Discord: / discord :) he looks so genuinely troubled when he says its not in tune at all video suggestions: forms.gle/JpUF... • "Imagination Off the C... #jacobcollier
For non-musicians who might stumble upon this video and be confused, Jacob Collier here is essentially explaining the *INTENTIONAL* tuning discrepancies of a piano called "equal temperament" as opposed to "just intonation". Mathematically, it is only actually possible to tune to one musical "key" at a time (ex. A major). This is a problem for many reasons, but one of the main ones is that it takes a very long time to tune a piano. If you were to play one song in A major, then the next song you're meant to play is in C major, you would either have to spend hours re-tuning your piano, or roll out a completely new piano. This is, of course, completely impractical, so a system was designed where every note is very slightly "equally out of tune" with each other. Collier is saying that he instead wanted to approach must with "just intonation", which refers to tuning based off of "simple" ratios between notes (simple is relative... it gets complicated quickly). This is generally considered a bit more easy on the ear, and is a more traditional method of tuning. This is obviously an overly simplified explanation, and entire encyclopedias have been written on the principles of tuning instruments, but I hope it helps someone understand a bit more.
I think Paul Davids video on John Frusciante explains this problem very well. For people that want to learn more about it you should check it out, the video is laid out so even people without a lot of music theory knowledge can understand it :).
@@OzzieWozzieOriginal The cop-out answer is... it depends on the tuner! Most tuners I see are tuned equal temperament around A440 just like a piano, but some guitar tuners (especially cheap ones made by engineers who understand math but not music) are just intonation. Generally the tuner should tell you somewhere on it what temperament it uses (for example "A440/A432 calibration" would mean equal temperament), but higher quality tuners often have methods of switching between tuning methods. So TL;DR: yeah they're usually also out of tune ;) but sometimes with the option to fix that!
@@moomoocowsly Watch enough of his stuff closely enough and you'll see he really does have perfect pitch. The Moon River "making of" vid is an example. It's not a miracle. Rick Beato's son Dylan could identify all kinds of chords aged I think about six, there's at least one video of them doing it.
@@moomoocowsly I’m sure there’s some of that, he does come off with a bit of an ego but he also does have a pretty insane level of perfect pitch tbh, it’s not like it’s unheard of though
Does this mean that you could program a keyboard to play in just intonation? The keyboard would just tune itself to whatever key you’re playing in? (Of course you couldn’t modulate or play chromatically.)
@@johnlanou yes, most DAWs should allow the tuning to work like that, you could also build one using MAX/MSP or PureData (the freesource analog), there is always the digital audio dilemma regarding harmonics but most of the classic synths sounds we know today were built using different tuning systems !
@l o l other instruments are so easy to tune, it wouldn't be much of a problem. Most wind instruments are fine tuned multiple times through a performance (slight adjustments to mouthpiece and reed position are never ending realities of orchestral life. Guitars and nearly all strings are easy to tune. In fact I'd bet "concert tuning" with no piano present would probably be closer to key specific just intonation...
@l o l you are correct. I have the jargon all mixed up, it's been a while. I just mean, so much of the playing I did was sans piano, probably it made us do less equalizing while we refined our intonation.
@@troysmithfr If you knew for real you would know that there's no solution. If you had to play all the intervals of a melody with perfect ratios and then return to the root you would find that the root you ended on is not the same note you started from
@@Davide_LP That’s for instruments with a fixed set of notes. Anything with an arbitrary amount of precision could be written for in just intonation with no problem. Jacob has talked about retuning guitars in between takes, so the DAW essentially allows him to do this with fretted instruments as well. Most music doesn’t even involve key changes at this point and the home tone drifting by commas doesn’t bother me. Everything else is a matter of tooling and shared language, which are both getting better
@@Davide_LP Exactly this. Equal temperament is the best we've got to be able to play in all keys using a 12 tone system, so instruments basically have to use it. Imo, It's just something that we've gotta live with since 99% people don't even know it's out of tune. For people who do know about it, it's something we should work around. Drop in a little just intonation and maybe even totally different tuning systems here and there, similar to what Jacob does. Too much spice ruins the dish.
The human ear is pretty darn remarkable and Jacob got a pretty good pair. 30 years of tuning pianos for a living and only had one customer who could actually tell me when the partials were right for A4 without a reference point and be accurate within 2c- cents. Absolute pitch. She considered it a curse.
I'd consider it a curse. If you're focusing that hard on micropitch differences a normal human can't even discern well... you're kind of missing the point of music lol.
@Martin Baldwin-Edwards indeed.. I am German and our grammar is a little more complex then (than? Never get that right) English grammar is. When I form a complex sentence with a rarely used case, autocorrect tries to tell me it is wrong, even though it's perfectly right. Sometimes autocorrect doesn't even know a case modified word exists. And this has consequences on people's speech patterns, and writing styles. Germans now, speak and write way simpler than Germans 50 years ago. It's some weird degeneration of speech.
@@lloydaran I believe it's irony. The way I read it, he's saying "computers think they know better than me," but what is 'in tune' to a computer may be in fact out of tune using a different tuning system, like just intonation.
@Martin Baldwin-Edwards I'd like to offer a counter argument. Usually computer programmers don't put basic knowledge into their work. Programmers do just that, -they program. All the knowledge conveyed by their final work is provided by trained professionals in that field. Programmers who make software for MRI machines don't fill it with mediocre medical knowledge. While I for one keep autocorrect disabled as much as possible, I know for fact that it has been made with the help of linguists and people who are knowledgeable on the subject. There's a lot to say about this, but I believe it's important to remember that portraying emotion and expressing one's self are both matters inherently subjective and no amount of even expert knowledge will ever be able to fully represent everyone.
@@dieterjones7402 Yeah I'm not sure if the comment is a fundamental misunderstanding of the joke format, or if this is just a pseudo-joke where he wrote his otherwise bland comment in the mode of a popular joke format so people would recognize it and give it likes.
It is amazing, especially to someone who haven't heard the difference between pure and equal tempered thirds before. That said, a lot of people, even people reading this, could do the same demonstration Jacob does in this short video clip. Which is of course not to claim that we can do all of the amazing things that Jacob can do with his voice.
You can ONLY do it with your voice. No surprise there. He's going to become an Engineer next and wonder why nothing is ergonomically correct. From him, I would expect less than 1% off and then try to hear it. I'm well-aware that I'm way off by a dB let alone a pitch that should shut down music.
@@pierrelacazotte8376 You're making very little sense. I was referring to the fact that you would have a much easier time demonstrating this with a synth tuned perfectly, rather than a human voice which is not mathematically correct and works solely by instinct.
@@MiloMcCarthyMusic You're making little sense, but then again - you don't speak more than one language...english isn't that colorful which surprises me because if you're from Enland you speak what? English. If you're from the U.S., you speak American. Voice are tones, language world music -- if you want to, you can do that. Everyone would have to sing that way if you had to communicate that way - you learned it starting a long time ago.
"The human voice can be mathmatically correct NEVER only instinct" - Victor Wooten. He's right, I don't understand why people tell me that they can't understand jazz music in general because it's "too technical" Really? -- It's all about want you want to pursue.
Your mind could comprehend it if you studied tuning systems. Without that, yes, you likely won't figure it out on your own. Hundreds of years of musicians before you that you shouldn't disregard.
You can hear a slight wobble in the sound when he sings with the piano, this is what happens when you play two notes slightly out tune from one another. This guy is legit an alien.
By the way this is one of the reasons vibrato got into classical singing. They felt there is a gap and wanted to bridge it. And it's more forgiving, you can hide your intonation a little :) and listeners like it too, even as listeners we might feel it. Singers will sooner or later feel the mathematical relations.
@Martin Baldwin-Edwards I've noticed this too!! For some singers their vibratos are out of tune and don't match the accompanying music. I only recently learned I'm quite sensitive to microtones & intonation and I'm slowly teaching myself the technicalities of why my ears pick up that weird dissonance. Your comment helped me figure out another puzzle piece. One opera singer i respect because she has a strong vibrato that 90% of the time sounds correct and nice, is Sarah Brightman. There's a reason she's one of the greats. I think she can tell where to tune her voice up or down so the midpoint of her vibrato sits nicely on the music.
Actually each piano key produces a variety of different tones and notes, which are unique for each Piano. What happens is that your ear just picks up the dominant tone.
"How does no one know this stuff?" Actually, I feel like that is widely known! ...at least for vocalists and (fretless) stringed instruments etc. If we rehears in our vocal ensemble we never sing after the piano, especially not for those dirty equal temperament thirds. :P
I think he is speaking to those of us who make modal music using discrete, predetermined intervals… keys, frets, buttons etc. Especially people using grid based DAWs and sequencers. Most modern music tends to fall into this category. I like it, but things like Terry Riley’s Shri Camel are among my favorites. Most people are also self taught, as the last 25 years has seen many primary schools cut their arts educational programming. This just leads to a less informed, more rigid population, especially as most products are designed and geared towards creating 16 bar sequences in standard time with a consistent clock. I am not saying that is bad, though… It just leads to a predictable and repetitive track, and truth be told, dancing to trance music into the wee hours of the morning is a pretty satisfying experience, in a way that not many other genres can lay claim to… The best part about it is, now we all know because dude is on a mission to unlock music from the bonds of our programmatic musical overlords…
The irony is that Vincenzo Gallilei (father of the mathematician/astronomer) described it 500+ years ago and here Collier is trying to explain it at, checks notes, shakes head, MIT.
