When you were partying, I studied Db. When you were having premarital sex, I mastered Db. While you wasted your days at the gym in pursuit of vanity, I cultivated Db. And now that the world is on quarantine and the content creators are at the gate you have the audacity to come to me for solos?
ngl i kind of love the solo for how it perfectly captures the sheer anxiety i felt playing alto sax solos in my high school jazz ensembles. It had everything; straying out of the peice's key, sporatic tonal and rhythmic fluxuation, accidentally overblowing the sax, falling out of time with the rest of the band, even stopping two bars early in an act of utter defeat.
I was in a backing band for Big J Mcnealy for one night in London in the eighties. after the show the guitarist commented that it "sounded like a zoo on fire"
A lot of solos have this moment at the beginning where it's like the musician is walking around outside a house, knocking on doors, turning different doorknobs and testing all the windows to try to find a way inside. Sometimes they only manage to get into the garage, rather than the core of the house. In this case it seems more like he was at the wrong address.
Holy shit did this comment make me laugh my ass off. The being at the wrong address comment is perfect, I've played with people who I have genuinely question, on an abstract level, just exactly where the hell they were going with their solo.
Sometimes I get this sadistic urge to say something about jazz is wrong or bad on social media just so Adam Neely will be compulsively forced to overthink it and play devil's advocate for half an hour. It would be evil, but these video essays are so interesting and fun to watch that it might be morally justifiable to get more of them
Man, this reminds me of school big band practice where some of us were anxious abt playing solos and our teacher encouraged us by saying "Even if you just play one note over and over, it counts" and we proceeded to troll her by having a round of solos where every instrument just played the same note over and over - most of us like this, but our saxophonist somehow managed to hold the same note for the entire length of the solo 😭
Regardless of your technical & improvisational prowess on the sax, if you're playing live to an audience & hit a high note & Hold it, the crowd goes wild. Saxophone magic I used to call it.
I would argue that this is not the 'worst' jazz solo ever, simply because it makes me laugh. It sounds hilarious, and it makes me FEEL something. In my opinion, the jazz solos that are truly the worst are the ones that just shred up and down the scales and arpeggios and chord changes and nothing else. Those solos make me feel nothing.
To summarize: if you lack confidence and don’t have anything to say with your art, everyone will be able to tell, and they will make fun of you on twitter
@@WinterandNoodle adam is literally the type of dude who mixes jazz zazz and a string quartet with 808s and emulated sidechaining, ripping some Dmaj7/C chords with damn violins and adding some distorted pop vocals on top of that. He is pretty open minded about other genres.
@Sunfish - band to sax player: 'But, we don't even have enough money for gas to get to the next gig, and what about breakfast?" sax player to band: "¿huh?"
8:16 That is EXACTLY what this kind of Jazz was about - demonstrating you had full control over your sax and proving it by making engaging music with JUST ONE NOTE. That's why this is bad, he had no control, he was NOT at the skill level you needed to perform such a stunt.
Yep, Miles Davis said he would rather hear someone play a one note solo w soul emotion and feeling instead of someone running through scales w/o substance. BB King and Neil Young are notorious for hanging around on one note for a while in their solos...
Curiosity Stream: "So, how are you going to spend the additional budget we're giving you? You can't just sit in your living room the whole time." Adam: "Um, I could drive to New Haven and stand in front of a church?" Curiosity Stream: [signs check]
Neely would make a terrible reporter. Whole time he was standing in front of a church, talking about recordings in a church, didn't mention the church behind him.
When I was first taught to solo we were only allowed to play one note until we were actually making choices with that note. Then we'd get another note. Then a pentatonic scale, etc. The director always said if we got in over our head to just scale back until we were in control again. Some of the lazier kids in band never got past that one note but that process was extremely valuable to me and really let me build up confidence and intentionality.
honestly, i'm too dumb for art, so most of it goes over my head and i don't know what they're going for most of the time. but i *feel* this guy's panic. i relate to it, way more than a lot of music, because i've felt that "oh no oh fuck" feeling of panic and totally dropped the ball before.
You're not too dumb for art man, you've articulated a really good point about the solo in a clear and concise way, which is hard to do. Art is about conveying meaning or emotion or something, and while this solo fails at it's intended purpose it IS interesting as art for your exact reason.
I guess, if that was the vibe the good was going for he really hit it. It starts off confident, starts to lose it, you get the panicked over playing then the defeated silence. Followed by a meek attempt at capturing the initial swagger. The problem is he didn't mean to do that.
Quantum Jump let’s take for example, your feet, and let’s say hypothetically you were to take photos of them. Now at this point you would have piqued my interest into buying said feet photographs so I would, naturally, offer you money for said feet photographs
@@pastorofmuppets1968 not even going to try. Because what you've made is a statement of personal taste. Ornette Coleman's bandmates, peers, and emulators have long since made quite a strong case for the opposite position.
Alvin Lucier wrote a piece of music that consists of a string of even pulses on a triangle. There aren't even dynamics. All that happens is the player messes around with overtones by hitting the triangle differently, sliding a finger along one side, etc. Basically you end up dissecting the timbre of the triangle because you have nothing else to pay attention to for like 6 minutes. It's called "Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra".
As a percussionist, I truly do feel like the triangle is too underrated. In an orchestra composition, it can be really important for accent, sound and atmosphere in both calm sections (small accents) and energetic sections (e.g. with triangle rolls). It's one of the instruments one doesn't really notice, until it's missing one time. Also, hit it in the wrong general pause too loud, and you ruin the whole performance (which might be greatly exaggerated, but I did that once anyway xD you can imagine the jokes afterwards about not even being able to play the triangle) And yeah, you can do crazy stuff with it...
@@NootalieWalf Welcome! The zinc compound for this seems to be ZnS (zinc sulfide), according to Wikipedia's article on phosphors, and the best of my memory. Fred
I worked with Big Jay McNeeley for several years. He and Joe Houston were the kings of the “honking” sax solo. Yet, when he wanted to, he could get around a bit on the instrument. He was definitely more of a showman than a jazzer….and a nice guy to work with. He used to do this bit where he would play while lying down on his back. Towards the end of his life he wore braces on his legs and it took awhile to get down on his back. His first hit was “Deacon’s Hop” in 1949. His second was “There Us Something On Your Mind” in 1959. That tune gave him a pretty good career. And the guy to Big Jay’s right in the first photo came to one of our gigs in Gardena, CA right before Jay’s passing and he was in his 70’s. He joked that most of Big Jay’s fans had died.
@@tobiassiagian2562 I both don't know if human person didn't get the joke but neither do I know why he thought that Simon would have needed the joke being pointed out by another person. Confusion at it's finest
When asked about his one-note solo on Cinnamon Girl, Neil Young replied, "It’s not [the same note]! Everyone says that, but there’s about a hundred notes in there. And every one of them is different. Every single one. They just happen to have the same name." King.
I know what you mean. But he has the finger on the same fret through out the solo. And at the very end of the solo there is actually two notes extra 😊. I really love that song though.
@@justinrensel8518 Cinnamon Girl is in double-dropped D, so the high 'drone' note is the open high D string. The chords keep changing under it so, yeah, it's a different thing over each chord. :)
Honestly, I can handle Lionel, Mcneely and Djent, I don’t understand the solo that is being discussed, whoa that was questionable. Goes to show that it’s isn’t what you do but how you do it.
One of the biggest musical experiences of my life happened unexpectedly, I was waiting to hear my cousin sing in her music school, and the orchestra started warming up where every single instrument did completely it's own thing, with absolutely no connection to any of the other instruments, and it all happened at the same time. It was a racket. I'm sure that's very typical, but I had never heard anything like that, and the excitement building up got me in the right mood, the horrible gush of random snips of melodies crashing into the room at once was the absolute complete opposite of a funky jam session ever. Everyone was just playing their own technical part in order to warm up their instrument before the concert. But man, it threw me so much off that I really had a cool musical experience, I really loved it. It was so magnificently horrible. It's was the opposite of a bop, but I liked it. It taught me something about music, that a great musical moment is as much about you opening up to it, than the music itself. You can show someone your absolute favourite song, that track which puts you into a wonderful state of bliss every time, but your friends might not like it at all. They won't hear what you're hearing. And we could never ask them to. Imagine taking someone into a recollection of the feeling you had as a child waiting for pancakes to be made while your mother was dancing by herself to the radio, or any other experience a song could trigger in us, that's just not possible. I mean I even once knew a girl who would turn on the static on the TV and listen to it. She loved that sound. Music is all about opening up to the experience. I've always hated the line dancing type of country music, accordion based forró, Scandinavian danseband, German Schlager, all that inbred farmer kind of music. Yet I see people dancing and having amazing musical experiences while that kind of music is playing, I see people absolutely loving it. It's amazing music, it's great, it's just me that's the problem. My prejudice. I haven't opened up to it yet. If some other people seem to like it, then bad music is just you making it bad. It's your prejudice.
