How my brain processes harmony
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- čas přidán 9. 09. 2024
- I took part in a study to figure out how improvisers react to harmony!
CHECK OUT THE PAPER (it explains why) doi.org/10.117...
Many thanks to Andrew Goldman and Tyreek Jackson for letting me interview them and be part of SCIENCE.
(⌐■_■)
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Peace,
Adam
Yes, the test is quite hard! I remember being exhausted after a half an hour of these blocks, describing later it to people as the "Ear Training Test from Hell." I imagine it was designed that way to force you to focus. I can't imagine getting everything right, but remember, this isn't school! Acing a test isn't the point.
Dr. Jackson's bit about Chopped is really interesting. I'm not a musician, did some choral in high school and that's about it, but I've definitely found that the more skills I learn, even tangentially, tend to inform other seemingly unrelated skills I know. For instance, my boyfriend is a carpenter, and I've spent some time in wedding dress alteration, and there's a LOT of overlap that you won't see until you actually start digging into the subjects. It's really quite interesting how everything is related.
BrokenMonocle "When you understand the way broadly, you see it in all things." Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
What is the V6 chord. Root Third Sixth? Why is it not a Vb for first inversion, is there a reason to write it as a number 6?
I've done contemporary music theory but lately I've been doing Classical music theory where it's Va Vb Vc and a V7d inversions if it was a seventh chord.
Puny Gods it's figured bass from classical counterpoint.
Ok the 6/3 6/4 way of writing the inversions. Thanks.
Due to mild colour-blindness, I can hear the difference between lemons and limes better than I can see the difference....
LOL!
Same!
same, except I can't hear the difference
Holy shit I was looking in the comments to find out why there were no limes holy fuck! I’m red green colourblind and generally have no trouble with yellow and green but I could’ve sworn every single one was yellow!
@@ayooobro It was the same for me - every single one was yellow!
A true J A Z Z M A N
Bruh
Bruh
Bruh
Habibi
Habibi
Your brain processes everything to see if the Licc is there
Well now my joke comment makes no sense because you changed the title, cheers Adam Neely...
Thos should be pinned af
Truck Boi: Oh it still kinda works... I think if you invoke the licc, you get a bit of poetic license.
Wm Reeves Yeah but it worked much better before Mr Neely changed the title, if you see this Adam, you're going on the naughty steps for 10 minutes to think about what you've done!
I'd never seen it before but that spelling of the lick is the best thing ever
I completely sucked at the test.
Should I drop out of Jazz School? Or should I grow a lemon tree?
I have no idea what I'm saying.
EDIT: I did the test again 3 years later, which during that time I've been doing some jazz arranging & performance. I can at least identify lemons consistantly. Limes and bannanas feel a bit harder to identify.
Joshlama Limes bruh. Limes. You've gotten too familiar with your vegetables. Start expanding your damn fruit knowledge!! 👌🏻😂
Is just a yellow lemon tree all you see?
Play more music
Drink more lemonade
I screwed up because I didn't understand what I was supposed to do haha, but then I heard the difference the second time I heard the sequence. Maybe you just got confused with the instructions or the format in which the test was presented to you, not by your ear training.
I guess these guys tested every musician like 1934832 times, so they could trust their data, so why don't you give it another try?
Ok, as an orchestral violinist for over 20 years... I had trouble hearing the differences. My wife, who is no musician, tends to focus on words to a song, whereas I've sung songs for 20 years and still don't know the words. So cool how we hear music differently. Great video, keep them up!
RJ Wohlman As an orchestral violinist, you’re probably a highly competent violinist, but you likely don’t have much experience improvising.
Zeke Merlis you are right on. however I've recently joined the band where I have to improvise jazz, Bluegrass, blues, rock definitely out of my element... But totally fun.
RJ---as a lifelong jazz musician I applaud you. Orchestral musicians, even the ones in the second and third tier orchestras are fantastic musicians and the music is wonderful. But keep going with the band side gig. It will push in ways you can't imagine right now. You'll learn a lot and have a lot of fun along the way.