@@lbb2rfarangkiinok HI think Helton means the little dissonant resulting sounds when two very close but not equal frequencies are joined. I suppose that it's called "the beat" in some specific lingo.
It’s really simple, folks. Bach popularized the “well-tempered klavier” with his book of the same name which exploits the equal temperament by enabling us to play in every key. Moreover, in each key he travels to as far distant keys as aesthetically possible and back without any of them sounding bad. This means that when you play chamber music with piano or any other instrument which cannot adjust its pitch, you play in equal temperament. That is, you adjust to the piano. When you go back to playing with other instruments like your own which adjust easily in real time (strings, woodwinds, brass, voice, mainly) you can play “perfect” intonations, but you’ll be adjusting constantly, which is what we do. It requires practicing your pitch in various ways, but is quite doable for any good musician. It’s not rocket science. Actually, it’s acoustic science. But we just use our ears and learn how to make it work. It’s easy once you grasp it.
Its not about playing in every key, its about playing in every octave possible while still avoiding dissonance in melodic intervals. Im not sure if it was pythagorus, but a greek philosipher made an instrument using true equal temperement to try to prove that the universe held itself together mathematically and failed miraculously when he came across multiple intervals that would sound horrible together (the wolf interval i believe its called).
Choirs as well. They sing in just intonation, perfectly in tune for the key they are in, which can lead to some interesting effects, such as ending several cents higher or lower than they began, all simply because of the natural tendency to tune each chord justly. Across many chord changes, this can force the tonal center away from the original. Ironically, the only way to combat going out of tune is to sing [slightly] out of tune, on purpose.
@@obiwanda in my choir we literally practice singing various notes in the scale "sharp" or "flat" to actually formalise this. It is a matter of opinion what method of tuning sounds "better" or "worse", so obviously not everyone needs to do it, but it's still going to sound fine if you do sing "out of tune".
@@obiwanda Also interesting, choirs who don't use A440 tend to stay closer to in-tune than those who don't. It seems that there's something more natural about A434-436 that makes it easier to hold. Also, alot of those old cathedrals you find in europe were built to have natural resonance in them when singing, and some of them don't work as-designed at A440
I experienced this during a choir rehearsal: the conductor asked the piano player to play C and G (in equal temperament fifths are narrowed by 2 cents, so it's pretty much in tune) and asked altos to sing E. They sang it and tuned it and then the pianist played the tempered third. Same result :)
Jacob sounds slightly more than 14 cents off of that third here, that’s interesting. I think he exaggerated that clash to sound like a diesis so that the audience would get the idea
Yeah I mean 14 cents is barely enough of an audible difference for an untrained ear, and even for a musician as incredible is him that’s a pretty impossible tonal change to consistently replicate. Like I get he’s really good and all but he’s not superhuman, he can’t just tune in 156hz in his brain or some shit and produce that exact frequency.
@@dreamdrifter It was definitely sharp compared to his. As OP said though, sounded a bit more than 14 cents away from his note; it sounded off-puttingly sharp in comparison, and a difference of only 14 cents wouldn’t be THAT jarring.
@@stanleystanley6456 No, he can't "tune in" a specific frequency and he doesn't do that here... he sings a note in relation to the ones he is playing. And while it is indeed pretty hard to hear such small discrepancies between two notes, that is not the jarring effect audible here, it is the two nearly, but definitely not the same notes creating a vibrating effect. Try it with a browser frecuency generator or something, its quite clear.
The men sat with him have quite interesting reactions. When he speaks of something quite that bold, they have a conflicted and yet accepting relationship with what he’s putting forward. As just an onlooker; this man seems to have an awe-inspiring connection with sound waves and how they work.
I've always thought about this because it fascinates me. When I was playing music with some buddies and we thought about recording some songs we had I tried to look into tuning the guitars to fit better with the key we were playing in instead of just standard equal temperament tuning. We never ended up doing it but it still fascinates me.
Except, your frets are straight and “roughly” spaced, so this only holds for eg one chord at a time. In general, the piano is more in tune than a guitar due to the straight frets, so in practice the temperament problems of the piano are worse on guitar (look up “true temperament” for guitar). But sure, you Can retune for every chord 😄
Except you can’t actually change the temperament of the guitar, unless you are only playing open strings. You’d have to rescale the frets to be in tune with just intonation. Currently, basically all guitars are fretted to reflect the current system of equal temperament we all use. It’s a nice thought, and if you are playing very simple melodies and chord progressions you will hear just intonation as sounding more pure. But if you start to get into more advanced chromatic harmony everything would start to sound out of tune. The reason we have the 12 tone equal temperament scale is actually pretty genius; it allows us to modulate from one key to any other key and it will still sound in tune, hence the term equal temperament.
That's the cool thing with classical guitars: we can intonate by fretting a note and then push it down or up. Use it all the time at key points in the music (e.g. closing chord).
You can't bend a note down tho lol and the major third is sharp. Often people tune their G string slightly flat, so they can play the major thirds on there justly intimated and then just bend the G string "sharp" when playing other notes on it like a perfect fifth in relation to something below it
@@joshuagavaghan224 the only way to do it is bend the neck in, but that will bend every note flat if you’re playing a chord. Not to mention it’s not a quick easy motion like bending a string.
@Ryandal Gilmore applying force perpendicular to the neck can indeed only stretch the string. However you can apply a force parallel to the neck, towards the body to loosen the side of the string that produces sound and consequently lowering the pitch, or on the contrary towards the head, pulling and stretching the side of the string that produces sound, which will result in a higher pitched sound (but might as well push perpendicularly to the neck for a higher pitch).
people can learn how to do this, it's not superhuman or requiring Collier's obvious gifts, it's just about exposure to that particular interval and practice. he's just singing an interval (a justly intoned 3rd) and holding it against what comes out of the piano (an equally tempered 3rd) so you can hear the difference.
people depend so much on technology and computers to do everything. They forget that even with quantum computers being billions of times more powerful than top of the live gaming rigs, the human brain is still far more powerful. You have to remember that every thing happening in your body, is controlled by your brain. And you're only using no more than 5-7% of your brain's total capacity. Imagine if you could access 100% of it
Here he is explaining something called equal temperament. Western music uses 12 notes of equal distance apart. But with having each not equal in distance, each note is just slightly off. So in short, he sang the perfect third against the pianos third that is slightly out of tune. If he were to tune it then playing in other keys would very off, but he can use the perfect harmony when singing because the tuned notes will not clash with other notes.
Jazz is not possible without equal temperament. Going beyond equal temperament is not bad. Musicians have been trying all the time. There is no need to shit on our roots, but grow beyond. "O Freunde, nicht diese Töne! Sondern laßt uns angenehmere anstimmen und freudenvollere. ". That's the attitude.
hes not shitting on anything, clearly hes been asked a question about his singing and he shared his story about learning of equal temperament vs just intonation
@@ghujdvbts If you're very good, you feel the differences, I don't. it's like singing. But mostly you stick to the other instrument's tunings. You will notice that string players very often use vibrato to bridge the gap and also to cover up initial minute pitch glitches.
Nope. There's a group of people obsessed with purity, sometimes it's political, sometimes it's how to tune a FUCKING piano... but in whatever way it manifests those people can't just enjoy life, shit's always got to be a problem. A problem no one but them can even detect. The closest I can even get to this level of scrutiny is probably 60hz strobing from LEDs and fluorescent lights... it's mildly annoying. If I had that level of give a shit about every little thing in life I probably would've ended myself by now lol.
The piano is equally by out of tune in all keys so that it can give the illusion of being in tune when one modulates to other keys. If some key centers were slightly more in tune the listener would hear the discrepancy. The illusion would be lost.
@@greyhound9967 Yikes. Pretentious much. Is your world view really that narrow that you cant see why people find jacob absolutely mind blowing...? Also, steve vai is FAR from the most technical guitarist...
"You guys know this because Pythagoras figured it out" I hate it when people say stuff like this. Just because you understand a concept doesn't mean you can automatically apply it to every single application immediately.
When you think about it, equal temperament is such a mind-bogglingly brilliant innovation. Whoever first thought of it, and did the complex calculations of how to achieve it, was a genius. Without it, any piece of music you can name that involves non-digital musical instruments, that isn’t 100% diatonic (aka really boring), couldn’t exist. That includes most classical music, all of jazz, and most contemporary music.
@@buckylove6918 Well, it took them a hell of a long time to figure it out. It’s not complex when you can use modern electronic technology to determine exact frequencies.
@@buckylove6918 it is complicated if the concept hadn't yet been conceived of in a time without calculators. Would you have figured it out? I doubt it.
Just intonation long precedes digital music and equal temperament. Any non-fretted string instrument can do it simply by shifting position on the finger board (and most classical musicians do this) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_temperament Also, this isn't a diatonic/chromatic difference. The chord that Jacob played in the video was diatonic (G major). The point is that just intonation/equal temperament affects all chords
@@ryangrose1481 What? Just intonation exists in nature. So, obviously it precedes digital technology and equal temperament. What does that have to do with anything? Whether a chord can be described as chromatic or diatonic depends entirely on its relation to other chords played alongside it. So a chord played in isolation (like Collier’s G chord) is neither. Well, I guess you could call it diatonic because its obviously in the same key as itself, but that’s pretty meaningless. Chromaticism is impossible on a piano tuned to just intonation. I overstated the case to suggest NO chromaticism was possible, in instrumental music prior to digital instruments, without equal temperament, because as you say fret-less stringed instruments, like vocals, can achieve it with just intonation. But it is impossible for other sorts of instruments, and the very complex chromaticism that is now commonplace in music would never have emerged without equal temperament.
