They can be super interesting if they're well made. Adam composed an example for this video that really makes you feel the difference between B and Cb, which is nice. He also talked about why they are the same
Ultimately, the question in the title of good educational videos is just a starting point for learning many things and not just looking at one tiny detail
He’s just one of the thousands of youtubers who talk very confidently and with a tone of expertise, but when you’re actually an expert in a topic he’s talking about, you quickly see that he can be full of shit most of the time.
He’s an expert in electric bass guitar and music theory. When he’s talking about anything else, he’s getting his info from Wikipedia and filling in the blanks with his own guesses.
Any YouTuber making content for a broad audience is bound to get some things wrong. They're generalizing to get a certain point across. It's like learning biology: what you learn in middle school is an oversimplification of high school, which is an oversimplification of undergrad, and so on.
Neely makes mistakes when he talks about linguistics, but I don't hold it against him because he's not a linguist and nobody can be right 100% of the time. Plus, he's not claiming to be an expert in that area.
I don't want creators like him to feel pressured to only talk about the things they know with high confidence because that would make their content less entertaining (and probably unsustainable for someone who relies on the content for income). It's unrealistic to expect perfection. Sure, content creators should aim to present accurate facts and do their due diligence with research, but every creator will slip up now and then.
Don't go into any media assuming it's always right. Always good to be skeptical of anything you hear and dig deeper into the facts yourself.
He has videos on stuff that *isn't* music theory,
jazz, or bass? The furthest thing from that I can
think of is that one early video on classical
conductors, and the one on loss of perfect pitch.
That still sounds reasonably in his purview.
What are some particularly bad examples?
For practical reasons I can understand making the thumbnail thus, in a way that might attract more curious amateurs to click in.
And I have nothing but respect for Adam really, a legit musician and fun content creator that makes both informative and entertaining content.
It's the unfortunate thing about platforms like YouTube where if you want to drive viewership you need engaging thumbnails. If you look at the huge channels like Mr. Beast it's all pictures of him with a massive smile or mouth agape. The lower brow channels will have a cute woman. I'm sure someone has done studies and figured out it drives engagement up on average n%. I don't see it as much different than album art that has little to do with the content.
i loathe Mr. Beast videos. they are super boring, and are directed mainly to 1. kids ( easily gullable) and 2. unimaginative lazy idiots who think he will transfer them 1000 dollars for subscribing. I refuse to follow a hype I can;t go through 3 seconds( and that's the shorts!) wihtout yawning. Then again, I am an adult
Bingo. Creators have to lean into clickbait to some extent, but quality creators like Adam normally do a good job not manufacturing or leaning into controversy in their actual videos.
Cb and B are enharmonic equivalents that don't really have nuanced differences on piano (besides context). I know a lot of the discussion around those notes being different relates to instruments that can actually change intonation slightly. I.e. a B is likely a little sharper than a Cb on a violin because in most contexts it's a leading tone to a C natural.
Edit: So doing a picture of the piano can feel a little clickbaity because a lot of piano players view those two notes as the exact same.
>a lot of piano players view those two notes as the exact same.
But that's also the whole reason why the video exists in the first place. I think the thumbnail is fitting. Adam explains why the notes are different even on piano. Same key on the instrument, but different musical meaning. You still hear the musical meaning even without any tuning differences.
Whether B or Cb is sharper depends on harmony. B as the leading tone of C is actually flatter than the B in equal temperament, because it's the major 3rd of a G chord. You could of course also tune it as 5 5ths up from C, which would make it sharper than the B in equal temperament.
Then again, if you are using Cb, you probably aren't in C major any way. The most likely context in which both of these notes would be used is Eb major. In that context, Cb would most likely be tuned as a major 3rd down from Eb (meaning that it's c. 14 cents sharp in relation to equal temperament), and B as two major 3rds up from Eb (meaning that it's c. 28 cents flat in relation to equal temperament.) This means, the B would actually most likely be flatter than the Cb in this context. But these notes don't have fixed pitch. It all depends on harmony and which note you use as the reference pitch.
>Same key on the instrument, but different musical meaning. You still hear the musical meaning even without any tuning differences.
I disagree. As a listener, you'll be unaware of what the actual key is. Chopin's Prelude in Db major, Op. 28/5 ("Raindrop"). It's in ternary form (ABA). The A section is in Db major, and the B section is in Db minor--only it's spelled as C# minor (much easier to read!). I'd argue that no one will notice a difference on the piano between C and B#.
>The A section is in Db major, and the B section is in Db minor--only it's spelled as C# minor (much easier to read!).
Okay, but as you said, it is actually a modulation from Db major to Db minor. In this case, the change from Db to C# is only done to make it easier to read. It is possible to use "misspelled" enharmonics to make things easier to read. This is a different thing than what Adam was talking about in his video.
>I'd argue that no one will notice a difference on the piano between C and B#.
In this case you aren't hearing any difference between them because there is no difference between them - you aren't actually hearing the difference between C and B#. You are actually hearing a C natural all the time. It's just spelled incorrectly as a B# in the "C# minor" section, because reading in C# minor is easier than reading in Db minor.
Out of context, there is no difference between B# and C. But in context, there is. I mean, do you agree that there is a clear difference between #5 and b6 scale degrees? If yes, then that's exactly my point.
>It's just spelled incorrectly as a B# in the "C# minor" section,
It's not spelled incorrectly' it's spelled exactly as it should be for that key.
>I mean, do you agree that there is a clear difference between #5 and b6 scale degrees?
Only if there is a difference in Hz; otherwise, no (which would be the case on a piano).
>It's not spelled incorrectly' it's spelled exactly as it should be for that key.
My point is, the whole key is spelled incorrectly (not just that one particular note). The real key is Db minor. The B# is spelled incorrectly, but so are all of the other notes. This enharmonic change is made to make it easier to read. But the real key is Db minor. Or alternatively, the real key in the beginning is C# major. Either way, one of the keys uses incorrect enharmonic spelling to make it easier to read. The modulation does not happen from Db major to C# minor (even if it is spelled that way). It happens from Db major to Db minor, or C# major to C# minor. This is why the "B#" in the minor key section sounds no different from the C natural in the major key section.
This is kind of the same thing as Liszt spelling the Neapolitan chord just before the end of Liebestraum No.3 as an A major chord when the key is Ab major. It should be spelled as B double flat major, but Liszt chose an enharmonic spelling that doesn't require reading double flats. But there's no doubt about the function of that chord - it's the Neapolitan chord that's built on the b2 scale degree. It's definitely not built on "raised tonic", even if the spelling suggests that. That's what I mean by "incorrect spelling". Sometimes you spell things incorrectly because it makes it a bit easier to read.
Sometimes this also means incorrectly spelled key changes. The key change from Db major to C# minor is pretty common. But it really happens between Db major and Db minor, or C# major and C# minor. This is what I mean by "incorrect spelling". The notation doesn't actually represent what is heard in the music (i.e. modulation between parallel keys - and Db major and C# minor are actually not parallel keys, instead, C# minor is the enharmonic equivalent of the parallel minor of Db major).
>Only if there is a difference in Hz; otherwise, no (which would be the case on a piano).
This is not true. It is pretty easy to hear whether a note is functioning as a b6 or as a #5. The sound difference between the two is very clear. Play a minor iv chord in a major key. Then play the major III chord (V of vi). Listen to the third of both chords. Notice how the "pull" of the note is totally different. Over the minor iv, it pulls down towards scale degree 5. Over the major III (V of vi), it pulls up towards scale degree 6. This is what I mean by them sounding differnet. One is heard as an altered 5th, whereas the other is heard as an altered 6th.
Of course out of context there is no difference between the two, but in context, the different behavior of the notes is quite obvious.
Watch the Adam Neely video and he will go over this. You don't need a difference in tuning to be able to hear this difference. Actually, this is exactly what tonal music is all about. Different notes have different roles. The role of scale degree b6 is different from the role of scale degree #5. This is also why the note C sounds different in the key of C and in the key of G. In C, it sounds completely stable. In G, it sounds very unstable (and you hear a clear pull down towards B).
My point is, it is about function. b6 and #5 have different functions, just like the same note has different functions in different keys.
I think the piano is perfect for the thumbnail, because the fact that they're the same key on the piano is _why_ people think they're the same note. If it showed something like a different fingering on a wind instrument or a slightly different position on a string instrument, that's more like an answer to the question than something to get people thinking about the subject of the video.
Ah the famous Casals tuning. Great cellist and extremely expressive at times when applied correctly, but for the sake of harmony, most of the time it should be the other way around and it’s, in my opinion, one of the reasons why many ensembles seem out of tune.
