@@vicentehamel its not accurate at all ... Pulse is time and time is relative.. note groupings relate space to time... You can count anything in anything, if you speed up or slow down by the precise amount. Your impulse to count fours is trained, really your brain just knows 1 beat of the pulse at a time.
@@dooshnukem32 I was replying to the other reply... People are by and large taking it a face value, Adam himself is kind of implying this un-ironically
Exactly! Yes, a 7:11 polyrythym is a bit silly, but if that's what makes sense to use, then I don't see the holdup. Hell, David Bruce wrote a 4 movement string ensemble piece using The Lick entirely seriously, and it doesn't sound like a joke, it's genuinely really good
Reminds me of a RUclips Short I watched where one person is like "more espresso, less depresso" and a second person goes "I'm still depressed but now I'm fast"
9:18 “I know if you’re familiar with my channel, I sound like a broken record at this point” had my spidey senses tingling in anticipation of a ‘repetition legitimizes’.
Adam, 5 or 6 years ago your channel inspired me more than anything else to chase music professionally. I met someone years later that pushed me to really challenge myself. I'm making a living in entertainment now. You've never been just a meme guy to me. You've been a genuinely inspiring person. Hope to catch y'all in Atlanta next go 'round. Thank you, for more than you can ever know.
For me he is one of only YT two channels I watch on a regular basis. First I thought he felt annoying and all-knowing. A bit besservisser or thinkin himself above other people. As I continued because the content and knowlegde used making it was just so good. Then I understood I totally misjudged and understood Adams tone of voice and manners wrong. He is just huge hard-end musicnerd and in this stuff with passion. I have been playing since kid and also interested in music as cultural phenomenom but mainly for the scientific connections to universal existence.
Perhaps it wasn't a snarky attack, but rather a plea: don't fight me on this.... or I know I'll lose. The person "simply" forgot that small magic word: please ;)
An euphemism is when you replace a word for something icky or negative connotation with something more neutral i. e. toilet -> restroom This is the opposite of a euphemism. Inversuphemism maybe? 😂
@@TachyBunker that is not a euphemism. My problem is not with the analogousness of 4/4 and microplastics. They are analogue. It is not a euphemism though because a euphemism is not just an analogy. I hope you read and understand this time.
''I have a feeling that 3 is like crabs, it is the evolutionarily most optimal way to groove to hyper-tuplets'' Yeah, okay maybe my friends are right. I'm too deep in this music nerd shit.
Both those are just primed for massive missunderstanding as well - the crab thing is about similar crustaceans, not about "all animals" as some people took it. Same here, I'm sure some people will soon shout "Adam Neely said every rhythm is 3/4 so there!"
SEE HIM LIVE!!!! Sungazer's live take on "Drunk" is amazing! Crowder takes his drumset on a *walk*, and tells the story of a night spent with too much to drink in a way that is more expressive then anything i've ever heard a drum kit do before.
There's a video somewhere on YT of him explaining his techniques and he's all "I can play individual beat patterns with each hand. No biggie." as if anybody can do it. Dude's brilliant.
It's been 6 years since I offhandedly said "Everything is in 4/4 if you don't count it like a nerd." to you in Thomann's kitchen. I'm glad it's still funny, and that Sungazer is so awesome.
8:29 "The pulse is the key." This is the first thing I teach in Lindy Hop. The greatest factor of a fun dance is not whether my partner knows tons of fancy swing moves; it is whether they feel the song and can communicate their pulse to me (and listen to my pulse).
In my view, there are four real ways to look at the time signature of any tune: 1) how the person writing it was feeling it 2) how the audience feels it 3) how it’s easiest to put in sheet music for a new performer 4) writing it weirdly for fun (you can write anything in 3/11 if you try hard enough) Aside from #4, none of them are wrong, just different use cases
All of them are wrong except maybe 3. Time signature and meter are two different things, and the time signature is specifically a *notational* element. The time signature is how it is written, not how it feels. For example, the Passacaglia from Peter Grimes by Benjamin Britten is in a *meter* of 11, as the repeating bassline is 11 beats long, but the *time signature* is 4/4 as that's what it's notated in, with each repetition (each variation) being 2¾ bars long.
"write" language (any kind) is a representational tool, isn't "the thing itself". You can be very nerdy and get into hermeneutics (interpretation of language) isues and so on, but there is no such thing as an "incorrect" way of representing something in a language (you can claim more or less adequate ways, but music is not writing itself).
@@wilh3lmmusic I feel like this misses the point in that there is no " *the* time signature" of any given piece; anything can be independently written by anyone using a different time signature for one of the four purposes. Your example sounds like a case of the writer doing number 4); the time signature of 4/4 basically having no relation to how the writer, audience, or performer would feel it. It sounds like if someone else rewrote the music using a time signature with a numerator of 11, they would likely achieve 1), 2), and/or 3) and as the comment suggested, this would have been much more useful. I'd say just because the idea of meter and time signature can be two different things, doesn't mean it's somehow less correct to not choose a time signature with a clear relationship to the meter.
@@M0odezNah, there are many good reasons to write something with a pattern of 11 beats in 4/4. Especially if it's for an orchestra, because 11/4 becomes almost impossible to conduct (try to come up with 11 different ways to swing your arm). And you don't have to say "on the 9th beat of this bar..." which would have musicians searching in their score for a long time. It's also easier to keep track of where you are. And experienced classical musicians don't really need to see the 11/4 time signature to know how to phrase the melody.
@@pepijnstreng4643 That's a great point; I suppose that's another reason quite similar to number 3) and another good example of purpose behind a time signature choice. I still think it stands that if someone chooses to rewrite in 11 to communicate the feeling, that's not more or less correct than choosing 4/4 for the orchestra setting. It could be logical for a solo arrangement of an orchestral piece that was originally written in 4/4 for the reasons you suggested.
Holy smokes, I work at Scientific American, some of my colleagues are gunna think it's cool that you used that screengrab of the "Why Do Animals Keep Evolving into Crabs" article!
@@soundninja99 You are in for a -treat-. They ROCK ASS live. (Seriously. If Adam calls out that they are about to play a song called "Anthem" START RECORDING.
I could imagine that the 3/4 crab phenomenon comes from the idea that, if it is not 4/4, it must be 3/4 because that's the next most well known time signature.
I actually wrote a tune called Periapsis, but it was based on a comet reaching it's Perihelion and max velocity around the sun. I wanted to write an album including "Aphelion" or "Apoapsis" for the whole orbit, but I only wrote two tunes :(
Oh man, I've been listening to black metal for years and one of my favorite things about it is how tremolo picking can suddenly make me feel relaxed, calm, ethereal. A million notes a minute, but the pulse is still slow.
Part IV made me realize that Adam Neely literally starts with the music memes, and then they become *refined* ideas backed by musical pedagogy and cool songs.