Sorry everyone, if you can hear the difference in pitch he's much flatter than he is saying. He isn't actually singing a consistent pitch; in fact when he includes the B (major 3rd and yes I have perfect pitch) he lowers his note to make it seem more out of tune.
Quick Science Explanation: The frequencies he plays on the piano are a multiple of 2^(4/12) = 1.25992 apart ("Equal Tempermant") since a major third is 4 half steps and there are 12 half steps in an octave He sings frequencies a multiple of 5/4 = 1.25 apart which sounds nicer to the ear. ("Just Intonation") The "14 cents" he's referring to is 2^(4/12) / 1.25 is approximately 2^(0.14/12)
Jacob Collier: "So I strive to sing more in tune." Also Jacob Collier in his Moon River video: "So this chord does not exist because I'm singing in microtones."
That's so interesting ... I always thought that some notes sound out of tune in piano chords to my ear ... I thought I was crazy, but that makes sense now!
The problem is, people at Bach's time knew this and figured it out already. There is no perfect way to tune an instrument, it deoends where you aim at and if you want to play together or not. Singers might never have invented the piano, that's why it surfaced so late.
@@AndreasDelleske Yeah all the hype around all this is killing me, it's such common knowledge amongst musicians. I'm missing the rest of the context from the video, but if this is all he said I'd swear he's just overinflating is self-ego by implying that this is some thing he just discovered and is the way of the future.
I also figured out equal temperament as a teenager, and it was exactly those two notes - G and B just below middle C, that made me understand it. Before digital tuners, tuning up a guitar by ear was pretty challenging, especially to get the G and B just out enough to make the rest sort of play in tune-ish...
The fuck I believe he's not only has a perfect pitch, but he also has a perfect frequency that allows him to detect the accuracy of pitch-shifting in microtonal's semitone. Maybe his accuracy is more than your digital tuner.
Yeah, the problem is nothing can play in just intonation except non-fretted instruments or maybe a trombone. But then, it would not be exact either. The real problem comes with the sharps vs flats and whether they're ascending or descending. Someone once tried to make a piano that was tuned in just intonation and it literally had different sharps and flats depending on which direction you were measuring your distance. It's kinda crazy. I spent years trying to reconcile this in composition and realized it's just not possible.
I'm not sure where he's coming from with the idea that this isn't known. It's common knowledge to every classically trained musician on earth, especially vocalists and violinists. Your voice actually naturally wants to sing the 'perfect third' as opposed to equal temperament third. It's also extremely common for harpsichordists and organists playing early music to have instruments tuned in a variety of temperaments. I'm not going to attempt to explain it as the pinned post has done a way better job than I could ever do.
he basicly learnd music theory from the internet, so he thinks he is a smartass when figures out some basics that they teach on 1st year of music theory
It’s obvious when he sings the “correct” pitch and then plays the “out of tune” piano key against it (we all can hear the clash between the notes 14 cents apart) but OMG it’s so much harder to perform than he makes it look.
It's not very hard at all...it just takes a little practice...if you can sing on pitch you'd probably be able to sing a pure major third in no time. I can do it..and if I can almost anyone else can too.
@@killboybands1 its not the being able to recite it, it's being able to pull that note perfectly out of the air without having to compare it to something else like people without perfect pitch do. It's not like he played the key a bunch of times first and just went flat a little, he was humming it already and then worked up to it on the keys
When I was younger, My uncle explained this to me by telling me about the harmonics you hear in piano notes. Like... if you listen very very closely to a real piano, you'll hear other pitches in a single key press. Like the Note C has a B or B flat in the harmonics, I'm not sure which one but yeah, it's there... but then if you play your tuned B or B flat and compare it to the harmonic B in your C note, it isn't the same pitch, it's a few cents out. Just so happens that Jacob Collier is so good he can sing perfectly in pitch by just instinct because he's a fucking mad man, but there you go.
I think he’s saying that ”the right” frequency of tuning that note in harmony with the others in a piano is wrong. He was talking about all pianos and the tuning system behind them, even electronic ones, not only the one in the room. Hope you understood somehow
It’s called perfect pitch, and Perfect pitch is not the epitome of all musicianship. He’s talented, but I can name 30 other pianists or concert pianists who have true musicianship. Jacob is for the pop stars.
the uncomfortable fidgeting as everyone realizes they're not deep enough into their craft to know if he's right or wrong, so they'll have to just sit and watch...
I can tell I got very very used to the equal temperament over the years, because when he sang his major third, I could hear it was "too low" for my taste :p (And yes, he plays the major third on the piano first, so we can compare very quickly what he sings to the equal temperament)
@Martin Baldwin-Edwards That is very interesting! I hear what you say. The closest thing I play or listen to, to a natural horn, is an irish whistle, and its tuning is just too dependant on the craftmanship of the maker. I can tell that equal temperament, as in the piano tuning, is the temperament I'm most used to, because of fretted stringed instruments, synthesizers and virtual instruments, which are often re-tuned to equal temperament. And I could argue that these instruments make up for the most everyday music that is being produced these days, pop music, electronic music, rock music. So, that would be why I'm more used to equal temperament, and you're used to other temperaments because of your experience with other types of instruments?
Easy demonstration for anyone with a guitar: Tune the top and bottom strings on your guitar to exactly the same E/e' pitch. Strike the harmonic over the 4th fret on the lowest string, E--it will sound as a pure (tempered) third over the open string, a b' natural. Now play, against that, the 4th fret on the 1st string. That will be an equal temperament b'. Here's your chance to compare the two. Only one is a real third. You will also notice the harmonic node isn't directly over the fret but a little closer to the nut. That is the distance of the 14 cents in his description of the problem.
I saw this video 2 years ago and it made no sense. Today I learned I can do it on piano. This will either start driving me crazy or I will start to use it somehow. It’s super cool though and now I know why in the past I couldn’t find the note that was in my head because it seemed in between somehow. I probably needed this 30 years ago, but at least I have it now. Thanks for posting!
Not every piano we play will be perfect. Not every meal we eat will be delicious. Not every person we meet will be friendly. But is that really so important? Just enjoy the music, food, and fellowship.
Brass players in a section constantly do this. We manually tune every note we play and have the freedom to generate the ‘correctly’ tuned intervals to our section.
That's the main reason I always liked to play 2nd more than 1st. I have pretty good ears and could adjust very quickly to whatever 1st is currently playing/struggeling. I'm also horrible at technical pieces, so a more "melodic" 2nd line is way more fun.
@@pysaumont I have to be honest, in a big band I never listened down to the bass for tuning, I just tune to my section. If I were playing trio with bass, would lock into that.
Here’s a video explaining this: ruclips.net/video/1Hqm0dYKUx4/видео.html It’s mathematically impossible to tune a piano perfectly-all pianos are very slightly out of tune. Edit: If you’re interested in the maths surrounding this, here’s another great video that’s a bit slower and explained better than the one above: ruclips.net/video/cyW5z-M2yzw/видео.html
As many of you know, just intonations sound well only in the one key an instrument was tuned, but prevent transposition as their inherent inconsistencies make them sound awful in other keys. Equal temperament, on the other hand, is a compromise where every interval between non-equivalent tones is out of tune. This allows free transposition as it sounds just as bad in one key as in any other key. But what you might not know is this: Equal temperament is NOT the best compromise. It’s just the one which was historically found centuries ago and used ever since. But this has just changed! The book MUSICAL TONALITY by Hans-Peter Deutsch (DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.4452394, also published on ResearchGate) determines the one, unique intonation which, in a strict mathematical sense, best adheres to the physics of overtones while allowing full transpositional freedom. So, after centuries of enduring either the inconsistencies of historical just intonations or the irrationality of equal temperament, the truly optimal intonation for the western tone structure has finally been found. In this optimal tone system, which is called CLEANTONE TEMPERAMENT, all thirds, fifths, sevenths, etc., and therefore all chords (which are stacks of thirds) sound clean above each and every tone, in every key. For example, a major third is always exactly 5/4, a minor third always 6/5, a perfect fifth always 3/2, a minor seventh always 9/5, a major ninth is 9/4, etc., over each and every base tone, in each and every key! In fact, half of all diatonic intervals have their justest possible frequency ratios - and the intonation is still consistent. The book also develops detailed designs for new instruments, called CLEANTONE KEYBOARDS, which make full use of the new tone system. Just like any musical entity (an interval, a chord, or a melody) has the same sound above any tone in cleantone temperament, it also has the same form above any key on a cleantone keyboard: The keyboard is ISOMORPHIC. And since cleantone keyboards, just like cleantone temperament, are mathematical consequences of the physics of euphony, the geometric arrangements of keys on these keyboard directly correspond to harmonic relationships: The closer keys are on the keyboard, the closer their tones are harmonically. This not only makes playing but also understanding music very intuitive. To summarize: Not only does music in cleantone temperament sound just and pure in every key, it is also easier to understand and perform when using the corresponding cleantone keyboards. All this while allowing full compositional and transpositional freedom. To anyone with experience in musical tuning systems, this might sound almost too good to be true. But it is all real in cleantone temperament, mathematically proven in the publication. You might want to check it out. It might change your life.