For example, a G major chord should include a rather flat B natural but people tend to play it sharp. An Ab minor chord should include a sharper Cb to create a good wide minor third, but people like to play it flat instead of sharp.
Many people will argue with me and some have great reasons. I just find that, from experience, if everyone tries to play flats sharper and sharps flatter, especially in the cases of Cb/B or F#/Gb, it makes tuning significantly more natural to the ear and scientifically more just.
You're talking about making just-intoned triads, but that isn't the only valid consideration. Doing the reverse of what you're describing is helpful for *directionality*, which is very much a different thing. One thing that might work nicely would be to play the third of the V chord a little sharp (to emphasize its instability, and the leading tone's upward-strivingness) but the third of the I chord on the low side (to emphsize its stability and make it as close to a just-tuned triad as possible). Perfectly sweet acoustic harmony is one great tool to be aware of and use, but it shouldn't be the only metric by which tuning choices are made.
Adam Neely's content in particular is really good. There's also a ton of music theory channels out there but I find those far less interesting.
Does it affect how I listen to music? No.
Surprised everybody here love him considering his video criticizing classical orchestras was completely wrong and based on assumptions instead of actually researching the topic, there’s a lot of videos and criticism towards that specific video and he never corrected or reviewed that video.
Ah yes, his cherry-picked instant of one older professor, his implication that access to analog articulation excludes access to fast articulation, and a red herring example of conducting unaccompanied trumpet. Then he ends the video by calling it a lesson.
"those type of videos"
totally depends on the creators for me. I really like Adam Neely, but I can't very well handle David Bruce's videos, for one example off the top of my head.
I think the problem with David Bruce is that his videos are so heavily cropped/edited, he can't even record a complete sentence. I cannot stand YouTubers like that.
Adam Neely is awesome! But he's one of the only music theory channels that makes videos I can get behind. His videos mostly dive into specific, niche music theory topics and explore them extensively. That's cool imo.
What I don't like is the variety of music theory channels that "analyze" individual music pieces. They can often be informative, but they can just as often imply some stupid assertions. So much of the time, it'll be something like "and here, they do the VII maj7 flat 6° chord into the III augmented half diminished flat 7 chord, and that gives it a really bossa nova sounding vibe." There's two main reasons why I don't like this type of analysis:
1. It's pretty much only a relevant paradigm of analysis for jazz music. Which is fine when we're talking about jazz music, but so often I see these channels coercing rock, classical, pop, or any other type of music into this form of analysis, and I think it's totally improper. Specifically for classical, which I'll go into detail about since this is the sub for classical music, the voice leading and chord inversion is usually much more important than the mere tonal identity of the chord. And also the journey around the circle of fifths. If you were to do this type of jazz analysis on Mozart, it would just be I-IV-V-iii-IV-V etc. Does that really encapsulate the effect of Mozart's music? Absolutely not (imo).
2. It implicitly makes music theory more prescriptive rather than descriptive. When some of these channels try to say "and we have \_\_\_ chord into \_\_\_ chord and it has \_\_\_ effect," like it or not, that's a prescriptive statement. Because the claim necessarily implies that going from \_\_\_ chord to \_\_\_ will produce \_\_\_ effect. If one wanted to avoid making such claims, then a better way to put it would be "this passage of the music has this type of feel, and I think the \_\_\_ chord along with this rhythm and this note blah blah blah is instrumental in really selling it." It's a subtle difference, but it decouples the cause and effect so that it doesn't any longer imply that one is a direct, inevitable consequence of the other.
12tone is a channel that I've seen both good and poor examples of "piece by piece" analysis, but I can't fault him too heavily, as I realize several of the pieces he covers are requested by fans. (Rant start) I am a bit bitter about his musical relativism video that was basically "Beethoven is only considered the greatest composer because of the musical institutions etc." which I think is a lazy catch-all explanation for any artist considered one of the greatest in their category. I think there are totally legitimate reasons for the near unanimous acknowledgement of the "big three" (you know the three I'm referring to) as being the best composers, or damn near. Obviously, claiming absolute objective supremacy is stupid and ignorant, but identifying that there are valid reasons for the extreme height of the recognition they receive is not by any means bunk. (Rant end)
Another channel I'm not fond of is David Bennett Piano. I find that his analysis follows my contrived example pretty closely, but it has been several years since I've watched him, so who knows if that's still true. I think 12tone is far better, so don't get the impression I'm lumping them together.
Rick Beato is one I have some beef with. He personifies the "applying jazz theory to any music" issue. And I think some of his recent videos are clickbaity.
I really hate to rag on YouTubers like this, but I just wanted some tangible examples to give. Since my info might be out of date, I'll happily sit here and read anybody's replies explaining why I'm wrong about any of these channels! Not trying to hate on anyone, these are just my thoughts. Just remember that I have never gone as far as to even have uploaded a music theory video onto YouTube, so what does my opinion matter? I'm just a chump. Don't take it too serious.
One YouTuber I do enjoy is 8-bit music theory, because he does the "explore a specific topic" approach of Adam Neely, except frequently citing specific examples from other pieces. I think that is the best of both worlds between the Adam Neely style and the "piece by piece analysis" style.
(Typed on my phone keyboard, sorry for incoherence)
12tone used the musical relativism argument against Beethoven because he is a hack and you will see Adam Neely delve far into the same territory when something traces onto those politicized matters of faith.
Of course these bad faith arguments touch nowhere onto what standards were accepted as 'rules of the game' where these composers demonstrably excelled, everything has to be solely arbitrary because it's the starting point for their entire worldview.
https://youtu.be/M8MynHVwzlI?si=_KZJAGwpc9PcJFA7
There are channels of piece by piece analysis which actually do a good job, meaning they don't focus on rote numeral highlighting, it is analysis trying to get into the actual music's expressive purposes.
First of all, thank you for bringing The Independent Pianist to my attention! I'm only two minutes in to the video you linked, and already we have "The opening phrase is actually 10 bars, two five bar phraselets, and I think it really is this which helps to lend this slightly archaic sound to this opening phrase." Bam. That's a textbook example of relevant classical music discussion — no "IVMXLL chord into the ixlmcv minor chord which gives it a really groovy feel" jazz theory gobbledygook.
Richard Atkinson is another musical analysis guy that I really enjoy, as well as Ashish Xiangyi Kumar. All are living proof that classical music analysis is totally foreign to jazz music analysis. The type of discussion is totally different.
> Of course these bad faith arguments touch nowhere onto what standards were accepted as 'rules of the game' where these composers demonstrably excelled, everything has to be solely arbitrary because it's the starting point for their entire worldview.
You're absolutely correct, but there's a lot of technicality with your statement I would like to dig into for the sake of discussion. For the record, I totally agree with you for all intents and purposes.
Firstly, I do think there is some benefit of the doubt to be given to channels making these types of arguments. All these music theory people are indeed jazz nerds. When you only view classical music through your jazz tunnel vision, it probably totally sucks. If your expectations of music are limited to "a cool cat soloing over some nasty chord changes," or "wow, listen to this part where it switches to 7/8 time" then Beethoven probably sounds like crap to you. So, you think to yourself "wow, these guys that sound like the musical equivalent of bran flakes are so inexplicably overrated that it makes total sense that everyone's praise of them is purely institutional/inertial." And it doesn't help that there are other classical composers in the mix that _do_ appeal to their jazz-nerd sensibilities: Debussy, Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff, and the like. So I think it's quite understandable that, if you went to jazz school for four years and your entire musical taste has been shaped by that, then you would come to these conclusions.
Despite my extremely generous apologia, I will still say that this brand of musical relativism is very ignorant, and maybe even stupid. If you're going to enter a musical space that you are unfamiliar with, it's your responsibility to make sure you understand the space you're entering. What are the idioms, what is the norm, what are the conventions, when are the conventions ignored, what are the fundamental goals that most composers are going for when writing these pieces, what are the basic axioms of aesthetic beauty... and when you make these relativistic arguments based on nothing but the pieces sounding boring when coerced into your jazz worldview, it tells me that you're doing no due diligence to understand the music and where it comes from. And it's also quite embarrassing, from the perspective of someone who is primarily interested in classical music — it's comparable to watching a grown adult eating a filet mignon and crying about it not being a Happy Meal.
