Q&A #1: Math And Music
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- Опубликовано: 15 окт 2024
- It's a Q&A! We're answering audience questions about math, improvisation, and what instruments I actually play, plus dream projects, favorite Beatle, dealing with trolls, and more!
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Also, thanks to Jareth Arnold and Inés Dawson for proofreading the script to make sure this all makes sense hopefully!
HOLY SHIT THAT SHOW SOUNDS AMAZING
^_^
I'd also like to mention that with connecting math and music, sheet music is just a really fancy pitch vs. time graph.
Antoni Soroka wow, I've always thought this. Didn't know I shared this observation with anyone.
...Woah.
That's what I always say to my friends who say " Woah how can you understand writen notes" and I always say it's actually much more logical than the writern word because its basically a graph.
It's just a really weird and imprecise spectrogram
That competition idea sounds so cool, definitely keep us updated on that if anything happens with it.
Thanks, I will!
I'm a math/music double major, this made me happy
also, is there anywhere we can hear/buy your compositions?
Ben Flood that's what I'm planning on going into as well, assuming my exam results go well
As someone with a degree in both Mathematics and Music, I think you hit the nail on the head about the connection between math and music. The only thing I would add is that math is about solving problems in a creative way, and music is all about that -- playing, writing, and analyzing. It's about taking the things you know very well, and using them to guide you into places you don't know, and hopefully come out with something that works.
Thanks, that's a good way of looking at it!
I have an alternate idea to the contest. It's not original by any means, but you could instead give out the same requirements of the contest to the RUclips community, and have all of us submit a live or MIDI recording, and then maybe have some sort of vote or bracket-style competition. That way, you get at least some experience holding a contest before you go for bigger things like you've been thinking about, and it gets us more involved in the music world!
That's what I was thinking too!
That's a great idea! I have no idea what the logistics of that would be, but I'll look into it!
12tone Just for a reference point, CaryKH on RUclips does a RUclips viewer tournament show called "Ten Words Of Wisdom" that is similar to this, but with writing prompts. That might be a good place to look? :D
Lokilotus surely an good place to get ideas and more stuff on how to keep the train rolling for an long term project (also, thanks for the shout out, now i'll be stuck on a rabbit hole for a while :) )
So the circle is complete. A few years ago I stumbled across a video called "Twelve Tones" by a woman named Vi Hart. The format of her vids was much like this, with a writer's eye view of her hands scribbling on a scratch pad while she narrated over it. She described herself as a "mathemucisian" and is equally at home discussing math or music. Then a few weeks ago I run across a channel called "12tone" which has a similar format to Vi Hart's and whose maker is both into math and music.
And for what it's worth, I prefer this channel. Vi Hart lost me a while back and all I'm really interested in is music and sometimes a little math.
Ok but do you eat the gummy bears?
Nah. They're props, not food. At this point it probably wouldn't even be safe!
I'm a mathematician in training and I really agree with your view on maths! Also I'm a great music enthusiast and I've wanted to ask you for quite awhile, if you can recommend any good books or other resources about classical or jazz composition. Thanks in advance and thank you very much for opening my mind a little more with every video you make! :D
Good question! Honestly, most of my work is based more on reading articles and talking to other theorists than it is on books: I tend to find most academic theory texts unnecessarily dense. If you're looking into theory textbooks, though, Harmony (Fifth Edition) by Walter Piston (amzn.to/2vUkLCu ) was the one that my college classes used, and it's pretty good. I've also heard good things about Hindemith and Tchaikovsky's books on harmony (amzn.to/2uyPwyc and amzn.to/2eOJ151 ) although I haven't read them personally. If you're just looking for reading, though, the journal of the Society for Music Theory (www.mtosmt.org ) is pretty excellent as well. It tends to be about more esoteric topics, so if you need to review the basics it's probably not the best place to start, but if you're looking for recreational music theory, it's one of my main sources.
