Why are these chords SO beautiful? | Q+A

[@t_yamz]

Someone with perfect pitch: "Please comfort me about losing perfect pitch." Adam Neely: "Don't worry, you're going to die anyway."

[@VemSenhorJesus]

Hahahahahaha So true

[@zacharybennett3249]

E.H. agreed.

[@4uartaOnda]

Welp... He is not wrong tbh...

[@davepowell1661]

Incidentally we call chopin Choppers up here.He suggests you master instrument. He says zzzzz

[@nickhydeviolin]

I imagine musicians who accidently develop it when they're young and never really use it, eventually lose it. (classical musicians). I'd be very surprised if actual play-by-ear musicians and composers like myself actually lose it. More studying needs to be done on how perfect pitch is developed and potentially lost though.

[@smthb123]

Band instructor: "Everyone play a C" Me: Frantically increasing tempo in Ableton on my laptop

[@Kayuk]

an

[@benjaminperez4570]

@@Kayuk no

[@d3vs3b96]

yes!

[@gustavholmqvistloved7286]

en

[@coryman125]

If you can't train yourself to press the piano key several hundreds of times per second to produce the note, you're not a real musician

[@davedavem]

The song Yellow, by Coldplay had the following chord progression: C,C,C,C,C,C,C,C,C,C,C,C,C,C,C it's all yellow

[@umaroxp5207]

Its actually in B

[@davedavem]

@@umaroxp5207 yeah, but why let a fact ruin a good joke, eh?

[@violetcitizen]

@@umaroxp5207 It's in C if you play it fast enough

[@Aaron628318]

@@violetcitizen Excellent.

[@ProbablyNotLapisFox]

@@umaroxp5207 ok, nerd

[@NahreSol]

Adam, I appreciate you. Thanks. 😁

[@mott7913]

Hello nahre my name's tom and I appreciate Adam

[@zeynepcanik3947]

♥️♥️🌹💜

[@lathankyles687]

Omg my favorite pianist!! Hi!!!!!!

[@willemkossen]

I appreciate both Adam and Nahre. You inspire me. Thanks

[@felipeveiga5807]

Nahre you are great, i appreciate you and your work. Thanks

[@gregoryhunter7413]

Century old composers be like: "Fellas, is it gay to resolve a chord progression on a weak beat?🤔🤔🤔"

[@michaelnajoan5104]

pretty sure gay would mean happiness back then, which is funny because the question will get kinda the same answer anyway

[@lilybeejones]

Hell yeah this is the comment

[@luiggigomez580]

@@nickkellam9155 stfu

[@ndescruzur4378]

"if you have your wig on, then's not gay"

[@klaxoncow]

"Ooh, it's totally gay, darling. You go, girl." **wink**

[@stevonico]

The “STELLA” scream on the b13 is absolute perfection.

[@columbogaming9377]

It pretty much bang on.

[@TiqueO6]

I tend to think the "big"-7 or "flat-7 ("dominant"?) is a strong musical analog to a Yell of some urgency but now I might have to rethink that a bit?

[@xavierharris9749]

*STELLAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!*

[@atthis8142]

Imagine a whole song being played fast enough to be an instrument, and that song is also made up of instruments made by speeding up entire songs into pitches. Fractal music

[@Juanus14]

This is all music was and ever will be

[@composerjack]

It's the Mendelssohn set.

[@joaobaptista4610]

I believe Adam has a video on this. If I'm not mistaken he took the whole audio of Giant Steps, repeated endlesly and speed up to ridiculous BPM counts to obtain the pitches of the the notes in the song, you guessed right, Giant Steps. He even named this concept exactly as fractal music as you also did.

[@AntonMochalin]

Imagine sampling such music not knowing it and then slowing it back down and realizing there's a whole piano concerto inside one note lol... Not actually much posible though

[@atthis8142]

@@AntonMochalin it's possible with a high enough sample rate

[@mrkrunch4340]

8:21 - _"There's nothing quite like a deadline to get the creative juices flowing"_ - Jim McNeely _"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by."_ - Douglas Adams

[@thedoublek4816]

For me it's either the first or the second case. The latter one especially happens when I realize that there is no way to make it in the time given to finish a task, so I just say "fuck it" and hear the deadline wooshin'. Often I am hating myself afterwards, but that's the life of a master procrastinator.

Precisely what I thought. It’s a mix of both for me.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@thedoublek4816 rushing until you finally say “fuck it” is relatable af

[@t0ss]

“Fingeritis” was my biggest problem for literal years as a hobbyist musician and actually made me avoid playing for awhile. “The Advancing Guitarist”, “20th century harmony”, (books from a video on your channel), and learning drums really helped that and brought music back to a less frustrating love again. For awhile I felt super boxed in and habitually uncreative. Those books and this channel gave me so much insight and reminded me to think like a beginner as much as possible. Weird tangent from one word, but thanks for making such wonderful and insightful content.

