hey, welcome to 12tone!
it's Q&A time again, and this time we've got my friend Jade from Up And Atom to read the
questions.
Jade, take it away!
Evan Hubler asked "Is there any type of resolution that can be used in the locrian mode?"
not really, at least not any good ones that I know of.
Locrian (bang) is a scale built on top of a diminished triad (bang) and diminished chords
are just too unstable to really resolve to.
after all, a resolution is basically just a release of tension, and there's nowhere
in Locrian that's more tense than the I chord.
if anything you can actually resolve the I chord to the bII, but then it just sounds
like you're in major.
next question!
funnyflywheel asked "would you like having perfect pitch?"
I'm actually not sure.
for those of you who don't know, perfect pitch is the ability to recognize notes not just
in relation to each other but as specific, individual frequencies.
that is, you could hear this (bang) and tell me it's an F#.
although that example may have annoyed the perfect pitch folks, because I actually played
a G. sorry.
anyway, this sounds like it'd be awesome, but it's not really necessary: being good
at music tends to be much more about relative pitch, which is the ability to recognize the
relationships between notes, and from what I've heard, having perfect pitch can actually
make that harder to learn.
plus, having perfect pitch makes it much more annoying to listen to things that are slightly
out of tune, and let's be honest, most things are.
still, though, it does seem like it'd be fun, and if I had the option I probably wouldn't
turn it down.
next question!
PlayTheMind asked "How would you modify traditional musical notation to make it "better"?"
if I could wave a magic wand and make every musician on Earth change the way they notate,
the first thing I'd do would be to standardize symbols, especially for chords. currently
this, this, and this all mean the same set of notes so why do we have so many symbols?
I mean, I know why: because the history of notation is complicated and weird.
but the current amalgamation of standards we have today is really annoying and largely
unnecessary.
I don't really care what we settle on: if we all agreed to notate a major triad like
this I'd be totally on board.
I'd just like us to pick one.
next!
L. Joy asked "If you could give one piece of advice to someone trying their hand at
music composition for the first time, what would it be?"
you're probably not gonna be good at it yet.
but that's fine.
no one is.
one of the first songs I ever wrote was based entirely around a diminished triad on a distorted
guitar because I was a metal kid who wanted to sound as dark and edgy as possible, and
I'm really glad that no recordings of it exist anymore.
but I kept going, 'cause you don't get good at things by only doing things you're already
good at.
once you've made enough bad things you'll start to figure out what makes them bad.
you'll be able to avoid those mistakes in the future, and really, that's what learning
is.
so dive in, give it your all, and then if you're disappointed by the results, just step
back and give it another shot.
next!
Luke asked "As a college educated theorist, what's your opinion on punk?"
I love punk!
the punk performance classes were some of my favorites in college.
the harmony's often fairly straightforward, of course, but being a good song is about
more than just having complex harmony.
punk uses simple tools because it wants to be blunt and accessible, and if it was full
of weird jazz chords I don't think it'd be able to do that nearly as well.
although if someone wants to reharmonize the Sex Pistols with jazz chords and send me the
results I'd love to hear it… next!
Extra Cursed asked "Is aleatoric tuning for an instrument a thing?
If so, do you know of any examples?"
I don't know any examples, but I really hope it exists.
for those of you who don't know, aleatoric is a fancy word for random, and it's often
used to describe pieces where the composer intentionally leaves important decisions either
up to the performers or up to chance.
this could mean rolling dice to choose the notes of your melody, letting performers repeat
sections an indeterminate number of times, or in the case of this question, tuning your
instruments randomly.
I think it'd work best on a keyboard-like instrument so that you can separately tune
each note, and if you did it on an electronic one you could even change the tuning between
sections.
it could go back and forth between different kinds of traditional tuning for a more harmonious
effect, or you could just detune notes completely at random and see what happens.
again, if any of you actually do this, or know of anyone who does, please send them
my way.
next!
Eporeon asked "Favorite type of dog?"
...cats.
next!
ScienceC asked "Do you think musical talent is some innate quality or is it entirely dependent
on work?"
I think it's a mix of both.
I'm a firm believer in the idea that anyone can be a musician if they practice enough,
but it's hard to deny that some people have a head start, either because they have naturally
good ears or nimble fingers or whatever else.
like, I've tried to learn drums, and I've seen other people start to learn drums, and
I can tell you that the coordination is a lot harder for me than most people, but I'm
sure that if I spent hours a day on it for long enough, I could be a pretty decent drummer.
but in my experience, truly great musicians tend to have both: they're naturally talented,
and then they work really, really hard to hone that talent and become masters.
next!