12tone Thank you very much! I'll definitely check that out!
I had a similar idea to your cooking show thing, except I'd want it to be more like Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown. I'd travel to some place with a specific musical heritage, like Louisiana for Zydeco or Bali for Gamelan, learn the basics of one of their instruments, learn to play one piece of music, and perform it at the end of one week. I would also get to explore their culture, language, food, and traditions along the way. It's a dream of mine, but I hope one day you get to realize your dream, too!
That sounds awesome! I'd love to watch something like that!
Oh hey I'm thrilled to have been the first question answered! :)
Nice to learn more about both of you!
^_^
Thanks, Inés!
If i win the lottery i would definitely bankroll that tv show! Awesome idea!
^_^
Music is as close as we can get to that brain-plug in _The Matrix_
I'm not sure what that means but I agree anyway!
Don't tell me you haven't seen the Matrix
More so than words?
a lot of music has words...
Any direction or any place or even a book; to start learning theory? want to start but its overwhelming as to where to start.
Thank you so much for your videos it may not show immediate rewards but let me tel you its a gem to people who want to dwell deeper into music..That is by far the greatest intrinsic reward..
Good question! Honestly, most of my work is based more on reading articles and talking to other theorists than it is on books: I tend to find most academic theory texts unnecessarily dense. If you're looking into theory textbooks, though, Harmony (Fifth Edition) by Walter Piston was the one that my college classes used, and it's pretty good. I've also heard good things about Hindemith and Tchaikovsky's books on harmony (amzn.to/2uyPwyc and amzn.to/2eOJ151 ) although I haven't read them personally. If you're just looking for reading, though, the journal of the Society for Music Theory (www.mtosmt.org ) is pretty excellent as well. It tends to be about more esoteric topics, so if you need to review the basics it's probably not the best place to start, but if you're looking for recreational music theory, it's one of my main sources.
Really, though, probably my biggest recommendation is to check out our Building Blocks series, which looks at music theory from the ground up: ruclips.net/p/PLMvVESrbjBWplAcg3pG0TesncGT7qvO06
I'm fascinated by your take on math and music theory, because I am much more of a language- and rhetoric-oriented person. Like you were saying about math, my side interests in high school were in creative writing and in foreign language study. Because of that, the stuff that has always fascinated me most about music theory has been form and topics, which are both more linguistic and rhetorical than mathematic. Also, it is no surprise that as a musicologist I get really into cultural representation and meaning. I wonder if this is a pattern among academics??
Interesting! Honestly, I think of music theory as almost a form of geometry: It's all about structures. In my early videos, there's rarely all that many audio examples because, believe it or not, sound is almost incidental to how I approach a lot of these topics. It wasn't until Henry Reich pointed out that that was ridiculous and that no one else thinks about it that way that I actually started including all the sounds.
Couldn't agree more on the math and abstraction part. Perfect answer there.
Thanks!
Have you heard of the book Gödel Escher Bach? It connects and intertwines math, music, and art in many interesting ways!
I haven't, I'll look it up! Thanks for the recommendation!
oh man, I love this channel
Thanks!
I use 4'33" on all of my Spotify playlists for the first track. Not because I like the song, but because even when you have shuffle on, Spotify still always plays the first song on your playlist first. And I hate that.
"More about EXPLORATION" "EXPLORATION not INFORMATION".
Man, I really wish I could do that. I don't know why, but something's keeping me from exploring, and I don't even know if it's emotional, motivational or of other sort.
Hmm... Are you playing in a space where others can hear you? I find that often messes with my ability to explore because suddenly I'm worried that if I play something weird they'll think I'm bad. If not... I don't know, I wish I had some advice that wasn't just some complex rephrasing of "don't worry about it", but I hope you can figure it out! Maybe try pre-setting some parameters (Say, black keys only) and exploring within that first, to get a feel for the process without risking many mistakes?