[@SirNoxasKrad]

I came to the comments because I wanted to learn more about the "fingeritis" cuz thats what I feel kind of stuck with right now. Do you have any tips on how to progress past that? Been meaning to check out 20th century harmony

[@salottin]

@@SirNoxasKrad picking up another (different) instrument is a good idea, like the piano (Kiko Loureiro talked about that in his latest video)

[@salottin]

Also, try practicing using only new scales or modes. You'll have to think more

[@Kreso191]

@@SirNoxasKrad I've been going thru the same thing for a while now, and a few things that helped were: I don't play it on the instrument. I listen music and memorise the phrase or solo I would normally just figure out on guitar. Then I just imagine myself playing it (I don't always know exact notes on the guitar). I just imagine the feeling of playing it, I don't think about any logic or anything, just imagining the feeling of that phrase, why it's beautiful etc. Then I sing it for a while when doing other stuff and only after a couple of days do I allow myself to play it on a guitar. I first deeply enternalise the phrase so it isn't just muscle memory. Second thing is I sing everything, literally everything. Harmonizing with house appliences or car horns on the street or anything. I sing my favourite songs and accompany myself on guitar, I actually consider that practicing guitar. I don't sing because I want to be a singer, but because I want to be better guitar player. Third thing is playing vocal melodies on guitar, preferably from memory. Or some easier solos if you know the in your head. The point is, we've been practicing our instrument so much it became our second nature, but we didn't work enough on our musicality so our body just takes over. But when you sharpen your inner sense for musicality it fights your body and your habits. Your mind is free. I learned this because i've but playing and practicing guitar for 12 years and I realised I wasn't very free. On the other hand, my best friend never practiced, literaly never (he had a few piano lessons as a kid but never stuck with it). He just played melodica or piano when we were drinking and messing around and he could play the best solos and improvised melodies that were so so good and fun and free. His only form of practice was listening to music and singing it. It didn't matter that his tehnique wasn't the best because his solos were so creative and free. Remeber, there is a difference between being a good musician and a good instrumentalist.

[@andrewkuder9111]

100% thought that said "fingertits"

[@flam1ngicecream]

I love how at 5:45, when he plays the E at 64hz, you can hear the major third with the low C

[@borismatesin]

The E turning into A experiment is even more insidious. Because you're switching the E on and off at 440 times per second, you're effectively doing amplitude modulation on your basic frequency of the E (329.628 Hz or thereabouts) with 440 Hz being the carrier. This leads to two effects. First off, the E has its own envelope and probably doesn't go to 0 dB peaks - but your 440 Hz switching frequency does because you're doing on-off switching, so the most audible tone becomes 440 Hz and you hear the A. The second effect is, ring modulation also produces tones at (carrier + signal), so about 769 Hz and at (carrier-signal), so about 111 Hz. If you were to take a look at the spectrum, there should be two smaller spikes at 111 Hz and 769 Hz along with a massive one at 440 Hz. There will probably also be repetitions of that "trident" higher up because of the fact you're modulating it by turning the signal sharply on and off (so you're modulating with a square wave, which has an ugly spectrum). I'd love to actually see a view from your DAW.

[@JoshSmith-db2of]

I knew I wasn't the only nerd who enjoys both signal processing and music theory! Thank you, sir.

[@SimoneProvencher]

Yes! I was looking for this comment ! It sounds pretty much like my square wave ring mod guitar pedal. An oscilloscope would have been neat for that segment.

[@borismatesin]

The ring mod and amplitude mod are very similar, it's just that the ring mod inverts the phase during part of the cycle, whereas the amplitude mod preserves the phase. So there will be a difference in tone depending on how it's mixed back with the original. And possibly some uglier overtones because modulation is never "clean".

[@TimDuncanofSoccer]

In other words (if I'm understanding you correctly [please correct any misconceptions]), the way Adam performed the ring modulation actually contributed to the amplitude of the observed frequencies. If Adam applied a filter to the post-ring-modulation audio to emphasize the lower and higher of the three frequencies, we would hear a chord consisting of frequencies 111 Hz-440 Hz-769 Hz (which would sound pretty close to A2-A4-G5 with the G5 being a bluesy/flat seventh a.k.a. the 7th harmonic of A2). Let's say that Adam instead used a starting tone of 110Hz, then the carrier-signal would be 330Hz, the carrier would be 440Hz, and the carrier+signal would be 550Hz. This would be a nice, crisp A major chord over E. if the initial signal had been 88Hz instead, then the triad would be 352-440-528 -- a standard F major triad.

[@alexthi]

Go signal processing nerds! In my opinion your answer about amplitude modulation is more correct than Adam's, however this is not what is going on here. Since Adam used a repeating sample rather than a volume control, the E was retriggered each time, and so the result is a complex waveform repeating identically 440 times per second. So its spectrum only contains frequencies multiple of 440Hz. If using a single E and fading it in and out without retriggering it, on the other hand, we would indeed obtain amplitude modulation. But we would not hear an A at all: in fact, we would still mostly hear the E, but also the differential tones at all the frequencies present in the original signal, plus or minus multiples of 440 Hz.

[@AngelSwe95]

Omg I just realized that "Stella by starlight" has the same chord progression Freddie Mercury used in the bridge of "Take my breath away" by Queen. About 3 minutes into the song if anyone is interested, it's the same key as well. I wonder if that was where he got the inspiration from!