15:19 Remember when 12tone played audio from that same Ben Shapiro quote and a commenter said 12tone shouldn’t read Ben’s statements in such an obnoxious mocking voice but it’s literally Ben’s voice
My favorite one-note composition is a completely different genre: "Not getting married today" from Company by Stephen Sondheim. It's actually three interwoven songs in three different styles. The groom's part is a ballad that is intentionally overly dramatic, the narrator's part is in an operatic style that is humorously acerbic, but the bride's part for which the piece is named, is a brilliant one-note piece. It is fast and it is frenetic but it only works because it speeds along on one note.
Hi, the idea of a one-note part contrasted with balladic and operatic parts was intriguing and I was curious what such one-note part would sound like. But from what I've found here on RUclips, the bride's part has a multiple-note melody so it doesn't seem to be one-note, unless I'm missing something. Could you explain to me how it is one-note?
The lyrics of "One note samba" talk about exactly what the musician is doing while playing/singing: "Eis aqui este sambinha Feito numa nota só Outras notas vão entrar, Mas a base é uma só. Esta outra é consequência Do que acabo de dizer Como eu sou a consequência Inevitável de você!" In English: "This is just a little samba Built upon a single note Other notes are bound to follow But the root is still that note. Now this new note is the consequence Of the one we've just been through As I'm bound to be The unavoidable consequence of you!" Pure metalanguage!
This is so good. It reminds me on the mind-boggling (kind of) one-note guitar solo in King Crimsons "Starless", which isn't an improvisation but a fully notated instrumental part of this wonderful piece of music. Your video gives me new ways to hear it or rather to eventully unterstand it. So far I always thought of the solo in Starless as a piece of experimental art , where the composer swaps the traditional roles of the rhythmic and the harmonic section of the band. While the normally melodic or harmonically leading guitar plays the same note over and over again, as a bass (or the drummer) sometimes does (without us caring about it), here the bass and the drums are allowed to to the more interesting things. But the monotonous guitar is so disturbing to my ears! It's so hard to ignore it. I'm always glad, when they swap back to their usual roles at the end of the song.
They didn't invent anything. Jobim had done the exact same thing in One Note Samba. While the singer - lead melody stays in the same note, the harmony runs across five different chords.
Adam's repeating "one note" hundreds of time for twenty minutes before mentioning "one note samba", is a perfect example of one note solos creating a tension that screams to be resolved.
I knowwwww! When he finally mentioned it, I actually screamed “YES!”. With nobody around to connect with. So thanks for making me feel a bit less isolated. Crazy, not alone.
I'm a 73 year old guitarist whose 23 year old grandson (a superb musician with true 'perfect pitch') kindly shared your interesting video a moment ago. I replied: "Thanks so very much Thomas. I'd just been thinking of COME RAIN OR COME SHINE -- best jazz version (all guitarists would agree) by the greatest of them all (according to all the other greats) -- Wes Montgomery. And I'd been thinking that this song - one of the best from Johnny (I Remember You) Mercer and Harold Arlen. The song's bridge consists of 17 consecutive 'same note'(s) -- two segments of eight and nine notes, but played as an octave; the chords 'pedal pointing' as pianists say around the same repeated note give the illusion that there's more than just one note. The opening refrain "I'm gonna love you like nobody's loved you come rain . . ." is just one note too, changing down by a fifth for the last words . . ."or come shine." Oh yes, listen to the greatest jazz guitarist. He was 19 (correct) when he took up the guitar. Immediately learned by ear all the solos of early giant Charlie Christian and kept repeating them until he'd developed his own inimitable style! To my ears the greatest soloist on any instrument ever. And as you may recall he played with his thumb ONLY -- including those 'octaves' a style he perfected and made all his own. ruclips.net/video/QszCUG3tOxw/видео.html Anyway, try to hear that same note repeated in two sequences of eight followed by nine on the bridge. Wes Montgomery's COME RAIN OR COME SHINE (from my favorite of his 'live' albums recorded by the 'king of remotes' Wally Heider of L.A. Worth looking up his Wiki entry. All that from your sending me THIS. Thanks again, Thomas! Thank you Andrew Neely for sharing. -- Mark B of the frozen North
Great vid! I once saw Branford Marsalis and Sonny Rollins at Carnegie Hall. They played together for a short time and naturally, a battle ensued. They went back and forth, getting hotter and hotter on each round. Branford killed with an amazing solo and even in Carnegie Hall, the crowd was nuts. The Rollins played a one note solo. Marsalis just put his hands on his hips and watched. He knew he was defeated by a master and that he had probably been goaded into it. One note solos can kill in the right context!
Pete Townsend's solo on "I can see for miles" is one note. The trick in the song is that the bass is playing the main theme, and the "guitar solo" is just one note, to satirize the "guitar god" craze of the time.
It's really not so much a guitar solo as an instrumental break with a one-note guitar part. The drums really carry it, but they're not playing a solo, either.
@@ballhawk387 Fair point. But I think Townsend's intent was to create a song that reversed the usual setup, with the bass and drums, as you say, "carrying" it. That could be why it wasn't a hit!
@@bobjones2041 how tf is there an adam neely viewer that puts song in quotation marks and just dismisses a song as "shite" without any justification, lol
"Sounds like someone had to run a mile and was forced to breathe out of a saxophone" 🤣 That's funny on many levels. Just picturing what that would look like is hilarious
I used to play one note solos all the time especially in hotel gigs when there's almost no audience. It's a good way to make your bandmates and the three people listening laugh a bit. It's actually interesting to explore what you can do with them with good use of dynamics and rythm displacement.
I pulled a thread out of my shirt and wrapped one end around the end of my thumb and the other end around the end of my index finger, held it up by my ear and played music for hours in jail one night by pulling the thread tighter or looser; it was all rhythm and tune but it was great. I got out the next morning. There's no end to how we can make "music."
@@choimdachoim9491 Must have been one helluva concert, man. Idk, I feel like I should try to say something profound but all I can muster is that I am glad that you got to experience that.
My music teacher told me one of the best pieces of soloing advice ever. "It doesn't matter what you do, it doesn't matter what you play; as long as it is loud. LOUUUDDD! It can be one note, but make it LOUD!"
One note example? Guitar solo from "Audioslave - Show me how to live". I love that song! I'm impressed, how many various tiny details have been utilized to enrich this video with information. The research have been enormous, I recon so. Pleasure to watch. Great work, Adam! :)
That's kind of my take on it. It sounds bad on a record that you listen to at home, but when you are in a smoky cellar and the crowd is going crazy, doing a stupid repetition out of tune is the equivalent of smashing the guitar on stage that will make people go nuts.
I think punk is simply the 70s and 80s manifesting of the rebellious young spirit to feel freely and without restraint. If anything, punk has borrowed from Rock and Roll, who has in turn borrowed from Jazz. The one note solos and wild carefree attitude of bebop jazz were just as polarizing as dubstep was or punk was. It's expressing the same emotions with a different toolbox
As part of my high school's trip to the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival, a few of us went to a clinic called "How to Solo With Only One Note", and it was fascinating! Listening to the instructor play and him getting us to play just made something click in my brain and unlocked something in my brain to get so much more tonality and variety out of my trumpet. If you're in a school band, I'd highly recommend getting your teacher/prof to check it out for a trip. I went 4 times during high school, and a few of my buddies and I are planning to go next year, 4 years graduated.
Kenny G played a sustained note for about 45 minutes one time. If he played that note six more times, for the same duration, he'd have made this video already.
@@dkomo2 Rahsaan Roland Kirk held one note for 2 hours and seven minutes at Ronnie Scotts in London on a tenor. The reason why it didn't make the Guinness Book of World Records is that Kirk blew into a mike which they thought was fixed. G blew a soprano sax which my sax playing friends say "is like blowing into a straw".