I'm an amateur self-taught and I tend to pick out something different as the main focus every time I listen to a song, if I don't focus on something it's a cacophony of sound that's just kinda there and sounds nice
I had a easier time finding the bananas from the lemons, but a bit of a harder time finding the limes from the lemons.
Sonic6293 makes sense
Sonic6293 There is a high note on the v6 because it is inverted so if you try listening again and head that it makes it easier. At least for me. That is what I found while listening to this actually. 😅
I think that's what Neely was getting at with the citrus analogy, because I see V and V6 functionally the same in these examples. If there were a melody against the chord, then I would start seeing them differently, because there's an element of context there.
Saym
Sonic6293 exactly. The notes in the chord kinda give you a #Bass for what notes you could start your melodies with.
Interesting but the real question is...
did you tell Tyreek that you took his words, bought all the ingredients and filmed yourself putting a potato chips crust on the fish?!
Best part
Tyreek Jackson the best part was when I heard you say "Dr. Tyreek Jackson"
Still getting used to that!
This is the closest I will get to being noticed on this channel lol
Tyreek Jackson holy shit man you’re here! I read what I could of the paper without signing up for another scientific journal, and it’s great man! You have a super cool career.
Man, you put so much work in your videos. I love what you do man, so interesting!
Dear Apple Peely:
What do think of constant structure harmony, specifically as a way to create harmonic cohesion without really having a scale?
HEHEHE I AM A SUPAHSTAR SAGA I love that nick name! 😂
I just love the comments on Alan Meely's videos.
You can’t call him “Adam Peely” because most mathematicians and computer scientists agree that P =\= NP
MOOSEWHISKER WTF?
MAFS!
I love how you turned the test into a song.
Understanding that jazz was a language and that improvisation was conversation was the beginning of my real jazz life.
10:58 after that clip of Tyreek playing bass, I hadn't expected him to love Gothenburg metal as much as I do! Definitely gonna check out his band!
"Taste the citrus!" sounds like a new catch-phrase here :)
As someone who studies psychology, I always find the musician versus non-musician comparisons very interesting! I'm familiar with the measuring instrument, having used it myself. This is great stuff! Even the little experiment we did showed significant differences.
7:53 I studied Spanish in school my whole life, and I can understand it fairly well, but I can't write it or speak it. So I suppose you could say that's a language I know but can't improvise in
Olá Adam, Saudações aqui do Brasil, canal André Sarmanho! você é um excelente músico
I think fluency is a good word to use to describe this sort of thing. This especially works when you talk about language. I took three semesters of French and was able to understand well enough what was being spoken to me but it took me to the fourth semester to be able to react upon what was being said. Super cool stuff!
8:23 I immediatly thought: "This looks like HowToBasic."
Later I noticed that I actually got a HowToBasic video as a recommendation.
I think that improvisational speed needs to be factored in. I can differentiate between the limes and bananas, albeit at a slower speed. If the chords were a little lengthier, it would be much easier for me. Was there a reason for the 400ms?
There are a few reasons, but one of the main reasons for that was because of the neural component that we were interested in (the P300b); the latency times couldn't be too long or else it would cause distortion in the neural signal. Other reasons included time. Each ms adds up when you have someone listening to 1440 chord progressions, so we found a happy medium. Additionally, it wasn't really about the participant acing the responses (although that matters a little bit). It was really about capturing the voltage fluctuations as you make your choice.
Ahh, the “Christmas” chord in your thumbnail haha
Holy crap, Tyreek's band is awesome! Just checked them out on spotify. They need some more recognition.
I still don't get it, and I feel like my brain is a fruit salad.
now you're making me imagine a fruit salad comprised solely of lemons, limes and bananas
now you're making me want to eat that
good job, you two
Sounds like you need Brain Salad Surgery.
Jelly as sauce to asparagus is like guitarists' "sour face" or like when the bassist takes a "tight" gluing with the drummer. I noticed that good improvisers I knew are very fluid in handling a conversation as they can "empathize" when to build up or chill down or shift flawlessly to a new topic, just like mind blowing key changes.