[@waynecliburn2749]

Good find! ... See/hear also the Chopin #20 Prelude Adam used at time 2:10 is also at start of Barry Manilow's 1973 "Could It Be Magic" .. beautiful at kzbin.info/www/bejne/jJSYiaehj7h7Y7M

[@babsdiamond]

How observant 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

[@musamor75]

Excellent observation. I think it’s quite obvious that Freddie had deep musical knowledge; actually some of his music is profoundly classical. This might be explained by the fact that he was was of Eastern European origin- where people have have much more culture than in the West. Education is totally free in those parts of the world.

[@columbogaming9377]

Totally fits the mood. The song is like an old movie soundtrack.

[@dazza2350]

@@musamor75 what

[@addeleven]

Isn't the term _feminine cadence_ borrowed from Old French / Middle French poetry, where feminine nouns often ended in an unstressed syllable, while masculine nouns often ended in a stressed one?

[@MichaelTurner856]

I have no idea but that seems like a good theory

[@markstanbrook5578]

Whichever root if has it's still essentially stereotyping which the woke would claim is bordering on sexism/misogyny. That said I don't advocate for changing it.

[@SimoneBattaglia94]

I'm pretty sure you are right.

[@klaxoncow]

Probably. But that's not "woke", so we ignore those kinds of facts. Look, I'm trying to "virtue signal" here, so stop bringing nuance, complexity and context into things, yes? It spoils the underlying message that I'm awesome.

[@vAlkemistv]

@@markstanbrook5578 I'd argue the concept of masculinity and femininity are gendered concepts but have nothing to do with gender and even less to do with sex. After all, the 'woke', as it were, would argue males can be feminine and vice versa.

[@mehulsheth7688]

And in a stroke of musical genius, the explanation of how you change an E note to an A note begins at…4:40. Bravo…

[@tektyman]

Why does finding out Adam is a coaster nerd make me smile so much? Just hearing coaster manufacturers named on this channel made me giggle immediately!

[@int0x80]

Why did I first think this comment was about coasters for drinks?

[@sustinance9557]

@@int0x80 same here

[@veganskillz]

coaster nerd LMFAO... iykyk

[@MinkyBoodle44]

I never once thought I would meet another coaster enthusiast in this area of KZbin, but it turns out there is a surprising amount of overlap. It's friggin' dope as heck.

[@loki3523]

@@MinkyBoodle44 lmao same

[@rahulgomes6488]

that chord progression is so beautiful man im literally tearing up

[@TanguyBlanchard]

Why is Adam so beautiful? Repetition legitimizes

[@jonathankrieger9121]

M a d e m y d a y!

[@kazvanrooij]

Models arent hot at all, its just that they upload daily

[@michaelnajoan5104]

Repetition legitimizes

[@TanguyBlanchard]

Repetition legitimizes

[@silentwulffff]

Bass man look gud:)

[@Tremaine26]

Your example of how an E becomes an A if you play it enough times a second was very cool

[@michaelnajoan5104]

Adam : "Why are these chords SO beautiful?" Me : "I don't know man, you're the music theory guy here you tell me"

[@Roxanneredpanda]

Tell me the funny words magic man!

[@moo639]

They are beautiful because of the 6-5 (Ab-G), 4-3 (Bb-Ab) and 7-6 (G-F and F-Eb) suspensions in the melody.

[@wohlhabendermanager]

Adam: "I'm not a KZbinr, music is a lot more fun" Also Adam: Has some of the most impressive video editing skills of all content creators on KZbin.

[@sihplak]

4:36 Quick note; their question says "fade in and out", not "play". To me, this seems more like ring modulation, which is where you take the amplitude of some note, e.g. the note E, and then have some waveform applied to the amplitude of that note, with the wave at some frequency. At low, sub-audible Hz values, we hear a "tremolo" effect. At higher Hz values, we hear ring modulation. The effect sounds like two tones going out from the original, center tone. So, if you have, say, E5 (659.25 Hz), and apply a sine wave to its amplitude with a frequency of 150hz, you hear a sum and difference tone, meaning you hear 509.25 Hz and 809.25 Hz together as the resultant tones.

[@phillipwalk3r]

You're right probably because I didn't read this

[@ilyanoeteuscher6870]

Yes, that was, what I was talking about, thank you so much for the explanation!

[@jbh001]

Yes. Because he is playing a sampled piano note, the faster it is played, the more we only get to hear the very initial part of the "attack" of the sample where the hammer strikes the strings without every really getting to play the E pitch. Eventually the attack is shot short of a duration that it is effectively reduced to a click. A hammer strike played 440 times per second is going to sound like A4. A pure E5 pitch faded in and out 440 times per second is going to product some sort of modulated tone instead. kzbin.info/www/bejne/enSzqZhshZZ-jdE

[@enginerdy]

Otherwise known as Amplitude Modulation where the “carrier” is E and the “modulation” is 440Hz. Note that if the E is below 440, you (I think?) get a wrap around at 0Hz, and a 180 out of phase signal on the low end that is the absolute value of the negative frequency. The other subtlety is that if your modulation is not sinusoidal (ie a triangle wave) its new spectrum should be as if you took the sum and difference with the E to the triangle wave’s original spectrum. If you use impulses like Adam used, you’ll get some kind of square-wavy, odd harmonic mess tho

[@sihplak]

@@enginerdy This is mostly right, though there's actually a slight difference! Ring modulation doesn't preserve the carrier signal! If you simply take a signal and modulate its amplitude, and then feed out the direct result, the carrier signal is absent in the end result. Amplitude Modulation preserves it. That is a good thing to point out though!