There's really a lot of potential reasons, but I'd guess the most likely one is just being nervous and having something to comfort yourself. Personally I sometimes will rub my legs when I'm stressed out. But then again, I am autistic, so your mileage may vary.
It's a pacifying behavior linked to nervousness, he feels uncomfortable and exposed being on stage, in fact every guy up there exhibits body language characteristic of uncomfort.
Yeah, except that he's not singing what he claims. He's singing way more than 14 cents under the piano pitch to get that clash. Over half a semitone, in fact.
@@cadwronny I agree that it's not obvious, but I checked the beats on audacity to be sure before commenting. Try listening carefully and ignoring the piano pitch. You will hear that he is indeed close to a minor third.
@@roadwarrior1981 Haha kinda, although I'm sure the audience have, for all ordinary purposes, reasonable aural skills😂 the problem is that very few people have aural skills good enough to reliably identify intervals on the order of 1/10th of a semitone. That's right at the limit of human pitch perception, so who's gonna say he's wrong? But I'm not necessarily suggesting that Jacob is being deliberately dishonest here. It's just that in the absence of explicit training and testing it's easy to think you are able to perceive things reliably that you actually cannot. Part of the problem here is that that the more you approach the limit, the more your honest judgments are inadvertently wrong. For example, consider a pitch discrimination test in which you have to say whether a pair of tones is ascending or descending. I have found that even when I can reliably distinguish the direction, the short term effect of practicing such a test is that intervals far less than half a semitone begin to register in my mind as full semitones. For example, a change of 20 cents up would begin to take on the subjective qualities of a full semitone (100 cents) up. If I didn't know any better I might well have mistakenly concluded that I had actually heard a semitone. I'm sure there are all sorts of similar effects leading to errors of this nature.
'Out of tune' in an incorrect phrase. And the major is third is not 14 cents too high. The upper note of the third is 'stretched', making the interval 14 cents larger than a 'pure' third, where the coincident harmonics of the two notes of the interval are not beating. He clearly understands this, but berating equal temperament is not the way to get the point across.
the piano is "in tune" to equal temperament he's just saying that it's not justly in tune, in terms of what you would sing or play on a string instrument.
A just M3 is not that far off on the piano, as soon as he hits B on the piano he goes flat, exaggerating the effect. Look at it in a spectrogram and it's very clear.
I was wondering if anyone ever took the time to check with a spectrogram if he's right or not. The number of people that take him to be correct without checking is unreal.
Fretless and wind instruments are best as you can always adjust intonation in the moment. As you develop your ear you start to adjust naturally and you will play in tune in every key every time. Piano and guitar are the only permanently out of tune instruments I can think of in western music. Everything else is easy to adjust notes as you play
Modern music composition is like a Yu-Gi-Oh tournament with one standardized deck for every player. The vast majority of musical space is devoid of human footprints. Most of a trading card game happens before the tournament, with the careful building of one's deck. Music used to be the same way. A composer would choose the temperament before anything else. I look forward to a future in which temperament is once again a musical tool available to all musicians, along with quarter-tones.
For non-musicians who might stumble upon this video and be confused, Jacob Collier here is essentially explaining the *INTENTIONAL* tuning discrepancies of a piano called "equal temperament" as opposed to "just intonation". Mathematically, it is only actually possible to tune to one musical "key" at a time (ex. A major). This is a problem for many reasons, but one of the main ones is that it takes a very long time to tune a piano. If you were to play one song in A major, then the next song you're meant to play is in C major, you would either have to spend hours re-tuning your piano, or roll out a completely new piano. This is, of course, completely impractical, so a system was designed where every note is very slightly "equally out of tune" with each other.
Collier is saying that he instead wanted to approach must with "just intonation", which refers to tuning based off of "simple" ratios between notes (simple is relative... it gets complicated quickly). This is generally considered a bit more easy on the ear, and is a more traditional method of tuning.
This is obviously an overly simplified explanation, and entire encyclopedias have been written on the principles of tuning instruments, but I hope it helps someone understand a bit more.
but at least octaves are tuned well :)
Great read, thank you
I think Paul Davids video on John Frusciante explains this problem very well. For people that want to learn more about it you should check it out, the video is laid out so even people without a lot of music theory knowledge can understand it :).
so practically what does that mean to a student musician? Are those electronic tuners also out of tune then??
@@OzzieWozzieOriginal The cop-out answer is... it depends on the tuner! Most tuners I see are tuned equal temperament around A440 just like a piano, but some guitar tuners (especially cheap ones made by engineers who understand math but not music) are just intonation. Generally the tuner should tell you somewhere on it what temperament it uses (for example "A440/A432 calibration" would mean equal temperament), but higher quality tuners often have methods of switching between tuning methods.
So TL;DR: yeah they're usually also out of tune ;) but sometimes with the option to fix that!
people check their voice with the piano, jacob checks the piano with his voice
jacob:
well, well, well..
how the turntables
jacob built different
@@moomoocowsly Watch enough of his stuff closely enough and you'll see he really does have perfect pitch. The Moon River "making of" vid is an example. It's not a miracle. Rick Beato's son Dylan could identify all kinds of chords aged I think about six, there's at least one video of them doing it.
@@moomoocowsly I’m sure there’s some of that, he does come off with a bit of an ego but he also does have a pretty insane level of perfect pitch tbh, it’s not like it’s unheard of though
😂😂😂
If anybody is wondering, the reason he says "you guys know this" is because he is speaking at MIT.
Does this mean that you could program a keyboard to play in just intonation? The keyboard would just tune itself to whatever key you’re playing in? (Of course you couldn’t modulate or play chromatically.)
@@johnlanou yes, most DAWs should allow the tuning to work like that, you could also build one using MAX/MSP or PureData (the freesource analog), there is always the digital audio dilemma regarding harmonics but most of the classic synths sounds we know today were built using different tuning systems !
@l o l other instruments are so easy to tune, it wouldn't be much of a problem. Most wind instruments are fine tuned multiple times through a performance (slight adjustments to mouthpiece and reed position are never ending realities of orchestral life. Guitars and nearly all strings are easy to tune. In fact I'd bet "concert tuning" with no piano present would probably be closer to key specific just intonation...
@l o l you are correct. I have the jargon all mixed up, it's been a while. I just mean, so much of the playing I did was sans piano, probably it made us do less equalizing while we refined our intonation.
@l o l and there was often a theme in our repertoire so the tendency would be to pitch for they key we were in.
jacob: yar fookin 14 cents out of tune
piano: yes chef sorry chef
😂🤣😂🤣😭
Chyoon*
First time I've seen the word yar on youtube
lol
Yuu donkay
Jacob has converted us to join in his conspiracy against equal temperament.
I was already well aware of it. This is precisely what I hate about most instruments.
@@troysmithfr If you knew for real you would know that there's no solution. If you had to play all the intervals of a melody with perfect ratios and then return to the root you would find that the root you ended on is not the same note you started from
@@Davide_LP I'm aware of that, I never said I didn't deal with it lmao.
@@Davide_LP That’s for instruments with a fixed set of notes. Anything with an arbitrary amount of precision could be written for in just intonation with no problem. Jacob has talked about retuning guitars in between takes, so the DAW essentially allows him to do this with fretted instruments as well. Most music doesn’t even involve key changes at this point and the home tone drifting by commas doesn’t bother me. Everything else is a matter of tooling and shared language, which are both getting better
@@Davide_LP Exactly this. Equal temperament is the best we've got to be able to play in all keys using a 12 tone system, so instruments basically have to use it.
Imo, It's just something that we've gotta live with since 99% people don't even know it's out of tune. For people who do know about it, it's something we should work around. Drop in a little just intonation and maybe even totally different tuning systems here and there, similar to what Jacob does. Too much spice ruins the dish.
Piano ever so slightly out of tune... Guitar: Hold my beer
hold my lost pick
Hold my frets
after I smash my guitar into pieces.
Guitar: hold my g string 😂
Hold my tuner pegs...
No wait give them back
What Jacob was trying to say is that equal tempered intervals are out of tune compared to Just Intonation
It's not out of tune, it just has yet to find the right context.
~jazz~
Brilliant
That was way out of context
There's a difference between saying that something is out of tune and saying that it's wrong
Nice flag
The fact that he can sing the right tune next to the untuned note is just stunning
My girlfriend hits those noes after about 4 glasses of wine, nothing clever, except he does it on purpose 🤣
is stunning... you mean it stuning. its tuning
I've heard, that people with perfect pitch are actually less likely to create music.
This makes musicians with perfect pitch all the more special.
Perfect pitch can do that for ya
Not so stunning if you practice singing with pure/just intonation. See WA Mathieu, Harmonic Experience. :)
Being able to modulate sure is fun though.
Great point. Then again Jacob modulates to G half sharp in one of his pieces, if I recall correctly. =D
But you lose out on all the intricate tones and moods of each key *actually* sounding different to one another!