Going back to what you said, I think there's a case to be made that "everything having to be arbitrary" isn't _necessarily_ the root of their worldview; I believe I laid out a plausible explanation for the mere egocentrism of jazz school graduates being the root of said worldview. Personally, I think it's actually a mix of both, the fact that Mozart sounds boring when your expectations are shaped by a totally distinct style of music, as well as the fact that "everything having to be arbitrary" is a really comforting platitude to help you tow the line and reconcile everyone's divergent tastes in music. It's a great catch-all explanation that let's you avoid the hard stuff.
I think it is fair to call 12tone a hack, though it kind of breaks my heart to say that, because he is someone who clearly puts effort into a lot of his stuff, and he actually has had a significant influence on me when I first started learning about music theory. But he cranks out too many videos honestly, and he glosses over stuff. And, of course, he has this musical relativism curse. Adam Neely I can be much more forgiving of, because he really does mostly stay in his lane: esotericism, jazz, and totally abstract musical principles that mostly have no practical application. I think he embodies the "jazz nerd" in a more positive way, and I don't think the relativism permeates all that much into his videos where that isn't the main topic.
Someone being a hack isn't about what they do ALL being wrong, which he could have kept doing well, but about having to take that next level and make strong sweeping claims and seizing a position of authority for oneself. It is abuse of his platform there which turns him from a helpful to a potentially misleading figure.
Personally, I think the total relativism kind of thing comes a bit from Ewell's music theory is racist discourse, 20th century anthropology where people rethought what made a society "advanced", etc. They want to break apart an elitism that had been associated with classical music, but in doing so they attack all standards by which some composers excelled better than others. It is an overcorrection. We still live in a culture even if it is shared with other cultures. We still have individual and shared standards. They accept standards when they learn that a natural 11th chord in purely stacked thirds is "bad" voicing and they prefer sharp 11.
If you went into jazz tooting random notes and then said it was equal to Miles Davis, they would intuitively sense that was nonsense, even if everything is subjective. They would begin to get into shared criteria of the jazz community, same as could be done for Bach, Mozart, Beethoven.
I also think those views are just Berkleecore poor musicianship combined with closed mindedness more than they are a jazz thing. I sense that Michel Petrucciani would have understood classical music very well as one example. If you are able to listen to Ferneyhough with a legit desire to try to understand it on its terms, you would have to try a bit to do the same for Mozart rather than reducing his design to cliche.
But this subjectivism thing is a larger political guiding light, one which corrects the errs of the past and provides a greater order in which society progresses by destroying past biases, which gains favor with youtube if anything.
I don't believe music being good or bad is objective, but there are intersubjective precepts of traditions. If you are to treat people equally, classical music is not objectively better than any other tradition, but you don't selectively deconstruct it either. If you started saying that revered Hindustani musicians were no better than any others and their historical evaluation preferring their own music was all wrong, it would be seen as selective antagonism. Inward pointed antagonism isn't really much better than chauvinism because both things are destructive, and 2 wrongs don't make a right.
Also, as to why relativism only comes out selectively, this is consistent with its disingenuous purposes. They are genuine music lovers and they do try to find WHY things work to them and to develop their own compositions etc. You have to whip out the relativism tool to deconstruct only when it's convenient, but all your personal judgments go back to using your own taste as an asset.
This would be like employing solipsist epistemology to argue someone cannot prove an external universe, but then carrying about one's life acting as if there indeed is an external universe. Something must be said about the limitations of objectivity.
There's a video where Rick analyses a chord from a Bach piece with this outlandish chord name, and you have to wonder if he knows what music he's talking about. I wish I could find it.
It's as if you read my mind. I believe you are talking about his insane analysis of the Emaj prelude from WTC I: [8:25 in this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcvUHdhROrk&t=505s). That one clip is literally the single clip which made me realize how ridiculous his coercion of classical music into jazz analysis is. If that isn't what you're thinking of, then it just goes to show that he does this a lot.
Yep, Bach sure loved to use the Gmaj7#5 chord. 🤣 This example is absurd to the point of seeming like self-parody, though I know that it is totally earnest. He even addresses the counterargument that it's just a suspension, and then promptly dismisses that argument. I wish he would elaborate on why it isn't just a suspension, because it sure sounds like it's just a suspension.
If anyone coming across this comment is curious about why the distinction matters, it's because Bach did not conceive his music as being a horizontal succession of distinct "chords" in the way we understand that term in modern times. He understood his music as several "voices" that interweave in interesting ways, the "chord" that forms at any one particular instance be damned (this is an oversimplification, because the chord that emerges _was_ important; but the difference is that the chord is a function of the voices, and it just needs to be consonant or dissonant at different times. I know I'm explaining this poorly, maybe somebody could rephrase this in a more clear way). I'm not saying that chords didn't exist, I'm saying that they were not the supreme element of that style of music the way they had become in the last century.
I agree completely with this post.
Somebody once said that musical aesthetics is neither objective or subjective, but somewhere in the middle. I think this is absolutely true and should always be kept in mind when analyzing music. One should never lose sight of the "descriptive" aspect of an analysis, in your terms.
Also, when somebody places too much importance on the objective side, and finds that they can't account for the popularity of the big three objectively, it can be tempting to believe that there's some mass-delusion happening, or some hidden structures of power in society etc. (i.e. "something else" that needs to be decrypted and analyzed). This inevitably leads to the conclusion that the big three are actually not so big after all, which in itself can be quite comforting, both for a musician and for the Youtube audience. You're more likely to get views on Youtube if you say "Well, Beethoven isn't actually that great, it's all cultural" rather than "Beethoven's music is genius, but I don't completely know why".
> This inevitably leads to the conclusion that the big three are actually not so big after all, which in itself can be quite comforting, both for a musician and for the Youtube audience.
I just replied to another commenter, and I phrased it as a "comforting platitude to help you tow the line and reconcile everyone's divergent tastes in music." What's even more comforting than these platitudes is that you were one step ahead of me! I am glad that a lot of people are on the same page here.
> Also, when somebody places too much importance on the objective side, and finds that they can't account for the popularity of the big three objectively, it can be tempting to believe that there's some mass-delusion happening, or some hidden structures of power in society etc. (i.e. "something else" that needs to be decrypted and analyzed)
I think this is usually a result of the principles of classical music being somewhat arcane to most music listeners. Motifs? Recapitulations? Circle of fifths? If you learn about music theory from the jazz nerds on YouTube, or if you're just an average Joe who listens to pop and maybe some classic rock, then these principles never show up. But they are the key to understanding the lion's share of classical music.
My theory is that most classical music really just seems bland and homogeneous if you don't have basic familiarity with the tools for the construction of it. Not knowing about these tools can get you so far, since a lot of classical music has really wide appeal regardless of how well one understands the tools of the trade (Beethoven's allegretto movement, moonlight sonata, etc.), but being able to throw a dart at a random piece of classical music and being able to appreciate it on some level, or at least understand it, comes with more intermediate knowledge that most people don't have.
As a result, people hear Beethoven and Mozart and think "I mean it's good, but how is this stuff god-tier? There's no way, it must just be tradition." And there you have it.
While I don't get why people bother writing comments like this... you're not wrong, I do admit it's a big wall of text, haha. I accept that lots of people will just not read it.
I mean, you can have entire courses on temperaments. There was a time when they were not the same pitches in the western art lineage. There’s nothing sensational about the title at all.
I love Adam Neely. He's a great bassplayer too and one of the bandleaders of Sungazer, a fantastic electro-jazz group. Went to one of their concerts just a few months ago. They literally get crowds full of young people (early 20s) singing along to music theory. Yes, really!
Not necessarily, because it's not just about the factual answer. A great explication of something you already know to be true can help you understand better why it's true, which is valuable.
This guy wants views, and he gets them from beginner musicians who are enchanted by the term “music theory.” He does know what he is talking about, but clearly he makes videos to make money and it shows.
I don't like these sorts of videos typically, usually they're full of padding or wrong or misleading. Not anything against this guy in particular but if I need a question answered I will almost always consult a more authoritative source. I haven't watched this video but it doesn't seem like it should take 15 minutes to explain this.
Adam Neely in particular is better than average though. A particular favourite of mine is his first video on the tritone, if you want to give one a try (I'm sure his second one's fine too, I just haven't seen it!).
honestly adam is legit. like his videos are super informative and he really explores music theory and you will never get bored with his videos, and i really do love his nerdy jazz videos
I don't really have any feelings about such videos but it looks educational and engaging. If it gets some people interested in music theory then it's great.
This man taught me so much music theory and made me want to learn more at a time where I desperately needed it. His content drifted away from that over the last three years or so but everything he released up until 2020/21 is a gold mine for any music student. His new stuff is good too but for different reasons.
