Understanding Smells Like Teen Spirit
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- čas přidán 16. 02. 2023
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If you were to write a list of the most historically important rock songs, odds are Smells Like Teen Spirit would be in the top 10. As the vanguard of the grunge revolution, Nirvana's breakthrough hit set the stage for the reinvention of rock music in the '90s, and it remains an iconic example of the sound that shaped my childhood. And it all started with a drunken scribble on Kurt Cobain's bedroom wall.
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Some additional thoughts/corrections:
1) As I understand it, Hanna and Cobain were the only ones there when they vandalized the pregnancy crisis care center (basically a clinic set up to draw in women seeking abortions and then talk them out of it with misleading information, in case you were wondering what that was about.) and then Grohl joined up with them later when they went back to Cobain's place. I simplified the narrative a bit for the video because those details weren't important to my actual point.
2) Going back and looking- at More Than A Feeling in the context of this song, I was surprised to find that they actually do change chords on beat 3 of the first bar, the just pull it back in the second. It's actually an almost entirely different riff. I suspect if Nirvana hadn't made the connection themselves, no one else would've.
3) I'm not 100% sure there are kicks on the beats in the fill for Burn Rubber On Me. I hear them, and it'd make sense for disco, but most drum covers on CZcams only put kicks on the offbeats so maybe I'm wrong. Not super relevant to my point, but wanted to clarify in case I'd made a mistake.
4) In retrospect it might've been a good idea to point out that the quiet section bass doesn't actually have the pull-chord syncopation in it. I don't really have anything much to say about that beyond "it reduces the energy level" which I already said about other parts of the section, but it's still a true thing.
5) In the specific instance of the verse vocals I used, he's pretty sharp on the low G, to the point where it might sound like he's actually just flat on an Ab. Looking at the rest of the verses I'm pretty sure that's unintentional, and I wanted to stick with the first statement 'cause otherwise I'd have to include an explanation for why I wasn't.
6) Also, technically, he does hit the G as the bass drops to a C, so I suppose it is sort of a chord tone, but again I don't view that C as implying a change in harmony.
7) The chords in the layered guitar part aren't actually _completely_ unrelated. The first one is the same, the middle two are built on the perfect 5th of the underlying harmony, and the last one is nominally the same again although he does some decorative stuff to prevent it from being identical. So they overlap a bit, but the distortion is so strong that even that winds up feeling pretty messy. This also probably explains why it's so hard to hear in the mix: By keeping the part quiet, it kinda just sounds like overtones to the main guitar part, so my ears are struggling to separate it out into its own distinct part.
When I heard the layered guitar tones on the chorus, I immediately thought of Bob Mould's playing in Husker Du, another band that influenced Nirvana. I don't know whether Mould layered separate chords in his recordings or whether his dissonances were more a result of playing dissonances through an extremely unforgiving distortion sound. For most of Husker Du's career, it would have been a distortion pedal directly into a mixing board, a sound that Nirvana uses on Territorial Pissings. Was it a known Husker Du trick? Maybe.
With #2 -- I remember constantly hearing about how "More Than a Feeling" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was the same riff, and I've wondered whether I just had cotton in my ears. There are some vague similarities, but the rhythm is different, and the progression is quite different. MTaF is just basic I-IV-iv-V pop chords; very normal pop functional harmony, and, well, you know SLTS veers away from that in the second bar. I've always felt Kurt was being a little facetious or self-deprecating or something when he said the riff was just a rip off of MTaF (or whatever his exact words were.) I'm sure he was influenced or inspired by it; but he turned it into something quite different.
“Burn Rubber” is absolutely not Disco. Funk or R & B but not Disco. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me a lot of people outside of black culture will call black music from this era “disco” whether it is or isn’t. The GAP band is a Funk band.
@@joel2421 Yeah, and you find that type of beat, or similar (maybe without the flams), in Motown type of music, as well. But definitely more R&B/funk than disco. On the other hand, the influence of those genres on disco is immense, so I could understand blurring the lines.
i loved this video, just wanted to add a couple of things.
firstly, 12:28 is not a powerchord, or at least as a guitarist i definitely wouldn't call it one, and i don't think many other guitarists, if any at all, would. a "powerchord" isn't just a 5th chord, it's kind of understood amongst guitarists that a 5th chord is a powerchord if it is played on the lower 3 or 4 strings. even the 4th string is pushing it a bit i think. you'd be correct enough just calling it an arpeggiated 5th chord i guess.
ok one other thing, and i'm a little surprised you didn't mention this, but in not doing so you kind of got Kurt's guitar chords wrong, like objectively.