Great video! Your pronunciation of "Györgyi" was adorable by the way :D The easiest way to pronounce the sound "gy" in Hungarian is it's basically the same as the sound "d" in the word "duke". And "ö" is close to the sound "u" in "hurt".
In a way, baiting us out of the famous “repetition legitimizes” phrase is a way of showing that his repetition of that phrase legitimized the saying in our mind. Repetition does not only serve to reinforce musical ideas, but any idea in general.
Thoroughly enjoyed this. Once, in the 1980s, I saw NRBQ and the piano player, Terry Adamas, who I think has a Monk fetish, invited anyone to come up on stage and outplay him. One brave soul did and played a cool barrel-house blues solo. Adams clownishly hip-checked him off the bench and played a one-note solo for about 32 bars. Pretty amazing. Jimmie Vaughan does this all the time, too. "Mty Girl," on T-Birdy Rhythm is a great example.
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given that Jobim is easily one of the most important composers and musicians to ever come out of Brazil that expression might have originated from the song
Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan, and others who have gotten rich being confidentially wrong/ignorant in an incredibly public way stand in stark contrast to the intelligent content in this channel. Thank you Adam for not making mental McDonalds® for a quick dollar, there is enough of that out there, and I appreciate what you do!
I smiled so wide when you finally landed on "One Note Samba". :-D Other one-note-ish solos that I love: Eric Reed (piano) - Rubber Bottom (Wynton Marsalis Septet - Live at the Village Vanguard) Oscar Peterson (piano) - Seven Come Eleven (The Essential Oscar Peterson: The Swinger) - possibly my favorite jazz piano solo Andy Summers (guitar) - When the World Is Running Down (The Police - Zenyetta Mondatta)
Johnny Ramone - I Wanna Be Sedated Also, the main riffs of The Weirdos - Helium Bar and Death Grips - Giving Bad People Good Ideas both only contain one chord
I think one of the main conclusions is that intentionality and confidence are extremely important. As long as it *sounds like* you did something intentionally, you can do *almost* anything you want.
That's nothing. When Kenny G made his finale for the Phuket Jazz Festival he hit the highest note on a soprano sax and held it for about two minutes (circular breathing) while the band stopped playing. Just a single ear-splitting note..
"The Race" by YELLO is a great example of how effectively one note can be used for the majority of an entire composition. It's literally 3 minutes 20 seconds of the bass, guitar, vocals, and half the brass section playing only the tonic, with synth pads occasionally changing the chord and a few riffs thrown in by a few other saxophones. It is some of the most fun one can have in under 4 minutes.
to give another example of how to use (basically) just one note in a song, bmbmbm by black midi. the one note repetition sounds almost like a methodic, focused marching forward, which together with the frantic, borderline schizophrenic rambling of the vocals and the interspersion of insanely fast riffs works to create a really intimidating sound
That's a bet you would win. Back then they used radioactive paint on everything they wanted to make glow in the dark. Even watch faces were painted with it to make them glow in the dark.
@@twojointsjay7330 Oh, putting radium on watch faces was probably one of the less insane uses they had for Radium - for the end user, not so much for the workers painting with it. They used to make water coolers lined with radium and uranium! By the days of Big Jay's era I would hope they had long-since stopped using radium paint on anything, as a result of the Radium Girls case in the 1930s.
@@funstuff2006 is the Radium Girls related to the watch faces? That's how I heard of it - the women painting the watches would paint their own teeth and other goofy stuff to have fun, not realising how dangerous it was. And who can forget the unshielded x-ray machines used to take accurate foot measurements at every upstanding shoe-seller in the country?
@@twojointsjay7330 The most harmful aspect was the method of application - 'lick, dip, paint.' To keep the paintbrush finely pointed, between applications they would lick the paintbrush - which still had some amount of radium paint in the bristles- the same way you lick a piece of thread when you are trying to put it through the eye of a needle. Painting their teeth with it once or twice likely wouldn't be a big dose of exposure, but adding it into their saliva thousands of times over a number of years caused them to have horrible issues with the bones in their mouth/face, as well as cancer. A documentary I saw about it said at least one of them had accumulated so much radium that there were detectable levels of Radon gas in her breath - and thats using measuring devices from the 1920s-1930s. Haha, yeah, I've heard of those X-ray boxes.
@@ContentConfessional if he used black lights to make it glow, it may have been a uranium based paint more likely than Radium, as Uranium fluoresces under UV
My first private guitar lesson my teach told me “play a solo only using one note”. After that he also did it with much more variation in articulation, length, tempo etc. That started my Musical journey
@@wingusdingus1019 Your confusion suggests you are American () -- they are well know for not understanding irony. He ironically used implied (missing) words, and to me he is implying that you need to defend your statement. Simply saying what said implies you are directly accusing the OP of lying, which is simply rude. If you're going to say "you are lying" on a public platform you must follow it with "because..." and tell us why you thing you are correct, otherwise everyone else will just say "you are a twat, you can't know it's a fake story." I for one have no problem accepting that a private tutor started with testing a pupil's grasp of rhythm or dynamic or some other capability of the instrument rather than just dive in to "how you play your first scale."
You know, one of my favorite one-note solos is from Black Country, New Road's 'Sunglasses', where in the second half, the guitarist only plays one chord for a pretty long time. It really contributes to the anxious feeling of the song
This is one of my favorite videos that you’ve done. The way you take a piece of music that is being ridiculed for its simplicity and then contextualize it and show the legitimacy of a simplistic form of musical expression is really cool.
In his 80s, Big Jay McNeely was still pulling sold out crowds and playing that big note. I can attest to it first hand. At my first rehearsal with him, first time I met him, he was quiet. Slowly unpacking his sax from its case, no words spoken, but the band chatting, getting set up. the first note Jay played made me jump from my seat. tbf I'm one to get jump scares anyway, but... the sound was huge. Rehearsal had started. He lived for the live shows to the very end. His energy was reserved for the sold out crowds. He would be out int he crowd and honking in people's faces. He was in his eighties! He told me to play the snare hard. like really hard. Think rimshots as hard as I could possibly sustain, all night long. I got sore hands playing with him. I think he relied on the snare for timing, perhaps a lot less of the band was really gonna cut through for him while he was lost in among the crowds which he walked through, while I would be stuck on stage trying to catch glimpses of him issuing the occasional ending cue/etc. Rest in peace, Big J
I remember seeing a Pete Townsend interview where he said that usually the guitarist plays the intricate multi note solos while the drummer keeps rhythm, but in the case of The Who; Keith Moon would play insanely intricate drum solos leaving Townsend to deal with keeping rhythm on guitar, hence the one note solo at 19:05
I can't begin to imagine the amount of time and effort that goes into your videos, how you are able to research so deeply, meanwhile maintaining your musical skills, relationships with other musos both online and off, doing all this video recording and editing, and still manage to eat and sleep, I assume, somewhere in between it all. I take my hat off to you, video after video. Amazing! And I must say, you share in such a way that even without a particular interest in this area, you easily held (and hold with other videos) my attention for the entire 28 min. I love the goat, by the way, it cracked me up every time, and the little "whop" sound when the elephant disappeared, nice little touches. Keep it up!
Im sure I could play a worse Jazz solo
I dare you
Please do.
Dew it
better than me in middle school bad thats for sure lmao
mp3s or I don't believe you. And it has to be an honest try.
When you were partying, I studied Db. When you were having premarital sex, I mastered Db. While you wasted your days at the gym in pursuit of vanity, I cultivated Db. And now that the world is on quarantine and the content creators are at the gate you have the audacity to come to me for solos?
Glorious nippon brass folded over a million tome to craft that sax
john m
>limp wrists
>plays bass
Choose one
@john m John relax
I applaud your use of this meme, sir/madam/non-binary person.
@@JohnsDough1918 thanks comrade/esteemed colleague/fellow carbon-based unit
I just clicked to make sure it wasn't one of mine.
Holly shit dude!
Same 😂
1000th like
it's called drugs
holy shit u destroyed him dude
ngl i kind of love the solo for how it perfectly captures the sheer anxiety i felt playing alto sax solos in my high school jazz ensembles. It had everything; straying out of the peice's key, sporatic tonal and rhythmic fluxuation, accidentally overblowing the sax, falling out of time with the rest of the band, even stopping two bars early in an act of utter defeat.