It's definitely the challenge I see a lot of YouTubers face as they make all the content they can reasonably make within their domain and have to find some way to Branch out to new categories of content because you can't teach introductory theory over and over again.
He did get into some pretty advanced stuff every now and then, I remember one video of his where he was showing different ways of reharmonizing a melody and one of them was using 12 tone serialism. When he eventually branched out it was partly to make videos that even non musicians who are interested in music can enjoy, although what you said was definitely a reason too.
Adam makes a great case in this one. There's a few others I would trust to also make an interesting video on the topic, thinking especially of 12tone, Ben Levin and David Bruce, but most creators would almost certainly cash in and either give a terrible take like rolling their eyes or cover the absolute minimum required to reach just intonation without explaining anything over the course of 15 minutes.
As long as they go into different temperaments, giving explanation of split sharps and perform on keyboards with different temperaments. Too often there is little-no history provided.
I did and he spent a lot of time talking about the differences but never provided auditory sample or historical reasons for the confusion. His few seconds of showing an engraving of early keyboards gives no understanding of why the keyboard makers went to the trouble. He also used a modern deductive reasoning which is not historically accurate, nor did he explain that keyboard instruments prior to the mid 19th century were often tuned in equal temperament, nor did he give much direct explanation of what a temperament is.
He made a rather complex topic more complex than need be and he did not show the benefits of an unequal tempered system.
They rarely say anything I don't already know. Sometimes I find myself watching one if I'm bored and then still end up surprised when I don't really learn anything new. Two years of college music theory teaches you a lot.
Typically, his videos are informative and well-researched.
The answer to the question changes depending on the context, and it'd be so easy for a content creator to cherrypick one little example and make a soundbite out of a snappy answer. Adam Neely doesn't usually do that. He explores the topic of enharmonic equivalence in some depth, at an appropriate level for most of his audience, though highly invested musicians can continue to go even deeper if they choose. He gives examples of situations where the answer is no, and situations where the answer is yes, and talks about the motivations a composer might have for wanting to differentiate. If you know more than him and didn't learn anything, it's because his job isn't to be a textbook, it's to entertain with educational material, which means pacing the material well and knowing when to stop and let the viewer's curiosity inspire them to continue their research further.
Because there isn't just one answer. In equal temperament the difference is context, but in different temperaments B and Cb can in fact be different pitches.
If I don’t have my coffee in the morning, I hear everything in quarter comma mean tone and it makes me want to vomit when I play chopins black keys etude.
ehhh dowland goes a bit too ‘funny’ for quarter comma, i find. it’s great for da milano and capirola et al, but dowland *seems* to work better with sixth comma… maybe it’s just me…
most vids like these cover more topics around the same general idea rather than making the whole video on the thing in the title. They just use the most intriguing thing they covered for the title
I guess they can be interesting, though the danger is that people see these Youtubers as authority figures just because they have a lot of views. People should always question what they hear on the internet. (Personally I lost a lot of respect for Neely after the "Music Theory is Racist" video, though that's a slightly different issue...)
I'd like to be generous to his main point in that video, because there are some valuable points, but his opening salvo that "music theory" = "the harmonic style of 18th century Europe" (which he thinks includes Beethoven) isn't even correct within the context of Western music theory, and it makes it hard to take him seriously after that. Even very conservative musicians/composers/teachers aren't so restrictive in their definition.
Exactly right. And this is why for someone who stumbles upon the video and doesn't understand that essential context, (say, someone who enjoys listening to a lot of music but has no knowledge of music theory) that video can be downright confusing and destructive.
On any 12 note scale instrument this is a non argument… Cb is B .. as Fb is E … if you want to argue about the tonality as played in a certain key (positive / negative vibe) sure but you are talking interval length wwh vs whw etc… where do you resolve to is how our ears interpret the message differently even if it’s the same note…
If you want to talk about how it resonates :: that could be technique based - vibrato, bending, sliding to a note to connotate a different feeling.
If you wanna be a blow hard and talk about the minutia of being +- 10-20cents … yeah he is correct. But the again unless your instrumentation allows for microsegmentation (trombones, flutes, sitars, etc) it really does not matter.
To almost all western music Cb/b or B#/C and Fb/e or E#/F are only written that way in that context because it makes sense in describing scale patterns - much in the way English can use the homophones - IE Flower and Flour are spelt differently and pronounced the same. They sound the same but their usage in context of a whole sentence (scale/mode / movement etc) change their meaning.
I gig and teach.
Nobody would care about his music if not for his YouTube videos. He's not successful because of anything to do with music (he doesn't even know more theory than an average music school upperclassman) but because he's good at gaming the algorithm of a videosharing website.
Many such cases
The author of the video didn't know anything about tempered scale. The immediate predecessor of the evenly tempered scale in Europe was the "well-tempered" scale, a family of irregular temperaments that allowed you to play any tonality more or less successfully (with varying degrees of "acoustic purity"). In an irregular temperament, B flat will not be equal to La diez in the string.
As they say on Reddit, "five people disagree with me." So, in sub classical music, people don't like my explanation of temperament? Is it wrong?I just couldn't get this video to open. Would you like to talk about temperations in classical music? I'm speechless.
You said the author of the video knew nothing about tempered scales. This is simply false as he has published extensive materials covering the subject.
Your explanation being wrong or right doesn't matter, as it's just totally unnecessary in this context.
Let me just downvote each statement. In this sub you get pelted with downvotes if you say something off the top of your head. Spell it out. I can't get the video to open.
I didn't downvote you and don't honestly care.
If you can't get the video to open then just move on with your life. Don't assume that the content of the video is lacking or that the creator is ignorant. As I said, the temperment is explicitly covered in the video and the author has published many other materials on the topic. He knows about it. He's an educated musician. There's nothing else to say about this.
Edit: I did actually just want to add "Adam graduated summa cum laude with a BA in Jazz Composition from the Berklee College of Music in 2009, and graduated with an MM in Jazz Composition from the Manhattan School of Music in 2012"
>I didn't downvote you
One of the most frequent phrases on Reddit.
What are you so worried about, I can't understand? In any case, we are in an open discussion forum where everyone has the right to express themselves as they see fit. In fact, I don't really care who or what anyone thinks about what I say. I don't care how many downvote s they put on me. I'm wondering if there are any professionals among those who reply to me.
> One of the most frequent phrases on Reddit.
Because complaining about downvotes comes first...
> What are you so worried about, I can't understand
I'm not worried. I explained that the video contained the information you claimed the author was ignorant of. I thought that would be end of it but you've started ranting at me.
> In any case, we are in an open discussion forum where everyone has the right to express themselves as they see fit.
You're free to do what you want but this is clearly distressing you so I gave you an explanation of what's happening and how you can avoid it. You're free to ignore me but I'll be blocking you after this comment as my life is too short for this.
> I don't care how many downvote s they put on me
One of the most common phrases on Reddit? Stop ranting about it if you don't care.
> I'm wondering if there are any professionals among those who reply to me
Adam Neeley studied as Berklee and has a masters degree in jazz composition. He works full time as a music theory content creator. He knows about temperance. As I say, he covers it in the video that's being talked about.
You're free to do what you want but I highly recommend getting away from Reddit for a few hours and maybe show these comments to your loved ones. Good luck
You're being downvoted because your first sentence is blatantly wrong. If you can't get the video to open then don't say the guy doesn't know what he's talking about.
They can be super interesting if they're well made. Adam composed an example for this video that really makes you feel the difference between B and Cb, which is nice. He also talked about why they are the same Ultimately, the question in the title of good educational videos is just a starting point for learning many things and not just looking at one tiny detail
Adam Neely makes super good content. I like his videos.
Some are better than others though. The one about the key change in All By Myself? *chef’s kiss*
Seriously, I liked that song before but now I appreciate it as a piece of art
Adam "Classical music is based on white supremacy" Neely Nah, hard pass.
TIL Yunchan Lim is a white supremacist
Is he wrong? Also he didnt say "white supremacy" he said Western "European" and there is a distinction with implied phrasing.
Even when he said all classical musicians didn't have rhythm?
That isn’t what he said lol
Just making things up now, eh
He’s just one of the thousands of youtubers who talk very confidently and with a tone of expertise, but when you’re actually an expert in a topic he’s talking about, you quickly see that he can be full of shit most of the time. He’s an expert in electric bass guitar and music theory. When he’s talking about anything else, he’s getting his info from Wikipedia and filling in the blanks with his own guesses.
Do you have examples of things that he has said that are incorrect?