I was brought here again after watching your latest video - congrats on 1M subs btw! - and I remember watching this video two years ago - I know for a fact that I didn't get all the limes right then - but after two years of playing more than ever before - finally catching up on scales, some more complex chord progressions, re-learning some temporarily forgotten knowledge and actually *hearing* what I'm playing, I am so happy to say that it was so easy recognizing all of these now! It's so nice to know that there was significant progress in just 2 years!
The ending answered the biggest question I had throughout the video.
Is that how fast they were presented in the study? In that case, my ear was more interested in the relationship between the turnarounds.
Casey Dahl Yes I think thats the point, your brain isn't focussed on analyzing each chord but associating an abstract thing with them! In other words you can feel the changes, almost as if youre assigning colors to them that you couldn't miss even if they're flying by!
I need your profile pic in my life Casey Dahl.
@Leif Burman
Yeah it sounded like that to me too. I kept wanting to hear it as going somewhere in whole, like Central Park West.
czcams.com/video/EFzLLoBOlCA/video.html
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Adam Nelly. The theory is extremely advanced and without a solid grasp of Jazz Standards most of the music will go over a typical viewer's head. There's also Adams 's 20th century art music influences , which is deftly woven into his teaching- his personal style draws heavily from Smash Mouth, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the Phase Locking of his riffs , to realise that they're not just funky- they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Adam Neely truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the subtlety in Adam's existential catchphrase "BASS," which itself is a cryptic reference to Bartoks 3rd string quartet
I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Adam explains why 440htz is better than 432. What fools.. how I pity them. 😂
And yes, by the way, i DO have a tattoo of the lick And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only- and even then they have to demonstrate that they can play Giant steps within 5 BPM of my own record of 690 Bpm (preferably lower) beforehand. Nothin personnel kid 😎
kevs musicandstuff Do you know how I know you're the fool? You're too stupid to realize that you're the fool..
This comment is definitely underrated
Fucking legend
A tattoo of the lick I’m dying
Dead 😂
So as a drummer I'm asparagus?
R U Nah, you dat tasty jam 😎
R U well, does the band treat you like you're asparagus? ; )
a better question is
can you play drums with asparagus?
now all that's left is to prove string theory.
It's been proven lacking. Has holes. E8 lattice reality theory is where it's at. Just like string theory, it has to be relatively unknown for a few years before the momentum of funding backing catches up and it then becomes more known to the collective.
E8 and other quantum theories will then provide the fillers for the holes and gaps in string theory on the backend.
wtf. I didnt need to write any of this. *sigh
@@eps4560 Well, it hasn't really been proven anything, though, I think?
Is that Gabe from The Office?
DUDE I LEGIT HAD THE SAME THOUGHT
best comment
It's Jared
I just see mobius from the matrix
I never ever thought I'd be interested in music theory and the like but then Adam came along. I mean, I still don't understand most of these but I sure am already amazed.
Your video-creating skills are getting *really* good Adam... you deserve all the subs you have and so many more :)
Thank you for the tip, I really enjoy The Hudson Horror! Great video also!
Agreed, perfect product placement :)
I just gave it a try, and really liked it
fun! You talked about how "improvisers have to train to think of chords more like ideas... non improvisers don't have to treat chords as concepts", and I feel this is a little reductive! As a classical musician who never improvises, I'm definitely always thinking about the functions of chords, the ideas and purposes and intentions behind each one! I just don't do it on the fly as an improviser does. To follow along with the recipe analogy, improvisers would be better at knowing 'I don't have lemon, I'll use a lime" (constructing your own recipe), but a non improviser would focus more on 'Why a Lemon? What's purpose of it, and why not a lime in the same place" (following and understanding a prewritten melody) (this is of course not meant to imply improvisers don't/can't also do this). So I think it's a bit simplistic to say non improvisers don't treat chords as concepts. I'd be able to better serve the music by sitting down and analysing, then creating on the fly. Each method serves the 'culture' of the music that is being created performed, but I love seeing this type of research being published!