Oof. DId you hang with the sax? I mean did you keep playing?
How could you be so sentimental about your suffering from saxophone playing
@@adonaiyah2196 man, if we don't laugh about falling out of key, we'll cry
@@NeoN-PeoN yeah, i still pull the old girl out from time to time
@@aninnocentmannerism2314 im a singer and i know being out of key is awful soo ill let u have that
I'm still playing a rest in the middle of a solo i started 5 years ago.
:))))
Sometimes the magic is in the notes you don't play.
Dude, you should totally keep playing an instrument. Maybe the one you are playing the rest on, maybe something else?
A way to play an instrument and create a brilliant musical moment-- via the intensity of the NOT PLAYING. Which EVERYONE NOT HEARS.
GENIUS!
BRUH
I was in a backing band for Big J Mcnealy for one night in London in the eighties. after the show the guitarist commented that it "sounded like a zoo on fire"
This comment needs way more love.
i can't even tell if that's a good thing or not
what i'm saying is all zoos should have the animals loosed, and then be set on fire
@@billyalarie929 That is so funny!!!
That's so badass lol. Congrats. Sounds like you've had an exciting life
That's friggin amazing. Legit cool story.... bro! 😍
A lot of solos have this moment at the beginning where it's like the musician is walking around outside a house, knocking on doors, turning different doorknobs and testing all the windows to try to find a way inside. Sometimes they only manage to get into the garage, rather than the core of the house. In this case it seems more like he was at the wrong address.
This comment is so underrated
What a goodylicious comment it is. #lipsmacking
Holy shit did this comment make me laugh my ass off. The being at the wrong address comment is perfect, I've played with people who I have genuinely question, on an abstract level, just exactly where the hell they were going with their solo.
Exactly. Great analogy.
That's a great analysis!
Sometimes I get this sadistic urge to say something about jazz is wrong or bad on social media just so Adam Neely will be compulsively forced to overthink it and play devil's advocate for half an hour. It would be evil, but these video essays are so interesting and fun to watch that it might be morally justifiable to get more of them
Casually deconstructing the psychology of Adam Neeley
@@surkey5055 BUT...he did it with confidence, therefore...art?
@@Trollificusv2intention*
Adam: "Even though repetition..."
Me: "Legitimizes."
Adam: "... does serve to reinforce musical ideas."
I've never been baited so hard
Same lmao. I expected that line so baddddd
its synonymous! youre close enough
Blueballs AF
Lmao
Ahh yes, but it only worked cause of the repetition
Man, this reminds me of school big band practice where some of us were anxious abt playing solos and our teacher encouraged us by saying "Even if you just play one note over and over, it counts" and we proceeded to troll her by having a round of solos where every instrument just played the same note over and over - most of us like this, but our saxophonist somehow managed to hold the same note for the entire length of the solo 😭
What a fucking legend
Regardless of your technical & improvisational prowess on the sax, if you're playing live to an audience & hit a high note & Hold it, the crowd goes wild. Saxophone magic I used to call it.
The "repetition legitimizes" has became so meta, I love it.
The "repetition legitimizes" has become so meta, I love it.
The "repetition legitimizes" has become so meta, I love it.
The “repetition legitimizes” has become so meta, I love it.
The "repetition legitimizes" has become so meta, I love it.
The "repetition legitimizes" has become so meta, I love it.
I would argue that this is not the 'worst' jazz solo ever, simply because it makes me laugh. It sounds hilarious, and it makes me FEEL something. In my opinion, the jazz solos that are truly the worst are the ones that just shred up and down the scales and arpeggios and chord changes and nothing else. Those solos make me feel nothing.
Yeah same. Good observation
Yeah, I call that "Playing the trumpet [or whatever instrument] instead of playing music."
I agree. I think expression and feeling are excuses to break the rules.
You don’t have to love it. You just need to feel it.
DOODLYOODLYOODLEOODLEOODLE
Sounds like a cope from someone who isn’t that proficient
To summarize: if you lack confidence and don’t have anything to say with your art, everyone will be able to tell, and they will make fun of you on twitter
Even if they cant express exactly why, they'll know you suck
because twitter is the height of taste makers
@@47fortyseven47 This. Adam and those twitter users seem like the type to say "rap is crap" unless it's made by Eminem.
@@WinterandNoodle adam is literally the type of dude who mixes jazz zazz and a string quartet with 808s and emulated sidechaining, ripping some Dmaj7/C chords with damn violins and adding some distorted pop vocals on top of that. He is pretty open minded about other genres.
@@WinterandNoodle yeah you understood shit about him.
It sounds like Morse code, like the saxophonist is trying to signal the audience for help
**... - - - ... intensifies**
LOL!
And boy did he need some
Oh, that's hysterical!!! I love it, SOS...
Haha
sax player to the band: “this is gonna be real big in 60 years guys just trust me”
People 60 years later: this is the worst solo I've ever heard.
Your kids are gonna love this
@@sam3ee Nice back to the future reference
@@sam3ee You guys aren't ready for that yet.
@Sunfish - band to sax player: 'But, we don't even have enough money for gas to get to the next gig, and what about breakfast?"
sax player to band: "¿huh?"
8:16 That is EXACTLY what this kind of Jazz was about - demonstrating you had full control over your sax and proving it by making engaging music with JUST ONE NOTE.
That's why this is bad, he had no control, he was NOT at the skill level you needed to perform such a stunt.
"Play excruciatingly" at 5:33 has to be one of the best pieces of musical notation ever. Not a lot of ambiguity there.
I'm so glad you pointed that out haha I missed it. Got a good belly laugh in
Smile away horribly now.
Another good piece of notation would have to be “initiate rotation”
"Exit, pursued by bear"
"TURN YOUR SAXOPHONE UP TO 11"
Nothing is more punk rock than a jazz solo with only one note.
Considering that the one-note solo I have probably heard most is in I Wanna Be Sedated, I would 100% agree with you.
@@wiltchamberlain9920 Turned out to be a very lucrative note.
I wonder how it would sounds if it's passed through distortion effects, and maybe slowed down into some sort of "breakdown" part
Yep, Miles Davis said he would rather hear someone play a one note solo w soul emotion and feeling instead of someone running through scales w/o substance. BB King and Neil Young are notorious for hanging around on one note for a while in their solos...
By 'punk rock' you mean these solos were noisy awful trash?
Curiosity Stream: "So, how are you going to spend the additional budget we're giving you? You can't just sit in your living room the whole time."
Adam: "Um, I could drive to New Haven and stand in front of a church?"
Curiosity Stream: [signs check]
Neely would make a terrible reporter. Whole time he was standing in front of a church, talking about recordings in a church, didn't mention the church behind him.
Jam Jox yes he did?
Haha was trying to figure out at first if it was green screened
@@elliotlangford824 it sure looked like it lol
Adam: "Repetition..."
Me: "Say it."
"...does serve to reinforce musical ideas."
"You bastard."
i felt so betrayed
Heartbreaking.
Yeah, triggered me hard that one
*LEGITIMIZES*
@@AlexnadroEH THANK YOU
If Adam keeps saying "repetition does serve to reinforce musical ideas", I'm going to start thinking it's true.
Haha. Nice one.
@tubetardism 20/20 r/whoooosh
Lol.
I mean, repetition legitimises.
Gloria
3:50
"At the battle of the bands, the loser is always the audience"
- _Demetri Martin_
When I was first taught to solo we were only allowed to play one note until we were actually making choices with that note. Then we'd get another note. Then a pentatonic scale, etc. The director always said if we got in over our head to just scale back until we were in control again. Some of the lazier kids in band never got past that one note but that process was extremely valuable to me and really let me build up confidence and intentionality.
C JAM Blues Baby!!!
It's a great process!
Oh man, that sounds actually pretty great.
Given the time it was made, I bet that glow-in-the-dark saxophone was pretty seriously radioactive.
honestly, i'm too dumb for art, so most of it goes over my head and i don't know what they're going for most of the time. but i *feel* this guy's panic. i relate to it, way more than a lot of music, because i've felt that "oh no oh fuck" feeling of panic and totally dropped the ball before.
Your comment is probably the most underrated one on this video.