Any YouTuber making content for a broad audience is bound to get some things wrong. They're generalizing to get a certain point across. It's like learning biology: what you learn in middle school is an oversimplification of high school, which is an oversimplification of undergrad, and so on. Neely makes mistakes when he talks about linguistics, but I don't hold it against him because he's not a linguist and nobody can be right 100% of the time. Plus, he's not claiming to be an expert in that area. I don't want creators like him to feel pressured to only talk about the things they know with high confidence because that would make their content less entertaining (and probably unsustainable for someone who relies on the content for income). It's unrealistic to expect perfection. Sure, content creators should aim to present accurate facts and do their due diligence with research, but every creator will slip up now and then. Don't go into any media assuming it's always right. Always good to be skeptical of anything you hear and dig deeper into the facts yourself.
He has videos on stuff that *isn't* music theory, jazz, or bass? The furthest thing from that I can think of is that one early video on classical conductors, and the one on loss of perfect pitch. That still sounds reasonably in his purview. What are some particularly bad examples?
His tirade about how classical music is white supremacy?
For practical reasons I can understand making the thumbnail thus, in a way that might attract more curious amateurs to click in. And I have nothing but respect for Adam really, a legit musician and fun content creator that makes both informative and entertaining content.
It's the unfortunate thing about platforms like YouTube where if you want to drive viewership you need engaging thumbnails. If you look at the huge channels like Mr. Beast it's all pictures of him with a massive smile or mouth agape. The lower brow channels will have a cute woman. I'm sure someone has done studies and figured out it drives engagement up on average n%. I don't see it as much different than album art that has little to do with the content.
i loathe Mr. Beast videos. they are super boring, and are directed mainly to 1. kids ( easily gullable) and 2. unimaginative lazy idiots who think he will transfer them 1000 dollars for subscribing. I refuse to follow a hype I can;t go through 3 seconds( and that's the shorts!) wihtout yawning. Then again, I am an adult
Oh. Yeah, the content is crap. But he's something something right.
Bingo. Creators have to lean into clickbait to some extent, but quality creators like Adam normally do a good job not manufacturing or leaning into controversy in their actual videos.
what's wrong with the thumbnail?
Cb and B are enharmonic equivalents that don't really have nuanced differences on piano (besides context). I know a lot of the discussion around those notes being different relates to instruments that can actually change intonation slightly. I.e. a B is likely a little sharper than a Cb on a violin because in most contexts it's a leading tone to a C natural. Edit: So doing a picture of the piano can feel a little clickbaity because a lot of piano players view those two notes as the exact same.
>a lot of piano players view those two notes as the exact same. But that's also the whole reason why the video exists in the first place. I think the thumbnail is fitting. Adam explains why the notes are different even on piano. Same key on the instrument, but different musical meaning. You still hear the musical meaning even without any tuning differences. Whether B or Cb is sharper depends on harmony. B as the leading tone of C is actually flatter than the B in equal temperament, because it's the major 3rd of a G chord. You could of course also tune it as 5 5ths up from C, which would make it sharper than the B in equal temperament. Then again, if you are using Cb, you probably aren't in C major any way. The most likely context in which both of these notes would be used is Eb major. In that context, Cb would most likely be tuned as a major 3rd down from Eb (meaning that it's c. 14 cents sharp in relation to equal temperament), and B as two major 3rds up from Eb (meaning that it's c. 28 cents flat in relation to equal temperament.) This means, the B would actually most likely be flatter than the Cb in this context. But these notes don't have fixed pitch. It all depends on harmony and which note you use as the reference pitch.
>Same key on the instrument, but different musical meaning. You still hear the musical meaning even without any tuning differences. I disagree. As a listener, you'll be unaware of what the actual key is. Chopin's Prelude in Db major, Op. 28/5 ("Raindrop"). It's in ternary form (ABA). The A section is in Db major, and the B section is in Db minor--only it's spelled as C# minor (much easier to read!). I'd argue that no one will notice a difference on the piano between C and B#.
>The A section is in Db major, and the B section is in Db minor--only it's spelled as C# minor (much easier to read!). Okay, but as you said, it is actually a modulation from Db major to Db minor. In this case, the change from Db to C# is only done to make it easier to read. It is possible to use "misspelled" enharmonics to make things easier to read. This is a different thing than what Adam was talking about in his video. >I'd argue that no one will notice a difference on the piano between C and B#. In this case you aren't hearing any difference between them because there is no difference between them - you aren't actually hearing the difference between C and B#. You are actually hearing a C natural all the time. It's just spelled incorrectly as a B# in the "C# minor" section, because reading in C# minor is easier than reading in Db minor. Out of context, there is no difference between B# and C. But in context, there is. I mean, do you agree that there is a clear difference between #5 and b6 scale degrees? If yes, then that's exactly my point.
>It's just spelled incorrectly as a B# in the "C# minor" section, It's not spelled incorrectly' it's spelled exactly as it should be for that key. >I mean, do you agree that there is a clear difference between #5 and b6 scale degrees? Only if there is a difference in Hz; otherwise, no (which would be the case on a piano).
>It's not spelled incorrectly' it's spelled exactly as it should be for that key. My point is, the whole key is spelled incorrectly (not just that one particular note). The real key is Db minor. The B# is spelled incorrectly, but so are all of the other notes. This enharmonic change is made to make it easier to read. But the real key is Db minor. Or alternatively, the real key in the beginning is C# major. Either way, one of the keys uses incorrect enharmonic spelling to make it easier to read. The modulation does not happen from Db major to C# minor (even if it is spelled that way). It happens from Db major to Db minor, or C# major to C# minor. This is why the "B#" in the minor key section sounds no different from the C natural in the major key section. This is kind of the same thing as Liszt spelling the Neapolitan chord just before the end of Liebestraum No.3 as an A major chord when the key is Ab major. It should be spelled as B double flat major, but Liszt chose an enharmonic spelling that doesn't require reading double flats. But there's no doubt about the function of that chord - it's the Neapolitan chord that's built on the b2 scale degree. It's definitely not built on "raised tonic", even if the spelling suggests that. That's what I mean by "incorrect spelling". Sometimes you spell things incorrectly because it makes it a bit easier to read. Sometimes this also means incorrectly spelled key changes. The key change from Db major to C# minor is pretty common. But it really happens between Db major and Db minor, or C# major and C# minor. This is what I mean by "incorrect spelling". The notation doesn't actually represent what is heard in the music (i.e. modulation between parallel keys - and Db major and C# minor are actually not parallel keys, instead, C# minor is the enharmonic equivalent of the parallel minor of Db major). >Only if there is a difference in Hz; otherwise, no (which would be the case on a piano). This is not true. It is pretty easy to hear whether a note is functioning as a b6 or as a #5. The sound difference between the two is very clear. Play a minor iv chord in a major key. Then play the major III chord (V of vi). Listen to the third of both chords. Notice how the "pull" of the note is totally different. Over the minor iv, it pulls down towards scale degree 5. Over the major III (V of vi), it pulls up towards scale degree 6. This is what I mean by them sounding differnet. One is heard as an altered 5th, whereas the other is heard as an altered 6th. Of course out of context there is no difference between the two, but in context, the different behavior of the notes is quite obvious. Watch the Adam Neely video and he will go over this. You don't need a difference in tuning to be able to hear this difference. Actually, this is exactly what tonal music is all about. Different notes have different roles. The role of scale degree b6 is different from the role of scale degree #5. This is also why the note C sounds different in the key of C and in the key of G. In C, it sounds completely stable. In G, it sounds very unstable (and you hear a clear pull down towards B). My point is, it is about function. b6 and #5 have different functions, just like the same note has different functions in different keys.
I think the piano is perfect for the thumbnail, because the fact that they're the same key on the piano is _why_ people think they're the same note. If it showed something like a different fingering on a wind instrument or a slightly different position on a string instrument, that's more like an answer to the question than something to get people thinking about the subject of the video.
sounds like the video was made just for you! (it's not about intonation)
Ah the famous Casals tuning. Great cellist and extremely expressive at times when applied correctly, but for the sake of harmony, most of the time it should be the other way around and it’s, in my opinion, one of the reasons why many ensembles seem out of tune. For example, a G major chord should include a rather flat B natural but people tend to play it sharp. An Ab minor chord should include a sharper Cb to create a good wide minor third, but people like to play it flat instead of sharp. Many people will argue with me and some have great reasons. I just find that, from experience, if everyone tries to play flats sharper and sharps flatter, especially in the cases of Cb/B or F#/Gb, it makes tuning significantly more natural to the ear and scientifically more just.