I’m glad you’re addressing music cognition. So many people get lost in the weeds of complicated seeming ideas that just don’t sound interesting. As a composer, I almost always start with the desire to create a new cognitive effect and work backwards from there to develop compositional techniques to achieve it. Most people seem to go the other way around.
We had a drumline warmup in highschool like the martian mambo called "7/8" it basically moved around the 2-2-3 pattern each phrase so 2-2-3, 2-3-2, 3-2-2 etc. We had a variation where all drums played the pattern in the same order, but we had a "big-split" version where the snares, quads, and bases would start at a different phrase. Like playing "in a round"
20:19 "Um actually" moment incoming! It is totally possible to write this passage without the whole 7:11 polyrhythm thing. It's a bit odd at first glance, but what you can do is change the meter to 7/16, and then use the metric modulation of "whole rest = whole rest". This would imply that the length of the measure is the same, but now it's subdivided differently. You could also use "Whole note = Whole note".
Yeah that's what I was thinking too. It's the same thing, but without unnecessarily barfing a 7:11 above every measure, and actually kinda comprehensible if we still care about that
I came down here looking for this comment, it's exactly what I thought of, and it's not exactly rare either, it happens all the time when composers switch from 6/8 to 2/4
I remember discovering a Frank Zappa piece called “13” where at the beginning he explains how to count the 13 in subdivisions of 1-2 1-2-3 1-2-3-4 (the last section counted half as fast) and it blew my mind and i’ve used that method to help discern weirder time signatures over the years. Great video Adam!
Its so cool you brought this up because as a drummer my favorite thing to do is come up with a synth loop and add delay to it so it creates a bunch of weird accents and then drum into different feelings within the loop. Its an absolute BLAST just feeling the strangest rhythms and pushing and pulling out of the framework of the loop. Just dropping and picking up the rythms. Making all the accidents seem as intentional as possible. Its amazing ❤❤❤
imagine walking up to Adam god damned Neely and telling him you know more about music than him, let alone music that he composed. can i have some of that confidence?
@@mrharvest you can question anything or anyone. A guy who makes RUclips videos is just a guy. Why should his ideas be so holy? This is what limits all thinking in general.
@@latheofheaven1017 it's just easier for most people to wait for a the metaphors others have brought forward than forge their own conclusions. In this particular case, I would argue neither is right, there is a fundamental misconception about time and space Adam and the redditors have. They are both adding complexity for ... reasons. If your curious about that, go read my other comment on this video. The point is you shouldn't just take others at face value if your perception leads you to more questions. Asserting what you believe is often the first step to finding a more objective truth.
On the crab statement, grouping into sub beats of 3 will always work in this “smoothing out” method because every number is either a multiple of 3 or 1 away from a multiple of three. The higher the number gets, the smaller the difference will be when smoothed out to 3/4 (100 will be 33, 34, and 33, and their ratios would likely be unnoticeable at every possible tempo).
I'm thinking of what you're saying in terms of how a leap day "smooths out" our 365 day calendar. I don't know if that's a close analogy or not though lol.
That's just how I hear music; time signatures don't matter to me, even with someone literally counting out the measures I just don't hear it as being anything significant, especially when they start getting into "off beat" stuff. Then you have some people trying to argue that 1/1 physically can't exist. To me I only ever hear it as one note of various lengths pitch and volume.
@@GAHAHAHHhonestly this is a mix and mastering engineers way of perceiving music and is probably closest to how you get a waveform To sound good, make that one sound, sound good lol
Agree. For listeners. Being on the same page helps the performers, and being able to math this stuff out is amazing, but as a listener? None of that matters, it's all in my perception of what it sounds like to me. It becomes subjective after a point, kinda like any other art form. I think of Adam's band as music for music nerds that also has general appeal. I think it's cool as hell to see what they did and how they arrived there, but in the end... can I move to it, does it sound good, does it make me feel?
I love what the journal piece said about the connection created by the challenge; it's sort of an optimistic take on something that rides the fine line of meme-ification, and I think you drive the argument home with your perspective on "quoting" the phrase. Nicely done and thanks for the tuplet knowledge drop!
Writing something in 11/16 instead of writing out the subdivisions in 4/4 seems like a logical continuation of writing 12/8 instead of 4/4 with a lot of triplets.
I’m just watching these past few videos after seeing you guys in Seattle. Now I’m realizing my enjoyment was even more methodically engineered than previously thought. Absolutely fantastic show! Everyone one on stage slays their instrument and the band cohesion amongst the crazy technicality is astounding!
I can see the trick with this sense of timing is really developing a confidence and punchy-ness within this flurry of notes. Really, hats off to you guys. You really sound great.
The band Consider The Source has been playing traditional Balkan tunes with Metal instruments for 20 years. They make some great compositions based on the concepts as well! Great video and great music.
Thanks for the suggestion. I've gone to "just check them out", clicked on the first video result "Consider The Source Live at Relix Studio" and got immediately sucked in. I just finished listening to the full 1 hour and 40 minutes concert with my eyes closed. Damn!
Adam, just to say, this is an incredible video. Inspirational, and making these complex concepts so clear. Both you and Sungazer are doing so much for music, thanks man.
4/4 in 4k! Amazing metaphor. Kinda reminds me a little of Aphex Twin. Some of his most twisted break beats are in 4. Doesn't seem like it because the 1 is elusive but once you find it, it's as plain as day. Very cool lesson today Adam
Big Aphex Twin fan but I don't think I know anything of his that isn't obviously 4/4. He uses a lot of syncopation, sure, but if you have any examples where it's not so obvious I'd love to know.
@@lewijiyeah me neither, *but* i think i get it as in, very detailed, (4k), rhythms in 4/4. also, drill n bass. fast, quick notes, but its "bob"abble (?) :P
I am so out of time, sadly, somebody kind said : " I am a free spirit " so when I listen to you, this analysis. I felt so happy. Thanks for sharing!!!!! From Argentina. Ana
i'm not particularly fond of that sort of music and find it baffling how trap, which does fall into that category has become so popular. bass to fall asleep to with nervous hihats on top.
Maybe it's because of the thing he talked about where music depends on how fast you can move your lower body to it? But if you aren't moving your lower body, it's a different experience? 🤔
Two things come to mind: 1. Charlie Chaplin's observation: "We think too much and feel too little." 2. Iain McGilchrist's hypothesis that we have created a culture that wires us to lean heavily into the hyper-analytical, decontextualized, rigid, and categorization-obsessed brain hemisphere.
Each string / synth oscillator / drum head / monophonic instrument is only producing one note at a time; on an instrument built for twelve-tone equal temperament, that's eleven notes they aren't playing even when they're playing continuously, which is to say nothing of octaves and microtones.