Adam I really appreciate the Chopped section- you really HowToBasic’d the hell out of it, good job
0:42 had me giggle
Tora Nagumanova (smoothly whispers): ``Jazz``
I´ll never get tired of this
Same 😂💀
I don't get it
This video is insane... the topic is crazy... the editing is ridiculously good... you are someone to look up to in so many ways!
Thanks for checking out the video! You and Adam are two of my favorite CZcams people!
I love In Flames... looking it op right now. :-)
ps. loved this video. Not sure what i learned. But I will rewatch it later. Now The Hudson Horror
Petch85 I just checked them out, they are awesome! Heavy as fuck! And those vocals! Killer stuff
Petch85 🤘🏾🤘🏾🤘🏾
My guitarists old band. I was stoked to see that and also Dr Jackson
Whatup! Keep me posted about upcoming ANLMA shows; definitely want to come check y'all out.
+1 new Hudson Horror fan
It'd be interesting to see a similar study on how musicians pick up on rhythms. How something like that would be executed I have no idea, but the thought popped up in my head since I as a musician am god-awful when it comes to chords, chord progressions etc. but when it comes to rhythms I'd say I'm pretty darn good.
Really interesting test! I never improvise, so I was very lost the first time. The second time it was much easier, somehow, but I couldn't tell the limes from the bananas. The third time, it was easier to tell them apart.
Hey Adam! Love the video, love when you get sciencey :)
One question that i always keep thinking about neurology, music and language, is how does being polyglot and musician affects your way of thinking and perceiving the world.
One "obvious" (very loosely with that adj here) is the fact that a musician's ear will be able to detect easier the intonation and rhythm of a phrase in a new language. But do you think knowing multiple languages affect the way you play some improvisation (do we think of the phrasings in the languages also affects the phrasings in our playing?) .
Well, maybe a bit of a seed for a next video about music and neurology ;)
Cheers! Have a great week
4:02 I felt like I was listening to Giant Steps. You can almost sing it for a while.
Giant steps is, in a nutshell, a series of ii-V-Is in basically all keys so...
As both a (bad) musician and freshly minted cognitive neuroscientist who worked primarily with EEG, this was great! Thank you for including the scientists' perspectives in this video. I'll have to go check out their paper!
4:05 -- I've heard worse versions of Giant Steps.
The recontextualization is mindbending. I was listening to the chords and had no idea what is happening (I study in a classical music school so at least I got the theory), but when the drums came in the 3 chord sections got a new meaning, now being one unit each in a bigger musical idea. Wow!
“Taste like exemplar deviance” print it on a T-shirt plz.
This is fantastic, Adam! The experiment is really very interesting. Also, I'm glad you are showing that there's research into music and there are possible roles needed in that. Just because you have a good knowledge of sound and music, doesn't necessarily mean that performance or composition are the only possible career routes. Research is love, research is life.
Ben we agree!
Those limes sound like bananas.
theyre a little darker sounding
For your next Q&A: What is your perspective on self taught players? I personally was the only person in my immediate circle who played music at all, so I had no one to point me towards any lessons, theory, or secondary musical education.
As a classical musician I can work out the functions of a chord after transcribing and looking at how it works in the context of the progression, but I have trouble hearing it right away, especially at the speed in the test. I feel like I'm trying to "translate" from a foreign language incredibly slowly and am far from being a native speaker. Do you think with enough training that this is a skill I could acquire, or if my years of classical training mean that I will always be "translating" from absolute notes to function?
I think you need to be playing these things to internalise. My experience was similar to yours 20years ago, but since playing in a band situation with relatively simple changes, my ear has gained its own sense of absolution. (NB. 20years ago I always looked for & bought sheet music for EVERYthing. Now I rarely use sheets coz I think it is easier to listen.)
Man, I just had to subscribe. I don't usually subscribe to channels, but you make so good fucking videos. So much effort, such depth in the subjects you chose to address. Congrats, amazing work.
No improvisation for me thanks, I’m already gay.
t a s t e t h e c i t r u s
that's such a mood
Sir Hiffwe *WHEEZE*
@W0Y4K What about the lesbians? Can't spell "Scissor Sisters" without, well "scissor sisters"...
Gothenburg sound! Badass. Here I am learning about improv and someone hits me in the feels.
