you put a really subtle Wilhelm Scream after saying "nobody's dying if you make a mistake"? It sounds like it to me but it's so quiet that I can't quite tell
Edit: nevermind, it's from the outro song lol. I paused right after hearing it and wrote/posted the comment before resuming
2:14 I think of it as, if you think of the top note (F) as the root it is consonant and if the root is the lower note (C) it is dissonant
Hey adam
Question
Do u listen to other genres like metal or heavy rock or even reggae
Keep up the good work
Dylan.j.fisher That I want to.know!
Dylan.j.fisher he listens to metal, or at least he has listened to metal. He's mentioned metal bands, and when people send in more metal submissions to How To Not Suck you can tell he's a little bit familiar.
He's mentioned liking Rage Against The Machine on another channel.
Rufus Stanier RatM is not metal though. Not even close.
Adam, he said "do you like metal, heavy rock or reggae" and I do believe RATM falls under a heavy rock genre.
For your next Q&A:
Why do we "start" at C? (C major having no sharps or flats, middle C on piano, etc.) Is it completely arbitrary? And if it is, then why didn't we choose A since it's the beginning of the alphabet and we tune to A = 440? Perhaps we designated note names to certain pitches before we came up with the major scale, but that raises the question - why did we decide that the interval between B-C and E-F would be half steps when all the other intervals are whole steps?
Perfect 4th is my favourite interval.
Adam, you played on the Apartment Sessions performance of Empire Liquor Mart by Gabriel Kahane. It’s a beautiful piece with a mesmerizing guitar passage at 3:16. I think it’s 7/8+11/8+4/8. Could you explain whats happening harmonically here, please? Especially as it goes through Eb-GbMaj11-Bb9-Dm-GMaj7-Eb-Db (I think). Is this modulation, modal mixing, etc.? I’m largely self taught, so if you could dumb it down, that would be appreciated. Thanks for your channel. Cheers.
Hey, wasn’t expecting Andy Rehfeldt to be here. Pretty cool!
13:07 This is 4 and a half years late, but the very first thing I was taught about playing music, is that when you make a mistake, if you don't react, then nobody will know. It's very unlikely anybody will notice, and there's nothing you can do about it, so move on to the next part and keep going, and just act like nothing happened.
qna question: what vinyl records do you have?
thomasLike YES
I prefer the closeness to a harmonic argument so much more than the "simple ratios" argument. In the spirit of transitioning from talking about "nice" or "good" or "pleasant" intervals to using labels like "consonant" or maybe even better: "cohesive." The fact of the matter being that any note, to varying degrees, even if a perfect sine wave generated by a computer, will produce harmonics by the time it has to be physically realized as waves in a vibrating medium or the air or even if it doesn't, will eventually have off-peak resonances with the cochlea in our ears! When you add one of the harmonics of a note over it, you are *accentuating* structure that already exists in the frequency spectrum. When you play a C4, you can hear a little bit of that C5, that G5, etc. It's already in there (usually)!
Somebody needs to make a gif of adam yelling "CENTER YOURSELF"
As a cellist currently playing Elgar Cello Concerto, youre mention of Jacqueline Du Pre really made me happy
Hey adam
I play a traditional string instrument from were i live which has a non-symmetrical tuning. There are two types of this instrument. One of them is tuned "b a e B A D" but i play the one that is tuned a full tone lower (a g d A G C). It's called portuguese guitar and it's great for folk and trad music and shit ( of course). Lately, i've been going further in my jazz theory knowledge because i'd like to get better in my improv skills. I'm reading a book that an ex-berklee student told me to read. The non-symmetrical tuning makes it really hard to sketch scales and some chords. However, there are things that i can do with this instrument that i can´t do with others and this is the one that gives me THAT feeling the bass gives to you. Do you think it is absolutely impossible and non-sense to expand my harmony and improv skills in this and eventually play jazz? or creativity and lots of hard work will get me there? I really don't know so i decided to ask the wisest musical geek on the web what he thinks. Hope you answer
If it can play the same notes then it's obviously not "impossible" for you to get there. It might be much more difficult but with enough practice I'm confident you can live the dream.
thanks, man! i've always thought that if, for example, trumpet players can do all they do with 3 fingers, i can go somewhere to. But people around me have been kinda discouraging me and saying it's to crazy. Thanks a lot for cheering me up! hope you can live the dream as well!