Guitarmalade "Which secret chord did David play to please The Lord?"
it's hard to say: Cohen says it "goes like this", but then plays three different chords
while he's describing the structure.
maybe it's a polychord.
maybe the answer is it's F major, G major, and A minor all played at the same time.
or maybe it's like that Tenacious D song: they couldn't remember the greatest song in
the world, so instead they just played a Tribute.
maybe the secret chord is supposed to be secret, and Cohen knows better than to actually tell
us what it is, so he just plays some similar things to give us a sense of what it might
be like if we were allowed to hear it.
we'll probably never know for sure.
next!
Akiva Weinberger asked "Why don't you put up a video announcing a Q&A?"
I know this was meant more as advice than a question, but I did want to address why
I gather questions for these on social media instead of here, where most of my audience
is.
there's a lot of reasons, not least of which is the fact that youtube doesn't like it when
I upload things that don't do well, but the main one is just that I want to encourage
people to check out our social media because I have a lot of fun there.
well, on twitter anyway, I almost never look at our facebook except to post videos 'cause
from a creator's perspective, facebook is terrible.
but twitter's a lot of fun: I get to be a bit less serious and professional, and it's
better set up to have actual conversations with people.
so yeah, if you do twitter, I'm @12tonevideos.
ok, I'm done plugging for now.
next!
Nick Howard asked "What are the differences between a polymeter and a polyrhythm?"
polymeters and polyrhythms are both ways to have different people playing a different
number of beats per bar at the same time.
in a polymeter, everyone agrees on how long a beat is, which means the length of the bar
has to change.
for instance, here's a 4/4 drum beat with a 3/4 guitar riff on top: (bang) a polyrhythm,
on the other hand, means that everyone agrees how long a bar is, which means that some people
need to play shorter beats in order to fit everything in, like this pattern where the
lower drum plays 3 hits in the time it takes the higher one to play 4: (bang) next!
Ewan asked "Given that you've talked about West Side Story, what is your favorite musical?"
would it be too cliche to say Hamilton? because it's Hamilton.
beyond that, though, I've always loved Jesus Christ Superstar.
I had the original cast recording as a kid, and it did a lot to spark my love of musical
theater and, specifically, rock operas.
admittedly, it has quite a bit of filler, which keeps it from being in the #1 slot,
but if every song was as good as Heaven On Their Minds, The Temple, and Gethsemene, it'd
be pretty unstoppable. and while we're talking about Andrew Lloyd Weber plays, I'd be remiss
not to mention Starlight Express, the musical about trains where everyone is on rollerskates.
it's not, like, good, but if you ever get the chance to see it live, it's absolutely
worth it.
next!
Jad Nour asked "Is there a line between author's intent and audience interpretation, and why
should we care?"
oh, geez.
wars have been fought over that question, so I doubt I'm gonna change many minds here,
but I don't tend to think the author's intent matters much in evaluating a piece of art.
I think that the experience of beauty is inherently personal, and that what a song means to you
shouldn't be changed or invalidated because you find out that it meant something different
to the person who wrote it.
like, for a long time I've associated Jackson Browne's Song For Adam with my grandfather,
who had Alzheimers, even though I think it's pretty clear that that's not what Browne meant
the song to be about.
that's not to say that understanding the history of a piece isn't valuable, just that its creator
holds no special ownership over its meaning.
next!
SVCompiler asked "Is there a genre of music where Accelerando is a thing?"
so accelerando is when the music speeds up over time, and I tend to hear it most in folk
music, although I do listen to a lot of folk music so my experience is biased.
but the first example that comes to mind is a scottish folk song called Mary Mack, where
traditionally each verse is played faster than the last, building from a typical upbeat
folk song at the beginning to a frantic sprint through the lyrics by the end.
it's a lot of fun, and Great Big Sea did a great version of it which I linked in the
description if you're into that sort of thing.
but yeah, if you're looking for accelerando stuff, folk dance traditions are probably
a good place to start.
and that seems like a good place to stop.
thanks again to Jade, who runs the awesome physics channel Up and Atom.
she covers all sorts of cool things like dark matter, force fields, and AI, all with adorable
drawings that, quite frankly, put mine to shame.
plus, my Mom loves her channel, and what better endorsement could you ask for?
anyway thanks to everyone for the questions, and thanks to you for watching!
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