Bro you have no idea how mind expanding and cutting edge this is, this stuff is music for the future. And the definition of 4:4 in 4k is just classic, brand new perspective, cutting edge and creates new possibilities in different avenues, bless you for this man. And bless all who will come across this. ❤
Yep, it's interesting how quickly the drum reactors all catch on to the Bleed drumcam, "Oh yeah, he's doing hertas on the kicks, snare hits on the one."
I also think of the Knower song, "It's All Nothing Until It's Everything" It's a very simple 4/4 rhythm, but it consists of a constant triplet beat for the first 3 and 2/3rds beats of each measure. So many people mistook it for being a complex meter. It's such a simple beat, but the legato triplets are really effective
Dude, come to Bulgaria next. There are people here that would absolutely eat your music up. Also, I have the feeling that even people who don't like traditional folk music (such as myself) still have a respect and a sort of natural understanding of it. Meaning that counting in 7,9,11 or 13 comes really naturally to many of us. I know I definitely would be trying to headbang to your music if you decide to come here.
I'm Bosnian and I feel the same way about our traditional music, though I never learned to dance the kolo so I am kind of a bit of a failure lol I bet people better at it than me could dance kolo to their stuff 🤣
@@phelanii4444 Yeah, it makes sense that basically any person from the Balkans would feel a similar way. I believe Balkan music in general has a similar vibe with slight variation between smaller regions. After all it doesn't matter where something originated from when there's so much cross-pollination in this region and everything influenced and continues to influence everything else.
Tuplet Chill. I have always thought it is a more descriptive name for this music. No matter how many notes are played it stills has a pulse of chill. Always good to see Adam.
A movie in a language I don’t/can’t speak - yet it’s interesting, yet I’m in to it, yet the dialogue is foreign to me - that’s my experience watching your videos, but I keep coming back, even though I just have no clue what you are talking about 😁
i love the slow and fast hypertouplets when studying, i do math and physics, and when you are studying you are kind of just sitting there so you dont want danc emusic, but your brain is doing all these complicated things, and the fast pace touplets kind of reflect that, i have studied so much to your last album alraidy, thank you for making it i guess
I saw someone somewhere describe Sungazer as "Liminal Jazz" and I think that ambiguity described early on in the video (do i feel the fast bit or the slow bit?) is what contributes most to that. The melodies y'all write for Sungazer sort of soar over the beats sometimes while other times they lock in. It reminds me or Ligeti's Clocks and Clouds concept. Super inspiring on every level.
I'm not sure you get it in this genre of music, but I've played some "modern classical" where it's notated in 6/4, but it really feels like it's in 3/4, and I really don't at all understand why they chose to write it in 6 instead - it just makes multi-bar rests hard to count (unless you just give up and count twice as many bars in 3)
What you're talking about at 19:14 (shifting between different n-tuplets while keeping a constant pulse) is found in "Restless Boy" by Pain of Salvation. The end is basically a massive 4/4 groove alternating between quintuplets and septuplets. Really cool effect in my opinion
there's something about your videos that shows me something. It really gives a way for the audience to _really_ connect with a song. It introduces a concept that is used in the song, introduces the story of the song, and introduces the song in a way that doesn't feel forced and doesn't feel like an ad, since we're learning something we wanted to learn anyways, and the song is just a good example. I always end up really feeling a song after watching a video like this. I think the first example of this from your videos for me (that I can remember) is Shubh Saran's Slip. It still vibes with me hard to this day I fear mentioning this, because I know if people start using this as a means to promote themselves first, with the education second, it will begin to feel flat and soulless like so many advertising 'trends' and techniques. But I've noticed it for a while now and do really appreciate the way you do it
I once asked tosin abasi what his favourite time sig was and he said all their music was 4/4 with weird feels. This taught me lots about weird time signatures. Basically exactly what you're saying in this vid.
Music theory on this channel melts my brain, and its clear Adam and his band have mad skills, but I found it hard to groove to any this at all. Something about it makes my brain "itch" and it's somehow unsettling. Anyone else? Bueller?
I'm with you. I enjoy learning from Adam's videos, but I kinda perceive Sungazer's music like the auditory equivalent of ghost peppers -- too spicy to enjoy unadulterated. It needs some heavy cream to coat the tongue, metaphorically speaking.
I can vibe to it but I’m also a jazz guy so I’m used to the spice, so to speak. I can understand it being too rhythmically confusing if you’re used to mostly 4/4, or other common odd time signatures like 3/4 and even 7/4.
@@DeltaEntropy It's not so much that it's confusing, it just doesn't elicit an emotional response beyond an abstract appreciation for the obvious skill required to produce it. I hear it, but I don't feel it.
@@DeltaEntropyit's not that it's rhythmically confusing, it's that the subdivisions are too fast and too fine to be practically rhythm at all. Like he said in the video, the subdivisions tighter than 100ms cease to have any real rhythmic meaning. I'm not confused, I know exactly what's happening. What's happening is rhythmic ambiguity. Free time over 4/4.
Bflat got that mains hum vibe... not too surprising given how close it is to 60Hz. But couple that with the tone of the bass setup and it really feels like you're riffin on interference, I like it
This video means a lot ot me. for over 20 years I have been wondering if it is possible to rewrite music in different time signature to 4/4. Now I know. I feel a sense of closure. TY
I've always been a fan of making odds sound natural and work around 4/4 overall. Your work has been inspirational for sure. I usually try not to extend the same measure the whole song.
There was a piece I played in high school concert band called “Undertow” by John Mackey. It has a very odd time that could be described as 15/8 or alternating bars of 7/8 and 4/4. For the notation, it has a time signature of “7/8+4/4”, and each bar has a soft measure break (represented by a dashed line) to indicate the two parts of the measure. It’s probably my favorite way to show the breakdown of time for the reader. 15/8 wouldn’t show the proper way to feel each bar, and constantly alternating would be far too busy on the page. In that sense, the tune they showed at the beginning could be written in 44/16, with soft breaks every 11 sixteenths. That way the spirit of the 4/4 is preserved, but the subdivisions are made obvious.
I love the confidence in arguing, to the musicians themselves, who are not only trained but also have degrees on music, that their music is in fact in a different time signature than they claim
I love the feel of 3/4 or 6/8 time signatures, especially when duplets are used, but a little known band called Signal Hill really loves their 8/8 and I've come to appreciate it. Gives a more narrative quality to music that a lot of music these days seems to be lacking. Two of their songs that come to mind are "Pacific Northwest" and "Standby, Sir."
The paradox of hypertuplets killing the momentum of a set is similar to something you get with extreme high-speed dance genres like splittercore. Sure, it’s supposed to be 1000+ bpm, but it just ends up feeling like a constant wall of 16th or 32nd note kicks. For my personal tastes, 250 bpm is roughly the maximum speed for constant 4/4 kicks before they all sound like subdivisions no matter the context.
