Isaac: Ooh!
Kevin: Oh, that's it?
Oh.
Ohhh!
Got me!
Umu: So now you're reacting to the K-indie duo Peppertones. One is a guitarist, another one is a bassist, and they're both vocalists.
They're known for their songs about youth, and they write their own songs and lyrics, as well.
The other three artists in this video
Drummer, keyboardist, and guitarist without glasses, are session musicians who often record and perform with Peppertones.
Stephen: Oh, sweet.
Umu: ''Fast' is a track from their fifth album, released in 2014.
The lyrics are about comforting people who live in the ever so busy and fast-paced world, despite how much our civilization has advanced.
Melissa: Peppertones, that's a cool band name. James: Cool message already, so... Melissa: Yeah. James: I'm excited to see what they do with it.
Henry: Nice bass.
Yamaha drums--sad.
Elizabeth: Ooh!
Henry: Good drummer though. Nice opening fill.
Nice harmonics.
Seiji: This is nice. Stephen: This is really sick.
Seiji: This is really nice.
Mmm!
Back door.
Elizabeth: I'm groovin'.
Elizabeth: Ooh, yeah, we got some chromatic voice leading chord. Henry: I'm having a "Why didn't I write this?" moment.
Fiona: There's like a motif bum-bum-bum. That's really cute. Makes me think like, 1-2-3. For sure. Aaron: Yeah.
Aaron: Nice little chromatic walk up.
Kevin: I never hear progression like that in K-rock, even.
Elizabeth: Is that just like a...are they singing in fifths, basically? Henry: What? Elizabeth: Are they singing in fifths, basically?
Henery: Yeah. Elizabeth: Yeah.
Elizabeth: Open fifths are a very interesting interval. Henry: It's the rock interval.
Elizabeth: Well, cuz it could be either major or minor, because without the third you just don't know. Henry: Yeah.
Melissa: Dude, every person is playing their instruments really well. There's like a lot of stuff in every part. James: Yeah.
Melissa: It's very dense. James No, they're very talented. Melissa: Yeah.
Melissa: They're good.
Collin: So spot-on.
That's a nice fill.
Kevin: Ah.
The chord changes don't even feel like chord changes. It just blends with the sound so well.
You know, there's a lot of jazzy stuff going on, but it's like they're not even making a big deal out of it.
Fiona: Ooh!
It's so much more spacious with the drums, that simple drum beat. Aaron: Oh, yeah, he's not filling things anymore. Fiona: Yeah. And the keyboard isn't like...
Now, it'll probably pick up again, Aaron: it's coming back. Fiona: because the cymbals.
It's still pretty spacious.
Seiji: I coulda used more shredding. Stephen: Really? Seiji: Yeah.
Stephen: It was nice and melodic though. Seiji: It was. It was really nice. Stephen: It was really melodic.
Henry: This is really good bass playing.
Kevin: Oh, I like how he doesn't really sing in pitch. It's a little off.
And he really leaps across his entire vocal range.
Aaron: Oh! Fiona: Bridge? Bridge?
The end?
Jarod: Oh, yeah.
Isaac: Ooh!
Kevin: Oh, that's it? Oh.
Ohhhh!
Got me! It got me!
Collin: Oh, sh*t.
Is that a...
Is he doing an organ?
Henry: Oh, and he switched to the organ!
Yeah, man! Yeah, man!
That's it. That's the one.
Seiji: It's really interesting how they're like, utilizing having two guitars. Stephen: Yeah. Seiji: Because most of the time
it's just like strumming and not strumming. Stephen: Right. Not to this extent, where it's like a range, where they both have like intricate parts that
Seiji: Yeah, they actually have... Stephen: Most of the set sounded like one part, but divided between two people, sort of, you know? Seiji: Yeah. They actually have parts.
Henry: Super good bass playing. He's just rockin' out.
Look at it! Bass face!
That's hilarious!
Melissa: It's like a really good instrumental interlude. I like that a lot.
We don't hear this that we don't hear those that much in K-pop.
Aaron: And we have the gradual fade out. Fiona: I like the fade out.
Aaron: Yeah, cuz they're all just like, Fiona: More songs need fade-outs. Aaron: the jam goes on, man!
Fiona: Yeah, it's like everlasting. Aaron: Long live the jam! Fiona: That's when you hit repeat.
Aaron: Exactly. Fiona: Go back to the beginning. Just like loop, loop...
Aaron: Wow. Talk about by vi-rioty...variety. Fiona: Talk about vi-rioty, am I rioty? Aaron: Vi-rioty?
Aaron: So many different textures--we had jazz organ, the drums, the lack of drums, with the spaciousness... Fiona: And the drums changed to like a
march feel. Aaron: Yeah, and then they
used silence and just...wow. So neat. Fiona: Caught us off gaurd, too.
Aaron: Yeah, I thought it was over, and I was like, awww. But then I was like, yeah, they're coming back! Fiona: That cool guitar with glasses, that guitar lick (mimicking guitar)
Aaron: That was fun Fiona: I don't know, just like the instrumentation was really good. They played so well together, they communicated really well. Aaron: I know, I feel like this is
a good mix of pop and classical rock. Fiona: Um-hmm.
Aaron: And you know, like they had the rock influence, but also like a little like gospel in there, with the jazz organ,
and I was like... Fiona: It was legit. Aaron: Just so many...it was awesome. It was like this big
segueing of all these great
genres that I love.