@@sammy3212321 your understanding of this is wrong
@@sammy3212321 in Jacob’s method, each interval is the same in every key, just shifted up or down in pitch
exactly haha
The human ear is pretty darn remarkable and Jacob got a pretty good pair. 30 years of tuning pianos for a living and only had one customer who could actually tell me when the partials were right for A4 without a reference point and be accurate within 2c- cents. Absolute pitch. She considered it a curse.
curse & blessings
Fortunately you’ll lose it when you get older
I'd consider it a curse. If you're focusing that hard on micropitch differences a normal human can't even discern well... you're kind of missing the point of music lol.
@@demiiiii worse, it slides down the scale
Jacob has it as well apparently
“I’ve had to disregard computers for knowing better than I did.” Well that’s my reassurance against the robot apocalypse for the day.
@Martin Baldwin-Edwards indeed..
I am German and our grammar is a little more complex then (than? Never get that right) English grammar is.
When I form a complex sentence with a rarely used case, autocorrect tries to tell me it is wrong, even though it's perfectly right.
Sometimes autocorrect doesn't even know a case modified word exists.
And this has consequences on people's speech patterns, and writing styles. Germans now, speak and write way simpler than Germans 50 years ago.
It's some weird degeneration of speech.
amazing isn't he. I want to be him when i grow up.......problem is I'm already near double his age.
Doesn't that sentence mean computers know more than he does?
@@lloydaran I believe it's irony. The way I read it, he's saying "computers think they know better than me," but what is 'in tune' to a computer may be in fact out of tune using a different tuning system, like just intonation.
@Martin Baldwin-Edwards I'd like to offer a counter argument. Usually computer programmers don't put basic knowledge into their work. Programmers do just that, -they program. All the knowledge conveyed by their final work is provided by trained professionals in that field. Programmers who make software for MRI machines don't fill it with mediocre medical knowledge. While I for one keep autocorrect disabled as much as possible, I know for fact that it has been made with the help of linguists and people who are knowledgeable on the subject.
There's a lot to say about this, but I believe it's important to remember that portraying emotion and expressing one's self are both matters inherently subjective and no amount of even expert knowledge will ever be able to fully represent everyone.
I don't understand what he's saying but I'm impressed anyway
Andrew Huang's video on the harmonic series might help you understand it.
He says beautiful things about climate change.
@@nataliezementbeisser1492 lmao
@@GoranAmadeus1337 Exactly!
@@nataliezementbeisser1492 based
"Every note can be played with every chord." -Jacob Collier
Also "Every piano is out of tune."
How is that a contradiction?
@@dieterjones7402 Yeah I'm not sure if the comment is a fundamental misunderstanding of the joke format, or if this is just a pseudo-joke where he wrote his otherwise bland comment in the mode of a popular joke format so people would recognize it and give it likes.
🤓
Jacob Collier is the only person who does not have an ego
We all know this, but it was absolutely amazing that he was able to demonstrate that with his voice
It is amazing, especially to someone who haven't heard the difference between pure and equal tempered thirds before. That said, a lot of people, even people reading this, could do the same demonstration Jacob does in this short video clip. Which is of course not to claim that we can do all of the amazing things that Jacob can do with his voice.
You can ONLY do it with your voice. No surprise there. He's going to become an Engineer next and wonder why nothing is ergonomically correct. From him, I would expect less than 1% off and then try to hear it. I'm well-aware that I'm way off by a dB let alone a pitch that should shut down music.
@@pierrelacazotte8376 You're making very little sense. I was referring to the fact that you would have a much easier time demonstrating this with a synth tuned perfectly, rather than a human voice which is not mathematically correct and works solely by instinct.
@@MiloMcCarthyMusic You're making little sense, but then again - you don't speak more than one language...english isn't that colorful which surprises me because if you're from Enland you speak what? English. If you're from the U.S., you speak American. Voice are tones, language world music -- if you want to, you can do that. Everyone would have to sing that way if you had to communicate that way - you learned it starting a long time ago.
"The human voice can be mathmatically correct NEVER only instinct" - Victor Wooten. He's right, I don't understand why people tell me that they can't understand jazz music in general because it's "too technical" Really? -- It's all about want you want to pursue.
That is absolutely insane, my mind cannot comprehend this, jacob keeps impressing me
I think he meant that one of the notes in the triad chord is out of tune. Idk what he just said too lmao
lmao I just saw your comment on Jack Pop's video and now here
Check out videos about equal temperament tuning, you will understand
Your mind could comprehend it if you studied tuning systems. Without that, yes, you likely won't figure it out on your own. Hundreds of years of musicians before you that you shouldn't disregard.
Its really not complex
"The piano is not out of tune, it just lacks confidence"
You can hear a slight wobble in the sound when he sings with the piano, this is what happens when you play two notes slightly out tune from one another.
This guy is legit an alien.
By the way this is one of the reasons vibrato got into classical singing. They felt there is a gap and wanted to bridge it. And it's more forgiving, you can hide your intonation a little :) and listeners like it too, even as listeners we might feel it.
Singers will sooner or later feel the mathematical relations.
100% an alien! :)
@Martin Baldwin-Edwards I've noticed this too!! For some singers their vibratos are out of tune and don't match the accompanying music. I only recently learned I'm quite sensitive to microtones & intonation and I'm slowly teaching myself the technicalities of why my ears pick up that weird dissonance. Your comment helped me figure out another puzzle piece.
One opera singer i respect because she has a strong vibrato that 90% of the time sounds correct and nice, is Sarah Brightman. There's a reason she's one of the greats. I think she can tell where to tune her voice up or down so the midpoint of her vibrato sits nicely on the music.
Actually each piano key produces a variety of different tones and notes, which are unique for each Piano. What happens is that your ear just picks up the dominant tone.
@Martin Baldwin-Edwards Maybe, but it is still interesting. Learned while tuning my piano and seeing the sound frequencies on the computer.
it's not out of tune it's just a ✨✨jazz piano✨✨
hmm pretty accurate actually
... No... its just equal temperament just like all keyboard instruments in order to play in all keys...
But I digress, enjoy your silly jape.
@@andyjacobs7010 you actually did it. You killed the joke.
@@nathandrums0 nahh, the joke was already dead.
@@andyjacobs7010 damn bro went serious mode 😭
This makes a lot of cents.
Sono dac(chord)o con te
ha
Does it? Does it???
Only 14
@@docmansound1 ...and 14 cents, that's around a 7'th of a dollar. Probably a $Maj7 ... or maby a $m7
"How does no one know this stuff?"
Actually, I feel like that is widely known! ...at least for vocalists and (fretless) stringed instruments etc.
If we rehears in our vocal ensemble we never sing after the piano, especially not for those dirty equal temperament thirds. :P
We also do this in our band rehearsals!
I think he is speaking to those of us who make modal music using discrete, predetermined intervals… keys, frets, buttons etc. Especially people using grid based DAWs and sequencers.
Most modern music tends to fall into this category. I like it, but things like Terry Riley’s Shri Camel are among my favorites.
Most people are also self taught, as the last 25 years has seen many primary schools cut their arts educational programming. This just leads to a less informed, more rigid population, especially as most products are designed and geared towards creating 16 bar sequences in standard time with a consistent clock.
I am not saying that is bad, though… It just leads to a predictable and repetitive track, and truth be told, dancing to trance music into the wee hours of the morning is a pretty satisfying experience, in a way that not many other genres can lay claim to…
The best part about it is, now we all know because dude is on a mission to unlock music from the bonds of our programmatic musical overlords…
The irony is that Vincenzo Gallilei (father of the mathematician/astronomer) described it 500+ years ago and here Collier is trying to explain it at, checks notes, shakes head, MIT.
This is why in chamber choir you try to avoid relying on the piano to give you a harmony: you should be able to do better than the piano.
Depends on the choir :)
I sang in madrigal choir and we tuned with a pitchpipe.
You can actually hear the beat between his voice and the piano note, even in the short duration that they overlap... Astonishing.
The beat?
@@lbb2rfarangkiinok He's beatboxing
@@lbb2rfarangkiinok how the two notes beat against each other i would guess
@@lbb2rfarangkiinok HI think Helton means the little dissonant resulting sounds when two very close but not equal frequencies are joined. I suppose that it's called "the beat" in some specific lingo.
@@lbb2rfarangkiinok yeah, "beat" in the sense of an interference pattern between two close frequencies
It’s really simple, folks. Bach popularized the “well-tempered klavier” with his book of the same name which exploits the equal temperament by enabling us to play in every key. Moreover, in each key he travels to as far distant keys as aesthetically possible and back without any of them sounding bad. This means that when you play chamber music with piano or any other instrument which cannot adjust its pitch, you play in equal temperament. That is, you adjust to the piano. When you go back to playing with other instruments like your own which adjust easily in real time (strings, woodwinds, brass, voice, mainly) you can play “perfect” intonations, but you’ll be adjusting constantly, which is what we do. It requires practicing your pitch in various ways, but is quite doable for any good musician. It’s not rocket science. Actually, it’s acoustic science. But we just use our ears and learn how to make it work. It’s easy once you grasp it.
"Well-tempered" is not equal tempered
Its not about playing in every key, its about playing in every octave possible while still avoiding dissonance in melodic intervals.
Im not sure if it was pythagorus, but a greek philosipher made an instrument using true equal temperement to try to prove that the universe held itself together mathematically and failed miraculously when he came across multiple intervals that would sound horrible together (the wolf interval i believe its called).