As someone who has listened to a lot of speedcore and other fast music, i notice that a lot of well-made speedcore sounds fast because it still is fast. Despite the BPM being an unreasonable 880, there are a lot of musical cues that direct the listener towards a still-quite-fast 220 BPM. A song like Camellia's "Hello (BPM) 2021" still sounds lively and energetic because the other elements of the song reduce it to a more palatable tempo (just barely) of around 250. Other songs at such high tempos might not reinforce the human-scale tempo as well, resulting in what sounds like tempoless noise. On the other hand, this can actually work to the benefit of the song. One of my favorite extratone songs, "Singularity at 2.64e+6 BPM" by Kobaryo doesn't provide as many clues to reduce its massive BPM of 2,640,000, but instead uses the hyperspeed kick drums to create an incredibly high-pitched melody above a tranquil backing that doesnt sound like it has even a triple digit BPM, much less a SEVEN-digit one.
I'd say I feel it up to somewhere approaching 400. When I listen to speedcore that mostly just chills on a quarter note pulse in the 300-400 range, I find that while dancing to it presents practical challenges, I can "get in the groove" so to speak and I feel the quarter notes as a proper pulse unless the half or whole notes are heavily accented. It depends a lot on the instrumentation as well though; 320 BPM written for a rhythm game by some Japanese zoomer in 2019 sounds a lot different from 320 BPM written for ravers by some German hardcore producer in 2001.
Adam you are awesome in every way. Your music is awesome and your willingness to educate all of us is amazing. Plus the memes are fun, even if someone thinks it's unserious.
In a way the stuff Sun Gazer plays harkens back to the fusion music of the late 60s and early 70s. This was the music that seriously expanded my mind about the art form. I was never great at it. But I LOVED to listen to it. You guys keep plowing away. We need more music likecthis
Incredibly inspiring as ever! I would challenge you on one thing (nothing to do with counting). The differentiation between 'meme' music and 'serious' music is I think a false dichotomy. As Christopher Small might say, the seriousness is in the quality of the shared musicking, and thus I would argue both 7:11 polyrhythms and Sungazer are equally 'serious'. Thanks again for the super thoughtful content Adam!
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
"Everything is in 4/4 if you stop counting like a nerd" will forever be my favourite musical joke.
It is pretty accurate tho
@@vicentehamel its not accurate at all ... Pulse is time and time is relative.. note groupings relate space to time... You can count anything in anything, if you speed up or slow down by the precise amount. Your impulse to count fours is trained, really your brain just knows 1 beat of the pulse at a time.
you are counting it like a nerd@@aibrainlet8041
@@aibrainlet8041please refer to the latter half of OP's statement 🤓
@@dooshnukem32 I was replying to the other reply... People are by and large taking it a face value, Adam himself is kind of implying this un-ironically
Shawn is the best value in drumming; no one plays more hits per beat.
legal eagle!!!
I did not expect to see a legal eagle comment on this channel
The crossover I didn't know I needed.
Would you say more hits per beat is the equivalent of higher value? 🤔
@@jj8703get off his Beak
I deeply need people to understand that serious and silly are not enemies
Like how visual experimental "high art" is actually quite close to stuff like RUclips Poop.
Just recommend Randall Munroe's "What If?"
Exactly! Yes, a 7:11 polyrythym is a bit silly, but if that's what makes sense to use, then I don't see the holdup. Hell, David Bruce wrote a 4 movement string ensemble piece using The Lick entirely seriously, and it doesn't sound like a joke, it's genuinely really good
Silliness is serious business.
Frank Zappa has entered the chat
That beat at ten minutes is like when you're really tired and have a red bull. It doesn't really wake you up, you're just turbo tired now.
Crowder is an *amazingly* expressive drummer. That is *exactly* what that sounds like.
Love (hate) when I'm jsut tired faster
Reminds me of a RUclips Short I watched where one person is like "more espresso, less depresso" and a second person goes "I'm still depressed but now I'm fast"
It’s in 3. Please don’t fight me on this
Okay
It's in 4.
@@gabevreyesno, comedy comes in Pi.
@@gabevreyes Nope. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_three_(writing)
@@Jeroen_K en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm
9:18 “I know if you’re familiar with my channel, I sound like a broken record at this point” had my spidey senses tingling in anticipation of a ‘repetition legitimizes’.
"It's the microplastics of time signatures" so you're telling me 4/4 is stored in the balls?
The pocket, if you will.
I dunno... It sure is a simpler rhythm than CBAT!
Whatever moves the lower body
@@CloudObsolete Got it in the bag.
4/4 is stored in the balls and 3/4 is the crab of music. Amazing. Enlightening even.
Adam, 5 or 6 years ago your channel inspired me more than anything else to chase music professionally. I met someone years later that pushed me to really challenge myself. I'm making a living in entertainment now. You've never been just a meme guy to me. You've been a genuinely inspiring person. Hope to catch y'all in Atlanta next go 'round. Thank you, for more than you can ever know.
For me he is one of only YT two channels I watch on a regular basis. First I thought he felt annoying and all-knowing. A bit besservisser or thinkin himself above other people. As I continued because the content and knowlegde used making it was just so good. Then I understood I totally misjudged and understood Adams tone of voice and manners wrong. He is just huge hard-end musicnerd and in this stuff with passion. I have been playing since kid and also interested in music as cultural phenomenom but mainly for the scientific connections to universal existence.
"Don't fight me on this" at the guys that made the god damn song is insane lmao
Reminds me of that time someone tweeted at Paul McCartney to tell him "Blackbird" was NOT the political song he claimed it to be
"we literally made the song, it is in 4/4"
"NUH-UH >:("
Perhaps it wasn't a snarky attack, but rather a plea: don't fight me on this.... or I know I'll lose. The person "simply" forgot that small magic word: please ;)
"Don't press me on this Sadeas"
Hey man the author is just as much a participant in the work as the reader authorial intentions don't matter Death of the Author etc.
3:16 "the micro plastics of time signatures" is one of my favorite euphemisms for something that is so inescapably ubiquitous as 4/4
An euphemism is when you replace a word for something icky or negative connotation with something more neutral i. e. toilet -> restroom
This is the opposite of a euphemism. Inversuphemism maybe? 😂
@@realGBx64 eh 4/4 is way more present in our daily lives
@@TachyBunker you did not understand my complaint did you
@@realGBx64 well both 4/4 and microplastics are bad so euphemism makes sense
@@TachyBunker that is not a euphemism. My problem is not with the analogousness of 4/4 and microplastics. They are analogue. It is not a euphemism though because a euphemism is not just an analogy. I hope you read and understand this time.
''I have a feeling that 3 is like crabs, it is the evolutionarily most optimal way to groove to hyper-tuplets''
Yeah, okay maybe my friends are right. I'm too deep in this music nerd shit.
Nah, yer friends ain't deep enough.
"3 is like crabs. Makes you wonder why you're always itchy". That's where I initially thought Adam was going with the crab talk. Oh well.