[@jazzbob7]

I really like your KZbins. I know some of the music things you talk about but don't know what causes them. My favorite is the "Misty Chord". I got that message at work and my workmate made me play the KZbin. We have a piano at work and she is always playing the first 2 bars of "Misty" with that chord. She can't get enough of it. Thanks for this and all your other KZbins.

[@kodywillnauer9422]

The way you describe how music works is so incredible. You are in the flow when you share.

[@onixtheone]

When they ask me why I procrastinate, but they don’t realize I’m slowly entering my flow state

[@billribas]

I appreciate your enthusiasm, makes everything more fun.

[@jacksonwrightmusic6805]

That experiment on frequency was fascinating! I guess I knew that the E would turn into an A but I've never seen that demonstrated.

[@jossspear]

Spatial Audio is also an important part of classical music, especially with extended ensembles. One cool example is “The Unanswered Question” by Charles Ives, where the strings are meant to be back stage and the brass and woodwind are meant to be in the rafters of the concert hall. This gives the piece a really ethereal sound. It’s a super cool topic, I bet Adam could do a fab video on it, similar to his “KZbinrs react to Experimental Music” video.

[@saqlainsiddiqui1744]

I think Adam has actually mentioned that particular piece before (can't remember the exact video sorry) so it would be awesome if he did a whole video essay on it!

[@JoricioCagel]

Henry Brant wrote a lot of spatial music, for example: kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZpO6lnehm6ejbrc score: issuu.com/theodorepresser/docs/wwcf_score

[@jossspear]

Nice! I’ll give it a listen.

[@chrisa0001]

There's a whole field of psycho-acoustics around placement of sound in space. This dude in San Francisco does "sound sculpture" in an environment of 176 audio speakers en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audium_(theater)

[@wolfgangamadeusmozart6457]

but it's not really a huge part of classical music...

[@ansonkhyip]

“music and pitch is just how fast sth is happening” ily

[@johnt.mickevich2772]

I miss the old theme "Question and answer time with Adam Neeeelyyyyy"

[@MrGnuifje]

Yah!

[@iscream6268]

ya!

[@richardrisner921]

bass

[@taythree5549]

1:04 is the coolest transition i have ever seen in my many years on the internet ever even months later. Transition flawless achieved kudos to you for such an amazing bit of editing and thank you for the hard work it must have taken to procure it for us all to enjoy.

[@kage-fm]

in synthesis, there is a feature called oscillator sync, in which a tonal oscillator can have its waveform position reset according to a second oscillator. so for example, one oscillator could be playing E but be reset 440 times per second. the result varies depending on the frequencies involved: it could sound like new timbres, and/or a blending of notes.

[@euronomus]

This is exactly what i was thinking. If you take a 440 tone and repeat it faster than the samples length but below 440 you aren't getting a pure tone, you're getting a mixture of the two.

[@btat16]

@@euronomus The perceived tone would definitely still be whatever the oscillation frequency is at. A mixture of pure tone just determines timbre, but when you use it the tones become indistinguishable

[@hansigucluer7223]

@@btat16 you hear both notes in oscillator sync/reset

[@woodlaminate]

i think a cleaner way to do what the question was asking for would just be amplitude modulation with a carrier (of whatever waveform made you happy) at E Hz and a 440 Hz signal

[@tabascocat5102]

11:22 Colours of chords. This has always fascinated me. I do though, have to be careful about the person I bring up the subject with. Some people dont get it, & just think you're weird. Anyway-with me, it all started with me seeing A major as RED. D is yellow, D# is brown and E is dark brown/black, C yellow white. Complex chords are tartan! Diminished are 3D pink.

[@cynthialinmusic]

You blew my mind with the 440Hz demo

[@imconfused6955]

11:25 as a child I always connected certain chords and songs with certain colors. When I tried to discuss it, people thought I was strange. Its feels good to know I'm not the only one

[@MikeMara]

Are you really a musician first, or do you just want to avoid boxing matches against the Paul brothers?

[@IsaiPR]

This comment is great!

[@Roxanneredpanda]

don't we all?

[@fhqwhgads1670]

Let's be honest: all sane humans want to avoid those mooks as much as possible, at all times.

[@johnfrenette]

@@fhqwhgads1670 I’d fight them for millions tho. Pretty good shot at not having long-term damage for 10 minutes of “work”

[@mattwhaley1865]

@@johnfrenette I'd fight them for $20

[@JoshAwang]

Your knowledge is simply so vast and your video production going into the 4th wall and coming out again is simple yet ingenious... Great job Adam!