You're not too dumb for art man, you've articulated a really good point about the solo in a clear and concise way, which is hard to do. Art is about conveying meaning or emotion or something, and while this solo fails at it's intended purpose it IS interesting as art for your exact reason.
Congratulations!: You've actually found a way in which this solo is good!
I guess, if that was the vibe the good was going for he really hit it. It starts off confident, starts to lose it, you get the panicked over playing then the defeated silence. Followed by a meek attempt at capturing the initial swagger. The problem is he didn't mean to do that.
For someone who says they’re dumb for art, you articulated this concept perfectly,
Whys bens voice sound like the parody “sped up” voice adam does whenever hes making fun of the other argument this is killing me
omg you're right
Because nobody ridicules Ben Shapiro as badly as he ridicules himself
Quantum Jump let’s take for example, your feet, and let’s say hypothetically you were to take photos of them. Now at this point you would have piqued my interest into buying said feet photographs so I would, naturally, offer you money for said feet photographs
Ben speaks very quickly to make you think he's smart, even though his actual thoughts are simple and juvenile
I also just realised how much they look alike. Or is it just me?
This is by far the best analysis of this exact horrible jazz solo that I've seen today
Jason! Hey!
It’s the man, the myth, the legend
MY FAVORITE FIFTEEN YEAR OLD
@@lillyhill6093 hi
omg the man himself
"the more you focus on this limitation, the more you realize there is actually a lot to explore". Awesome line. It applies to so many genres.
This is saxophone djent and you cannot convince me otherwise.
yes and no, 'djent' technically has 2 notes.......
01001010001
Only if it's a baritone sax.
djazz
Beat me to it
“worst jazz solo of all time” clearly, no one has heard any of my jazz solos in middle school
Don’t worry, just say it’s jazz
I might get killed for this but I've never heard anything good from Ornette Colman. Change my mind. Please?
@@pastorofmuppets1968 not even going to try. Because what you've made is a statement of personal taste. Ornette Coleman's bandmates, peers, and emulators have long since made quite a strong case for the opposite position.
"Yeah, I'm pretty good at improvising with jazz"
*plays C-blues scale for 17 minutes on the piano*
saaame
man attempts popular meme of his day, fails so hard he succeeds 64 years later.
LMAO
this shouldve aged well until 69 years later but oh well.
@@Amirul9339 we try again at 420 years~!
Saxophone battle fatigue is probably one of the most unique, yet cohesive phrases I have heard.
King Crimson, "Starless", the entire middle section has one-note riffs that ascend and increase in intensity. A very effective use of the concept.
Yeeees, I was waiting for Adam to mention it. That 5 minute tension build-up before the explosion into a jazzy solo is so good.
Finally, a King Crimson mention!
Such a good song
Fripp bends a note a whole step and synchronously hits the same note on a different string for a solid minute or so hahah
I love Prog rock and king crimson!
I suddenly feel really passionate about playing the triangle.
Look up Stevie T playing on the triangle
Jazz triangle union will want their dues
Alvin Lucier wrote a piece of music that consists of a string of even pulses on a triangle. There aren't even dynamics. All that happens is the player messes around with overtones by hitting the triangle differently, sliding a finger along one side, etc. Basically you end up dissecting the timbre of the triangle because you have nothing else to pay attention to for like 6 minutes. It's called "Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra".
There is three sides to every note.
As a percussionist, I truly do feel like the triangle is too underrated. In an orchestra composition, it can be really important for accent, sound and atmosphere in both calm sections (small accents) and energetic sections (e.g. with triangle rolls). It's one of the instruments one doesn't really notice, until it's missing one time.
Also, hit it in the wrong general pause too loud, and you ruin the whole performance (which might be greatly exaggerated, but I did that once anyway xD you can imagine the jokes afterwards about not even being able to play the triangle)
And yeah, you can do crazy stuff with it...
you're talking about all this stuff but now I just really want a glow-in-the-dark sax
I need more information on if that was radium paint because it sure looks like radium to me ☢️
@@NootalieWalf With some zinc salt I've forgotten, acting as scintillation medium.
Fred
ffggddss Thanks! Good to know!
@@NootalieWalf Welcome! The zinc compound for this seems to be ZnS (zinc sulfide), according to Wikipedia's article on phosphors, and the best of my memory.
Fred
@Fliszt Thats actually a thing lol
I worked with Big Jay McNeeley for several years. He and Joe Houston were the kings of the “honking” sax solo. Yet, when he wanted to, he could get around a bit on the instrument. He was definitely more of a showman than a jazzer….and a nice guy to work with. He used to do this bit where he would play while lying down on his back. Towards the end of his life he wore braces on his legs and it took awhile to get down on his back. His first hit was “Deacon’s Hop” in 1949. His second was “There Us Something On Your Mind” in 1959. That tune gave him a pretty good career. And the guy to Big Jay’s right in the first photo came to one of our gigs in Gardena, CA right before Jay’s passing and he was in his 70’s. He joked that most of Big Jay’s fans had died.
"i love not the man who has played 10,000 notes once, but i love the man who has played one note 10,000 times." - adam neely, probably
Bruce Lee said something similar about practicing kicks!
@@TallSilentGuy that.... thats the joke.....
@@humanperson7198 you didnt get the joke?
@@tobiassiagian2562 I both don't know if human person didn't get the joke but neither do I know why he thought that Simon would have needed the joke being pointed out by another person. Confusion at it's finest
I don't laugh at a man that misses a thousand jokes a single time, I laugh at a man that misses a single joke a thousand times.
When asked about his one-note solo on Cinnamon Girl, Neil Young replied, "It’s not [the same note]! Everyone says that, but there’s about a hundred notes in there. And every one of them is different. Every single one. They just happen to have the same name." King.
I know what you mean. But he has the finger on the same fret through out the solo. And at the very end of the solo there is actually two notes extra 😊. I really love that song though.
fuckin great song
@@justinrensel8518 Cinnamon Girl is in double-dropped D, so the high 'drone' note is the open high D string. The chords keep changing under it so, yeah, it's a different thing over each chord. :)
@@SRHMusic012 I know. It's fun to play that song also. I seldom care much about lyrics. But this song is so good in every field. 👍👍👍
Lionel Hampton: plays D whole song...
Djent musicians: Write that down, write that down.
proceeds to play Q note for whole song
I was watching this with my boyfriend and he just yelled "it's the djent of jazz!"
Came down into the comments for the Djent jokes and I was left not disappointed
Honestly, I can handle Lionel, Mcneely and Djent, I don’t understand the solo that is being discussed, whoa that was questionable. Goes to show that it’s isn’t what you do but how you do it.
Tune it down. A little bit more.. More. Yes! Now palm mute it. Yes YES *YES, IT'S PERFECT!* (starts to proggy headbangs)
One of the biggest musical experiences of my life happened unexpectedly, I was waiting to hear my cousin sing in her music school, and the orchestra started warming up where every single instrument did completely it's own thing, with absolutely no connection to any of the other instruments, and it all happened at the same time. It was a racket.
I'm sure that's very typical, but I had never heard anything like that, and the excitement building up got me in the right mood, the horrible gush of random snips of melodies crashing into the room at once was the absolute complete opposite of a funky jam session ever. Everyone was just playing their own technical part in order to warm up their instrument before the concert. But man, it threw me so much off that I really had a cool musical experience, I really loved it. It was so magnificently horrible. It's was the opposite of a bop, but I liked it.
It taught me something about music, that a great musical moment is as much about you opening up to it, than the music itself. You can show someone your absolute favourite song, that track which puts you into a wonderful state of bliss every time, but your friends might not like it at all. They won't hear what you're hearing. And we could never ask them to. Imagine taking someone into a recollection of the feeling you had as a child waiting for pancakes to be made while your mother was dancing by herself to the radio, or any other experience a song could trigger in us, that's just not possible.
I mean I even once knew a girl who would turn on the static on the TV and listen to it. She loved that sound.
Music is all about opening up to the experience. I've always hated the line dancing type of country music, accordion based forró, Scandinavian danseband, German Schlager, all that inbred farmer kind of music. Yet I see people dancing and having amazing musical experiences while that kind of music is playing, I see people absolutely loving it. It's amazing music, it's great, it's just me that's the problem. My prejudice. I haven't opened up to it yet.
If some other people seem to like it, then bad music is just you making it bad. It's your prejudice.