Both those are just primed for massive missunderstanding as well - the crab thing is about similar crustaceans, not about "all animals" as some people took it. Same here, I'm sure some people will soon shout "Adam Neely said every rhythm is 3/4 so there!"
They're just not cool enough to understand
Or perhaps they’re just fans of 3 bean salad podcast
Your drummer is a friggin beast, dude. What a sense of time and feel.
SEE HIM LIVE!!!! Sungazer's live take on "Drunk" is amazing! Crowder takes his drumset on a *walk*, and tells the story of a night spent with too much to drink in a way that is more expressive then anything i've ever heard a drum kit do before.
@@LordChaosWing that sounds amazing
There's a video somewhere on YT of him explaining his techniques and he's all "I can play individual beat patterns with each hand. No biggie." as if anybody can do it. Dude's brilliant.
It's been 6 years since I offhandedly said "Everything is in 4/4 if you don't count it like a nerd." to you in Thomann's kitchen. I'm glad it's still funny, and that Sungazer is so awesome.
Legend
Dude, like EVERYONE quotes that all the time, that's crazy
Maybe one day that quote will end up in an academic paper like the 7/11 trend did.
Mkay
8:29 "The pulse is the key." This is the first thing I teach in Lindy Hop. The greatest factor of a fun dance is not whether my partner knows tons of fancy swing moves; it is whether they feel the song and can communicate their pulse to me (and listen to my pulse).
In my view, there are four real ways to look at the time signature of any tune:
1) how the person writing it was feeling it
2) how the audience feels it
3) how it’s easiest to put in sheet music for a new performer
4) writing it weirdly for fun (you can write anything in 3/11 if you try hard enough)
Aside from #4, none of them are wrong, just different use cases
All of them are wrong except maybe 3. Time signature and meter are two different things, and the time signature is specifically a *notational* element. The time signature is how it is written, not how it feels. For example, the Passacaglia from Peter Grimes by Benjamin Britten is in a *meter* of 11, as the repeating bassline is 11 beats long, but the *time signature* is 4/4 as that's what it's notated in, with each repetition (each variation) being 2¾ bars long.
"write" language (any kind) is a representational tool, isn't "the thing itself". You can be very nerdy and get into hermeneutics (interpretation of language) isues and so on, but there is no such thing as an "incorrect" way of representing something in a language (you can claim more or less adequate ways, but music is not writing itself).
@@wilh3lmmusic I feel like this misses the point in that there is no " *the* time signature" of any given piece; anything can be independently written by anyone using a different time signature for one of the four purposes. Your example sounds like a case of the writer doing number 4); the time signature of 4/4 basically having no relation to how the writer, audience, or performer would feel it. It sounds like if someone else rewrote the music using a time signature with a numerator of 11, they would likely achieve 1), 2), and/or 3) and as the comment suggested, this would have been much more useful. I'd say just because the idea of meter and time signature can be two different things, doesn't mean it's somehow less correct to not choose a time signature with a clear relationship to the meter.
@@M0odezNah, there are many good reasons to write something with a pattern of 11 beats in 4/4. Especially if it's for an orchestra, because 11/4 becomes almost impossible to conduct (try to come up with 11 different ways to swing your arm). And you don't have to say "on the 9th beat of this bar..." which would have musicians searching in their score for a long time. It's also easier to keep track of where you are. And experienced classical musicians don't really need to see the 11/4 time signature to know how to phrase the melody.
@@pepijnstreng4643 That's a great point; I suppose that's another reason quite similar to number 3) and another good example of purpose behind a time signature choice. I still think it stands that if someone chooses to rewrite in 11 to communicate the feeling, that's not more or less correct than choosing 4/4 for the orchestra setting. It could be logical for a solo arrangement of an orchestral piece that was originally written in 4/4 for the reasons you suggested.
Holy smokes, I work at Scientific American, some of my colleagues are gunna think it's cool that you used that screengrab of the "Why Do Animals Keep Evolving into Crabs" article!
Everything is crabs
that 7/11 challenge was the sleeping agent to start liking sungazer years later 😂❤
It's like a gateway drug. Now years later i'm heading to a sungazer concert in a few months
@@soundninja99 You are in for a -treat-. They ROCK ASS live. (Seriously. If Adam calls out that they are about to play a song called "Anthem" START RECORDING.
@@soundninja99
I could imagine that the 3/4 crab phenomenon comes from the idea that, if it is not 4/4, it must be 3/4 because that's the next most well known time signature.
Then an Irish Slip Jig comes in and sounds like it could be either, but it's really 9/8
I'm gonna write a song called Aphelion, based on the groundbreaking conception of a 4/4 time signature, with four evenly divided beats each bar.
I actually wrote a tune called Periapsis, but it was based on a comet reaching it's Perihelion and max velocity around the sun. I wanted to write an album including "Aphelion" or "Apoapsis" for the whole orbit, but I only wrote two tunes :(
I'm writing Syzygy, it's in 1/1 with 1 neatly undivided whole note per bar.
Lol.
Oh man, I've been listening to black metal for years and one of my favorite things about it is how tremolo picking can suddenly make me feel relaxed, calm, ethereal. A million notes a minute, but the pulse is still slow.
Finally someone else who gets it! Atmospheric black metal and post-black metal are my go-to chillout music.
Part IV made me realize that Adam Neely literally starts with the music memes, and then they become *refined* ideas backed by musical pedagogy and cool songs.
feels like a metaphor for how the channel has evolved since 2018
Partially sarcastically, totally sincerely:how did you think it worked?
Repetition legitimizes
I’m glad you’re addressing music cognition. So many people get lost in the weeds of complicated seeming ideas that just don’t sound interesting. As a composer, I almost always start with the desire to create a new cognitive effect and work backwards from there to develop compositional techniques to achieve it. Most people seem to go the other way around.
We had a drumline warmup in highschool like the martian mambo called "7/8" it basically moved around the 2-2-3 pattern each phrase so 2-2-3, 2-3-2, 3-2-2 etc. We had a variation where all drums played the pattern in the same order, but we had a "big-split" version where the snares, quads, and bases would start at a different phrase. Like playing "in a round"
Yup, we did that one too. Lol the first part, I mean. I will tap that out still today, when I'm trying to concentrate on something.
The Martian Mambo is *directly* referenced in this vid.
@@LordChaosWing I know, that’s why I mentioned it
@@GAJake Aaaaah. Apologies. I misread your post.
@@LordChaosWing its ok, sometimes many people comment before watching a video
20:19
"Um actually" moment incoming!
It is totally possible to write this passage without the whole 7:11 polyrhythm thing. It's a bit odd at first glance, but what you can do is change the meter to 7/16, and then use the metric modulation of "whole rest = whole rest". This would imply that the length of the measure is the same, but now it's subdivided differently. You could also use "Whole note = Whole note".