[@GeoffLiMusic]

That original Stella bridge is bonkers; I've always learned to play the last two chords as bVII7 to Imaj7 (over its root), but that ivmiMa7 to I/iii is just unreal. So so beautiful. I'm never playing the realbook version of this again lol

[@flamulated]

Playing bass with/for good people (in a room) is one of the best things! All the instruments are beautiful and wonderful but bass stole my heart

[@inpursuitofhappiness4873]

Our ear lobes (the whole outside part of the ear) filter a sound differently depending on its direction. Our brain then uses those timbre differences to help locate sounds. I read something about it a long time ago anyway. something about comb filtering in the brain. so that can be used in reverse to encode location in a track for playback in stereo (two front speakers) system. the limitation is that the listener must sit in a specific spot and keep their head facing forward. one listener. only. no headphones lol

[@purplehayes335]

I am a musician and have been doing it for a while but the beauty of it all is the ability to always learn something new!! Thank you Adam!

[@JKTCGMV13]

Great video as usual 👍

[@minimifetti]

Damn u can watch fast

[@kirjian]

Naw he's a prophet. He knows the video will be good even during the first minute

[@JKTCGMV13]

@@kirjian you know the truth

[@emmanuelwood8702]

Deadlines don't create a state of flow it creates a state of being under pressure, against time, forced to produce. When you're in a Flow state you lose your sense of time and you don't have the feeling of being under pressure. Everything feels like it comes very easy and you lose track of everything except the thing that you're doing.

[@BradTasteInMusicOfficial]

Damn, I knew you loved music, but a whole video on the physical attraction of this one chord? I am shocked

[@phillipwalk3r]

Oh look a checkmark

[@guszuccaro9300]

This feels like a fantano comment

[@litigatedparadox8946]

Yo Brad Taste, didn’t expect you here love your videos man.

[@zynel413]

wait you watch Adam?

[@gingerwithglasses6793]

What's up checkmark

[@bommokhan7068]

I'd love to see your analysis of Carnatic or Hindustani music, or just generally non-western music, Thanks for the consistently awesome content!

[@honsebingus6426]

I’m happy he got my request on this series

[@diseasefreeforall]

Pretty sure the horn counter melody in Stella by Starlight wasn't meant to be triumphant but to evoke an undercurrent of dread. It's a creepy movie.

[@chordacopia5149]

Take the Chord Progression Quiz: Can you identify these songs by their chord progressions alone? kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z2GoentnariGeqc kzbin.info/www/bejne/eXzJlIppidVssNE kzbin.info/www/bejne/g3bLgJibr7GopqM

[@AfonsoFDV]

E 440 times per second sounds like A. That was insane. Living

[@kauwgomboom]

I really like seeing something that’s very intuitive to me because of my experience in modular synthesis explained by Adam. Playing the note E at 440 Hz is in synthesis simply called amplitude modulation and can be easily done on a modular using two oscillators (one at E and one at A) and a VCA. Produces great timbres and produces frequencies of both the sum and difference of the two frequencies :)

[@sam3524]

Was going to comment this! ^

[@karlboud88]

(256/60) • 103 = 439.46 Yep! checks out :)

[@zzzut]

The guy who wrote that arrangement was a genius. Anyone, even those who don’t know the first thing about harmony, can feel something listening to that music.

[@whycantiremainanonymous8091]

0:58: But is a jazz-based analysis really appropriate? It's clearly inspired by late Romantic symphonic music. Sounds like a Rachmaninoff.

[@wolfgangamadeusmozart6457]

The guy is a jazz musician... He's going to compare it to jazz theory, even if it isn't appropriate.

[@hugobouma]

@@wolfgangamadeusmozart6457 and why wouldn't it be appropriate? The tune ended up in the Real Book, after all.

[@harrys2331]

@@hugobouma I don’t like calling it jazz theory tbh because it’s just music theory. Classical musicians use the same stuff, like Ravel and Debussy. Ravel being the master of the 9ths and augmented chords. And Debussy using extended harmony which is a fundamental concept of jazz. Despite that people like to distinguish the two theories even though they are one. Jazz ain’t nothin special to be categorized into its own genre.

[@Skotanax]

Adam's way of sharing his passion for music is SO beautiful

[@mattbown]

You made an A of Es.. that was cool to see. That's neat that you can play any note as another note lol

[@mrpedrobraga]

Playing music with only one note went to another level

[@chrisa0001]

This is how FM (Frequency Modulation) synthesis happens - the engine behind the old Yamaha DX7.

[@helgelk]

You delight and inspire me even though I don't understand half of what you're saying. Such is the power of music.

[@jakemilburn]

Musician + Coaster Enthusiast = God tier person

[@coasterking9536]

Absolutely

[@joshuamarks1129]

10:50 *use both tensions in succession instead of choosing just one, but expect that the 9 to b9 tends to sounds more “correct” than the b9 to 9

[@thedoublek4816]

"There is nothing quite like a deadline to get the creative juices flowing" - Me, working on my thesis

[@sucail128]

6:06 everything in it’s right place immediately started playing in my head after hearing that note with that timbre

[@chetruane]

I can handle dying but the thought of becoming anymore tone-deaf than I already am is terrifying

[@Schwa_Iska]

Adam, I think the question at 4:33 is actually describing ring modulation. It would be a sustained note but "faded in and out" or the way I interpret it: Turned up and turned down. Your point still stands. The overtone would highly emphasize the 440 Htz that it's "fading" at.

[@HaydenofEverything]

There are some songs that use binaural audio quite brilliantly in their conception, like Chrome Sparks' "Marijuana" by having the intro fade in and swirl around, gradually speeding up. The effect is brilliantly psychedelic.