Great now i feel like a toaster.
Sam Antoniak
Can you toast a piece of bread for me
I don't have a lot of musical experience, but when I started to practise to learn how to play things by ear, I did the same I do to numbers (I'm quite good with maths), which is precisely turning chords into ideas and understanding how they relate to each other within a scale and the subtle differences between them. I am a bit irritated right now and it was hard to focus, but I did manage to identify some limes from lemons.
I also should point that I had an extra hard time focusing because you were looking good. Nice one.
I'm a simple man, I see Adam has a new video out...
I click it.
Altus you poor soul. You do not yet know your sins..... one does not simply click on an Adam Neely video and enjoy a blissful trip into the world of music. You experience the horrors of that which you do not yet know and will never hope to understand. The deep, dark secrets of the sacred musical cult know as.... the Apple Peely Convention of Cyborgs and Musical Wizardry. The A.P.C.C.M.W.
Spread the word people.... he is a very sick man. 😐
Half Seen I need to learn more of this which you speak of
(C)lick it
"one does not simply click on an Adam Neely video"
I love the food analogy. My wife is an excellent classical piano player, but can’t really improvise. I improvise pretty much everything I play, but can’t really read music. We cook the same way. She cooks from recipes. I cook based on the function of the items I happen to have on hand. Once I was cooking a cream soup and said it needed something to make it a little more tangy. My then five year old son said “lemon juice!” I wonder if there are genetic as well as learned aspects of being able to think functionally about both music and food.
Hey Adam, when writing, chords or melody first?
S1NGULAR1TY the answer: yes.
Check out Hindemith's The Craft of Musical Composition, Book 2. It's the best book on writing music I've ever seen. It starts with extreme restrictions, then gives rules for how to use more and more ideas, notes, and chords. By the end, you'll be allowed to do anything, but you'll have internalized how to effectively turn a harmonic idea into music with a melody and how to turn a melodic idea into something with chords. You can do either and both with the right type of practice.
yes
Yes
S1NGULAR1TY 42
I'm not much of an improviser, but I could hear the differences. I couldn't identify them fast enough, i.e. before the lemon, lime or banana appeared.
I loved the cooking analogy. Sometimes you gotta zoom out to see the picture better.
Great stuff, Adam.
I’m definitely going to need to check out Tyreek’s band. Thanks for these interesting sort of uploads, and showing me that I can’t tell the difference between a lime and a banana.
Progressive melodic death thrash metalcore. It's neat.
Cheers! thehudsonhorror.bandcamp.com
Tyreek Jackson Man, your tracks are some of the coolest I've heard. While I've never been into screaming too much, your band helps bring it all together much more cohesively and enjoyably than I usually find. I really like 'What the Moon Brings'.
I know some people who'll love this music, and I'm gonna make sure to share it around.
Yeah! The metal shout out at the end, props!
I feel bad now because I didn't hear the limes
I didn't even hear the lemons as the same thing lol
It's hard, but with the lines there is more of an interval between the highest and lowest notes because of it being an inversion. Not sure if that helps. Either way, keep practicing bro! All of it takes a looooong time to learn.
Maybe that's a good thing. The lemons and limes are just different inversions of the same chord so non musically trained people would treat them as different chords whereas musically trained people would treat them as virtually the same chord.
T A S T E T H E L I M E
Loving the effect with the bits of paper.
Is it cheating if I was able to hear the differences solely based off of the voice leading of the chords?
Q Not at all. In fact, many participants commented that they were listening out for the interval changes in the soprano voice when we debriefed with them. In anticipation of hearing this, we counterbalanced the stimuli so that what would be a standard in one block would appear as a deviant in others. Additionally, we did a secondary interval analysis which focused on the soprano voice and found that the top note was not a driver in how the participants made their choices.
Cool. I was wondering about that, too! Glad you took it into account in the experiment.
Yeah. After about the 20th person mentioning that, we knew we had to do a second analysis with that involved, haha!