Yeah that's what I was thinking too. It's the same thing, but without unnecessarily barfing a 7:11 above every measure, and actually kinda comprehensible if we still care about that
I came down here looking for this comment, it's exactly what I thought of, and it's not exactly rare either, it happens all the time when composers switch from 6/8 to 2/4
I remember discovering a Frank Zappa piece called “13” where at the beginning he explains how to count the 13 in subdivisions of 1-2 1-2-3 1-2-3-4 (the last section counted half as fast) and it blew my mind and i’ve used that method to help discern weirder time signatures over the years. Great video Adam!
Link?
@@LordChaosWing ruclips.net/video/w7AZjx9sz7k/видео.html
Zappa was for real
a genius!
Hearing that the 7:11 video was in 2019 made me realize how long I’ve been watching Adam Neely, dang!
Always has been
Was looking for this
Yooo salut cest Côme 😂
Its so cool you brought this up because as a drummer my favorite thing to do is come up with a synth loop and add delay to it so it creates a bunch of weird accents and then drum into different feelings within the loop. Its an absolute BLAST just feeling the strangest rhythms and pushing and pulling out of the framework of the loop. Just dropping and picking up the rythms. Making all the accidents seem as intentional as possible. Its amazing ❤❤❤
imagine walking up to Adam god damned Neely and telling him you know more about music than him, let alone music that he composed. can i have some of that confidence?
It's free
"The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure, while the intelligent are full of doubt." Bertrand Russell
@@mrharvest you can question anything or anyone. A guy who makes RUclips videos is just a guy. Why should his ideas be so holy? This is what limits all thinking in general.
Being so confident in your wrongness is probably not a great idea.
@@latheofheaven1017 it's just easier for most people to wait for a the metaphors others have brought forward than forge their own conclusions.
In this particular case, I would argue neither is right, there is a fundamental misconception about time and space Adam and the redditors have. They are both adding complexity for ... reasons. If your curious about that, go read my other comment on this video. The point is you shouldn't just take others at face value if your perception leads you to more questions. Asserting what you believe is often the first step to finding a more objective truth.
The fact that Gentle Giant's "So Sincere" is in straight 4/4 is one of the most amazing facts of all modern music...
On the crab statement, grouping into sub beats of 3 will always work in this “smoothing out” method because every number is either a multiple of 3 or 1 away from a multiple of three. The higher the number gets, the smaller the difference will be when smoothed out to 3/4 (100 will be 33, 34, and 33, and their ratios would likely be unnoticeable at every possible tempo).
I'm thinking of what you're saying in terms of how a leap day "smooths out" our 365 day calendar. I don't know if that's a close analogy or not though lol.
That's an amazing point. Never knew that about the multiples of 3!
Spent yesterday learning this one for the tour. Its so awesome. Cant wait to play it live!
All music is in 1/1.
It's just that the BPM can differ wildly, and it's easier to remember things in groups of 3 or 4.
Took the words out of my mouth
Not *all* music has a tactus.
That's just how I hear music; time signatures don't matter to me, even with someone literally counting out the measures I just don't hear it as being anything significant, especially when they start getting into "off beat" stuff. Then you have some people trying to argue that 1/1 physically can't exist. To me I only ever hear it as one note of various lengths pitch and volume.
@@GAHAHAHHhonestly this is a mix and mastering engineers way of perceiving music and is probably closest to how you get a waveform
To sound good, make that one sound, sound good lol
Agree. For listeners. Being on the same page helps the performers, and being able to math this stuff out is amazing, but as a listener? None of that matters, it's all in my perception of what it sounds like to me. It becomes subjective after a point, kinda like any other art form. I think of Adam's band as music for music nerds that also has general appeal. I think it's cool as hell to see what they did and how they arrived there, but in the end... can I move to it, does it sound good, does it make me feel?
I love what the journal piece said about the connection created by the challenge; it's sort of an optimistic take on something that rides the fine line of meme-ification, and I think you drive the argument home with your perspective on "quoting" the phrase. Nicely done and thanks for the tuplet knowledge drop!
Writing something in 11/16 instead of writing out the subdivisions in 4/4 seems like a logical continuation of writing 12/8 instead of 4/4 with a lot of triplets.
I’m just watching these past few videos after seeing you guys in Seattle. Now I’m realizing my enjoyment was even more methodically engineered than previously thought. Absolutely fantastic show! Everyone one on stage slays their instrument and the band cohesion amongst the crazy technicality is astounding!
New sungazer means new adam neely video breaking it down
🕺
I can see the trick with this sense of timing is really developing a confidence and punchy-ness within this flurry of notes. Really, hats off to you guys. You really sound great.
The band Consider The Source has been playing traditional Balkan tunes with Metal instruments for 20 years. They make some great compositions based on the concepts as well! Great video and great music.
I've got a CTS neck tattoo. Listened to them for over 15 years
pretty dope thanks for the tip!
Thanks for the suggestion. I've gone to "just check them out", clicked on the first video result "Consider The Source Live at Relix Studio" and got immediately sucked in. I just finished listening to the full 1 hour and 40 minutes concert with my eyes closed. Damn!
@@letrhysdance5926 I've never met you but I have Facebook stalked the hell out of you. You're the real deal. Thanks for saying hey! You rock!
Adam, just to say, this is an incredible video. Inspirational, and making these complex concepts so clear. Both you and Sungazer are doing so much for music, thanks man.
Why is nobody talking about the amazing LEGO sets Adam owns
it's all on Adam Neely Lego channel, didn't you know really?
@@tiltil9442 Even your coment fool me for a nano second, imagine if it had a link...
LOLZ
It's a LEGO Creator Modular Building set, #10255, Assembly Square, from 2017. Just for the record.
I'm gonna let you finish, but I just needed to say this is one of the best RUclips video essays of all time, and I'm very proud of you, Adam.
@ 16:43
4/4 in 4k! Amazing metaphor. Kinda reminds me a little of Aphex Twin. Some of his most twisted break beats are in 4. Doesn't seem like it because the 1 is elusive but once you find it, it's as plain as day. Very cool lesson today Adam
Can you give some examples?
Big Aphex Twin fan but I don't think I know anything of his that isn't obviously 4/4. He uses a lot of syncopation, sure, but if you have any examples where it's not so obvious I'd love to know.
@@lewijiyeah me neither, *but* i think i get it as in, very detailed, (4k), rhythms in 4/4. also, drill n bass. fast, quick notes, but its "bob"abble (?) :P
I am so out of time, sadly, somebody kind said : " I am a free spirit " so when I listen to you, this analysis. I felt so happy. Thanks for sharing!!!!! From Argentina. Ana
Honestly, whatever the struggles in the club, I always find "simultaneously slow and fast" super fun when I'm sitting at home listening.
It's tough to dance to but it's great in video games
i'm not particularly fond of that sort of music and find it baffling how trap, which does fall into that category has become so popular. bass to fall asleep to with nervous hihats on top.