Plenty of people play jazz on a standard-tuned guitar, which isn't symmetrical either. Maybe I'm not understanding your question correctly, but I don't see how that would hinder your playing if you're learning the actual notes that make up the chords and scales, rather than relying on shapes and patterns.
what are the notes in that tuning? I Know that a regular guitar is not completely symmetrical but almost every distance between strings is an ascending perfect 4th. In my case i have a perfect 5th, a major 2nd, two perfect 4ths and a major 2nd again. It makes it really hard to map scales. However, I understand what you are saying and you are right
A standard-tuned guitar is E A D G B E, fourths, with the exception of the 2nd and 3rd strings, tuned in a major-third. But yes, I see why your particular tuning would make scale patterns very difficult. You might have to tune your instrument to a more consistent set of intervals to make scales and chords more manageable, although this would also entail relearning what you already know based on the current tuning intervals.
Some of the best recordings ever made were done in one take with everyone playing together on a four track analog machine. The Beatles are a great example. Even if there is a mistake, the take is the take. Even on a complicated multi track recording like Bohemian Rhapsody with was dozens of tracks, overdubs and if there was a glitch or strangled note, it was on the final mix. It makes your music so much more organic and natural sounding.
Do you know insaneintherainmusic/Carlos Eiene? If so, do you enjoy his arrangements and playing? If not, check him out and give us your thoughts! He is (primarily) a saxophonist who arranges video-game tracks into jazz covers and arrangements. In my opinion, he is really talented and his projects deserve more attention.
insanetherainmusic/adam neely collab please
About getting out of your head when you make a mistake playing live. In my case I find that mistakes usually come from loss of focus,or at least,loss of focus comes from thinking about the mistake after it happens. losing focus by thinking about a mistake is the absolute worst think you can do. You just sharpen your focus,move on and never give it a second thought. Let any mistake slide by,don’t acknowledge it it any way and 99% of the audience will never know. If they do notice they don’t care and those that care will forgive you. Trust me it is not a big deal except in your head. Anyway you can’t do a thing about it after it happens! Just be thankful you get paid for doing something you’d do for free any way,because you love it.
What is your favourite piece from The well-tempered Clavier?
For me it will always be the C prelude because for one it's awesome but it's also the first thing I ever learned to play on piano.
Which book? (Mine for both is the C# minor fugue)
Hey Adam! For the next Q&A:
I have a pretty big problem finding reliable material on how to notate accidentals in terms of melody. Now, chords are no problem: if it's a triad, stack up 3 notes and add accidentals to define the type of triad if it's not in key, if it's a seventh chord, stack up 4 notes and add accidentals to define the type of the seventh chord (there is some variation in terms of inversions but you get me, right?). But what do I do with melody? Which accidentals to use when the melody steps out of key?
Hi Adam :)
For your next Q&A
Why is a 7th chord considered a "dominant 7th"?
Let me give you some background.
When I was in music school and, later, conservatory, in the written music theory tests we usually had an exercise where you had to identify chords. The chords were not related to one another, not related to a key, not related to anything, they were just random. You had to tell if they were Major, minor, Aug, dim, etc. For the 7th chords (C E G Bb, for example) I always had to say it's a DOMINANT 7th, not just a 7h chord, but never actually understood why.
If you give me an harmonic context, or a key, I can identify a certain chord as a V7. But random chords??
Any idea why?
Thanks, and have a nice year!! :)
Also, I cant' hear the perfect 4th as dissonant, even with the explanation and examples you gave :)
PCanas Because when you construct a 7th chord from the dominant (5th) degree on a major scale, the resultant chord is a dominant 7th. I guess that the name has more of a historical meaning rather than a "logical" meaning.
PCanas It's because there's a tritone between de 3rd and the 7th of the chord. Every key contains only 2 notes that are a tritone apart (the 4th and the 7th) so whenever you hear a tritone it's stablished that you are in a specific key.
I understand that, and I wrote that. But if you're given a RANDOM 7th chord, with no more information about harmonic context or the key you're in, how can you say its a dominant 7th?
Example: D7. Why is it a dominant 7th?