This video is real great
I think you're great
69th like
This video is real great, unlike that solo.
Real Crazy Cool, I'd say
I think all y'all are real great
15:19 Remember when 12tone played audio from that same Ben Shapiro quote and a commenter said 12tone shouldn’t read Ben’s statements in such an obnoxious mocking voice but it’s literally Ben’s voice
nice pfp
Ben is a social distancing measuring stick, war pushing chick hawk. Buy Burch Gold folks.
Burch Gold.
lmao I remember that.
In times like these, have you considered putting some of your money into . . . . gold-foil wrapped Hannukkah Gelt?
I just spit out my food and I wasn't even eating. *Consider me sent.*
"Yes, that is a glow-in-the-dark saxophone, and I want one."
Given how that was done back in that time (radioactive paint), you really, REALLY don't.
Big Adam McNeely is gonna get cancer
Now with 35% less Cesium!
You've got it the wrong way 'round - now I _definitely_ want one
So you’re saying I can get a glow in the dark saxophone AND get cancer and die ? I’m in.
How radioactive though? I mean, a banana is slightly radioactive, so just saying it's radioactive isn't a guarantee that it's enough to be harmful.
My favorite one-note composition is a completely different genre: "Not getting married today" from Company by Stephen Sondheim. It's actually three interwoven songs in three different styles. The groom's part is a ballad that is intentionally overly dramatic, the narrator's part is in an operatic style that is humorously acerbic, but the bride's part for which the piece is named, is a brilliant one-note piece. It is fast and it is frenetic but it only works because it speeds along on one note.
It's also my go-to piece to counter people who think the Major-General's song is the greatest patter song of all time.
Hi, the idea of a one-note part contrasted with balladic and operatic parts was intriguing and I was curious what such one-note part would sound like. But from what I've found here on RUclips, the bride's part has a multiple-note melody so it doesn't seem to be one-note, unless I'm missing something. Could you explain to me how it is one-note?
"Solo means I only have to play one note, right?" is the 2020 equivalent of "PROTIP: Make sure that the synth and the vocals are in THE SAME KEY".
“Make sure the sax solo and the rest of the band are in THE SAME TUNING FREQUENCY”
@@rmshredz "it's played through bad frequencies"
it's amazing how many modern day hobbyist producers have zero knowledge of music theory
The lyrics of "One note samba" talk about exactly what the musician is doing while playing/singing:
"Eis aqui este sambinha
Feito numa nota só
Outras notas vão entrar,
Mas a base é uma só.
Esta outra é consequência
Do que acabo de dizer
Como eu sou a consequência
Inevitável de você!"
In English:
"This is just a little samba
Built upon a single note
Other notes are bound to follow
But the root is still that note.
Now this new note is the consequence
Of the one we've just been through
As I'm bound to be
The unavoidable consequence of you!"
Pure metalanguage!
the song is actually awesome though, so the self awareness works great
boa traduçao hein
Yes, and then after the one note part the sax plays through the whole scale :D
isso é coisa de brasileiro, eu amo
@@mellomendoncacaio Na verdade eu peguei a versão em inglês do próprio Jobim (a versão em português é de Newton Mendonça).
This video is so insanely high quality. Well researched, well explained, and interesting
And hilarious!
That’s what most of his videos are :)
Adam Neely is def one of my favorite RUclipsrs and it makes me so happy how the quality of his content is always getting better ❤️
Except that it’s titled worst “Jazz” solo and the song is not even jazz
@@ExpertAdviceTV That's part of the hilarious!
This is so good. It reminds me on the mind-boggling (kind of) one-note guitar solo in King Crimsons "Starless", which isn't an improvisation but a fully notated instrumental part of this wonderful piece of music. Your video gives me new ways to hear it or rather to eventully unterstand it.
So far I always thought of the solo in Starless as a piece of experimental art , where the composer swaps the traditional roles of the rhythmic and the harmonic section of the band. While the normally melodic or harmonically leading guitar plays the same note over and over again, as a bass (or the drummer) sometimes does (without us caring about it), here the bass and the drums are allowed to to the more interesting things. But the monotonous guitar is so disturbing to my ears! It's so hard to ignore it. I'm always glad, when they swap back to their usual roles at the end of the song.
They didn't invent anything. Jobim had done the exact same thing in One Note Samba. While the singer - lead melody stays in the same note, the harmony runs across five different chords.
@@skyhigh6089this has nothing to do with the original comment
Adam's repeating "one note" hundreds of time for twenty minutes before mentioning "one note samba", is a perfect example of one note solos creating a tension that screams to be resolved.
Dang son youre right
Kinda like the analogy!
"One Note Samba" had momentarily slipped my mind; I was expecting Adam to cite the Allegretto from Beethoven 7.
I knowwwww! When he finally mentioned it, I actually screamed “YES!”. With nobody around to connect with. So thanks for making me feel a bit less isolated. Crazy, not alone.
You know, this analogy, it, it kinda good
I'm a 73 year old guitarist whose 23 year old grandson (a superb musician with true 'perfect pitch') kindly shared your interesting video a moment ago. I replied: "Thanks so very much Thomas. I'd just been thinking of COME RAIN OR COME SHINE -- best jazz version (all guitarists would agree) by the greatest of them all (according to all the other greats) -- Wes Montgomery. And I'd been thinking that this song - one of the best from Johnny (I Remember You) Mercer and Harold Arlen.
The song's bridge consists of 17 consecutive 'same note'(s) -- two segments of eight and nine notes, but played as an octave; the chords 'pedal pointing' as pianists say around the same repeated note give the illusion that there's more than just one note. The opening refrain "I'm gonna love you like nobody's loved you come rain . . ." is just one note too, changing down by a fifth for the last words . . ."or come shine."
Oh yes, listen to the greatest jazz guitarist. He was 19 (correct) when he took up the guitar. Immediately learned by ear all the solos of early giant Charlie Christian and kept repeating them until he'd developed his own inimitable style! To my ears the greatest soloist on any instrument ever. And as you may recall he played with his thumb ONLY -- including those 'octaves' a style he perfected and made all his own.
ruclips.net/video/QszCUG3tOxw/видео.html
Anyway, try to hear that same note repeated in two sequences of eight followed by nine on the bridge. Wes Montgomery's COME RAIN OR COME SHINE (from my favorite of his 'live' albums recorded by the 'king of remotes' Wally Heider of L.A. Worth looking up his Wiki entry. All that from your sending me THIS. Thanks again, Thomas!
Thank you Andrew Neely for sharing. -- Mark B of the frozen North
Ok.
ah yes because i know so many 73 year olds that use youtube and know how to link things
@@Ok-vk9wx but have you ever seen someone actually use asterisk, quotations, and citations in a youtube comment?
@@Ok-vk9wx ...huh?
Jesus, TL;DR if there ever was one
everyone: “ITS JUST ONE NOTE!!!”
snare drummers: “...pathetic”
Ha! Checkmate! snare drummers!
@@yesterdaytech9569 Snare drummers play great one note solos with every solo they play. Checkmate anyone who plays notes!
Snare drums are like a chord of noise
you can many tones on a snare tho
I dont think snare drums really have a "note" but yeah
Great vid! I once saw Branford Marsalis and Sonny Rollins at Carnegie Hall. They played together for a short time and naturally, a battle ensued. They went back and forth, getting hotter and hotter on each round. Branford killed with an amazing solo and even in Carnegie Hall, the crowd was nuts. The Rollins played a one note solo. Marsalis just put his hands on his hips and watched. He knew he was defeated by a master and that he had probably been goaded into it. One note solos can kill in the right context!
The listening book: "Use one note"
"Instructions unclear, accidently made a djent EP"
A Cat Do you play the keyboard?
As soon as he quoted Ornette Coleman saying something about "the biggest saxophone sound", I immediately though djent.
DJENT
DJENT!
DDJJEENNTT!!
A Cat hey you’re a cat!
Wouldn't the book say: "Use the G note only"? XD
Actually I was thinking of the bass riff in Periphery's Absolomb during the entire video
Pete Townsend's solo on "I can see for miles" is one note. The trick in the song is that the bass is playing the main theme, and the "guitar solo" is just one note, to satirize the "guitar god" craze of the time.
its a totally shite "song"
@@bobjones2041 …not 👨🏻🦱
It's really not so much a guitar solo as an instrumental break with a one-note guitar part. The drums really carry it, but they're not playing a solo, either.