@@dartmansam10 True, that's Pythagoras.
I understand this, but no, it's not simple, at all.
That is why a good string quartet playing a triad sounds so rich and deep, because they play the thirds in tune.
Choirs as well. They sing in just intonation, perfectly in tune for the key they are in, which can lead to some interesting effects, such as ending several cents higher or lower than they began, all simply because of the natural tendency to tune each chord justly. Across many chord changes, this can force the tonal center away from the original.
Ironically, the only way to combat going out of tune is to sing [slightly] out of tune, on purpose.
@@obiwanda in my choir we literally practice singing various notes in the scale "sharp" or "flat" to actually formalise this. It is a matter of opinion what method of tuning sounds "better" or "worse", so obviously not everyone needs to do it, but it's still going to sound fine if you do sing "out of tune".
Or literally any wind/string instrument/voice that is properly accounting for just intonation.
@@obiwanda Also interesting, choirs who don't use A440 tend to stay closer to in-tune than those who don't. It seems that there's something more natural about A434-436 that makes it easier to hold.
Also, alot of those old cathedrals you find in europe were built to have natural resonance in them when singing, and some of them don't work as-designed at A440
I experienced this during a choir rehearsal: the conductor asked the piano player to play C and G (in equal temperament fifths are narrowed by 2 cents, so it's pretty much in tune) and asked altos to sing E. They sang it and tuned it and then the pianist played the tempered third. Same result :)
“Disregard what computers know” funny.
Jacob sounds slightly more than 14 cents off of that third here, that’s interesting. I think he exaggerated that clash to sound like a diesis so that the audience would get the idea
Yeah I mean 14 cents is barely enough of an audible difference for an untrained ear, and even for a musician as incredible is him that’s a pretty impossible tonal change to consistently replicate. Like I get he’s really good and all but he’s not superhuman, he can’t just tune in 156hz in his brain or some shit and produce that exact frequency.
THEN JACOB IS THE HOAX
spread the word
Plus he said the piano is 14 cents too high, but that third sounded flat against his. IT'S ALL A LIE
@@dreamdrifter It was definitely sharp compared to his. As OP said though, sounded a bit more than 14 cents away from his note; it sounded off-puttingly sharp in comparison, and a difference of only 14 cents wouldn’t be THAT jarring.
@@stanleystanley6456 No, he can't "tune in" a specific frequency and he doesn't do that here... he sings a note in relation to the ones he is playing. And while it is indeed pretty hard to hear such small discrepancies between two notes, that is not the jarring effect audible here, it is the two nearly, but definitely not the same notes creating a vibrating effect. Try it with a browser frecuency generator or something, its quite clear.
The men sat with him have quite interesting reactions. When he speaks of something quite that bold, they have a conflicted and yet accepting relationship with what he’s putting forward. As just an onlooker; this man seems to have an awe-inspiring connection with sound waves and how they work.
Don’t mean to change your mind but for classical musicians this is basic stuff
That's one of guitar's advantages: depending on the song you wanna play, you can tune it especially for the song, if you have good enough ears.
I've always thought about this because it fascinates me. When I was playing music with some buddies and we thought about recording some songs we had I tried to look into tuning the guitars to fit better with the key we were playing in instead of just standard equal temperament tuning. We never ended up doing it but it still fascinates me.
@@mastod0n1 that is definitely possible!
Open tunings have entered the chat
Except, your frets are straight and “roughly” spaced, so this only holds for eg one chord at a time. In general, the piano is more in tune than a guitar due to the straight frets, so in practice the temperament problems of the piano are worse on guitar (look up “true temperament” for guitar). But sure, you Can retune for every chord 😄
Except you can’t actually change the temperament of the guitar, unless you are only playing open strings. You’d have to rescale the frets to be in tune with just intonation. Currently, basically all guitars are fretted to reflect the current system of equal temperament we all use. It’s a nice thought, and if you are playing very simple melodies and chord progressions you will hear just intonation as sounding more pure. But if you start to get into more advanced chromatic harmony everything would start to sound out of tune. The reason we have the 12 tone equal temperament scale is actually pretty genius; it allows us to modulate from one key to any other key and it will still sound in tune, hence the term equal temperament.
That's the cool thing with classical guitars: we can intonate by fretting a note and then push it down or up. Use it all the time at key points in the music (e.g. closing chord).
You can't bend a note down tho lol and the major third is sharp. Often people tune their G string slightly flat, so they can play the major thirds on there justly intimated and then just bend the G string "sharp" when playing other notes on it like a perfect fifth in relation to something below it
@@joshuagavaghan224 you absolutely can bend a note down tho
@@pedrobambinoperez2572 how? Without a floating bridge?
@@joshuagavaghan224 the only way to do it is bend the neck in, but that will bend every note flat if you’re playing a chord. Not to mention it’s not a quick easy motion like bending a string.
@Ryandal Gilmore applying force perpendicular to the neck can indeed only stretch the string.
However you can apply a force parallel to the neck, towards the body to loosen the side of the string that produces sound and consequently lowering the pitch, or on the contrary towards the head, pulling and stretching the side of the string that produces sound, which will result in a higher pitched sound (but might as well push perpendicularly to the neck for a higher pitch).
people can learn how to do this, it's not superhuman or requiring Collier's obvious gifts, it's just about exposure to that particular interval and practice. he's just singing an interval (a justly intoned 3rd) and holding it against what comes out of the piano (an equally tempered 3rd) so you can hear the difference.
Not if ur singing is 14 cents off tune which you might believe to be in tune xD
Idk man it sounds p fucking wild when Jacob does it. Might try it
people depend so much on technology and computers to do everything. They forget that even with quantum computers being billions of times more powerful than top of the live gaming rigs, the human brain is still far more powerful.
You have to remember that every thing happening in your body, is controlled by your brain. And you're only using no more than 5-7% of your brain's total capacity. Imagine if you could access 100% of it
@@johnsuggs7828 *yawns* brain capacity myths...
@@andyjacobs7010 you use so much less don't you?
I loved the part where he actually tunes the piano
Ikr!
Here he is explaining something called equal temperament. Western music uses 12 notes of equal distance apart. But with having each not equal in distance, each note is just slightly off. So in short, he sang the perfect third against the pianos third that is slightly out of tune. If he were to tune it then playing in other keys would very off, but he can use the perfect harmony when singing because the tuned notes will not clash with other notes.
Jazz is not possible without equal temperament. Going beyond equal temperament is not bad. Musicians have been trying all the time. There is no need to shit on our roots, but grow beyond. "O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!
Sondern laßt uns angenehmere
anstimmen und freudenvollere. ". That's the attitude.
hes not shitting on anything, clearly hes been asked a question about his singing and he shared his story about learning of equal temperament vs just intonation
A plant can only grow if someone shits on their roots.
@@AndreasDelleske lmfao
@@ghujdvbts If you're very good, you feel the differences, I don't. it's like singing. But mostly you stick to the other instrument's tunings. You will notice that string players very often use vibrato to bridge the gap and also to cover up initial minute pitch glitches.
Nope. There's a group of people obsessed with purity, sometimes it's political, sometimes it's how to tune a FUCKING piano... but in whatever way it manifests those people can't just enjoy life, shit's always got to be a problem. A problem no one but them can even detect.
The closest I can even get to this level of scrutiny is probably 60hz strobing from LEDs and fluorescent lights... it's mildly annoying. If I had that level of give a shit about every little thing in life I probably would've ended myself by now lol.
He just sang a note 14 cents flat. By ear. Then confirmed it AFTER by playing that note on piano. LoL WUT
No, he sang the correct note, and then confirmed that the piano is 14 cents flat
@@Mambojambobombastic pretty sure the piano is *sharp relative to the note he sang tho
no he just sang a major third tuned correctly, for most who have sung in a chamber choir its p normal
The piano is sharp on purpose. Look up John Frusciante out of tune, similar concept with the major 3rd
The piano is equally by out of tune in all keys so that it can give the illusion of being in tune when one modulates to other keys. If some key centers were slightly more in tune the listener would hear the discrepancy. The illusion would be lost.
the most impressive part of this video is he starts singing the B *before* he plays the chord on piano for reference. Insane
@@greyhound9967 Yikes. Pretentious much. Is your world view really that narrow that you cant see why people find jacob absolutely mind blowing...? Also, steve vai is FAR from the most technical guitarist...
That part is possible even without perfect pitch, just usually not to the degree of accuracy he has.
He will be frustated to hear a massive dissonance from an "in tune" guitar.
To be able to store the true sound of a chord or a note in the mind is a skill by itself. Kudos to all who can actually do that.
This a sign for you to finally learn the violin jacob...
"You guys know this because Pythagoras figured it out" I hate it when people say stuff like this. Just because you understand a concept doesn't mean you can automatically apply it to every single application immediately.
i have perfect pitch as well, but i don't understand the arrogance of saying "how does nobody know this, man?" lmao ok good for you
you don't have to have perfect pitch to know about equal temperament
When you think about it, equal temperament is such a mind-bogglingly brilliant innovation. Whoever first thought of it, and did the complex calculations of how to achieve it, was a genius. Without it, any piece of music you can name that involves non-digital musical instruments, that isn’t 100% diatonic (aka really boring), couldn’t exist. That includes most classical music, all of jazz, and most contemporary music.