Kurt is playing the powerchords with either his ring or little finger barring the 5th and the octave, so for the F5 chord that would be 133xxx, for example. thing is, because of the physicality of the instrument, when you barre, it is difficult to avoid also barring higher strings you are intending to mute, especially for a sloppy guitarist like Kurt. i wouldn't be surprised if this was originially an accident, but that he ended up liking the way it sounded, but he's actually playing 1333xx, rather than 133xxx. what this means is that he's actually adding a 4th onto the F and Ab chords, making them 5add4 chords? Idk what you'd call them, but they're comprised of root, 5th, root, 4th in that order. Now, why did I say this is just the F and Ab chords? Well, because for the Bb and Db chords, they are rooted on the A string, which means that top "unintended" note produced by the exact same fingering/shape isn't a 4th, but a major 3rd, because the B string is tuned to a major third rather than a 4th. They are played like x1333x, which means the chord progression is technically F5add4, Bb, Abadd4, Db. The band is probably still thinking of it as just F, Bb, Ab, Db, but these extra notes add a LOT of colour and weight to the chords sonically, and the extra harmonic information does a lot for the progression as well. Plus it's very interesting with regards to the physicality of the instrument, which is something I love when you mention in these videos.
That's all I had to say, thanks!
I've always really respected how open Kurt was about his influences. I think it says a lot about him that he got this sudden, unexpected, worldwide fame and he used it to promote lesser-known acts that he loved.
It also speaks to just how he learned music without "formal training". He listened widly and tried to play along! Then once he started making his own stuff, used what he liked!
honestly i have been wanting to start a band at some point and no matter how big or small i hope to do the same it is really respectable
"He acknowledges that he knows where you want him to go, but he pretty clearly doesn't want to be there" sums up Kurt and Nirvana perfectly tbh
I've always loved that origin story. The fact that Cobain didn't know what Teen Spirit was until after he released the song is priceless. Reminds me of the name Breakfast at Tiffany's. The author, Truman Capote, knew what Tiffany's was. But it was based on an overheard conversation from someone who didn't. They thought Tiffany's sounded like a nice place for breakfast. That inspired the creation of the Holly Golightly character.
"What About" it? 😉
@@billymanilli I think I remember the film
I think I speak for all of the loyal 12tone viewers when I say this has been a LOOOOONG time coming, and I thank you for finally breaking down THE best song of the 90s!
He broke down wonderwall?
same! I've been waiting for this for years!
How was this NOT already done. :)
i didnt see anywhere in this video unforgiven II
Honestly, I hadn't realised he hadn't already made this video. I just assumed he had.
Nirvana broke into "More Than A Feeling" at the Reading Festival 92' before playing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" acknowledging this, and it's hilarious. "I wanted to write the ultimate pop song." Well done, Kurt.
I'm so glad you included the backstory (and Hanna's denial of the "scent marking" story). I'm from the PNW, the ties between Riot Grrrl and Grunge are so obvious when you know the scene but a lot of people don't acknowledge it.
hey i’m from olympia! i have nothing else to say. do you like the raincoats, lol
@GearandaltheFirst. There was a lot of stuff going on the Pacific North West during the late 80’s and early 90’s.
You had a Punk scene with bands like The U Men, Fastbacks, Mudhoney, Seaweed, and Presidents Of The United States.
You had a Sludge scene going on with Melvins, TAD, and Willard.
You had a Riott Girrl scene with Metal, Blues and Punk influences with bands like Dickless, L7 (though they weren’t from the PNW, I think they were from LA), Babes In Toyland, Hole (I think they were from LA as well), 7 Year Bitch. And tbh Nirvana sound closest to those bands, like a softer version of Melvins and TAD as well.
Then you had a bluesy Metal scene with Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Gruntruck, and My Sister’s Machine, with vocalists who all Yarled.