[@Johnrack]

My wife is a B3 organ jazzer. She’s had perfect pitch since childhood. At 63 she still has it. Chromesthesia is what she has, seeing sounds as colors in the minds eye.And she can still tell when my guitar’s b string is slipping flat.

[@RammusTheArmordillo]

Me watching you warp an E to 440Hz like it's a new thing ".... so the new guys haven't watched the all star video huh"

[@GabrielVelasco]

If you modulate the PITCH of a note, such as an E, at the frequency of another note, such as an A, you get Frequency Modulation (FM) synthesis which is exactly what the Yamaha DX7 introduced to the world. One "operator" is simply a sine wave generator that generates sine waves at audio frequencies and another operator is a sine wave generator that is used to modulate the pitch of the first generator at audio frequencies. When you do that, you can get crazy complex harmonic series depending on the harmonic relationships between the operators. Very cool.

[@ngkktht774]

Fading E in/out at 440 Hz gives a different result than the experiment you did. If it was E5=659.25Hz, then you should be getting 659.25+440 Hz and 659.25-440 Hz. It should sound like what ring modulator effect does. (except that one is four-quadrant, while fade in/out is 2-quadrant... goes only to 0 volume and never to negative)

[@RJFerret]

On "Flow", the psychological concept Mihály Csíkszentmihályi use to quantify an aspect of joy, you mentioned a deadline, IE, a challenge. Part of it is having a challenge that matches the reward. In your case, the intrinsic accomplishment of producing creative work. Watching TV tends to be inherently boring as the reward lacks challenge. Video games tend to provide more flow as there's involvement and clear challenge. IE, one knows what to do, how to do it, there's challenge/skill involvement, no distractions (focus). A chart on Wikipedia suggests relaxation/control and arousal/being energized lead to it. So plan what/how, execute with skill, focus.

[@JVR10893]

Bassist AND roller coaster enthusiast? Am I Adam Neely?

[@KingstonCzajkowski]

I always wondered why Chopin's Prelude no. 20 was my favorite prelude, and now I know!

[@pjmorley5785]

"As we age we lose our faculties and our hearing goes..." WHAT! WHAT WAS THAT, SON? SPEAK UP!

[@arielgon3173]

You are one of the only chanels that entretains me and educates me

[@csucskos]

What the muscle memory question reminded me was the "When you learn a riff and put it in everything" Daniel Trasher video. Obviously you should not be guided only by muscle memory, but just as the "Lick" these are common phrases. It's like speaking. You don't always have to invent a new word to discribe something, though repeating other people's ideas can get pretty boring pretty quickly. So I'll be really helpful with this totally exact answer: Just find the balance between old and new.

[@SamuelKristopher]

As a language educator and music enthusiast, it's uncanny how similar the art of learning both languages and music are. Common misconceptions exist in both fields, for example that native speakers or virtuoso players are consciously choosing and controlling every motion they make, whereas in reality, both are calling on "chunks" of drilled and deeply-rooted patterns that we string together in coherent ways. Like with any musical instrument, the path to fluency is less to do with grammar exercises and aimless production activities, and more with repetition and drilling of useful patterns and constructions.

[@rome8180]

I think that the more you practice and the more you work on your craft, the quicker and more easily you can enter a flow state. I once wrote a very long novel. I worked on it every day. In the beginning, I would only enter this flow state occasionally. But after several months, it happened just a few minutes after I sat down. And it happened almost every day.

Your synesthesia crashes so hard with mine: Yellow = E ; Blue = C ; Bb/D is like mint ice cream on a bed of lettuce. We should do something like "5 synesthetes compose over the same painting (or any colorful visual thing)".

[@MisterL777]

To me yellow = 5th degree (shines like gold aka dominates), blue = 2nd degree Tonic is white obviously

[@ZachMcCordProg]

D is yellow for me lol (the note and the scale)

[@DemirSezer]

@@ZachMcCordProg E is the yellowest yellow for me

[@shadowbunny7892]

YOURS MATCHES MINE. We're besties now

@@shadowbunny7892 oh yeah!

[@whollypotatoes]

I like when we get cool snippets of you playing something more technically complex. I'm very used to watching videos where you describe theory and play in a demonstrative way to reinforce learning concepts, I almost forget that you're a very talented performer!

[@s1nd3rr0z3]

It's hilarious how much all those early film scores sound like Rachmaninoff

[@saqlainsiddiqui1744]

ikr, that rich Romanticism carried itself so far into the 20th century damn

[@s1nd3rr0z3]

@@saqlainsiddiqui1744 I think the specific reason is that Rachmaninoff spent the last part of his life in Beverly hills and I think he was friends with a few Hollywood composers but I'm not sure.

[@saqlainsiddiqui1744]

@@s1nd3rr0z3 Yeah I think you’re right, his emigration to the US definitely had an impact on his contemporaries. I think it also went the other way too - the works he wrote in the US are sometimes really different from his ‘usual’ style - the often-forgotten 4th piano concerto is a good example of that I think

[@astamilio]

jazz cinematography

[@docmupsy]

Relieved that E didnt become "All Star" by smash mouth "somebody once told me" haha when you start playing w Ableton I get fractal flashbacks

[@jjboo4064]

Love the camera effects where you are on screen within screen and then back out again!