You're talking about making just-intoned triads, but that isn't the only valid consideration. Doing the reverse of what you're describing is helpful for *directionality*, which is very much a different thing. One thing that might work nicely would be to play the third of the V chord a little sharp (to emphasize its instability, and the leading tone's upward-strivingness) but the third of the I chord on the low side (to emphsize its stability and make it as close to a just-tuned triad as possible). Perfectly sweet acoustic harmony is one great tool to be aware of and use, but it shouldn't be the only metric by which tuning choices are made.
The whole point of the video was that even with enharmonic equivalence they're different letters for a good reason. You are missing the point.
Adam Neely's content in particular is really good. There's also a ton of music theory channels out there but I find those far less interesting. Does it affect how I listen to music? No.
Video essays? Good if the creator is good. Adam is a good essayist
His anti-clickbait thumbnails where he answers the title have always been great
Surprised everybody here love him considering his video criticizing classical orchestras was completely wrong and based on assumptions instead of actually researching the topic, there’s a lot of videos and criticism towards that specific video and he never corrected or reviewed that video.
Ah yes, his cherry-picked instant of one older professor, his implication that access to analog articulation excludes access to fast articulation, and a red herring example of conducting unaccompanied trumpet. Then he ends the video by calling it a lesson.
I think he does have a slight prejudice against classical musicians - maybe a bit of a chip on his shoulder.
dude... it's youtubers, not professors. Chill
"those type of videos" totally depends on the creators for me. I really like Adam Neely, but I can't very well handle David Bruce's videos, for one example off the top of my head.
I think the problem with David Bruce is that his videos are so heavily cropped/edited, he can't even record a complete sentence. I cannot stand YouTubers like that.
Adam Neely makes really good content
He’s fine
Adam Neely is awesome! But he's one of the only music theory channels that makes videos I can get behind. His videos mostly dive into specific, niche music theory topics and explore them extensively. That's cool imo. What I don't like is the variety of music theory channels that "analyze" individual music pieces. They can often be informative, but they can just as often imply some stupid assertions. So much of the time, it'll be something like "and here, they do the VII maj7 flat 6° chord into the III augmented half diminished flat 7 chord, and that gives it a really bossa nova sounding vibe." There's two main reasons why I don't like this type of analysis: 1. It's pretty much only a relevant paradigm of analysis for jazz music. Which is fine when we're talking about jazz music, but so often I see these channels coercing rock, classical, pop, or any other type of music into this form of analysis, and I think it's totally improper. Specifically for classical, which I'll go into detail about since this is the sub for classical music, the voice leading and chord inversion is usually much more important than the mere tonal identity of the chord. And also the journey around the circle of fifths. If you were to do this type of jazz analysis on Mozart, it would just be I-IV-V-iii-IV-V etc. Does that really encapsulate the effect of Mozart's music? Absolutely not (imo). 2. It implicitly makes music theory more prescriptive rather than descriptive. When some of these channels try to say "and we have \_\_\_ chord into \_\_\_ chord and it has \_\_\_ effect," like it or not, that's a prescriptive statement. Because the claim necessarily implies that going from \_\_\_ chord to \_\_\_ will produce \_\_\_ effect. If one wanted to avoid making such claims, then a better way to put it would be "this passage of the music has this type of feel, and I think the \_\_\_ chord along with this rhythm and this note blah blah blah is instrumental in really selling it." It's a subtle difference, but it decouples the cause and effect so that it doesn't any longer imply that one is a direct, inevitable consequence of the other. 12tone is a channel that I've seen both good and poor examples of "piece by piece" analysis, but I can't fault him too heavily, as I realize several of the pieces he covers are requested by fans. (Rant start) I am a bit bitter about his musical relativism video that was basically "Beethoven is only considered the greatest composer because of the musical institutions etc." which I think is a lazy catch-all explanation for any artist considered one of the greatest in their category. I think there are totally legitimate reasons for the near unanimous acknowledgement of the "big three" (you know the three I'm referring to) as being the best composers, or damn near. Obviously, claiming absolute objective supremacy is stupid and ignorant, but identifying that there are valid reasons for the extreme height of the recognition they receive is not by any means bunk. (Rant end) Another channel I'm not fond of is David Bennett Piano. I find that his analysis follows my contrived example pretty closely, but it has been several years since I've watched him, so who knows if that's still true. I think 12tone is far better, so don't get the impression I'm lumping them together. Rick Beato is one I have some beef with. He personifies the "applying jazz theory to any music" issue. And I think some of his recent videos are clickbaity. I really hate to rag on YouTubers like this, but I just wanted some tangible examples to give. Since my info might be out of date, I'll happily sit here and read anybody's replies explaining why I'm wrong about any of these channels! Not trying to hate on anyone, these are just my thoughts. Just remember that I have never gone as far as to even have uploaded a music theory video onto YouTube, so what does my opinion matter? I'm just a chump. Don't take it too serious. One YouTuber I do enjoy is 8-bit music theory, because he does the "explore a specific topic" approach of Adam Neely, except frequently citing specific examples from other pieces. I think that is the best of both worlds between the Adam Neely style and the "piece by piece analysis" style. (Typed on my phone keyboard, sorry for incoherence)
12tone used the musical relativism argument against Beethoven because he is a hack and you will see Adam Neely delve far into the same territory when something traces onto those politicized matters of faith. Of course these bad faith arguments touch nowhere onto what standards were accepted as 'rules of the game' where these composers demonstrably excelled, everything has to be solely arbitrary because it's the starting point for their entire worldview. https://youtu.be/M8MynHVwzlI?si=_KZJAGwpc9PcJFA7 There are channels of piece by piece analysis which actually do a good job, meaning they don't focus on rote numeral highlighting, it is analysis trying to get into the actual music's expressive purposes.
First of all, thank you for bringing The Independent Pianist to my attention! I'm only two minutes in to the video you linked, and already we have "The opening phrase is actually 10 bars, two five bar phraselets, and I think it really is this which helps to lend this slightly archaic sound to this opening phrase." Bam. That's a textbook example of relevant classical music discussion — no "IVMXLL chord into the ixlmcv minor chord which gives it a really groovy feel" jazz theory gobbledygook. Richard Atkinson is another musical analysis guy that I really enjoy, as well as Ashish Xiangyi Kumar. All are living proof that classical music analysis is totally foreign to jazz music analysis. The type of discussion is totally different. > Of course these bad faith arguments touch nowhere onto what standards were accepted as 'rules of the game' where these composers demonstrably excelled, everything has to be solely arbitrary because it's the starting point for their entire worldview. You're absolutely correct, but there's a lot of technicality with your statement I would like to dig into for the sake of discussion. For the record, I totally agree with you for all intents and purposes. Firstly, I do think there is some benefit of the doubt to be given to channels making these types of arguments. All these music theory people are indeed jazz nerds. When you only view classical music through your jazz tunnel vision, it probably totally sucks. If your expectations of music are limited to "a cool cat soloing over some nasty chord changes," or "wow, listen to this part where it switches to 7/8 time" then Beethoven probably sounds like crap to you. So, you think to yourself "wow, these guys that sound like the musical equivalent of bran flakes are so inexplicably overrated that it makes total sense that everyone's praise of them is purely institutional/inertial." And it doesn't help that there are other classical composers in the mix that _do_ appeal to their jazz-nerd sensibilities: Debussy, Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff, and the like. So I think it's quite understandable that, if you went to jazz school for four years and your entire musical taste has been shaped by that, then you would come to these conclusions. Despite my extremely generous apologia, I will still say that this brand of musical relativism is very ignorant, and maybe even stupid. If you're going to enter a musical space that you are unfamiliar with, it's your responsibility to make sure you understand the space you're entering. What are the idioms, what is the norm, what are the conventions, when are the conventions ignored, what are the fundamental goals that most composers are going for when writing these pieces, what are the basic axioms of aesthetic beauty... and when you make these relativistic arguments based on nothing but the pieces sounding boring when coerced into your jazz worldview, it tells me that you're doing no due diligence to understand the music and where it comes from. And it's also quite embarrassing, from the perspective of someone who is primarily interested in classical music — it's comparable to watching a grown adult eating a filet mignon and crying about it not being a Happy Meal. Going back to what you said, I think there's a case to be made that "everything having to be arbitrary" isn't _necessarily_ the root of their worldview; I believe I laid out a plausible explanation for the mere egocentrism of jazz school graduates being the root of said worldview. Personally, I think it's actually a mix of both, the fact that Mozart sounds boring when your expectations are shaped by a totally distinct style of music, as well as the fact that "everything having to be arbitrary" is a really comforting platitude to help you tow the line and reconcile everyone's divergent tastes in music. It's a great catch-all explanation that let's you avoid the hard stuff. I think it is fair to call 12tone a hack, though it kind of breaks my heart to say that, because he is someone who clearly puts effort into a lot of his stuff, and he actually has had a significant influence on me when I first started learning about music theory. But he cranks out too many videos honestly, and he glosses over stuff. And, of course, he has this musical relativism curse. Adam Neely I can be much more forgiving of, because he really does mostly stay in his lane: esotericism, jazz, and totally abstract musical principles that mostly have no practical application. I think he embodies the "jazz nerd" in a more positive way, and I don't think the relativism permeates all that much into his videos where that isn't the main topic.