You also had Pearl Jam who were like a softer version of those bluesy Metal acts, instead a more Neil Young Classic Rock vibe, and tbh when I think Grunge and it’s sound I immediately think Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder’s Yarling vocals.
This is where Nirvana and Kurt Cobain differs from Layne, Cornell, and Vedder as Kurt wasn’t a Yarler, Kurt instead had a more raspy/croaky kinda vocal fry like vocal sound.
Then you also had some bands that were outliers not quite apart of something like Love Battery (who sounded very British inspired), Hammerbox (they sounded more in common with acts like Smashing Pumpkins and Garbage), Mother Love Bone (who sounded very Guns N Roses esq), and Screaming Trees who sounded like a hybrid of Nirvana and Pearl Jam.
However I don’t think Grunge became a true sound until we got to the Post Grunge bands like Candlebox, Collective Soul, Silverchair, Bush, Our Lady Peace, Days Of The New, and later Creed, Nickelback, Puddle Of Mudd, 3 Doors Down and Shinedown.
A lot of those Post Grunge bands were copying Eddie Vedder’s, Chris Cornell’s and Layne Staley’s Yarlling vocals.
Tbh if I was to say what makes a band Grunge, it’s the Yarlling vocals. Which most of the bands from the Pacific North West don’t fit apart of that, except for Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Gruntruck, My Sister’s Machine, Pearl Jam, and later Candlebox who all came from the PNW and had a vocalist that Yarls.
@@nu-metalfan2654 Sorry, but that last paragraph makes you sound as if you think Nirvana weren't "actually" grunge, and any definition of that musical style that excludes them is less than useless. Indirectly calling Puddle of Mudd or Nickelback more grunge than the band that pushed this style into the mainstream, just because Chad Kroeger and Wes Scantlin yarl while Kurt Cobain didn't, is borderline insulting.
@@ospero7681 Well I like to classify bands in how they actually sound. A genre should be about classifying bands that sound alike.
@@nu-metalfan2654 Grunge is about more than just yarling, though. Saying a band isn't really grunge because the singer doesn't go full Eddie Vedder is like saying that a country song has to have banjos on it. It's a hallmark of the genre, but not a necessary component.
Ok, as a non-native English speaker I probably don’t get most of your puns, but drawing a sink to illustrate ‘sync’opation is one of the most hilarious ones yet… 🙈😂
17:44 Music is all about timber.
English is a difficult language because of how many jokes we've worked into the lexicon
This is one of the first songs I learned on drums. It’s still so fun to play and I’m thankful of this track for teaching me how to play
oh.
To be fair, from an electronics engineering perspective, distortion isn’t much more complex than that. Thanks for making these, and for highlighting the literal soundtrack to my early/mid 1990s youth.
Many distortion/overdrive pedals involve using diodes and/or transistors to clip the top and bottom of of the waveform, which produces a number of significant harmonics, bada bing it’s “overdrive”. There’s maybe some amplification or buffering stages, but the meaningful effect is just harmonics produced via a rather crude operation pushing cheap semiconductors beyond their limits.
THANK YOU for mentioning and playing the buried guitar in the choruses. I've felt like I heard a guitar with a chorus effect on it in there for a while now but couldn't find anyone mentioning it, so figured I was hearing ghosts. Good to know my ears did not deceive me.
You inspired me to pursue a career in music during the pandemic. I giggled way more than I probably should have when you mentioned a motif and used the jaws doodle to represent it at 16:06. I'm always impressed by your subtle but witty doodles. You rock!
The Neely c flat devil was great too
It took me a while to realize this video isn't 4 years old, surprised this took so long to cover!
Also, Understanding Toxicity when?
Of all the Nirvana tracks Teen Spirit has the most textural and environmental variation and is also the most produced. As you show here: solo chords, full band with distortion, drum/bass w/ vox and arp, "Hello" section w/ layered vox, full band with panned gtrs. and verbed vox, and the turn-around "yeah" riff that breaks the key and the loop. For a simple "punk" song it's actually quite savvy and quite a production. No other Nirvana track has this much variation and is probably one of the reasons why it is so successful. If you think of the track as being built upon the bass tone, it's really more 80s new romantic than Boston and The Pixies, which gives it that extra moodiness (and then it kicks your ass); much like a dramatic arch: filled with tension and release, conflict and climax and that oh so necessary pinch of chaos that AI's will never truly compute.
it has been forever since listening to nirvana... i guess bc the older i get, the more kurt's suicide makes sense and i would rather focus on fighting for a world worth living in. thanks for reminding me why i used to like grunge so much
I think alot of people resonate with this sentiment. I think its a damn shame we werent taking mental heath more seriously back then, because i think kurt wasnt predestined for such an end. I think he was hurting and nobody helped him.