Stephen: The fun part about being a rock drummer or pop drummer is the fact that with a lot of these songs
you create your own drum parts. So it was really, really cool for me to hear
what kind of grooves he would play for the verses as opposed to like, the bridge. It was tasteful, too, in the sense that like,
I feel like a lot of times when I hear music that's either rock music or heavily influenced by rock,
the drums can be a little bit
overbearing or over...yeah, like overbearing sometimes, but all of his fills,
not just sonically, and not just dynamically, but also like, what drums he was playing, and like going from, for example,
like, high to low or low to high,
it was a really, really great job of supporting what was going on in the rest of the band, arrangement-wise.
Like, yeah. Seiji: He restricted himself quite a bit.
Stephen: Yeah! He did, and it was...even like, I don't know,
it was just really, really nice, because he didn't do anything necessarily super fancy,
but everything he played felt really, really good and made me want to dance, which is really, really awesome.
That's very much like a Steve Gadd approach. Or I feel like every famous
drummer nowadays, no matter what genre, is kind of like, they can do a lot of crazy chops,
but first and foremost foremost, they want to make sure that everything they play
places in time, feels good, and that someone could dance to it, you know.
Seiji: Yeah, he held back for a while, and then once it did start getting going, like he started to... Stephen: Um-hmm.
Stephen: But that's also in line with the comment I just mentioned, where he's creating his own part.
He's picking and choosing
moments where to like,
kind of burst open, and you notice that he does that towards the end of the song where the climax is, before they kind of
drop down and resolve.
Collin: I didn't like it. Jarod: Oh, I liked it. Collin: I didn't...it was weird.
It was like non-committal, like the whole thing was so damn light. No one was doing this and breaking their necks. No, I'm kidding
I mean, that's the thing,
that's why I don't know if I want to say anything, because I don't even know if it's a legitimate
complaint, cuz the guitar work was pretty good. The hammond organ sound was
surprising. Jarod, go! I want to hear what you think. I need to look at these guys. Jarod: See, I enjoy...
The only thing I wish I got more of, I wish there was a little bit more of the keyboard in the mix,
because it's like I really had to like,
like I was leaning forward, really leaning in with my ears, trying to find it, and it was like, there
was just a lot of...getting a lot of guitar and drums, but just not enough keyboard. But I really liked,
I don't know, I felt like I was going on a little...I felt I was going on an adventure, man.
Collin: Yeah... Jarod: We were kind of meandering at times, but it was a light-hearted meander, so it's like,
Collin: Yeah. Jarod: I thought it was fun. It felt like, you know, a bunch of dudes just, you know, getting their instruments together
and just playing together, and they were having a good time. So it's like they were radiating positive energy,
so I was...I think I was picking up their vibe.
Isaac: That was so relaxing to listen to. And it's just like, what I appreciate is the aspect of having such a simple
structure. It's like you have the faster rhythmic percussion line, and then you have the core harmonies that are coming in,
it's like the later half of the measure. It has a nice, nice groove to it. It's very slow-paced,
but then you have the vocal lines that are just very, quite ethereal.
They really know how to let things just ease up and then bring back the tension,
even though the tension that they're bringing is a very soothing vibe.
So it's like soothing, and then even more soothing, and then bring you back a little bit higher. So it's just, you're in a very
comfortable ride throughout the whole entire piece.
Kevin: Now, may we move to the piano, and I'll teach you a little modern theory.
So, you know Isaac was talking about that soothing vibe,
even though it this is like a...literally a song called 'Fast', and fast-paced? Well, there's a reason for that. It's because
there are these intervals that he uses that are used in a lot of new-age tunes,
especially on the guitars in this song. It's the (playing piano)
You hear this a lot.
Or like...
Like that's literally one of the riffs.
And we can't really describe this in terms of keys, because you know, like okay, is it 1-3-4, 5-7-1...what is it?
Well, we're gonna use some modern theory, because modern theory - 20th century theory - people stopped using
tonalities, and what they did was they counted in half steps. So, what we call this is 0-1-5.
I know we're counting downward, but this is how they did it. I'll explain it later, I guess.
But 0 - the first note is always 0 - and then this is 1, and then you count 2-3-4-5.
0-1-5,
even though (playing)
this type of sound is the 0-1-5 sound. Learn that.
Henry: That is so good! First of all, how have
only 148,000 people see this? This is f*ckin' awesome. Umu: They're under the same company as Lee Jin-ah.
So, it's a smaller, but the best company out there. Henry: This company rocks! They're so good! This is the sh*t!
It's so
true to its roots, and it's extremely original, and it very much adopts other sounds from
from other bands that already exist. They pull them in and implement them in ways that
American artists are just blind to at some times. This is awesome.
I'm actually gonna check this out. Elizabeth: From what you were saying about it being about trying to bring people back
from a world that seems like it's made a lot of
advances but really is just kind of isolating us and making us feel overwhelmed,
so I think having sort of the retro things like a fade-out, or have like, everybody stops playing and then you
slowly build everything back up, I feel like that's not something that...that's something that has happened in music history, but isn't
necessarily on the forefront, the cutting edge, right now.
So I think...and even the music video itself, just being like a studio vibe, with a bunch of people just
jammin' out together,
I think that's kind of that's definitely what they were going for, is just trying to take his back to that sort of
time gone by, where we all weren't drowning in our own anxiety 24/7.
Hello, everyone I'm Umu, React to the K channel creator, and I'd like to thank you for watching this video.
I really hope you enjoyed or learned something from it
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