Nice! Mind you, I was focusing on the bass voice in the video, just in case he might've switched up the soprano, since the soprano doesn't usually count toward the inversion. XD
Yeah I thought the voice leading made it very apparent. Only missed one, and while I've dabbled in jazz improv, I'm not great. I've transcribed a fair amount though.
Adam went full how to basic on the kitchen
Adam Neely eats things...again.
@5:23 there's talk about a more abstract representation of what is being heard, as if it is a mystery. It may be that we don't know for sure what it is, but it's very easy to propose a mechanism: intervallic relationships. The reason why the exemplar and examplar deviants are connected is that their internal intervallic relationships have a lot in common, or are even identical. The functional deviants do not share this property.
Remember: our entire nervous system is built around the detection of difference. It seems entirely reasonable (though currently unproven) that what we hear when we hear music are not absolute pitches but the intervals between both the notes of a chord and the sequential notes of a melody. Strong energy at 3/2 the frequency of another tone sounds different from strong energy at 15/12 the frequency of another tone.
I think we're really built for this sort of sensory detection/representation, but it's also (as with spoken language) driven by experience too. It would also mirror some of the ways that the visual system works in building representations from visual data, by using things like edge detection (again, detecting difference, not absolutes).
Title reminds me of how High IQ rick & morty would say lmao
Maaan! You genious with the green sceen in the torn paper!
I got 0% right. 👎 Definitely. 😐
Actually it was random stuff for me and, by chance, I'd make 33% right. 🤔 I'll never call myself a musician 🎶 again! 😭
I know that feel. I got same feeling abot it and kinda same result...
same
It just means you don't have a lot of experience improvising. If you want to, you can try to get better at that, or you can be happy doing other musical things. Just because you're a musician doesn't mean you have to be good at all music related skills.
xway2 Yeah! What he says. 👌🏻 Like for example I play mostly rhythm guitar. But I am a vocalist so I have experience improvising off of chords. It all just takes a hellota practice.
Doesn't mean you're not a musician, just that you focus on other stuff. Noticing harmony is easier if you're doing a lot of improvising (or in general, having to quickly adapt to music you _hear_ as opposed to read).
I'm mostly self-taught on guitar, and learned by ear, trying to copy what I was listening to. So I'm pretty good at this kind of "musical puzzle", roughly getting the underlying function going on.
However, I would be hopeless trying to write lyrics, quickly read sheet music, lead singing etc.
I'm too used to focusing on pitch, harmony and rhythm, but I forget about timbre and emotion. I don't "get" some songs because they were written with a different focus in mind than what I tend to notice. Doesn't mean they're "bad" songs
Such a cool cutaway idea 9:02
when u 7 minutes in on an 11 minute video and ppl already be commenting
You do great analysis of songs that are super complex and detailed. Could you do an in depth look at traditional bluegrass songs? The vocal harmonies, solo phrasing, roles in the band. Show the depth that lies within what seems like an old "hillbilly" 3 chord song, banjo phrasing, mandolin chops on the off beat, more complex bass than just root/5th.
So you're saying you are the ultimate being?
TheYummyBurrito shhh the Justin Y bots will come for you
speakin' the truth my dude. Maybe one day they'll get bored when they see they've gathered more hate than appreciation
if he ever actually read the replies maybe he'd listen to you and realise what he's doing just isn't impressive at all and only fools think differently.
You even watch Adam Neely?!
he doesn't watch anything you pumpkin, he just spams comments everywhere for what little, meaningless praise that awards him.
Wow, a jazz man who likes melodic death metal, great combination, I love Soilwork man, especially the older LP´s have a groove never heard in this genre :)
I could hear the bananas but not the limes.
Apan Apandottír I could hear the Limes more than the bananas
Just the matter of experience. In russian musical schools they make us recognise chords and their inversions like for hours! Believe me, after that you would be able to distinguish bananas that come from different parts of africa
Антон Кузнецов I'm African... Lol
Fascinating how the brain processes subtleties that a "muggle" can't even detect. Glad I speak a bit of your language.
Dude, how was your grocery shopping?