Ultimately i believe kurt and nirvana were life affirming. So much was/is plastic and corrupt, and they were saying "hey we're real, we see this too." (Like so many other legends of rock)
Theres a good bit of footage of the band offstage, joking around, and having a good time too. I know there was good with the bad, and that its no good seeing things as black and white.
Either way from one grunge fan to another, i hope your doin alright 😅
@@markop.1994 i always enjoy a thoughtful comment
on the point of mental health, i think of people i have personally lost, and the truth is that a perfectly sane way to react to the world is to hurt
an injury to one is an injury to all. kurt's suicide hurts us all, but i like to believe, even in death, we help/honor him by fighting for those our society harms the most
meanwhile, i get to sit by the fire w cats and a pizza... hope your doin alright, too
@@louisaruth I have many a feeling for Kurt's passing. Like you said, to feel hurt is a fair reaction to a world and a society that actively harasses us. It was sad and unnecessary, it never needed to happen.
But at the same time, I think his untimely death, as part of his existence is a bit empowering. Like, a "do it for him" mentality, if you will. Cobain walked for a better, more just world, so the least we can do is try to run.
Being hurt is natural and some things are worth hurting over, but the simple, animal pleasures of life are worth holding onto. Warm sun and hot food and cool water and soft textures.
Keep holding onto your little slice of the world, sweetpea. We deserve the little sweetnesses
@@cicadeus7741 nice to read some thoughtful words on day such a day as this. yesterday was my first mother's day w a child of my own, and we could not go outside and enjoy the world due to the poor air quality from climate change related forest fires
plus the ongoing genocide has been difficult to witness; observing mother's day while moms, dads, and children are being slaughtered in Gaza w my tax dollars is like something out of brave new world (but over the top)
regardless, i maintain hope that things will improve, but it won't be my despair that brings about change. that's what makes music so powerful- it makes agitation, education, and organizing so much more accessible, even to those of us whose hearts broke a long time ago
Wooooow, that explanation @ 18:00 of those inharmonic guitar stems really helps to understand Nirvana’s thrashy guitar sounds. Awesome stuff
Kurt Cobain, probably: "I just thought it sounded cool"
Probably the secret recipe of a genial music.
the theory behind the song is still interesting and is still fitting
Apparently he hated this song.
Theory is useful for writing, but after a certain point it just becomes a way to describe/ justify/analyze what was played after the fact
See 11:26.
16:55 im glad someone finally mentioned the 2 hidden guitar tracks. They are definitely burried in the mix a bit but they come up in level now and then. Pretty genius actually, adds all kinds of overtones and such. These hidden guitar are actually on the same tracks as the feedback before the solo, the rhythm guitar for the solo, and also the feedback at the end of the song. Its most noticable at the first post-chorus when they move the levels up. its also pretty noticably at the end of the song.
The idea that "untrained" musicians don't know theory is nonsense - they just learn it more haphazardly, and don't have the same language "trained" musicians have - but you don't make music seriously without having some kind of frame work to build upon.
What do you mean? Either you know music theory or you don't. How does one not know music theory but knows it with a different language? I'm confused. That's like me saying i know how to talk in english but then i talk in french. Music theory literally means that you know how to analyse what you're writing in a specific music language. What does music theory even mean to you?
@@gsly6081 No, that's not at all true. Because music theory is just a language to describe what musicians are doing. I'll say it again, because it matters - theory describes what musicians are doing. The music comes first. Just because you don't know the names doesn't mean you don't know the music - I've known plenty of musicians who can't read a lick of notation, but can play rings around most music theory experts. So, they may not know the formal names of things, but they have, in their heads, a way of organizing things.