Its not complex calculations
@@buckylove6918 Well, it took them a hell of a long time to figure it out. It’s not complex when you can use modern electronic technology to determine exact frequencies.
@@buckylove6918 it is complicated if the concept hadn't yet been conceived of in a time without calculators. Would you have figured it out? I doubt it.
Just intonation long precedes digital music and equal temperament. Any non-fretted string instrument can do it simply by shifting position on the finger board (and most classical musicians do this)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_temperament
Also, this isn't a diatonic/chromatic difference. The chord that Jacob played in the video was diatonic (G major). The point is that just intonation/equal temperament affects all chords
@@ryangrose1481 What? Just intonation exists in nature. So, obviously it precedes digital technology and equal temperament. What does that have to do with anything? Whether a chord can be described as chromatic or diatonic depends entirely on its relation to other chords played alongside it. So a chord played in isolation (like Collier’s G chord) is neither. Well, I guess you could call it diatonic because its obviously in the same key as itself, but that’s pretty meaningless. Chromaticism is impossible on a piano tuned to just intonation.
I overstated the case to suggest NO chromaticism was possible, in instrumental music prior to digital instruments, without equal temperament, because as you say fret-less stringed instruments, like vocals, can achieve it with just intonation. But it is impossible for other sorts of instruments, and the very complex chromaticism that is now commonplace in music would never have emerged without equal temperament.
the fact that he can hear the difference between a note 14 hundreths of a semitone higher or lower is mind fucking boggling itself
14 cents is not a small amount. It’s possible if you have perfect pitch and a trained ear.
If you could hear the fact that his voice and the piano weren't in tune, you too can hear the difference.
Sorry everyone, if you can hear the difference in pitch he's much flatter than he is saying. He isn't actually singing a consistent pitch; in fact when he includes the B (major 3rd and yes I have perfect pitch) he lowers his note to make it seem more out of tune.
Quick Science Explanation:
The frequencies he plays on the piano are a multiple of 2^(4/12) = 1.25992 apart ("Equal Tempermant") since a major third is 4 half steps and there are 12 half steps in an octave
He sings frequencies a multiple of 5/4 = 1.25 apart which sounds nicer to the ear. ("Just Intonation")
The "14 cents" he's referring to is 2^(4/12) / 1.25 is approximately 2^(0.14/12)
When it comes to intonation and tuning for guitars, we've got chorus pedals!
Jacob Collier: "So I strive to sing more in tune."
Also Jacob Collier in his Moon River video: "So this chord does not exist because I'm singing in microtones."
That's so interesting ... I always thought that some notes sound out of tune in piano chords to my ear ... I thought I was crazy, but that makes sense now!
Jacob should make his own piano and name it Jacob's.
The problem is, people at Bach's time knew this and figured it out already. There is no perfect way to tune an instrument, it deoends where you aim at and if you want to play together or not.
Singers might never have invented the piano, that's why it surfaced so late.
@@AndreasDelleske Yeah all the hype around all this is killing me, it's such common knowledge amongst musicians. I'm missing the rest of the context from the video, but if this is all he said I'd swear he's just overinflating is self-ego by implying that this is some thing he just discovered and is the way of the future.
Good luck playing in more than one key then
hard to deny how brilliant this dude is
Just a pure genius. I’d cut off my left pinky to have theory like this guy.
I also figured out equal temperament as a teenager, and it was exactly those two notes - G and B just below middle C, that made me understand it. Before digital tuners, tuning up a guitar by ear was pretty challenging, especially to get the G and B just out enough to make the rest sort of play in tune-ish...
So we can we stop pretending to be amazed by this guy?
why did i read this as "jacob collier turns into the piano"
The fuck
I believe he's not only has a perfect pitch, but he also has a perfect frequency that allows him to detect the accuracy of pitch-shifting in microtonal's semitone. Maybe his accuracy is more than your digital tuner.
Yeah, the problem is nothing can play in just intonation except non-fretted instruments or maybe a trombone. But then, it would not be exact either. The real problem comes with the sharps vs flats and whether they're ascending or descending. Someone once tried to make a piano that was tuned in just intonation and it literally had different sharps and flats depending on which direction you were measuring your distance. It's kinda crazy. I spent years trying to reconcile this in composition and realized it's just not possible.
I'm not sure where he's coming from with the idea that this isn't known. It's common knowledge to every classically trained musician on earth, especially vocalists and violinists. Your voice actually naturally wants to sing the 'perfect third' as opposed to equal temperament third. It's also extremely common for harpsichordists and organists playing early music to have instruments tuned in a variety of temperaments. I'm not going to attempt to explain it as the pinned post has done a way better job than I could ever do.
Even without having a good hearing skills, just by studying even a bit of music theory it is very easy to find posts/videos about it.
he basicly learnd music theory from the internet, so he thinks he is a smartass when figures out some basics that they teach on 1st year of music theory
Thank you for exposing PIANOGATE.
We teach this to our wind players in 7th grade. The concept is very simple. Eliminate the waves. Very young players can learn how.
*Nods in Oboe*
this guys better at talking about making music than actually making music
It’s obvious when he sings the “correct” pitch and then plays the “out of tune” piano key against it (we all can hear the clash between the notes 14 cents apart) but OMG it’s so much harder to perform than he makes it look.
It's not very hard at all...it just takes a little practice...if you can sing on pitch you'd probably be able to sing a pure major third in no time. I can do it..and if I can almost anyone else can too.
@@killboybands1 its not the being able to recite it, it's being able to pull that note perfectly out of the air without having to compare it to something else like people without perfect pitch do. It's not like he played the key a bunch of times first and just went flat a little, he was humming it already and then worked up to it on the keys
@@MajesticSkywhale He plays the Triad and then root and 5th , then sings the 3rd. But He also has perfect pitch.
literally every choir singer knows about this.
The piano isn't out of tune: it's tuned differently
When I was younger, My uncle explained this to me by telling me about the harmonics you hear in piano notes.
Like... if you listen very very closely to a real piano, you'll hear other pitches in a single key press. Like the Note C has a B or B flat in the harmonics, I'm not sure which one but yeah, it's there... but then if you play your tuned B or B flat and compare it to the harmonic B in your C note, it isn't the same pitch, it's a few cents out.
Just so happens that Jacob Collier is so good he can sing perfectly in pitch by just instinct because he's a fucking mad man, but there you go.
Some can put in their two cents while Jacob puts in his 14 cents.
This is why Jacob should explore other equal temperament systems, like 31-TET
Bach lehman is nice
Dude, it’s called a temperament. It’s how keyboards are tuned. Yes, a cappella singing and strings without piano are tuned differently.
I give up trying to understand, I think I'll stick to my guitar tuner
Yes, they are. It‘s to accommodate equal temperament, which skews intervals slightly.
He's talking about the equal tempered 12TET system being out of tune
I think he’s saying that ”the right” frequency of tuning that note in harmony with the others in a piano is wrong. He was talking about all pianos and the tuning system behind them, even electronic ones, not only the one in the room.
Hope you understood somehow
@@carltonhanks4123 out of tune compared to what? Why are they out of tune?
I have so many questions
It’s called perfect pitch, and Perfect pitch is not the epitome of all musicianship. He’s talented, but I can name 30 other pianists or concert pianists who have true musicianship. Jacob is for the pop stars.
I will wager to say that most good high school band/orchestra/choir directors teach this to their students. Its a fundamental to ensemble playing.
Based on the thumbnail, I thought that he was going to sing a, “SHEEEESH!”
the uncomfortable fidgeting as everyone realizes they're not deep enough into their craft to know if he's right or wrong, so they'll have to just sit and watch...
I can tell I got very very used to the equal temperament over the years, because when he sang his major third, I could hear it was "too low" for my taste :p
(And yes, he plays the major third on the piano first, so we can compare very quickly what he sings to the equal temperament)
@Martin Baldwin-Edwards That is very interesting! I hear what you say. The closest thing I play or listen to, to a natural horn, is an irish whistle, and its tuning is just too dependant on the craftmanship of the maker.
I can tell that equal temperament, as in the piano tuning, is the temperament I'm most used to, because of fretted stringed instruments, synthesizers and virtual instruments, which are often re-tuned to equal temperament. And I could argue that these instruments make up for the most everyday music that is being produced these days, pop music, electronic music, rock music. So, that would be why I'm more used to equal temperament, and you're used to other temperaments because of your experience with other types of instruments?
@Martin Baldwin-Edwards Super interesting stuff :D
Easy demonstration for anyone with a guitar: Tune the top and bottom strings on your guitar to exactly the same E/e' pitch. Strike the harmonic over the 4th fret on the lowest string, E--it will sound as a pure (tempered) third over the open string, a b' natural. Now play, against that, the 4th fret on the 1st string. That will be an equal temperament b'. Here's your chance to compare the two. Only one is a real third. You will also notice the harmonic node isn't directly over the fret but a little closer to the nut. That is the distance of the 14 cents in his description of the problem.
and yet, he can't make actually good music to save his life
Jacob: cut that out
Piano:*quickly tunes itself
Inpressive
I’n very inpressed too
inpressing indeed
Very inportant aswell!
Leave hin alone. Its am easy nistake
Brillant connemt.