I have zero improvisation experience, just other musical training, but I felt pretty confident about deciphering the deviant chord progressions. Not sure the test is about improvisation experience rather than just musical training in general
the chords were all the same ta-da-da
copych
thats the rhythm not the chords
joking ? =)
The repitition of of those chords in different keys, predictably started to make more and more sense when listening to the examples. Interesting. Rhythm is powerful
I don't have a brain
Flowey's hot jamz You’re profile pic makes this comment 100 times better lmao
I laughed more than I should
I’m a experienced and daily improviser, I was able to get both of the functional deviants correctly. I did however, miss a few of the exemplary, which I’m confident I wouldn’t have had the test been done slower. I think that may been the point however, but I can’t see the purpose of it beyond ear training at that level of speed... it seems to me that it would yield better results on the brain scan if it were slower, and you could more accurately identify the deviations. I’m sure that I’m wrong, and these guys know what they’re doing, but that’s how it seems to me.
Oh yeah, talk dirty to me
Christopher K non-functional harmonies ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
The Man In The Void oh GOD yes!
atonal improvisation
sumojack i legit actually want to learn to do that
Not a question, a comment in praise and adoration of this channel:
A comment was left on your Q+A #48 about theory influencing the 'magic' of music. You discussed how applying knowledge to new contexts can refresh that 'magic' in a way. I loved that idea but also wanted to suggest, if that comment-maker sees this some how, that there will always be more magic to find with music (as with most things, but I'll get back to that).
A friend told me to listen to Dinosaur Jr. a few years ago. I had heard the band before and kind of dismissed them as fuzzy grunge. Like, I thought, 'I know that music; no need to think too deeply about it'. We then tried to learn the song 'Out There'. The chords and rhythm are simple enough. Loosely speaking, we could play and approximate the song quite well, quite quickly. But listening to the song more and more, I found that there were nuances I couldn't recreate. A lot of these were tonal or to do with the specific timbre that J Mascis achieves by using vintage fuzz pedals, a selection of amplifiers and through his distinct playing style. But just 'knowing' that, didn't stop there being 'magic'. I bought the vintage pedals, the amps, I studied videos of his playing, but there's still a quality to his version of the song that I can't seem to get at. And I love that. In the space between my best version, my knowledge of his technique and his playing, there is what feels like a small but endless divide that is as frustrating as it is wonderful.
There's that apocryphal story about a stubborn and ill-informed person meeting a scientist; it culminates in the phrase 'turtles all the way down'. What the stubborn person in the story represents is the kind of person that can accept something at face value and stop looking for further mystery and complication. Like accepting that 'gravity' is what makes things 'fall' without getting in to the greater depths of gravity being a phenomenon that has echoes of the entire universe within it, and that 'falling' is really a form of attraction to a larger object (or the even greater depth of then what that 'gravity' might be and is it a wave or a particle or, 'what's a gluon' or... etc.).
If I had just accepted my version of 'Out There', the version that most people could recognise and that fuctions in a band context, as the same as J Mascis' version, it would be like believing the universe sits on top of a magic turtle. Magical but, uninformed. Or maybe worse, maybe a little less magic somehow!
When I dig in, try my hardest, learn the techniques, research and purchase the equipment and still find myself coming up short, there's still magic there but now it's a well informed magic. I can now appreciate, more than ever, a unique talent and a musical phenomenon.
Great channel, always inspiring.
I've been improvising every day for 30+ years now, on a variety of instruments. Wake me up in the middle of the night, and I'll improvise a Bach figuration prelude or a Chopin waltz for you on the spot.
With that in mind, all I can say is: this was way too fast. I didn't hear anything at all. Just a minute of random chords that made no sense musically.
Now, I can only guess that that must be the whole point of the experiment, and the reason why they hook you up to a brain scan: So they can check what your brain actually does "behind the scenes", all by itself and within a split second, before you have any time to stop and think about it consciously and put it in words and revise it and all that.
However, if that is the case, I am not sure what the point of your "recreating" the experiment here was, as none of your audience are hooked up to an MRT. I have absolutely no idea what my brain actually thought about any of these chords flying past at such breakneck speed.
Александр Евстюгов I'm glad you said this because now I don't feel so bad lol
The point is just illustrative. But yeah, way way too fast.