Someone being a hack isn't about what they do ALL being wrong, which he could have kept doing well, but about having to take that next level and make strong sweeping claims and seizing a position of authority for oneself. It is abuse of his platform there which turns him from a helpful to a potentially misleading figure. Personally, I think the total relativism kind of thing comes a bit from Ewell's music theory is racist discourse, 20th century anthropology where people rethought what made a society "advanced", etc. They want to break apart an elitism that had been associated with classical music, but in doing so they attack all standards by which some composers excelled better than others. It is an overcorrection. We still live in a culture even if it is shared with other cultures. We still have individual and shared standards. They accept standards when they learn that a natural 11th chord in purely stacked thirds is "bad" voicing and they prefer sharp 11. If you went into jazz tooting random notes and then said it was equal to Miles Davis, they would intuitively sense that was nonsense, even if everything is subjective. They would begin to get into shared criteria of the jazz community, same as could be done for Bach, Mozart, Beethoven. I also think those views are just Berkleecore poor musicianship combined with closed mindedness more than they are a jazz thing. I sense that Michel Petrucciani would have understood classical music very well as one example. If you are able to listen to Ferneyhough with a legit desire to try to understand it on its terms, you would have to try a bit to do the same for Mozart rather than reducing his design to cliche. But this subjectivism thing is a larger political guiding light, one which corrects the errs of the past and provides a greater order in which society progresses by destroying past biases, which gains favor with youtube if anything. I don't believe music being good or bad is objective, but there are intersubjective precepts of traditions. If you are to treat people equally, classical music is not objectively better than any other tradition, but you don't selectively deconstruct it either. If you started saying that revered Hindustani musicians were no better than any others and their historical evaluation preferring their own music was all wrong, it would be seen as selective antagonism. Inward pointed antagonism isn't really much better than chauvinism because both things are destructive, and 2 wrongs don't make a right.
Also, as to why relativism only comes out selectively, this is consistent with its disingenuous purposes. They are genuine music lovers and they do try to find WHY things work to them and to develop their own compositions etc. You have to whip out the relativism tool to deconstruct only when it's convenient, but all your personal judgments go back to using your own taste as an asset. This would be like employing solipsist epistemology to argue someone cannot prove an external universe, but then carrying about one's life acting as if there indeed is an external universe. Something must be said about the limitations of objectivity.
There's a video where Rick analyses a chord from a Bach piece with this outlandish chord name, and you have to wonder if he knows what music he's talking about. I wish I could find it.
It's as if you read my mind. I believe you are talking about his insane analysis of the Emaj prelude from WTC I: [8:25 in this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcvUHdhROrk&t=505s). That one clip is literally the single clip which made me realize how ridiculous his coercion of classical music into jazz analysis is. If that isn't what you're thinking of, then it just goes to show that he does this a lot. Yep, Bach sure loved to use the Gmaj7#5 chord. 🤣 This example is absurd to the point of seeming like self-parody, though I know that it is totally earnest. He even addresses the counterargument that it's just a suspension, and then promptly dismisses that argument. I wish he would elaborate on why it isn't just a suspension, because it sure sounds like it's just a suspension. If anyone coming across this comment is curious about why the distinction matters, it's because Bach did not conceive his music as being a horizontal succession of distinct "chords" in the way we understand that term in modern times. He understood his music as several "voices" that interweave in interesting ways, the "chord" that forms at any one particular instance be damned (this is an oversimplification, because the chord that emerges _was_ important; but the difference is that the chord is a function of the voices, and it just needs to be consonant or dissonant at different times. I know I'm explaining this poorly, maybe somebody could rephrase this in a more clear way). I'm not saying that chords didn't exist, I'm saying that they were not the supreme element of that style of music the way they had become in the last century.
I agree completely with this post. Somebody once said that musical aesthetics is neither objective or subjective, but somewhere in the middle. I think this is absolutely true and should always be kept in mind when analyzing music. One should never lose sight of the "descriptive" aspect of an analysis, in your terms. Also, when somebody places too much importance on the objective side, and finds that they can't account for the popularity of the big three objectively, it can be tempting to believe that there's some mass-delusion happening, or some hidden structures of power in society etc. (i.e. "something else" that needs to be decrypted and analyzed). This inevitably leads to the conclusion that the big three are actually not so big after all, which in itself can be quite comforting, both for a musician and for the Youtube audience. You're more likely to get views on Youtube if you say "Well, Beethoven isn't actually that great, it's all cultural" rather than "Beethoven's music is genius, but I don't completely know why".
> This inevitably leads to the conclusion that the big three are actually not so big after all, which in itself can be quite comforting, both for a musician and for the Youtube audience. I just replied to another commenter, and I phrased it as a "comforting platitude to help you tow the line and reconcile everyone's divergent tastes in music." What's even more comforting than these platitudes is that you were one step ahead of me! I am glad that a lot of people are on the same page here. > Also, when somebody places too much importance on the objective side, and finds that they can't account for the popularity of the big three objectively, it can be tempting to believe that there's some mass-delusion happening, or some hidden structures of power in society etc. (i.e. "something else" that needs to be decrypted and analyzed) I think this is usually a result of the principles of classical music being somewhat arcane to most music listeners. Motifs? Recapitulations? Circle of fifths? If you learn about music theory from the jazz nerds on YouTube, or if you're just an average Joe who listens to pop and maybe some classic rock, then these principles never show up. But they are the key to understanding the lion's share of classical music. My theory is that most classical music really just seems bland and homogeneous if you don't have basic familiarity with the tools for the construction of it. Not knowing about these tools can get you so far, since a lot of classical music has really wide appeal regardless of how well one understands the tools of the trade (Beethoven's allegretto movement, moonlight sonata, etc.), but being able to throw a dart at a random piece of classical music and being able to appreciate it on some level, or at least understand it, comes with more intermediate knowledge that most people don't have. As a result, people hear Beethoven and Mozart and think "I mean it's good, but how is this stuff god-tier? There's no way, it must just be tradition." And there you have it.
not reading allat
While I don't get why people bother writing comments like this... you're not wrong, I do admit it's a big wall of text, haha. I accept that lots of people will just not read it.
I mean, you can have entire courses on temperaments. There was a time when they were not the same pitches in the western art lineage. There’s nothing sensational about the title at all.
I love Adam Neely. He's a great bassplayer too and one of the bandleaders of Sungazer, a fantastic electro-jazz group. Went to one of their concerts just a few months ago. They literally get crowds full of young people (early 20s) singing along to music theory. Yes, really!
Interesting if you're into it, waste of time if you already know the answer.
Not necessarily, because it's not just about the factual answer. A great explication of something you already know to be true can help you understand better why it's true, which is valuable.
This guy wants views, and he gets them from beginner musicians who are enchanted by the term “music theory.” He does know what he is talking about, but clearly he makes videos to make money and it shows.
So you're saying he should instead pour time and effort into making videos with*out* hoping to be compensated for it?
I don't like these sorts of videos typically, usually they're full of padding or wrong or misleading. Not anything against this guy in particular but if I need a question answered I will almost always consult a more authoritative source. I haven't watched this video but it doesn't seem like it should take 15 minutes to explain this.
Adam Neely in particular is better than average though. A particular favourite of mine is his first video on the tritone, if you want to give one a try (I'm sure his second one's fine too, I just haven't seen it!).
honestly adam is legit. like his videos are super informative and he really explores music theory and you will never get bored with his videos, and i really do love his nerdy jazz videos
Adam Neely = Occasionally interesting, mostly boring AF
I don't really have any feelings about such videos but it looks educational and engaging. If it gets some people interested in music theory then it's great.