+12tone Ironic as this may seem now, I wrote a 34-measure jazz piece (...of some sort, I hope) for a piano melody accompanied by piano with *three* modulations today, and I haven't even read your comment before. But still, your point stands, I've set myself some rules (voice-leading, cohesive harmony and so on) and it worked! Still thanks for the advice ^^!
On a side note, do you know any other way to modulate to other keys besides pivot chords, diminished sevenths and augmented chords?
And do you have any advice on how to (in some way) navigate through non-functional harmony, say not to play around until it sounds good?
Look up the use of group theory in music theory (modulation and majorminor changes in harmonic changes are modelled as the action of the dihedral group D12)
Can you please elaborate?
@@Anonymous-df8it no, I'm not an expert and I don't want to mislead.
Google is your friend.
@@Anonymous-df8it anyway if you've studied any group theory and any music theory this should be clear: you should know what modulation and major/minor scales are. and you should know what an action of a group is and what the dihedral group is.
The idea: majorminor change is like a flip while modulations are like rotations. This maps perfectly to the dihedral group.
@@shacharh5470 What about changing modes?
@@Anonymous-df8it again, not an expert. There might be other groups to model this as a group action. I don't know.
Thank you for these answers! I always feel that the best answer to "Is 4'33" music?" comes from Cage himself, when he said "The music never stops; only the listening." It's an incredibly liberating way of approaching music, or any art form for that matter.
That's a great quote, I hadn't heard it before! Thanks for sharing!
Would love an episode on Steve Reich! Obviously, music for 18 musicians is too large, but Clapping Music would be fun - though a bit tricky in the whole absence of functional harmony thing - Electric Counterpoint, perhaps?
I'll look into it! Steve Reich did some really awesome things, I'd love to talk about his work.
There actually is a very complex and deep mathematical struture built in music. There's a book about this called The Topos of Music: Geometric Logic of Concepts, Theory and Performance by Guerino Mazzola. He tries to put music in a rigourous mathematical framework. It's a little too advanced, some people say there's too much maths in it for a musician, but it's still really interesting.
I love your idea of a song arranging competition show! I would watch, compete and judge in a show like that.
I so want to see a collab between 12 tone, adam neely (who i have seen commend you for your work) and andrew hwuang. You three are my favourite tmusic youtubers. (also yeah i am a noob but this stuff is interesting none the less).
Also 4'33" is awesome
1:48 ...who passes for straight... Is that a discrete way to come out to your RUclips viewers?
Not really, no. It was more a way of ducking the issue entirely: The answer is somewhat complex and not really relevant to the point at hand. It was just an acknowledgment that people who present as non-straight are often victims of increased harassment as well, and that I don't fall into that category.
Not that there's anything wrong with that!!!
What is your favourite time signature where the number on top is prime?
What a horrifyingly great question.
7/4
If I had to choose I'd say 3/4 or 2/2 because the first when I play it tends to remind me of jazz and saxophones (both great things) and the second because when I play clarinet I want to be going fast and high or slow and low and when I play in cut time it moves very quick and tends to be higher
P.S. I understand that the question wasn't directed at me but I wanted to answer anyway
11/4 is kind of growing on me, as is 13/4.
For me, it's between 11/8 and 7/8.
The most complex song I ever wrote had its main riff in 19/16, so that one holds a special place in my heart.
Hey. This channel is pure gold. Keep it up. Also, i have a question, I am pretty late to the party trying to study music on my own starting at 18, and I would like to know if i can still get at least somewhat close to your level of understanding theory if I keep it as my hobby, not a full time job?
Thanks! Honestly, I didn't start studying music until I was around 15, so you're not too far behind me. I did wind up going to music college, so it was more than a hobby, but you can definitely still pick up a lot of stuff if you're willing to give it the time!