@@lightaces Yeah but the concept of music theory involves knowing how music works and the language used for it. Knowing how to play or seeing others play and learning it doesn't mean you know music theory. You may know more than a beginner of course, especially if you've been playing for a long time, but that doesn't mean you know why the music you're playing makes sense and sounds good. People who know music theory know all that. Kurt was a guy that broke music rules because he didn't know music theory, but he did have a knack for melody and knew the basic chords and guitar techniques to use and how and when to use them. I'm not 100% sure on what i'm saying but i'm pretty sure that music theory is knowing how things work musically speaking and knowing the technical terms for it. Something that Kurt didn't know and even admited.
@@gsly6081 As a fellow pedant, I know where you are coming from, but, much like any other craft, the tools don't matter. Music Theory is just a tool, and I don't care what the job is, there will always be multiple tools which can get the job done.
I'd also point out, your approaching this from a pretty Eurocentric point of view. There isn't just one name for anything in music. For that matter, there isn't just one music theory. Indian musicians approach the same information quite differently from western musicians. It's not just a translation - a raga isn't a scale, quite. Or some eastern European musical traditions where the beat isn't steady. Or the difference between classical theory and Jazz theory (and, as the two I've actually studied, boy howdy, they are DIFFERENT). I never had any exposure to counterpoint or classical harmony until I was taking my required courses at Berklee, and up until then my whole education had been centered around ii-V progressions.
Great musicians understand music. Joni Mitchell has always sounded like Joni Mitchell, from day one. She didn't learn the names for what she was doing until she started working with Jazz musicians, but she already understood what she was playing. Same thing for someone like Paul Simon. Hell, it took Stravinsky 30 years to figure out how to write down parts of Rite of Spring. He knew what he wanted to hear. It took the theory a while to catch up. You don't need to know the names to know what you are playing.
Also, don't mistake this for me saying theory isn't important or useful. I'm just saying, you can get to the important part (the music, and understanding it) a bunch of different ways.
@@lightaces Ok i see your point and you know way more than me on this topic but what i still don't understand is what you mean by knowing what you're playing even if you don't know the names. For example, i don't know anything about music theory (or at least what i consider it to be), but i know some basic chords, techniques, etc. I don't know specifically what i'm playing in terms of music language, the only thing that i know for sure is i play a lot of open chords, powerchords, use techniques like hammer ons, harmonics, etc. I don't know the specific language (at least the western one) of the music i'm playing. I don't know what specific chords i'm playing, i just mess around with the guitar until i find cool things that sound good together. But does that mean that i know music theory? Because i would sound like a fool if i said i did. I do know the basic stuff that my dad taught me, but i never cared for the names. Just the general names (not specific ones) like i mentioned above. Also artists sounding like they do, if they don't know the specifics, they probably mess with the instrument until they find what they like to play, consequently developing their style. It doesn't necessarily mean they know what they are doing on a deeper musical level. I for sure don't, but who am i really.
Back in 1991, I loved music, but I hated music. I listened to old '60's psychedelic, classical music, a few other random things. Music was for rich, cool, tough, attractive people. The kind that hated me for being a bookish nerd who didn't like beating people up. The kind of people that everyone who hated me loved. But, as fate would have it, while I was flipping channels I passed by MTV and saw the last little bit of "Into the Great Wide Open" by Tom Petty. It made a very slight impression on me, and I wanted to hear the whole song. So occasionally, I would flip back to MTV trying to hear the rest of Into the Great Wide Open. . . usually it was just a commercial, occasionally, it was now swaggering hair metal guy singing about how rich he was and how everyone loved him. (Though, damn, I loved those loud guitars, but felt like if I hung out with the person making the music, it would just be them making fun of me.)
Then one day, I heard instead: Dadum Da thakka-thakka da da duh / Dumda dah thakka-thakka dah dah dah. Wasn't pretty, it wasn't flashy, it wasn't clean. IT was ugly, it was dirty, it was angry, but it was smart. I was interested. This bedraggled guy started started mumbling how fun it was to lose with a tone that made it clear it wasn't any fun at all. I was fascinated. Then suddenly after one exhausted version of what I couldn't tell was "hello" or "how low" That guy who looked like the guy the popular kids were beating up next to me started screaming. I heard anger, intelligence, and art for the first time. I was enthralled. There was this *thing* mixed together into something as furious and seething as the sounds I heard in my head when I looked at this horrible world.