Maybe it's because of the thing he talked about where music depends on how fast you can move your lower body to it? But if you aren't moving your lower body, it's a different experience? 🤔
Two things come to mind:
1. Charlie Chaplin's observation: "We think too much and feel too little."
2. Iain McGilchrist's hypothesis that we have created a culture that wires us to lean heavily into the hyper-analytical, decontextualized, rigid, and categorization-obsessed brain hemisphere.
You might be overthinking this.
@@wheatthicksyou might be underthinking this.
@@bazzfromthebackground3696 return to the background
If you follow the adage "listen to the notes they are not playing," Sungazer is silence.
Each string / synth oscillator / drum head / monophonic instrument is only producing one note at a time; on an instrument built for twelve-tone equal temperament, that's eleven notes they aren't playing even when they're playing continuously, which is to say nothing of octaves and microtones.
pending lawsuit from John Cage...
@@gorak9000 😆
Bro you have no idea how mind expanding and cutting edge this is, this stuff is music for the future. And the definition of 4:4 in 4k is just classic, brand new perspective, cutting edge and creates new possibilities in different avenues, bless you for this man. And bless all who will come across this. ❤
That's basically Meshuggah as a band, isn't it. 4/4 underneath it all
Gotta have a steady pulse or it's tough to actually lock in and groove with.
The stuff that isn't pseudo random anyways (I, Parts of Catch 33)
Yep, they play around with it a lot so it's hard to tell sometimes, but it all has a base of 4
They use polymeter a lot. Check out Yogev Gabay for some good analysis of the rhythm in their songs.
Yep, it's interesting how quickly the drum reactors all catch on to the Bleed drumcam, "Oh yeah, he's doing hertas on the kicks, snare hits on the one."
I also think of the Knower song, "It's All Nothing Until It's Everything"
It's a very simple 4/4 rhythm, but it consists of a constant triplet beat for the first 3 and 2/3rds beats of each measure. So many people mistook it for being a complex meter. It's such a simple beat, but the legato triplets are really effective
Dude, come to Bulgaria next. There are people here that would absolutely eat your music up.
Also, I have the feeling that even people who don't like traditional folk music (such as myself) still have a respect and a sort of natural understanding of it. Meaning that counting in 7,9,11 or 13 comes really naturally to many of us.
I know I definitely would be trying to headbang to your music if you decide to come here.
I'm Bosnian and I feel the same way about our traditional music, though I never learned to dance the kolo so I am kind of a bit of a failure lol I bet people better at it than me could dance kolo to their stuff 🤣
@@phelanii4444 Yeah, it makes sense that basically any person from the Balkans would feel a similar way. I believe Balkan music in general has a similar vibe with slight variation between smaller regions.
After all it doesn't matter where something originated from when there's so much cross-pollination in this region and everything influenced and continues to influence everything else.
I immediately thought about Balkan music.
Tuplet Chill. I have always thought it is a more descriptive name for this music. No matter how many notes are played it stills has a pulse of chill. Always good to see Adam.
When the world needed him most.
“BASS!!”
“REPETITION LEGITIMIZES X3”
Welcome back Adam Neely.
Came for for the geeky theory memes, stayed for Sungazer.
I’ve listen to Perihelion A LOT over the last few years. Hyped for the new album!
sungazer: but we wrote the song.
social media: wrong!!
A movie in a language I don’t/can’t speak - yet it’s interesting, yet I’m in to it, yet the dialogue is foreign to me - that’s my experience watching your videos, but I keep coming back, even though I just have no clue what you are talking about 😁
Omg Adam Neely just dropped a new video
i love the slow and fast hypertouplets when studying, i do math and physics, and when you are studying you are kind of just sitting there so you dont want danc emusic, but your brain is doing all these complicated things, and the fast pace touplets kind of reflect that, i have studied so much to your last album alraidy, thank you for making it i guess
its in A/A because you got A note, and then you got A nother note
1/1: Allow me to introduce myself
time signatures aren't real
I saw someone somewhere describe Sungazer as "Liminal Jazz" and I think that ambiguity described early on in the video (do i feel the fast bit or the slow bit?) is what contributes most to that. The melodies y'all write for Sungazer sort of soar over the beats sometimes while other times they lock in. It reminds me or Ligeti's Clocks and Clouds concept. Super inspiring on every level.
9:21 well repetition legitimizes
Literally was about to say the same thing but saw your comment already posted at the top of the comments section 😂
I think youtube is expirimenting with showing different comments at different points in the video
interesting. well *i* heard that repitition legitimizes 🤔 really makes you think
The transition at 9:39 is genius. Great video, this is some of your best work!
everything evolving to 3/4 was interesting to me because the older I get the more I find 3/4 or any meter felt in 3s to feel better than meters of 4
I'm not sure you get it in this genre of music, but I've played some "modern classical" where it's notated in 6/4, but it really feels like it's in 3/4, and I really don't at all understand why they chose to write it in 6 instead - it just makes multi-bar rests hard to count (unless you just give up and count twice as many bars in 3)
What you're talking about at 19:14 (shifting between different n-tuplets while keeping a constant pulse) is found in "Restless Boy" by Pain of Salvation. The end is basically a massive 4/4 groove alternating between quintuplets and septuplets. Really cool effect in my opinion
Shifting between 7- and 11-tuplets... *yawns in drum corps*
Shifting between 7- and 11-tuplets... *yawns in drum corps*
As a Maths teacher and musician I love that you mentioned subitising!
"If you've watched my channel for a while, I probably sound like a broken record"
repetition legitimizes
repetition legitimizes
repetition legitimizes
Been watching you for years and while I'm a failed musical theater kid, I'm now a LEGO adult. So...yeah, I liked seeing the bricks & minifigs. :)
there's something about your videos that shows me something. It really gives a way for the audience to _really_ connect with a song. It introduces a concept that is used in the song, introduces the story of the song, and introduces the song in a way that doesn't feel forced and doesn't feel like an ad, since we're learning something we wanted to learn anyways, and the song is just a good example. I always end up really feeling a song after watching a video like this. I think the first example of this from your videos for me (that I can remember) is Shubh Saran's Slip. It still vibes with me hard to this day
I fear mentioning this, because I know if people start using this as a means to promote themselves first, with the education second, it will begin to feel flat and soulless like so many advertising 'trends' and techniques. But I've noticed it for a while now and do really appreciate the way you do it
At the 11:17 section I was literally thinking, "wait that's like Martian mambo" and then he said it and I felt so smart
I once asked tosin abasi what his favourite time sig was and he said all their music was 4/4 with weird feels. This taught me lots about weird time signatures. Basically exactly what you're saying in this vid.
Music theory on this channel melts my brain, and its clear Adam and his band have mad skills, but I found it hard to groove to any this at all. Something about it makes my brain "itch" and it's somehow unsettling. Anyone else? Bueller?