12tone thank you for the reply! I look forward to the journey. Though i live in Hungary and here we use the german Terminology so it is hard for me to find online resources without having to translate every single term. Thankfully I live near the biggest library of out country and it has quite an extensive amount of books on the topic of theory :) in fact I am heading home from there right now with a book on harmony in my backpack.
This is unrelated to the Q&A but I have a suggestion for a video. Have you considered doing a video on the composition of Brian Wilson/The Beach Boys? I feel like there are a lot of cool and unique elements used by Brian, especially the way his songs often dance around key signatures in creative ways (God Only Knows being probably the best, and most well-known example). Just something to consider
If you could have dinner with any musician, who would it be and why?
Ian Anderson, 'cause I feel like he'd have some really interesting things to say. I'd love to pick his brain about his work, it's some of the most interesting music I've ever heard.
My argument is about "who is producing the music?" Sure, you can say what you hear is music, but it's not being caused by the piece itself. So is the piece itself music, or just the ambient sounds that are music, and the "piece" is just really an announcement of "let's all listen to the music?"
At least with the radio one, there's an aspect where you intend to add the preexisting sounds together. But with 4'33", there is no intention in the production of sound.
And, no, that's not me defining the piece specifically as not being music. That's me exploring my own thoughts on why I have trouble arguing that 4'33" is music when I don't for other experimental pieces.
The same question could be if asking people to just notice the world around them is art, or if it's the world around them that is art on its own. Is merely asking people to listen to the world around them music?
The answer, I think, gets into what we actually consider to be music. And the fact that we can disagree shows we don't all have the same framework.
I totally agree! 4'33" definitely opens a lot of really interesting questions, and I don't mean to imply that it doesn't. I just find that most people discussing it prefer to circumvent those questions in favor of just insisting that it can't count because it'd be weird if it did. But you're absolutely right, the question of where the music is actually coming from is a hard one to answer. Who's actually playing it? I tend to view musicality as a question of experience, rather than intent, though: If you feel you have listened to a piece of music, does it matter that no one intended it to be one? Does it matter that the people producing the sound weren't doing so in order to create a piece of music? I'd argue that, fundamentally, it doesn't, but that's a really big question and, as you say, it comes down to the framework you're viewing it from.
I've just recently found your channel. You have the same ultra instinct for music theory that Goku from Dragon Ball has for fighting. You're awesome. Thanks for your videos.
You should check out Guerino Mazzola, if you don't know him already. He's originally from Switzerland and teaching at the University of Minnesota. He developed a music theory based on very abstract topics like topology etc.... I think "The Topos of Music" is his major work.
Wow, that sounds awesome! I'll definitely look it up, thanks!
I'm about to get a bassoon. Stravinsky wrote a lot of stuff for the bassoon. It also has an impressive range.
The bassoon is a beautiful instrument
It can be but it can also sound like a dying duck on steroids that just snort a pound of cocaine
mason harris that's oddly specific
awesome!
Could you perhaps do a video on how to read sheet music?
I'll look into it!
12tone thanks man, means a lot!
+12tone - What do you think about the old school European note writing/naming and the modern?
IE - when I was going in music school, B is B flat here, and H is actually what you call today B. I get it - A-B-C-D... instead of A-H-B-C.... but what are your thoughts on that? I am STILL using the old ways of reading and it has more logic (mathematically) than the westernized music. Any thoughts about the legendary solfeggio master Kodaly Zoltan?
Cheers from north Serbia, south Hungary!
I've always been somewhat confused by the German method. I understand the history of the H, but it seems weird that it's inserted in the middle of the alphabet. I also prefer the 7-letter system because it matches the 7-note scales we tend to mostly use, but I'm sure I'm biased by having learned it first. Either way, as long as the notation is understood I'm not too worried about it!
Yes, it is confusing...
Major scale - DUR
Minor - MOLL
Ie F sharp - F IS (FIS) (CIS, DIS,...)
F flat - F ES (FES) (CES, DES,...)
Much easier if you ask me, but that's me :)
yay we have the same fav Beatle!