LEss then five minutes later, the blonde guy on my TV screamed the last line with a slasher smile that immediately snapped away into a scowl. I picked up a notebook and a pen and started writing the first song I'd ever written in my entire life. I haven't stopped writing music since.
Thanks for sharing your experience, it brought back old memories. I still have a VHS tape with a fragment of the Tom Petty song you mentioned, taped during one of my countless late night TV channel surfing sessions in the early '90s. Nirvana's Teen Spirit had a similar impact on me, everything changed the day I heard it.
Did I just witness the birth of the greatest Nirvana copy pasta of all time?
This song is lodged in my soul. Two notes and I was back at university again.
Thank you for waiting until you accumulated so much experience and thank you for taking all the time you needed to analyse it.
Could you do an analysis of Kashmir by Led Zeppelin?
YES
The focus brought to the "here we are now" line reminds me of a nationsquid video I watched about the Beatles and the growth of teen culture around them, and in that light its hard not to read the line as a sort of demand aimed at a culture that tends to blame teenagers themselves for being what they are; You created us, you made us what we are, now take responsibility for it. Here we are now, entertain us.
I think the interesting thing about analysing this song is that for a lot of people it's the first song they learn on guitar, and at that point you're maybe not used to paying so much attention to the details in a song (e.g. the way the guitar riff is played slightly differently at different times, or some of the ways that the bass isn't just playing the root notes). It was only coming back to this song more than twenty years later when a friend wanted me to teach him the bass parts that I came to it with a much more experienced ear and realised that there was more to it than a very young me had heard.
Also, regarding that delayed kick hit on the first beat of the bar, I always think of this kind of thing as more like holding the last beat of the previous bar for slightly longer. To me it has the feel of like raising a stick up in the air in order to slam it down with more force, which I think it why it gives it that sense of impact.
@3:16 he just casually makes a reference to one of my favorite book series of my childhood.
This was one of your best song breakdowns, ever. Superb analysis, clearly described with a carefully balanced mix of technical knowledge and non-technical descriptions. I’ve been critical of some of your videos in the past, but you hit a home run on this one. A+ work, sir.
Love the "sloppy" elephant drawn with the right hand. Had a good chuckle with that one.
Great video! One thing that caught my attention in Smells Like Teen Spirit is the way the vocals (and solo) are off-set with the riff+drums+bass by one beat. Maybe this is just basic standard stuff, but here it feels like the vocals are constantly lagging behind. And I think this plays a big part in making such a simple song so good.
Love your videos, and have enjoyed watching you get better at drawing your doodles over time
Thank you! Especially the detailed breakdown of how small scale rhythmic devices influence our perception of harmony and subsequent effects. That's so challenging to analyze since the effect of the song's complete sonic soundscape is so ingrained in popular culture, it's basically a musical trope. Once upon a time - there was a German music TV station: during their top 20 charts show they would play an excerpt of Teen Spirit instead of some of the charting tunes when they were considered to cheesy. Fun.
These videos are extemely high quality and just as interesting. I really like listening to your analysis and the doodles are absolutely adorable. You`re making great content out there, I`m totally binging the channel.
Blessed you be by the algorithm.
If you listen to the track you can hear that background lead guitar at the end of the song when he is singing "A denial" It's low in the mix but you can hear it.
What an excellent video. I love that this "simple" song continues to have things to teach me.
And then there is offsprings self esteem which is very very similar
Offsprings used tons of bits from older songs in their stuff, like one of their songs have the riff from the kinks "all day and all of the night" in the middle
It is well documented that Kurt wrote 'Teen Spirit' as an homage to The Pixies, and it does share the quiet verse/loud chorus of 'Gigantic;' however, I suspect 'Where Is My Mind' was a greater influence. The guitar and bass parts in both songs are very similar.
I’m very late with this but I’ve always been pretty sure the hidden chorus guitar is only audible in the “a denial” post-chorus section at the end of the song, I guess they dropped it almost all the way out of all the other chorus parts. Gives the outro guitars a nice thickness to end on and makes it feel distinct! As always, love your song break-downs and analysis, they are satisfyingly thorough and informative!