Really? I understood it pretty well. 🤔 Do you mean you weren't able to follow it? Or what because I mean all of our brains process things in different ways and at different speeds. For me at least I was able to follow and pick them out. And then when I listened to it again it was easier for me to pick them out. It could depend on the genre of music. Jazz tends to have a lot of intense chord changes where as a majority of classical will build heavily off of one chord in sections.
Half Seen u couldn't have said it any better, I remember back when I use to listen to (and play on bass) mostly simpler rock, metal, and classical and I tried to expand my taste into jazz it seemed like the simpler the chord progressions and harmonic structures, were easier for me to learn and understand and enjoy. After 6 years however hard bop, free jazz, and stuff is very easy on my ears and I can follow along
I think the test being this fast does have a valid point. It is about instantly recognizing what is going on, not in an analytical way. Compare it with colors, for example, light-blue (lemon), dark-blue (lime) and green (banana). When seeing these colors in the same speed, you'd instantly know light-blue and dark-blue are variations of the same color, no analysing required. The green banana would pop-out even easier.
Looking at myself, I'm in no way an experienced improviser, but since I've grown some interest in music theory (thanks to Mr Neely, Mr Beato) after hammering clueless on my guitar for years, I have started to listen differently to music in general. As I'm usually the rhythmguitarist in the settings I'm playing my main interest was in progressions and chord functions rather than soloing. So, I did the experiment on this video myself and I found the 'bananas' easy to spot at that speed. (the limes not so, lol)
Now I agree improvising is not about improvising on a progression you hear for the first time. But this test does expose a correlation between beeing experienced in improvising and being able to quickly identify progressions in various abstractions. In a live video Rick Beato once did about Aydin Esen, Rick showed an improvisation by Aydin on a very complex progression which was spot on. He heard that progression only one time before which was 5 minutes before he started improvising.
Point being, even the best cannot improvise on first exposure of any (complex) progression, as you need to anticipate certain changes. But the only way for Aydin Esen to improvise on such complex progressions after hearing it only once, is an instant way of abstracting the progressions into functions and other abstraction levels he has at his disposal
"that could be your sauce" is not only a good anology but also good life advice👌👌👌
Loved this!
I wasn't able to tell most of them apart. The shifting scale constantly gave me false hope for guessing the next one and I was often wrong.
It would be interesting to do other blind tests for things like rhythm, pitch, or tone.
I love your channel Adam. Thank you
Brilliant insight and information Adam. We have added your channel to a recommended music educators playlist. Thank you.
i love your great content Adam. Thank you for thinking deeply about every video you do and not dumbing things down too much.
This channel is awesome. Keep going!
i feel like it would be useful for the purposes of terminology to distinguish 'musician's improvisation' with 'composers improvisation' because i couldn't even tell the lemons from the other lemons, despite the fact that 90% of the melodies in my songs are made by playing the song in a loop and noodling until 8 good-sounding bars pop out somewhere.
2:55 "I like to make this analogy with chefs"
*Adam plays sound clip of a plumber*
For the next Q&A:
A group of friends at my college and I started a jazz quartet and have done a few gigs. Mainly at Breweries and banquets. We just booked just our first wedding gig that's in a few months. With all of your wedding gigging experience can you share some tips? Maybe somethings you didn't know going into your first one that you wish you had known? Thanks!
I found myself salivating halfway through this video
I've heard the Lime more prominent all the time, as a more sharpened, pointed-like, and not-so-flat or plain-like as the other two blocks.
Pointy against flattened.
I don't know if it has some sense, it's just the way I felt the test. Also noticed a core note that told me how the relationships between the 3 blocks were changing, giving diferent flavours or resolutions, as if the 3 weren't separated, but a virtual, abstract chord, creating different melodies.
Oo, that's fascinating. I'm a musician, but not an improvisor. I played along without looking at the screen and my brain quickly started grouping the chords together. However, I was completely unable to distinguish which group was which, just that they were related and separate.
Tyreek looks so friendly I love it
Mishak Heyman 🙏🏾