^_^
Great video as always :D
txd bruh you couldn't have even watched the video yet
I'm sorry ?!? :)
blackbeltrj fish, from the timings in my computer txd's comment was 7 minutes after the video was posted, and it's a 6:17 long video so it's perfectly possible that he has watched the video.
Well It did say one view when I wrote the comment so I was pretty early :)
Thanks!
Can you give some examples of smaller creators you've run into that are like yourself? I like your content and I'd like to see more like it!
Sure! Last year for Thanksgiving I did a video linking out to some of my favorite small channels at the time (ruclips.net/video/NH99abKtIxc/видео.html ) and I still highly recommend all of them. I wouldn't say their stuff is like mine, it's all different topics and different presentations, but they all do amazing things. Outside those, some others include Play The Mind (ruclips.net/channel/UC0-oBbYS4LqupJ1vhOqUhJw ), Neurotransmissions (ruclips.net/channel/UCYLrBefhyp8YyI9VGPbghvw ) and The Endless Knot (ruclips.net/channel/UCG6tBbWzY_ZR4_rd72vp6CA ) all of whom are gonna be in this year's Thanksgiving episode!
Oh, that pendulum one sounds like it could be interesting if you set up the frequencies and distances right?
Yeah, it's a really clever idea! If you're curious, here's a performance of it: ruclips.net/video/fU6qDeJPT-w/видео.html
12tone I meant with different lengths of pendulums so that they swing at different frequencies. Then it would be a bit less repetitive and a bit more polyrhythm-ish
Hey man, I like this kind of video, I learnd more about the person behind that voice we hear on every video of yours. I have a little non-related-to-this-video question, why does this progression work, C - Am - Em - D? I've been playing that and have no idea why does it work.
Thanks. Keep making awesome videos!
Thanks! On that progression... the C-Ami is pretty easy to explain, those are both strong tonic function chords so you're just establishing the key. The Emi-D-C is pretty coherent as well, it's basically just a harmonized melody. The descending bassline gives it some structure. the transition between the two, from Ami to Emi, though, is a little odd. Emi is also tonic, but a bit less stable, so maybe it's better viewed as an almost subdominant thing? Root movement by fourth or fifth is always a pretty strong sound, so that's probably helping too. Anyway, I'm not entirely sure, but those would be my guesses as to what's holding it together.
12tone Thanks for the answer! But, are you saying that a descending bassline movement helps building the structure of the progression? What if the movement was ascending instead of descending? What happens with bigger intervals like minor thirds or fourths or any other Interval? Do you have any video explaining this kind of chord movements?
°_°
Please explain the structures of Alan Holdsworth's
song - Metal Fatigue.. :)
You should do that song arranging competition but with your viewers, like a viewer submission of songs
I'm sure you could drag in Ben Levin for your game show?
Can you analyze the themesong to The Price is Right? It's so fresh and spiffy, it blows my mind.
That Music Competition Show would be amazing!!!
^_^
There's a song at the beginning in Final Fantasy VIII (8), the Balam Garden theme, that sounds dreamy or like you just woke up and ready to start an adventure. What makes this type of sound? I've heard songs like this that seem to appear in the beginnings of adventure games. I know the lydian mode gives a dreamy feel because of its raised 4th, but it doesn't exactly seem lydian every time. So, any thoughts?
I'm not familiar with that specific piece, but beyond Lydian, another thing that can create a dreamy sound is ambiguous harmony. Things like the whole-tone scale make it hard to figure out which note is the actual root, which makes the piece feel ungrounded, like it's just kind of floating.
Newton or Leibniz?
Cauchy
Thanks for the video. I'm somewhat opposite: I've chosen science over music in terms of getting degrees etc., but still music is fun AND beautiful, right? Just a random info, 'cause this q&a stuff engaged me to say thank you for all your videos I've watched and I am still excited. Weird, sorry :) Cheers
Thanks! Really, I think music and math/science are two sides of the same coin. When my brother was getting his physics degree, one of the first things his advisor asked him was what instrument he played.