I'm with you. I enjoy learning from Adam's videos, but I kinda perceive Sungazer's music like the auditory equivalent of ghost peppers -- too spicy to enjoy unadulterated. It needs some heavy cream to coat the tongue, metaphorically speaking.
I can vibe to it but I’m also a jazz guy so I’m used to the spice, so to speak.
I can understand it being too rhythmically confusing if you’re used to mostly 4/4, or other common odd time signatures like 3/4 and even 7/4.
Yeah, but the itch is nice! It's unfamiliar and surprising!
@@DeltaEntropy It's not so much that it's confusing, it just doesn't elicit an emotional response beyond an abstract appreciation for the obvious skill required to produce it. I hear it, but I don't feel it.
@@DeltaEntropyit's not that it's rhythmically confusing, it's that the subdivisions are too fast and too fine to be practically rhythm at all. Like he said in the video, the subdivisions tighter than 100ms cease to have any real rhythmic meaning.
I'm not confused, I know exactly what's happening. What's happening is rhythmic ambiguity. Free time over 4/4.
“I know if you’re familiar with my channel, I sound like a broken record at this point.”
No worries dude. Repetition legitimizes.
Adam Neely content drops are officially an event now
Every thing is in 4, just get comfortable moving your one around. Love this video!!! Thanks!
15-tuplets at 60bpm be like shooting speed into one arm and horse tranquilizer into the other one. 🤣🤣
Bflat got that mains hum vibe... not too surprising given how close it is to 60Hz. But couple that with the tone of the bass setup and it really feels like you're riffin on interference, I like it
If it helps you in any way with the self-respect: That 7:11 breakdown is justified simply for the fact that it absolutely slaps.
This video means a lot ot me. for over 20 years I have been wondering if it is possible to rewrite music in different time signature to 4/4. Now I know. I feel a sense of closure. TY
"I'm like a wide 4/4" is going to do gangbusters on my dating profile.
Thank you Adam. My respective loves for balkan music and experimental music theory have found a place to cohabit in your channel :))
Santa Clara Vanguard mentioned!
This rocks. I’m so happy to hear about musicians exploring this stuff!! I listen to “Bird on the wing” weekly! Nice stuff man.
0:55 ... civilians?
Ah yes, the civil folk
Yes 🙂
You heard him. 😂
The jazz troops at it again
What he means is "muggles"
I've always been a fan of making odds sound natural and work around 4/4 overall. Your work has been inspirational for sure. I usually try not to extend the same measure the whole song.
4:09 Meshuggah without distortion be like
There was a piece I played in high school concert band called “Undertow” by John Mackey. It has a very odd time that could be described as 15/8 or alternating bars of 7/8 and 4/4. For the notation, it has a time signature of “7/8+4/4”, and each bar has a soft measure break (represented by a dashed line) to indicate the two parts of the measure. It’s probably my favorite way to show the breakdown of time for the reader. 15/8 wouldn’t show the proper way to feel each bar, and constantly alternating would be far too busy on the page.
In that sense, the tune they showed at the beginning could be written in 44/16, with soft breaks every 11 sixteenths. That way the spirit of the 4/4 is preserved, but the subdivisions are made obvious.
I liked the image with 2 cops more than the image with 3 cops because it has less cops in it
? That's a mechanic, a security guard, and Some Guy tm
I love the confidence in arguing, to the musicians themselves, who are not only trained but also have degrees on music, that their music is in fact in a different time signature than they claim
“Jared Yi takes a massive…
saxophone solo”
I love the feel of 3/4 or 6/8 time signatures, especially when duplets are used, but a little known band called Signal Hill really loves their 8/8 and I've come to appreciate it. Gives a more narrative quality to music that a lot of music these days seems to be lacking. Two of their songs that come to mind are "Pacific Northwest" and "Standby, Sir."
The paradox of hypertuplets killing the momentum of a set is similar to something you get with extreme high-speed dance genres like splittercore. Sure, it’s supposed to be 1000+ bpm, but it just ends up feeling like a constant wall of 16th or 32nd note kicks. For my personal tastes, 250 bpm is roughly the maximum speed for constant 4/4 kicks before they all sound like subdivisions no matter the context.
That’s exactly what the music psychology research suggests! 240-250bpm is roughly the fastest embodied pulse.
As someone who has listened to a lot of speedcore and other fast music, i notice that a lot of well-made speedcore sounds fast because it still is fast. Despite the BPM being an unreasonable 880, there are a lot of musical cues that direct the listener towards a still-quite-fast 220 BPM. A song like Camellia's "Hello (BPM) 2021" still sounds lively and energetic because the other elements of the song reduce it to a more palatable tempo (just barely) of around 250. Other songs at such high tempos might not reinforce the human-scale tempo as well, resulting in what sounds like tempoless noise. On the other hand, this can actually work to the benefit of the song. One of my favorite extratone songs, "Singularity at 2.64e+6 BPM" by Kobaryo doesn't provide as many clues to reduce its massive BPM of 2,640,000, but instead uses the hyperspeed kick drums to create an incredibly high-pitched melody above a tranquil backing that doesnt sound like it has even a triple digit BPM, much less a SEVEN-digit one.
I'd say I feel it up to somewhere approaching 400. When I listen to speedcore that mostly just chills on a quarter note pulse in the 300-400 range, I find that while dancing to it presents practical challenges, I can "get in the groove" so to speak and I feel the quarter notes as a proper pulse unless the half or whole notes are heavily accented. It depends a lot on the instrumentation as well though; 320 BPM written for a rhythm game by some Japanese zoomer in 2019 sounds a lot different from 320 BPM written for ravers by some German hardcore producer in 2001.
Adam you are awesome in every way. Your music is awesome and your willingness to educate all of us is amazing. Plus the memes are fun, even if someone thinks it's unserious.
New Adam Neely WE EATING GOOD
As a person from the Balkans learning to play bass, I'd love a dive into Balkan music and rhythms, I never gave it much thought before this lol
68 missed calls from Tigran Hamasyan
In a way the stuff Sun Gazer plays harkens back to the fusion music of the late 60s and early 70s. This was the music that seriously expanded my mind about the art form. I was never great at it. But I LOVED to listen to it. You guys keep plowing away. We need more music likecthis
oh hey im in the adam neely video in 21:23
Adam the kind of guy who has to make a nearly 30 minute long video assuring his audience that the song he wrote is actually in 4/4
Incredibly inspiring as ever! I would challenge you on one thing (nothing to do with counting). The differentiation between 'meme' music and 'serious' music is I think a false dichotomy. As Christopher Small might say, the seriousness is in the quality of the shared musicking, and thus I would argue both 7:11 polyrhythms and Sungazer are equally 'serious'. Thanks again for the super thoughtful content Adam!
Love the groove of this track!! Great work, somehow I can’t stop hearing the 3 as 4 + 4 + 3 rather than 4 + 3 + 4