PCanas D7 contains the notes F# and C. If you check all other 11 keys (besides G, the key D7 is dominant to) you'll notice that no other key contains both notes. So when you hear F# and C you know you are in the key of G, and since D7 is dominant to G, then you can assume it works as a dominant chord.
Hope I explained myself properly
I'm a 15 y/o piano student and with what you said about live performances is absolutely right, I started playing at a restaurant on Friday evenings 2 years ago and when I started that was something I really had trouble with but the best thing to over coming it is to just play live more and more
Of course the perfect 4th occurs in the harmonic series. If you have a fundamental of 100 Hz, the third and fourth overtone are 300 and 400 Hz, which makes a perfect 4th.
If you go by that logic, technically every interval is included in the harmonic series (technically, because they are getting really silent at some point in most sounds).
For our ears though, it is more important how the overtones relate to the fundemental note, because it is the lowest (the second lowest too) and, in most cases, the loudest perceived frequency.
I don't have a copy of Persichetti but I do have Walter Piston's "Harmony" and I was just reading his position on perfect 4ths - I think he said they're dissonant when they are the lowest interval but consonant in upper voices. To me that would fit with the idea of notes being in the harmonic series of the fundamental bass, but not necessarily with other notes that they form consonances with.
Then again, by this reasoning minor thirds are dissonant too!
"If you go by that logic, technically every interval is included in the harmonic series"
Well, almost. The harmonic series is infinite, so it does include every possible rational interval (if any math inclined person can correct me on this, please do!). Irrational intervals are absent, though. You don't have the interval 1:e in the harmonic series--which is exactly why we should be using that *more* in our music.
The real question here is: does it even matter if our intervals are "included in the harmonic series"? We still believe in the lie that the seventh degree of the harmonic series represents the minor seventh, when it doesn't. The minor seventh is the perfect fourth of the perfect fourth, that is, it's 3/4 * 3/4 = 9/16, which is "more complex" i.e. "more dissonant" than the 7/4 of the harmonic series; yet we perceive 9/16 as being in tune and 7/4 as being out of tune. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?
I love to explore the math to ridiculous extremes, but I think what sounds "consonant" comes down to how we hear things. My ears have an "uncanny valley" encompassing all intervals too big to be considered a unison and too small to be considered a third. When any pair of strong overtones between two notes falls in that uncanny valley, there's a possibility for it to sound dissonant. We can use math to avoid the uncanny valleys and find the "tolerance" of consonance rather than a "perfect" consonance.
Let me know when you make your 1:e music, Fernie... I'd love to hear it :) John Chowning's "Stria" uses the golden ratio as an interval... www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/comj.2007.31.3.26
There are an infinite amount of rational numbers (Just Intonation, or JI), AND an infinite amount of real numbers. There are MORE real numbers, though, because they can't all be listed. JI gives a framework for consonance in closed form that's historically relevant and mathematically consistent, so that's a big part of its usefulness.
another way to look at a perfect 4th is that it is a red herring - it can be seen as a tonic above its 5th; this explains the phenomenon of consonance, because the reference note is not the one we think of when referencing the fourth. Think of the interval as an inversion where the note we want to call the fourth is "really" best understood as the tonic and the note we are referencing as the tonic is the fifth.
Also, when Echo meowt, my cat [Zaccheus] was like "who dat?"
Question for next Q&A:
Do you have any thoughts on the use of words in music? I feel like this is an underrepresented aspect of the musical craft, especially in terms of academic discussion. As far as I understand it there are 3 primary factors that combine to form good lyrics;
1) The literal content
2) The lyrical/poetic value
3) The musical qualities
I'm especially interested in hearing your thoughts on the 3rd factor (What makes words musical, why do some words work better than others, the rhythmic qualities of language) and why this is generally neglected from music education programs when everything else is being hyperanalyzed.
Thanks!
4:45 I thought you're going to say "this cat is technically my girlfriend" xb
Your last sentence there was really inspired. There's this ridiculous fear that the audience would outrage if we make mistakes, but what I found out is that 9 out of 10 times, they don't even notice, and when they do, at least in my experience, they were very forgiving, because, you know, they're there to chill!
hi echo, hi echo, hi echo, hi echo...............
SO LAME
;)
15:18 - I like your use of the F-clef here! 😂