First off: link to you playing Lullaby of Birdland, please? Thank you for mentioning it so much, I love that tune!
Second: Adam Neely, Andrew Huang, Rob Scallon, 12tone collaboration? Can this happen?
I hope you get to make that composition show. I bet some really great non RUclips musicians would be willing to jump in too.
I'd watch your song-arranging show. Kickstarter it!
You should make a math channel!
Let's hear you sing a tune! preferably a jazz standard
Would you call what you do "animation"? If not, there definitely is some natural larger category that includes both what you do and actual animation
I would, yes, in the more classic sense. "Animation" these days often refers specifically to computer animation, but for a long time it was all hand-drawn.
Do you know many of Stuart Saunders Smith's works?
If you see this you can put it in your next Q&A or not but my question is... What is your opinion on the alto clarinet.
I'm in my last year of school right now and I probably want to study music theory/compostion. My parents are kind of not so happy about that. Therfore I want to ask you how hard it is to find a job as a music theorist.
I also want to know if it is bad when somebody tells you he knows the melody of your composition eventhough you came up with it. And how can you tell if you didn't just unconsciousley copied somthing?
Moreover what if you have something in mind which sounds familiar to you, but you don't remember hearing it?
Hmm... Honestly, finding a job as a pure music theorist isn't easy. There's not a lot of demand: It's largely just teaching positions. You're more likely to get a job as a composer or arranger, but those don't necessarily pay all that well either unless you're at the top of the pile. You may also be able to supplement that with session work if you can play an instrument well. Getting started in the music industry usually means taking on a bunch of different kinds of jobs until you get successful enough in one of them to make it your focus. I don't want to discourage your interest: I think it's an awesome field and if you have the drive to get into it and you can afford to do so, you should do it. Just don't go in expecting it to be easy.
On the question of familiar melodies... Ask them what it's from and compare. Often, listeners, especially ones who aren't trained musicians, will hear things as the same just because they have similar shapes, so comparing your melody to the one they think you copied will give you a good idea of whether it's really an issue. As for identifying it yourself, that can be hard. If it sounds familiar but you can't place it, play it for a friend and ask them if they recognize it. Beyond that, I tend to just err on the side of caution: If you think it might be a thing already, don't use it. Or at least alter it to the point that you can defend it as your own creation.
12tone I appreciate your answer, it helped me a lot. Thanks!
Definitly glad so much new music theory channels popped up recently, and your clearly among the best ! Keep it up ;)
Thanks!
okay, I need that game show in my life
Me too!
You should sing something you composed!
The question voice sounds like a pretty cool and fun dude, is he like that in real life?
Eh. I've had worse brothers, but he's certainly not the best. I'd say top 5 brothers that I currently have, though.
New viewer here. I love your channel. #musicislife #pride
Aw, thanks!
You like bells huh? I have a two ton octave in C Major if you need them...
THat song competition would be greeeeeeeeeeeeat
Also Also I improv the exact same way. sorry for all the comments, commenting while watching
I would watch the heckin heck out of that show with Adam Neely and Andrew Huang!
Hi! =) I know that alot of ideas in jazz harmony comes from academic music so i tryed to make a research about Coltrane Changes and i could not found any real examples of it in academic music can you point on it ? Thanks
Hi! What do you mean by academic music? When I was researching my video on them I saw some references to Have You Met Miss Jones, by Rodgers and Hart, which uses something similar to the Coltrane changes, but I don't know if it counts as "academic" or not.
i mean classic music. Yep have you met miss jones uses pretty similar ideas in part B but there is only 2 5 chords in it without that maj7 flavor stacked by thirds.
In that case, I'm unaware of any direct examples in classical music. I think it's better viewed as an evolution of classical ideas than a direct lifting of them.
is there a possibility to analyze the rhythm of pyramid song? I mean a good explanation, like what is actually happening not a "123 123 1234 123 123" explanation.