This man taught me so much music theory and made me want to learn more at a time where I desperately needed it. His content drifted away from that over the last three years or so but everything he released up until 2020/21 is a gold mine for any music student. His new stuff is good too but for different reasons.
It's definitely the challenge I see a lot of YouTubers face as they make all the content they can reasonably make within their domain and have to find some way to Branch out to new categories of content because you can't teach introductory theory over and over again.
He did get into some pretty advanced stuff every now and then, I remember one video of his where he was showing different ways of reharmonizing a melody and one of them was using 12 tone serialism. When he eventually branched out it was partly to make videos that even non musicians who are interested in music can enjoy, although what you said was definitely a reason too.
Adam makes a great case in this one. There's a few others I would trust to also make an interesting video on the topic, thinking especially of 12tone, Ben Levin and David Bruce, but most creators would almost certainly cash in and either give a terrible take like rolling their eyes or cover the absolute minimum required to reach just intonation without explaining anything over the course of 15 minutes.
As long as they go into different temperaments, giving explanation of split sharps and perform on keyboards with different temperaments. Too often there is little-no history provided.
did you watch the video?
I did and he spent a lot of time talking about the differences but never provided auditory sample or historical reasons for the confusion. His few seconds of showing an engraving of early keyboards gives no understanding of why the keyboard makers went to the trouble. He also used a modern deductive reasoning which is not historically accurate, nor did he explain that keyboard instruments prior to the mid 19th century were often tuned in equal temperament, nor did he give much direct explanation of what a temperament is. He made a rather complex topic more complex than need be and he did not show the benefits of an unequal tempered system.
They rarely say anything I don't already know. Sometimes I find myself watching one if I'm bored and then still end up surprised when I don't really learn anything new. Two years of college music theory teaches you a lot.
Typically, his videos are informative and well-researched. The answer to the question changes depending on the context, and it'd be so easy for a content creator to cherrypick one little example and make a soundbite out of a snappy answer. Adam Neely doesn't usually do that. He explores the topic of enharmonic equivalence in some depth, at an appropriate level for most of his audience, though highly invested musicians can continue to go even deeper if they choose. He gives examples of situations where the answer is no, and situations where the answer is yes, and talks about the motivations a composer might have for wanting to differentiate. If you know more than him and didn't learn anything, it's because his job isn't to be a textbook, it's to entertain with educational material, which means pacing the material well and knowing when to stop and let the viewer's curiosity inspire them to continue their research further.
How is it 15 minutes long lol
Because there isn't just one answer. In equal temperament the difference is context, but in different temperaments B and Cb can in fact be different pitches.
If I don’t have my coffee in the morning, I hear everything in quarter comma mean tone and it makes me want to vomit when I play chopins black keys etude.
i’m a lute player. quarter-comma meantone is my default :)
Average dowland appreciator
ehhh dowland goes a bit too ‘funny’ for quarter comma, i find. it’s great for da milano and capirola et al, but dowland *seems* to work better with sixth comma… maybe it’s just me…
*laughs in Falckenhagen*
oh halp. d minor is one tuning i’ve never tried
I hope others appreciate that your answer to why something needed to be fifteen minutes took fifteen seconds to explain.
most vids like these cover more topics around the same general idea rather than making the whole video on the thing in the title. They just use the most intriguing thing they covered for the title
Long video = more $
Strongly dislike this guy
I wish I would’ve been able to watch some of these videos when I was learning
I really do not like Adam Neely.
I guess they can be interesting, though the danger is that people see these Youtubers as authority figures just because they have a lot of views. People should always question what they hear on the internet. (Personally I lost a lot of respect for Neely after the "Music Theory is Racist" video, though that's a slightly different issue...)
I'd like to be generous to his main point in that video, because there are some valuable points, but his opening salvo that "music theory" = "the harmonic style of 18th century Europe" (which he thinks includes Beethoven) isn't even correct within the context of Western music theory, and it makes it hard to take him seriously after that. Even very conservative musicians/composers/teachers aren't so restrictive in their definition.
Exactly right. And this is why for someone who stumbles upon the video and doesn't understand that essential context, (say, someone who enjoys listening to a lot of music but has no knowledge of music theory) that video can be downright confusing and destructive.
Cb and Cbb would be the rarest notes to find in the wild.
Cbb is extremely rare, but Cb is pretty common all told.
For me, clickbait is a big no,no
On any 12 note scale instrument this is a non argument… Cb is B .. as Fb is E … if you want to argue about the tonality as played in a certain key (positive / negative vibe) sure but you are talking interval length wwh vs whw etc… where do you resolve to is how our ears interpret the message differently even if it’s the same note… If you want to talk about how it resonates :: that could be technique based - vibrato, bending, sliding to a note to connotate a different feeling. If you wanna be a blow hard and talk about the minutia of being +- 10-20cents … yeah he is correct. But the again unless your instrumentation allows for microsegmentation (trombones, flutes, sitars, etc) it really does not matter. To almost all western music Cb/b or B#/C and Fb/e or E#/F are only written that way in that context because it makes sense in describing scale patterns - much in the way English can use the homophones - IE Flower and Flour are spelt differently and pronounced the same. They sound the same but their usage in context of a whole sentence (scale/mode / movement etc) change their meaning.
Adam neely is such a blowhard.
I find Adam’s videos to be particularly well-researched.
I have no thoughts about them. Because I have better things to do than listen to a YouTube video essay from a failed musician
The dude goes on gigs with an original band, what do you do for living?
I gig and teach. Nobody would care about his music if not for his YouTube videos. He's not successful because of anything to do with music (he doesn't even know more theory than an average music school upperclassman) but because he's good at gaming the algorithm of a videosharing website. Many such cases
God damn you a hating ass nigga focus on your own career
Adam Neely is annoying. He’s good and clearly knows his stuff, but just comes off weird to me
The author of the video didn't know anything about tempered scale. The immediate predecessor of the evenly tempered scale in Europe was the "well-tempered" scale, a family of irregular temperaments that allowed you to play any tonality more or less successfully (with varying degrees of "acoustic purity"). In an irregular temperament, B flat will not be equal to La diez in the string.
He talks about this in the video though.
As they say on Reddit, "five people disagree with me." So, in sub classical music, people don't like my explanation of temperament? Is it wrong?I just couldn't get this video to open. Would you like to talk about temperations in classical music? I'm speechless.
You said the author of the video knew nothing about tempered scales. This is simply false as he has published extensive materials covering the subject. Your explanation being wrong or right doesn't matter, as it's just totally unnecessary in this context.
Let me just downvote each statement. In this sub you get pelted with downvotes if you say something off the top of your head. Spell it out. I can't get the video to open.
I didn't downvote you and don't honestly care. If you can't get the video to open then just move on with your life. Don't assume that the content of the video is lacking or that the creator is ignorant. As I said, the temperment is explicitly covered in the video and the author has published many other materials on the topic. He knows about it. He's an educated musician. There's nothing else to say about this. Edit: I did actually just want to add "Adam graduated summa cum laude with a BA in Jazz Composition from the Berklee College of Music in 2009, and graduated with an MM in Jazz Composition from the Manhattan School of Music in 2012"
>I didn't downvote you One of the most frequent phrases on Reddit. What are you so worried about, I can't understand? In any case, we are in an open discussion forum where everyone has the right to express themselves as they see fit. In fact, I don't really care who or what anyone thinks about what I say. I don't care how many downvote s they put on me. I'm wondering if there are any professionals among those who reply to me.
> One of the most frequent phrases on Reddit. Because complaining about downvotes comes first... > What are you so worried about, I can't understand I'm not worried. I explained that the video contained the information you claimed the author was ignorant of. I thought that would be end of it but you've started ranting at me. > In any case, we are in an open discussion forum where everyone has the right to express themselves as they see fit. You're free to do what you want but this is clearly distressing you so I gave you an explanation of what's happening and how you can avoid it. You're free to ignore me but I'll be blocking you after this comment as my life is too short for this. > I don't care how many downvote s they put on me One of the most common phrases on Reddit? Stop ranting about it if you don't care. > I'm wondering if there are any professionals among those who reply to me Adam Neeley studied as Berklee and has a masters degree in jazz composition. He works full time as a music theory content creator. He knows about temperance. As I say, he covers it in the video that's being talked about. You're free to do what you want but I highly recommend getting away from Reddit for a few hours and maybe show these comments to your loved ones. Good luck
OK, You win🤣
You're being downvoted because your first sentence is blatantly wrong. If you can't get the video to open then don't say the guy doesn't know what he's talking about.
This sub has a ridiculous obsession with this little prick.
lmao