Happy to be a patron. Thanks for your awesome work, Corey (Cory?) ❤️
I noticed the length of video About halfway through… I was pleasantly surprised that i still had a half a video left to go. Your analysis has a unique timbre of its own. So it’s cool to see you tackle a monster like this .
Great explanations and lovely drawings👍
Loved the video and loved the appearance in Tim's epic documentary.
Another great video. Kurt was/is a genius. Knowing all the correct terms and/or an acumen for music theory or whatever should never stop someone from making music.
What's more important is getting the music out of your brain then weather you know what a perfect fifth or (fill in the blank) is.
Hearing analysis of his (and others work) astonishes me at how rich and nuanced it was/is.
Once again: great video... ✌️
Just discovered you. I really like your breakdowns ive only watched this and the mr bright side video. Both i knew a lot on already and yet i learnt so much more. Thank you for all your work.
Really awesome analysis. Wanted to call out your Sheet note graphics were very on point. A step above your usual.
I was literally JUST thinking about how I haven't seen you do this song yet, and now here we are
I love how you referenced watching Rick Beato in a video about a song where the band was so honest about acknowledging their influences.
Loved seeing Jak and Daxter in your drawings for the music! That game was my childhood
Me too.
I enjoyed seeing Strongbad.
I loved the Andalite
Nirvana had a sixth sense for song writing. They didn't know what they were doing per se, but they knew they were doing it well
You just blew my mind with the 2nd guitar part in the chorus.
Such great work. Thank you
Very cool video! I am always sceptical with music theory CZcamsrs because I don't know it myself very well and I always feel like the point of these videos where I get to know the CZcamsr feels kind of iffy because it feels too perfect of what the CZcamsrs are saying. Now I know that it's something that I can articulate through finding this video :)
so thank you for that!
This song blew my mind when it first came out,and whenever I hear it it takes me back to when I was 18.
Great job!🤘🤘🤘
Wow!!!You nailed the rabbit drawing and the Futurama ship.👍Very nice!
Glad the algorithm brought me to this channel. Interesting content!
Kurt came from school, take his guitar and play non stop til 11 in the night, maybe 12, when his family just shut him up and send him to sleep. Yeah, he maybe don't go to the conservatory, but he has a inmense musical language.
I remember sitting in my house at the time as a 20 yr old after having some beers and then this tune comes on MTV..it was probably one of only 3 songs in my whole lifetime that I remember exactly the first time I heard it (the other 2 were Down Under by men at work and Don’t stop me now by Queen). Anyway, there was something so different in smells like teen spirit that really represented something ‘new’. A newness that had not been felt globally since the explosion of punk in 1976. I remember folks asking the next day around the town (yes, it had that effect!) “did you see that band on mtv last night??”. Still a phenomenal and impactful song and I would suggest that much of its influence was lifted straight from the pixies
Fantastic analysis!!!
17:37 Garnet for "together again" is now officially my new favourite drawing of yours
Great analysis… I was a senior in high school when this song came out, and it definitely got my attention. I *hated* the hair band music that dominated my high school years, so I spent those years obsessing over '70s prog rock. But Nevermind gave me new hope for the '90s. (Hope the decade did not live up to.) On the 30th anniversary of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" I recorded my own jazz-inflected 6/8 version: czcams.com/video/I66q-y_NBSQ/video.html
Keep on rocking!
I heard a comment made about that soft-verse-hard-chorus pattern long before. I can't remember who said it but they called it "Pulling a Zepplin". As in Led Zeppelin. They used this pattern rather a lot.
Fantastic analysis; thanks for this and kudos to you choosing integrity.
Wow, great analysis! Thanks! :)
2002 me just jolted awake at seeing Strong Bad and Elfangor (or Ax?) at the same time at 3:43
A Nirvana song analysis, song I absolutely love, and a 12tone music video all on the same day? It must be my birthday!
Amazing video!
I love it when a person with knowledge on a subject can explain in a proper way what I’m feeling but can’t properly explain myself.
Nirvana became such a countercultural phenomenon in such a short amount of time in the pre-Internet 90's that even if I'd never sought them out, I would've heard them eventually. And I wasn't even alive when this song debuted!
How were they "countercultural"?
@@alukuhito ….exactly. Nonsense.
@@alukuhito Nirvana had a punk ethos. This ran counter to the prevailing culture of commercialization during the 1980s.