It's actually a pretty typical bossa nova 3 + 2 clave rhythm. (If you are not familiar with clave rhythms, the "3 + 2" refers to the way the notes are arranged - so the first bar has three notes in it and the second bar has two. 2 + 3 clave is also possible, which would be basically the same thing, but you would just start with the bar that has two notes in it.) The beginning of the song sounds kind of "confusing" because the chords are not changing when you would expect them to change - they don't emphasize the strong beats of the bar.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/Bossa_Nova-Clave_3-2.png
If you want another example of the same rhythm, the drum beat in "Break on Through" by The Doors uses it.
Perhaps it's just me but your brother sounds quite a bit like Jeff Anderson (Randall from the movie Clerks). And for your next Q&A - Why Rob Zombie? :-)
I've been wondering why It sounds really good to go out of the key when improvising. For example, if I was playing a Cm pentatonic scale over a Cm7 chord it sounds really interesting to add an F#.
That depends, but the simple answer is that surprise is exciting. You have to balance it against being coherent, but throwing in the occasional unexpected element can really help give your music life.
You know, originally music belongs to the quadrivium, that is the the mathematical arts. Beginning with the renaissance it became _trivialized_.
Awesome, thanks for sharing!
What is your opinion on modal key signatures?
I tend to avoid them unless I have a good reason, because it makes it harder to communicate what the actual root is. If a player sees two sharps, they're gonna be thinking D major or B minor, so it'd throw them off it it turned out to be E dorian.
Thanks so much man!
"who passes for straight"
Can't unhear that :p ... Now I want to see what you look like !
Can you analyze Classical Gas?
Thanks for the suggestion! At this point, though, we receive so many song requests that we can really only focus on the ones from our Patreon patrons. We just don't have the time to look at every song that comes in, unfortunately. There's a link to our Patreon in the video description if you're interested, though!
I completely understand your reasoning, love your videos!
Frank Zappa once said `music is just math`. Cant really disagree with that but, it is a lot of things to a lot of different people. I think it is a very clever way of manipulating sounds to entertain us. Our sonic muse.
Yeah, I certainly wouldn't claim that it's ALL math, but there's math running through it at a pretty deep level!
I think Frank may have been of the mind that, well, everything is math, or could be deduced to a count to reference with everything else in the universe.
dope
Thanks!
Why did I only find out about this channel now???
^_^
Do the contest but via internet
Can you do Smells like Teen Spirit next? Or any Nirvana Song?
Thanks for the suggestion! At this point, though, we receive so many song requests that we can really only focus on the ones from our Patreon patrons. We just don't have the time to look at every song that comes in, unfortunately. There's a link to our Patreon in the video description if you're interested, though!
12tone That sounds cool👌
You sound like Vi Hart when you quote people
60 thousand people ?
you can make a 7 minutes video and say nothing on it and we would still watch it and like it ! :D :D :D
^_^
If you had to listen to only one genre of music for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?
Celtic folk rock. It's just so happy!
Post your improvs
I've considered it, and I might in the future, but part of what makes them so loose and free is that I don't have to worry about how other people might hear them, so recording them to publish might change them in ways I'm not happy with. I'll keep thinking about it!
Yeah, but our brains aren't calculating ratios when we listen to things. We're just listening. Just because things can be described by math doesn't mean they are.
Like how some people think our brains are computers that do calculus to see where a ball will land and catch it. We're just looking.
I like the idea of them both being the same because of abstraction tho, interesting point of view.
I think our brains are calculating ratios, it's just a subconscious process. We don't think through it, but beneath the surface it's at least a good metaphor for what's going on.
12tone
idk
I feel like saying our brains are actually making calculations leads to a certain set of assumptions about how our brains work and how we work as beings.