@@ballhawk387 Fair point. But I think Townsend's intent was to create a song that reversed the usual setup, with the bass and drums, as you say, "carrying" it. That could be why it wasn't a hit!
@@bobjones2041 how tf is there an adam neely viewer that puts song in quotation marks and just dismisses a song as "shite" without any justification, lol
8:28 Truly the greatest solo in jazz history. Vinny Mazetta boldly rejected the harmonic style of 18th century european music on set.
And in so doing, produced the worst jazz solo of all time.
This is why jazz is in the dark ages now because of Your train of thought.
Amazing how you put it in a different musical context and suddenly the solo sounded good
"Sounds like someone had to run a mile and was forced to breathe out of a saxophone" 🤣
That's funny on many levels. Just picturing what that would look like is hilarious
I used to play one note solos all the time especially in hotel gigs when there's almost no audience. It's a good way to make your bandmates and the three people listening laugh a bit.
It's actually interesting to explore what you can do with them with good use of dynamics and rythm displacement.
"You can play a shoestring if you're sincere." - John Coltrane
I pulled a thread out of my shirt and wrapped one end around the end of my thumb and the other end around the end of my index finger, held it up by my ear and played music for hours in jail one night by pulling the thread tighter or looser; it was all rhythm and tune but it was great. I got out the next morning. There's no end to how we can make "music."
@@choimdachoim9491 Wow, that's quite an interesting story 🤔
@@choimdachoim9491 Must have been one helluva concert, man. Idk, I feel like I should try to say something profound but all I can muster is that I am glad that you got to experience that.
🎶 A shoelace supreme, a shoelace supreme... 🎶
My music teacher told me one of the best pieces of soloing advice ever. "It doesn't matter what you do, it doesn't matter what you play; as long as it is loud. LOUUUDDD! It can be one note, but make it LOUD!"
The first installment of Adam’s new series: “How TO Suck at Music”
You mean "How To Make Money As A Musician"
"What makes this song bad?" with Radam Bealy.
There's no such thing as bad music
@@lucalapaglia3941 But, there is. This seems like an impossibility because a lot of bad music is profitable and money = good.
EctoRekt I kinda doubt that the sax player made any money from this, besides maybe 50 bucks for the session.
When he didn’t say “repetition legitimizes”
The climax of the video. The suspense. And then the horror.
Matt Rutkowski I was on the edge of my seat
How could Adam do this I'm literally shaking and crying right now
Pat S *_u n l e g i t i m i z e d_*
When he didn’t say “repetition legitimizes”
Petition for Adam to refer to himself as “Big A Neely”
"Little D McNeely" has a better ring to it tho... just sayin.
Big ABCDBGAdam Neely
If you buy him a burger, you introduce yourself with 'Hey, Big Mac Neely?'
@@asomafw underrated comment
You sure you want to admire someone by calling him "Big A"?
One note example? Guitar solo from "Audioslave - Show me how to live". I love that song!
I'm impressed, how many various tiny details have been utilized to enrich this video with information. The research have been enormous, I recon so. Pleasure to watch. Great work, Adam! :)
Tom Morello can get hella mileage outta one note!
@@jerroneous8549 Morello isnt a guitarist. He's a fucking wizard.
One note solo? "I wanna be sedated" by the Ramones has a guitar solo that shows perfectly how effective one note can be.
this was the first thing my mind went to.
Johnny Cash playing piano on Hurt
The verse in Mr. Brightside by The Killers is also one note
@@DoctorPatient "I Can See For Miles". Stole the words outta my typing finger. Actually sets up the break for Moon's menacing drum salvos.
Macy's day parade - Green Day also, that single note in the guitar, gives the song so so so much more atmosphere to the song in the very end
Adam: even though repetition...
My brain: REPETITION LEGITIMIZES REPETITION LEGITIMIZES
REPETITION LEGITIMIZES REPETITION LEGITIMIZES
Adam: no lol
d e c e p t i o n
He got me as well
I guess by now we can say he clearly legitimized that into a meme
Repetition legitimized!
He did it on purpose. He got all of us there lol.
The concept of playing a simple solo in contrast to complicated solos sounds like a very punk thing to do.
ex. 138 by misfits
Another example "I wanna be sedated" Ramones
That's kind of my take on it. It sounds bad on a record that you listen to at home, but when you are in a smoky cellar and the crowd is going crazy, doing a stupid repetition out of tune is the equivalent of smashing the guitar on stage that will make people go nuts.
Finally, someone close to my heart.
I think punk is simply the 70s and 80s manifesting of the rebellious young spirit to feel freely and without restraint. If anything, punk has borrowed from Rock and Roll, who has in turn borrowed from Jazz.
The one note solos and wild carefree attitude of bebop jazz were just as polarizing as dubstep was or punk was. It's expressing the same emotions with a different toolbox
As part of my high school's trip to the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival, a few of us went to a clinic called "How to Solo With Only One Note", and it was fascinating! Listening to the instructor play and him getting us to play just made something click in my brain and unlocked something in my brain to get so much more tonality and variety out of my trumpet. If you're in a school band, I'd highly recommend getting your teacher/prof to check it out for a trip. I went 4 times during high school, and a few of my buddies and I are planning to go next year, 4 years graduated.
are we all forgetting the Ramones song 'I Wanna Be Sedated' has a solo that is also literally one note that everyone loves?
*laughs in Cinnamon Girl*
It suits the song so well. Don’t think much else could’ve been better in its place.
Yeah that always bugged me too. Like if you don't want to bother playing a real solo, don't pretend to
@@lllULTIMATEMASTERlll "Punk Rock God" by Stevie T shows what might have gone better than the fake solo
@@nthgth I mean it sounds good, but I don't think it fits with the Ramone's aesthetic as well as the one note solo. It's all just opinions though.
Adam: "check out the worst jazz solo"
Me playing random notes on my guitar: "are you sure about that?"
lmao same
lmao same
yeah you're playing the epitome of jazz
*_f r e e j a z z_*
Adam: This is the worst jazz solo
You: *playing 0-0-0-0-0-0-0 in the guitar while watching the video
"I play one note for 5 hours straight" video incoming.
Hook us up you crazy cat.
Kenny G played a sustained note for about 45 minutes one time. If he played that note six more times, for the same duration, he'd have made this video already.
@@dkomo2 Rahsaan Roland Kirk held one note for 2 hours and seven minutes at Ronnie Scotts in London on a tenor. The reason why it didn't make the Guinness Book of World Records is that Kirk blew into a mike which they thought was fixed. G blew a soprano sax which my sax playing friends say "is like blowing into a straw".
Great video! Your pronunciation of "Györgyi" was adorable by the way :D The easiest way to pronounce the sound "gy" in Hungarian is it's basically the same as the sound "d" in the word "duke". And "ö" is close to the sound "u" in "hurt".
So..."duhrg-yee"?
@@irishjet2687 Well... I guess!
@@irishjet2687dyurdy
“Played excruciatingly” is one of the most powerful bits of music notation I’ve ever seen
i love it when expression marks are in and of themselves expressive.
Excruciato
In a way, baiting us out of the famous “repetition legitimizes” phrase is a way of showing that his repetition of that phrase legitimized the saying in our mind. Repetition does not only serve to reinforce musical ideas, but any idea in general.
Adam: I want a glow in the dark saxophone
1950s Radon Paint: So how much do you like cancer?
I WAS THINKING THE EXACT SAME THING
It’s not a bug if it’s a feature
@Robbi Rose Didn't help Coltrane much :-(
Thoroughly enjoyed this. Once, in the 1980s, I saw NRBQ and the piano player, Terry Adamas, who I think has a Monk fetish, invited anyone to come up on stage and outplay him. One brave soul did and played a cool barrel-house blues solo. Adams clownishly hip-checked him off the bench and played a one-note solo for about 32 bars. Pretty amazing.
Jimmie Vaughan does this all the time, too. "Mty Girl," on T-Birdy Rhythm is a great example.
The worst jazz solo ever
Me: challenge accepted
I think Jon Benjamin might have you beat
You have fierce competition, trust me! ;)
I too, came here fiercely triggered by the title
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The "one note samba" is also a Brazilian expression meaning that someone is just repeating the same argument(note) over and over again.