[@JackAllpikeMusic]

Do people with audio-visual synesthesia actually *see* colours when hearing sounds? Like when you mentioned yellow and blue, do you get the 'feeling' of those colours? Or do you actually like... see them somehow?

[@davimariee]

I think Adam was more so talking about the actual letters like C and B, so a letter-color synesthesia. Idk if audio-visual is a thing but it probably is

[@lowcostfish]

I'd imagine it's like thinking about (or imagining) a colour. You don't see it overlayed on your visual field. But you still can kind of see it in your mind. Or like if I imagine my house. I don't see it in the same way that I see what is actually in front of me but I can see it in my mind and visually focus in on details etc. I'd say it's analagous to imagining a song in your head. And in fact smells and tastes often have sound to me and it's very much the same sort of thing as how I would usually imagine sounds.

[@ntombi105]

Adam Neely's are the only sponsor ads I don't ever skip through❤❤

[@downhill2k013]

I think by “fade in and out” they’re talking about ring modulation Or I guess amplitude modulation but like... same thing

[@klaxoncow]

It would still predominantly sound like an A, so the principle "pitch is how many times something happens a second" holds.

[@ilyanoeteuscher6870]

I was, but I don't the results would've varied much

[@downhill2k013]

@@ilyanoeteuscher6870 it actually sounds pretty different. It’s used in a lot of synths because it makes weird timbres, I wish he kinda went into it

[@downhill2k013]

@@ilyanoeteuscher6870 so if you did fade E in and out at 440hz you WOULD hear the interval... BUT (and here’s where it gets funky) You would ALSO get........ a G? I really don’t understand the interval relationships, but it goes into the undertone series or something idk

[@patrickskoniczin9063]

I’m first an foremost a musician, but my hobby is coasters. So awesome that you share that too!

[@Brandon-jw8yx]

Alan Parsons did a quadraphonic mix of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon in 1973, which could technically be a very early example of 8d music. The sound effects and instruments all have really cool placements.

[@stephenoverstreet9898]

I played horn for 15+ years, and therefore of course I always can appreciate good horn parts. Thanks Adam!

[@andymcl92]

Re binaural audio, here's a bit of a summary about how stuff works: There are four basic ways we work out where sounds come from. The first two are called the interaural time difference (ITD) and the interaural level difference (ILD). If a sound is on your right, it has to travel further to reach your left ear, so it takes longer. Also, your head casts a shadow so it's quieter in your left ear. These two things alone are pretty good for working out where sounds are. The ITDs work better at lower pitches and the ILDs work better at higher pitches, because physics, but there's a bit more nuance to it than that. The problem with these interaural cues is that there's a lot of symmetry. There's no way to tell front vs back vs up vs down. This leads to what we call the Cone of Confusion, an infinite cone of points that all have the same binaural cues. The next thing that helps us resolve this is spectral cues. Those flappy things on the side of your head act as dishes that filter sounds differently depending on the direction they arrive from. For example, a sound in front will reach your eardrum with more high frequencies than a sound from behind. Over time, your brain learns the relationship between different sound spectra and different locations. If you swapped your ears for someone else's, you'd be confused about where stuff was. But after about 2 weeks, you'd be pretty good again. The spectral cues are good, but they tend to work better for things with a spread of frequencies, particularly higher ones. The final way we work out where sounds are in the real world is motion. Say you hear a sound that's either directly in front of or behind you. It reaches both ears at the same time and level. Now say you turn to the right. If the sound was in front of you, it'd now be to your left. If it was behind, it'd be to your right. By seeing how sounds move relative to your head as you move your head, you can pinpoint the correct location. Virtual audio stuff in headphones can replicate the ITDs and ILDs. You can even use some generic ears to replicate the spectral cues to an extent, but it would be so much better with your own ears. However, headphones can't generally replicate motion cues (unless the sounds are being generated in some complicated virtual acoustic environment).

[@anachronismic]

Thanks for this explanation! Do you study this kinda stuff? I just ask because it reads like someone with a deep understanding of the field.

[@andymcl92]

@@anachronismic You're welcome, and thanks :) Yeah, I did a PhD in sound localisation, and am a hearing researcher, though in a different area

[@anachronismic]

@@andymcl92 Makes sense. Have just enough of a tangential understanding in signal processing to read between some of the lines you provide, it's neat to think about for sure.

[@sacredgeometry]

That opening cadence to Prelude no 20 is one of my favourite things. Those old critiques really didnt know anything.

[@Margar02]

Adam Neely was at Cedar Point!? Darn, that's less than an hour from me. Coulda had a celebrity sighting 😆

[@benostiguy7215]

Probably the best music channel on KZbin! Keep it up!

[@secondengineer9814]

Notably the waveform of the E at 440 Hz will look like a chopped up wave with a jump every 1/440 seconds. Hence the sawtoothy sound?

[@Mr.Nichan]

Yeah, since the E of the sample sounds like it's lower pitched than the 440hz, and thus not actually being played at all. In the examples when the rate at which the samples are being played back is less than the pitch of the E (presumably ~330hz), it should sound less sawtoothy, though it still should have sudden discontinuities, so maybe it still should sound sort of sawtoothy.