Gonna be real interesting to see how he handles things when his perfect pitch begins to drift
the irony is he harmonized with an out of tune C. That classroom piano gets tuned MAYBE every 15 years by an intern.
Jacob is pumping and dumping that comma I see
I saw this video 2 years ago and it made no sense. Today I learned I can do it on piano. This will either start driving me crazy or I will start to use it somehow. It’s super cool though and now I know why in the past I couldn’t find the note that was in my head because it seemed in between somehow. I probably needed this 30 years ago, but at least I have it now. Thanks for posting!
pompous dude innit
Not every piano we play will be perfect. Not every meal we eat will be delicious. Not every person we meet will be friendly. But is that really so important? Just enjoy the music, food, and fellowship.
Brass players in a section constantly do this. We manually tune every note we play and have the freedom to generate the ‘correctly’ tuned intervals to our section.
As a double bass player, I constantly do the same. I don’t know why other musicians in the band don’t acknowledge that!
That's the main reason I always liked to play 2nd more than 1st. I have pretty good ears and could adjust very quickly to whatever 1st is currently playing/struggeling. I'm also horrible at technical pieces, so a more "melodic" 2nd line is way more fun.
@@pysaumont I have to be honest, in a big band I never listened down to the bass for tuning, I just tune to my section. If I were playing trio with bass, would lock into that.
I was a never a great trumpet player in school, but even I moved my finger slide thing out on certain notes.
If you were the string section you'd be working the hell out of the vibrato to cover it up! Yay mush!
The beat between his voice and the piano key.....constant and perfect 😂
I don't believe the note he's singing is only 14 cents off. Sounds more than that.
I was thinking the same. But then I'm a normal human being
It sounds like the beat when he sings together with the Piano is around 4Hz. That would make him sing 8Hz higher than the piano.
Yes. It's 14.3 cents.
True actually
Stunning. I ran my fancy piano soundfont on a Pythagorean temperament once and it was pretty weird. I love the inharmonicities. Sometimes
Here’s a video explaining this: ruclips.net/video/1Hqm0dYKUx4/видео.html
It’s mathematically impossible to tune a piano perfectly-all pianos are very slightly out of tune.
Edit: If you’re interested in the maths surrounding this, here’s another great video that’s a bit slower and explained better than the one above: ruclips.net/video/cyW5z-M2yzw/видео.html
As many of you know, just intonations sound well only in the one key an instrument was tuned, but prevent transposition as their inherent inconsistencies make them sound awful in other keys. Equal temperament, on the other hand, is a compromise where every interval between non-equivalent tones is out of tune. This allows free transposition as it sounds just as bad in one key as in any other key. But what you might not know is this: Equal temperament is NOT the best compromise. It’s just the one which was historically found centuries ago and used ever since. But this has just changed!
The book MUSICAL TONALITY by Hans-Peter Deutsch (DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.4452394, also published on ResearchGate) determines the one, unique intonation which, in a strict mathematical sense, best adheres to the physics of overtones while allowing full transpositional freedom. So, after centuries of enduring either the inconsistencies of historical just intonations or the irrationality of equal temperament, the truly optimal intonation for the western tone structure has finally been found.
In this optimal tone system, which is called CLEANTONE TEMPERAMENT, all thirds, fifths, sevenths, etc., and therefore all chords (which are stacks of thirds) sound clean above each and every tone, in every key. For example, a major third is always exactly 5/4, a minor third always 6/5, a perfect fifth always 3/2, a minor seventh always 9/5, a major ninth is 9/4, etc., over each and every base tone, in each and every key! In fact, half of all diatonic intervals have their justest possible frequency ratios - and the intonation is still consistent.
The book also develops detailed designs for new instruments, called CLEANTONE KEYBOARDS, which make full use of the new tone system. Just like any musical entity (an interval, a chord, or a melody) has the same sound above any tone in cleantone temperament, it also has the same form above any key on a cleantone keyboard: The keyboard is ISOMORPHIC. And since cleantone keyboards, just like cleantone temperament, are mathematical consequences of the physics of euphony, the geometric arrangements of keys on these keyboard directly correspond to harmonic relationships: The closer keys are on the keyboard, the closer their tones are harmonically. This not only makes playing but also understanding music very intuitive.
To summarize: Not only does music in cleantone temperament sound just and pure in every key, it is also easier to understand and perform when using the corresponding cleantone keyboards. All this while allowing full compositional and transpositional freedom. To anyone with experience in musical tuning systems, this might sound almost too good to be true. But it is all real in cleantone temperament, mathematically proven in the publication. You might want to check it out. It might change your life.
Drum teachers: NOT MY TEMPO
Collier: Not my tuning system
You discovered the wheel! Bravo!
Why is that guy stroking his legs near Jacob???
He regrets wearing shorts and feeling like an awkward elementary school student on that stool.
Mosquitoes mayb
There's really a lot of potential reasons, but I'd guess the most likely one is just being nervous and having something to comfort yourself. Personally I sometimes will rub my legs when I'm stressed out. But then again, I am autistic, so your mileage may vary.
It's a pacifying behavior linked to nervousness, he feels uncomfortable and exposed being on stage, in fact every guy up there exhibits body language characteristic of uncomfort.
@@infamous8179 Sitting on a stool is naturally uncomfortable though
Yeah it’s not out of tune. It’s a compromise. He knows that of course.
His perfect pitch and his ability to accurately reproduce microtones is just awe-inspiring
Yeah, except that he's not singing what he claims. He's singing way more than 14 cents under the piano pitch to get that clash. Over half a semitone, in fact.
@@nathan87 What you are claiming is that he sings actually closer to a minor third than a major third. That is just not the case.
@@cadwronny I agree that it's not obvious, but I checked the beats on audacity to be sure before commenting. Try listening carefully and ignoring the piano pitch. You will hear that he is indeed close to a minor third.
@@nathan87 He's basically the fast talking Shamwow guy teaching music in an informercial to people who can't hear pitch.
@@roadwarrior1981 Haha kinda, although I'm sure the audience have, for all ordinary purposes, reasonable aural skills😂 the problem is that very few people have aural skills good enough to reliably identify intervals on the order of 1/10th of a semitone. That's right at the limit of human pitch perception, so who's gonna say he's wrong?
But I'm not necessarily suggesting that Jacob is being deliberately dishonest here. It's just that in the absence of explicit training and testing it's easy to think you are able to perceive things reliably that you actually cannot. Part of the problem here is that that the more you approach the limit, the more your honest judgments are inadvertently wrong.
For example, consider a pitch discrimination test in which you have to say whether a pair of tones is ascending or descending. I have found that even when I can reliably distinguish the direction, the short term effect of practicing such a test is that intervals far less than half a semitone begin to register in my mind as full semitones. For example, a change of 20 cents up would begin to take on the subjective qualities of a full semitone (100 cents) up. If I didn't know any better I might well have mistakenly concluded that I had actually heard a semitone. I'm sure there are all sorts of similar effects leading to errors of this nature.
i thought the jacob was doing the "sheesh" pose on the thumbnail
I was intially impressed with him like most people. But after binging his videos the more and more I feel like he's a griffter
'Out of tune' in an incorrect phrase. And the major is third is not 14 cents too high. The upper note of the third is 'stretched', making the interval 14 cents larger than a 'pure' third, where the coincident harmonics of the two notes of the interval are not beating. He clearly understands this, but berating equal temperament is not the way to get the point across.
what was the temperature in that room? 0:07
great question xD
the piano is "in tune" to equal temperament he's just saying that it's not justly in tune, in terms of what you would sing or play on a string instrument.
@@twinicebear775 he's talking about the clothes dude
A just M3 is not that far off on the piano, as soon as he hits B on the piano he goes flat, exaggerating the effect. Look at it in a spectrogram and it's very clear.
I was wondering if anyone ever took the time to check with a spectrogram if he's right or not. The number of people that take him to be correct without checking is unreal.
Fretless and wind instruments are best as you can always adjust intonation in the moment. As you develop your ear you start to adjust naturally and you will play in tune in every key every time. Piano and guitar are the only permanently out of tune instruments I can think of in western music. Everything else is easy to adjust notes as you play
Wait, can't you literally tune a guitar to whatever you want?
@@brent_peterson sure but you can't adjust the spacing of the frets
@@justafase Oh, I see what he meant now
@@justafase People have made, and people have played, guitars with fretboards with frets spaced for 19- and 24-equal and possibly other temperaments.
@@justafase There are fretless guitars. Actually frets were added later, for ease of playing.
Modern music composition is like a Yu-Gi-Oh tournament with one standardized deck for every player. The vast majority of musical space is devoid of human footprints. Most of a trading card game happens before the tournament, with the careful building of one's deck. Music used to be the same way. A composer would choose the temperament before anything else. I look forward to a future in which temperament is once again a musical tool available to all musicians, along with quarter-tones.
MY BAND TEACHER TAUGHT US EQUAL TEMPERAMENT IN HIGH SCHOOL! We sounded so much better than other bands because of it
what was his approach?
the fact that he can hear 14 Cents offpitch is so crazy to me
If i played 2 tones 14 cents apart you would be able to distinguish them too. The human ear can go as narrow as 6 cents if i'm not wrong
@@TentacleTerrorMusic yes, but it has no reference point and that's what makes it so crazy
@@TheSelfmadesupport He just knows, he didn't mentally calculate it