Interesting
I didn't think I could love that song even more!
given that Jobim is easily one of the most important composers and musicians to ever come out of Brazil that expression might have originated from the song
Petition to only ever refer to Adam as 'Big A McNeely' from now on
Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan, and others who have gotten rich being confidentially wrong/ignorant in an incredibly public way stand in stark contrast to the intelligent content in this channel. Thank you Adam for not making mental McDonalds® for a quick dollar, there is enough of that out there, and I appreciate what you do!
What do you have against these guys, what a hater😂
As Beethoven said, "To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable".
I keep telling myself that as I learn how to solo on guitar.
I smiled so wide when you finally landed on "One Note Samba". :-D
Other one-note-ish solos that I love:
Eric Reed (piano) - Rubber Bottom (Wynton Marsalis Septet - Live at the Village Vanguard)
Oscar Peterson (piano) - Seven Come Eleven (The Essential Oscar Peterson: The Swinger) - possibly my favorite jazz piano solo
Andy Summers (guitar) - When the World Is Running Down (The Police - Zenyetta Mondatta)
Johnny Ramone - I Wanna Be Sedated
Also, the main riffs of The Weirdos - Helium Bar and Death Grips - Giving Bad People Good Ideas both only contain one chord
When you just want to chug the low e string but you only have a saxophone and the 1950s
Exactly where my mind went. This was their repetitive, aggressive thrashing music.
I think one of the main conclusions is that intentionality and confidence are extremely important. As long as it *sounds like* you did something intentionally, you can do *almost* anything you want.
I love how it's in Db because that's the key my first ever solo was in and it did not go very well absolutely torture.
The bitchiest bass scale of them all
Adam when he encounters anything strange in music: "But can quantify that in any meaningful way?"
"Pick a single note on your instrument and make a short piece using only that note."
Ah, the seeds of djent have been planted.
That's nothing. When Kenny G made his finale for the Phuket Jazz Festival he hit the highest note on a soprano sax and held it for about two minutes (circular breathing) while the band stopped playing. Just a single ear-splitting note..
"The Race" by YELLO is a great example of how effectively one note can be used for the majority of an entire composition. It's literally 3 minutes 20 seconds of the bass, guitar, vocals, and half the brass section playing only the tonic, with synth pads occasionally changing the chord and a few riffs thrown in by a few other saxophones. It is some of the most fun one can have in under 4 minutes.
to give another example of how to use (basically) just one note in a song, bmbmbm by black midi. the one note repetition sounds almost like a methodic, focused marching forward, which together with the frantic, borderline schizophrenic rambling of the vocals and the interspersion of insanely fast riffs works to create a really intimidating sound
I went and watched that video, because I had never heard of it, and you're right, it completely slaps
I'm willing to bet you $500 that the "glow in the dark saxophone" is just painted in a rather radioactive paint 😂
That's a bet you would win. Back then they used radioactive paint on everything they wanted to make glow in the dark. Even watch faces were painted with it to make them glow in the dark.
@@twojointsjay7330 Oh, putting radium on watch faces was probably one of the less insane uses they had for Radium - for the end user, not so much for the workers painting with it. They used to make water coolers lined with radium and uranium! By the days of Big Jay's era I would hope they had long-since stopped using radium paint on anything, as a result of the Radium Girls case in the 1930s.
@@funstuff2006 is the Radium Girls related to the watch faces? That's how I heard of it - the women painting the watches would paint their own teeth and other goofy stuff to have fun, not realising how dangerous it was.
And who can forget the unshielded x-ray machines used to take accurate foot measurements at every upstanding shoe-seller in the country?
@@twojointsjay7330 The most harmful aspect was the method of application - 'lick, dip, paint.' To keep the paintbrush finely pointed, between applications they would lick the paintbrush - which still had some amount of radium paint in the bristles- the same way you lick a piece of thread when you are trying to put it through the eye of a needle. Painting their teeth with it once or twice likely wouldn't be a big dose of exposure, but adding it into their saliva thousands of times over a number of years caused them to have horrible issues with the bones in their mouth/face, as well as cancer. A documentary I saw about it said at least one of them had accumulated so much radium that there were detectable levels of Radon gas in her breath - and thats using measuring devices from the 1920s-1930s.
Haha, yeah, I've heard of those X-ray boxes.
@@ContentConfessional if he used black lights to make it glow, it may have been a uranium based paint more likely than Radium, as Uranium fluoresces under UV
My first private guitar lesson my teach told me “play a solo only using one note”. After that he also did it with much more variation in articulation, length, tempo etc. That started my Musical journey
That is a fake story.
@@wingusdingus1019 ok and..?
@@jerryqueerand there's nothing more to say? I have no idea what else you could possibly want, your comment is confusing.
@@wingusdingus1019 Your confusion suggests you are American () -- they are well know for not understanding irony.
He ironically used implied (missing) words, and to me he is implying that you need to defend your statement. Simply saying what said implies you are directly accusing the OP of lying, which is simply rude. If you're going to say "you are lying" on a public platform you must follow it with "because..." and tell us why you thing you are correct, otherwise everyone else will just say "you are a twat, you can't know it's a fake story."
I for one have no problem accepting that a private tutor started with testing a pupil's grasp of rhythm or dynamic or some other capability of the instrument rather than just dive in to "how you play your first scale."
@@Dranok1 yeah uhh that's not at all what he said
This is the only thing that’s helping me remember it’s Monday
Same
That and Scott the woz
Monday for people stuck at home is known as "Adamneelyscottthewozjamesandmikemondaysday"
Michael Turner interesting to see scott the woz and adam neely fans intersecting
@@modalinterchange8359 it is isn't it
You know, one of my favorite one-note solos is from Black Country, New Road's 'Sunglasses', where in the second half, the guitarist only plays one chord for a pretty long time. It really contributes to the anxious feeling of the song
Facts
that solo its more than adequate
"centers around the tonic"
it's only the tonic, there's no around here lol
Around 5 cents 😋
As Ariano Suassuna once said: "arround the hole, everything is edge" 😅
Aiding your cause.
This is one of my favorite videos that you’ve done. The way you take a piece of music that is being ridiculed for its simplicity and then contextualize it and show the legitimacy of a simplistic form of musical expression is really cool.
17:35
Microtonal LoFi has evolved into One-Note Microtonal LoFi
In his 80s, Big Jay McNeely was still pulling sold out crowds and playing that big note. I can attest to it first hand. At my first rehearsal with him, first time I met him, he was quiet. Slowly unpacking his sax from its case, no words spoken, but the band chatting, getting set up. the first note Jay played made me jump from my seat. tbf I'm one to get jump scares anyway, but... the sound was huge. Rehearsal had started. He lived for the live shows to the very end. His energy was reserved for the sold out crowds. He would be out int he crowd and honking in people's faces. He was in his eighties! He told me to play the snare hard. like really hard. Think rimshots as hard as I could possibly sustain, all night long. I got sore hands playing with him. I think he relied on the snare for timing, perhaps a lot less of the band was really gonna cut through for him while he was lost in among the crowds which he walked through, while I would be stuck on stage trying to catch glimpses of him issuing the occasional ending cue/etc. Rest in peace, Big J
I remember seeing a Pete Townsend interview where he said that usually the guitarist plays the intricate multi note solos while the drummer keeps rhythm, but in the case of The Who; Keith Moon would play insanely intricate drum solos leaving Townsend to deal with keeping rhythm on guitar, hence the one note solo at 19:05
Give that sax player a break. He broke all his strings except one.
Thank you for a genuine laugh-out-loud.
On my acoustic guitar, it is tough to locate the water valve.
@@3kmek937 I think it's between the pedals.
lmao
@@euansmith3699 Actually, I'm sure it's near the keyboard
Adam really took that jazz solo and did something with it. I want that full track now.
I can't begin to imagine the amount of time and effort that goes into your videos, how you are able to research so deeply, meanwhile maintaining your musical skills, relationships with other musos both online and off, doing all this video recording and editing, and still manage to eat and sleep, I assume, somewhere in between it all. I take my hat off to you, video after video. Amazing! And I must say, you share in such a way that even without a particular interest in this area, you easily held (and hold with other videos) my attention for the entire 28 min. I love the goat, by the way, it cracked me up every time, and the little "whop" sound when the elephant disappeared, nice little touches. Keep it up!