This article is interesting regarding that point if view aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer
I may be being pedantic, semantic, and too philosophical, but I think it's important to think about
Math is pretty objective, music relies quite a bit on cultural and other learned responses to sound (like trumpets being heroic or whatever) it's more relative.
Correct favorite Beatle = thumbs up
^_^
I don't see music as math but more as language tbh.
That's fair! I think it's both, really, and it's subject to both linguistic and mathematical analysis techniques, which is part of what makes it so fascinating!
Well it can be both especially in a technical way :) The way I see it is as a language is like: You have all the notes which represent letters and these letters make words and this are like chords. But what are simple words in a row? When you put multiple instruments (or just one) and different time signatures (or just one) and put accents, and all the other amazing stuff you can do with music, in a song. Than makes the music complete and expressive. Just like we're not just using words in a row but we use our voice to change the words and give meaning to the message. But you can also see it in the math way which very scientific and is very cool and interesting too :) Music is what I do almost all the time in life and I would do it until the end of time! Your videos are great, keep doing them, you very wise in music!
This channel could really use a Q&A. Watched a whole mess of your videos, and still get lost the your bouncy tempo raised to the power theory jargon. Thanks. Does this count as a question that you'll read on another Q&A?
Music show: could you simply collaborate with those other channels and do most of it remotely?
The problem isn't so much the location, it's the fact that we'd have to hire a bunch of really talented session musicians to be the house band, and great session musicians are expensive. I'd also really like to have a high production-value setting for it, but really the big stumbling block is the personnel. That's just something we can't afford to skimp on.
Well for the session musicans, many of them have bands on the side and might do it for a shout out each episode or naybe new musican everythime with the same deal. And you could always give them a percentage of the shows earnings
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Great definition of math! I'm stealing it.
^_^
your brother sounds smug as hell ha
Did you really say John Lennon wasn't a very good person. Shame on you. Remember we are all much more than the worst thing we ever did or said and we are all much less than the best thing we ever did or said. As someone who has loved John since Sgt. Peppers was released in 1967 and remembers with horror the evening of December 8, 1980 I really am so disappointed that an intelligent young man such as yourself would say such a hurtful thing about a beloved, though not universally, person. I hope you rethink that position and address it at an appropriate time.
To quote Julian Lennon: "I have to say that, from my point of view, I felt he was a hypocrite. Dad could talk about peace and love out loud to the world but he could never show it to the people who supposedly meant the most to him: his wife and son. How can you talk about peace and love and have a family in bits and pieces - no communication, adultery, divorce? You can't do it, not if you're being true and honest with yourself."
John Lennon's treatment of his first wife and son wasn't just one thing he did: It was a pattern of abusive behavior over the course of decades. At the time of his death, he still hadn't reconciled with either of them, and even though he was talking about building a relationship with Julian, he left them barely anything in his will as one final insult. Considering all that, "Not a very good person" is a pretty mild criticism of Lennon's behavior.
If you think 4:33 is music, you've essentially invalidated your opinion on music.
how open-minded of you
@Bold and Brash open-mindedness leads one to the most perverse interpretations of art. Art is a struggle against reality. A struggle to attain dominance and pure enlightenment through an increasingly complex syntax of form. It is not whatever happens in a room at any given point.
@TODD TOLSON Then you have surrendered you role in the struggle for pure art. Pure art comes when pure change is in the air and the glory of perfection is acheived through hard-won struggle. Bach and Shakespeare knew it, cretens from the romantic period onward have never known it.
@TODD TOLSON What did the romantic period give us but a burlesque of unnecessary complications? Beethoven's so-called 'innovations' were but a molestation of what already came before him. His piano sonata's sound like a grosteque abortion of Mozart; chopped up and bloodied.
Autodidactus Plays JRPGs
you know, what you've stated here is known as an opinion. it's not objective.
Adam Neely collab soon?
We'll see! I'd be happy to work with Adam, if he was interested.