@@Dunbar0740 Meh. A bit of a stretch there. US society's been commercial forever.
@@alukuhito I simply stated the facts.
This song on guitar should be called 'Carpal Tunnel in Chords'
Have you played Creep by Radiohead before? And I mean using the proper arpeggios.
Nah but Every breath you take by The Police. Now that's the one.
Pulling the kick a bit always makes the groove more epic. Another great example is Muse's "Supremacy."
love the hilda giant 11:21
17:18 almost sounds like the 2nd guitar part, blended with the 1st, is going for a Smashing Pumpkins type of fuzz... so it probably goes back to the Pixies too. But then the pop mixer buried it... I would say too much, but I don't think the song could've been more popular, so they made the right choice in that respect.
The same guy, Butch Vig, who produced Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream produced Nevermind.
@@paulwblair hah! What was acceptable in pop music changed a lot in 2 years. That's interesting it was the same producer... maybe that was something he liked to try (layering dissonant fuzzed guitar lines into just that timbre. It was Siamese Dream I was thinking of)
Great piece, Cory.
i always used to just scream my own name at the end of performing this song....no one could tell the difference.
Drawing skills are getting crazy good
As a Slavic person, it's really weird to hear last name Novoselic pronounced with [k] in the end instead of [ch]. Great video regardless and it's surprising that 12tone haven't made the video earlier!
The first of your videos that I watched was on Mr. Brightside. After it, I watched Rick Beato's analysis on the same song. Both analyses are complimentary.
Awesome video!!! as always :) could you do analysis of Norah Jones' harmony?
Liked before watching! I won't regret...
Twist: He's actually right-handed and is writing in reverse with the video flipped
Just wanna say your art game has leveled up massively
was not expecting a jak 3 doodle, that's awesome
i love break downs of this song. and this is one of the best ever
Thanks for letting me know why I dug Nirvana even when I was primarily listening to dance music. It's those disco drums! (and Cobain's melodic sensibilities)
loving the new glyphs, Dr Manhattan 10 points!!!
Great job. Thank you.
18:33 drawing Frisk when talking about chordioids smells like a nod to 8-Bit Music Theory's video on the Snowdin theme.
Clever
Love the "killroy was here" on the vandilising part😂
Since we have Soundgarden and Nirvana analysed, how long until we get a deconstruction of Alice in Chains? We need to complete the big names in grunge.
Also, Korn.
Lol i just watched the 8bit music theory chordioid vid, i laughed at the shoutout in your drawing
Would absolutely love to see your take on Faith No More or Mike Patton in general, since vocals are part of what you do.
That Futurama bit blew my mind.
i do online English classes and today an eleven-year-old girl appeared on my screen in a Nirvana t-shirt. i could not have been happier. really made my day. thanks for this vid, as always really interesting, i enjoy the theoretical analysis and it's great to hear you talk about how and why people create things. excellent
@@PiedPooper-gh6cnbro she is eleven years old
Great video on one of my favorite songs. I was watching a documentary on women in experimental electronic music in the 1950’s and heard a snippet of Daphne Oram’s “Bird of Parralax” and recognized something similar to the melody of when Kurt sings Hello, Hello in the song. I tried to isolate that section and overlay it with the music in Smells but it was only in the melody of his singing. Just wanted mention it in case anyone else wants to check it out. Let me know if anyone hears that similarity as well.
Side note: the Futurama theme sounds for all the world like a reimagining of Pierre Henry's 1970 track, Psyché Rock. Great fun
I can hear that layered guitar track only at the end of the song ( "A Denial" x4)
This is kind of like how I like word play that these scholarly types call Iambic (amuse, portray, delight) and Trochee (seeking, garden, highway), and Haiku form (5, 7, 5). I had forgotten the terms but not the structures because they sound cool.
nice work
5:13
Loved the tier zoo reference.
I am begging for a 12tone video on the band reuben. any of their songs are great picks. lyrics blended perfectly with the rhythm of drums and melody of guitars is the bread and butter of this channel.
Wow the drawings in this one are next level
15:54 Either I’m trippin or that’s Jak from the Jak and Daxter Trilogy. I didn’t expect to see that in one of your music theory videos but I still appreciate the reference…
Great video btw.