[@sionjones1675]

Nice to see you back! I hope you've been ok, and that your temporary absence wasn't due to any problems. Keep on making the vids.

[@AdamNeely]

I was on tour! I made a video about it.

[@sionjones1675]

@@AdamNeely Oh I do apologise! That didn't show up in my feed for some reason!

[@nadionmediagroup]

Does your a synesthesia change over time, or in context? Like “blue” is C now, it was more purple before? Or is the color consistent? If C is blue, is it always blue regardless of the mood of the piece (like sad, or thumping) or might it change for you living inside a piece of music vs in isolation? That’s a lot. I’ll take your answer off the air. I really like your channel.

[@princetai5870]

As a synesthete, my experience is that, generally speaking, notes remain the colours that they've always been, but personally, I started on an instrument where you play in a lot of sharps keys, and when I began to play jazz piano (where you run into a lot more pieces in flat keys), found that reading (for example) a Db instead of C# would be different colours. My run down is C= white/cerise (this seems to be the only key which changes, and it is dependant on the mood of the piece) D= mid blue E= yellow F= blue-green G= mid green A= red B= pale blue

[@ValfreyjaAndTheHarp]

I don't have music/colour synaesthesia, but I thought you might be interested in this anyway! Mine is colour/grapheme, so every letter and number and some other things have colours for me. The colours have been completely consistent throughout my life, and a select few do change slightly in circumstances. 2 for example is red for me, but when paired with yellow numbers (like 4), it looks pink. Font, emotional connection to the words, etc, don't affect it at all. If anyone is reading this and has music/colour, I'd love to know what it sounds like to hear microtones. When I see non-letter/numbers in text, like &, %, ~ etc, they have no associated colour. @ takes on the colour of "a", though. I'd also love to know if music/colour synaesthesia works effectively like perfect pitch. Either way, always been super jealous of this type, it seems utterly magical :)

[@andersjeppsson8499]

Happy you’re back!!

[@beefstroganoff1774]

"Like that, right there, that's C major as f***" -Adam Neely, 2021

[@segmentsAndCurves]

Isn't that too obvious to C?

[@rthavi4166]

That experiment with the frequency of the E note was enlightening. Thanks for that!

[@Wyattporter]

I think your “E at 440hz” experiment wasn’t quite optimal, because of that piano sample. It has a little percussive sound at the beginning which produces much of the 440hz tone. Could it be retried with a sine wave?

[@kruksog]

It would still sound like A440 in the end.

[@Wyattporter]

@@kruksog probably, yeah. There would probably be a “click” when the sine wave resets. The question mentions fading it, I wonder if it’d work that way.

[@woodlaminate]

@@Wyattporter you could avoid that by modulating the amplitude of a constantly playing sine wave rather than starting and stopping a sample over and over, this technique is called amplitude modulation and you've probably heard of it in the form of AM radio, which uses a carrier frequency in the radio band and modulates its amplitude (raises and lowers its volume) according to the signal that is to be broadcast. you could accomplish this very easily with a basic modular setup by running a 440hz sine wave from an oscillator through a voltage-controlled amplifier and then using whatever E signal you wanted as a control voltage for the VCA

[@Wyattporter]

@@woodlaminate your AM radio comparison explained it to me, I think. Modulating an E like that basically makes it broadcast an A.

[@griffinlevine5228]

learning adam is a coaster enthusiast is the best part of my day

[@timmo491]

Absolutely. You get the same horn counter melody in the orchestration of the amazing original Star Trek theme. Perfection!

[@sunriseoath]

Feminine and masculine cadences seems to just follow the terminology in poetry (especially French poetry), where "feminine" endings (ones that ended with a silent off-beat schwa vowel) alternate with "masculine" endings (ones that end without silent syllables). Within that context, there's nothing pejorative about it outside of the low hanging fruit of "feminine = weak". (And if we follow that train of thought, we'd probably need to unpack why being on the beat is "strong" while being off is "weak".) Feminine endings are as important to French poetry as masculine endings are.

[@DoubleOhSilver]

Weak/strong is based off physical strength, it was never meant to call an entire gender weak overall. I wouldn't even say feminine cadence's are named so because they are "weak", they just remind people of feminine beauty. There's no problem with applying gender to things as long as it doesn't come from a place of misogyny/misandry.

[@sunriseoath]

@@DoubleOhSilver Frailty (or perceived frailty) is an integral part of traditional feminine (and also female) beauty across pretty much every human culture. So the idea of a trochee being female and an iamb being male is certainly "problematic" insofar that negative associations and connotations are problematic. But yeah, I agree with the fact that the terminology is innocuous. I still teach it to my students, since I find it a bit more imaginative and effective than the alternatives. Another context where masculine / feminine appears is as labels for sonata themes, where "masculine" = extroverted and proactive while "feminine" = introverted and reactive. My students are mostly aware enough to know that gendering nonsexual things is just a matter of analogy. For the younger ones (and also the more impressionable ones among the girls in my studio), I offer a caveat as needed.

[@caleb6258]

Dude the video quality just keeps getting better goddamnnn