Henry: [loud surprised noise] What trumpet player?!
What trumpet player was like: [imitates high lip trill]
WHAT did you do, mister?!
[Rossini's Semiramide Overture plays]
[excited noises]
Henry: [excited noises]
Yes! Yes! YES!
James: "Jazz In My"… garage sale? Melissa: [laughter]
James: "Jazz In My"…
…life! I don't know! I don't know where… where does jazz exist? Everywhere. Jazz is everywhere. Okay.
Jordan: So now you're reacting to the solo artist Samuel Seo, and two of his B-side tracks,
off his 2018 album, "UNITY".
Umu: First you'll listen to UNITY's first track, called "Jazz In My".
This was written with the idea of how one's negative use of language can affect other people in a bad way.
So… Samuel wanted to get rid of human voice in this track. He was originally going to have it be
100% instrumentals, but… since selling music is a thing where consumers tend to buy tracks with vocals
more than instruments alone… he had to add vocals, but also decided to feature a body percussionist to represent
communication through sound not from the mouth.
Charlotte: Wicked. Umu: Go ahead.
Peyton: Dope.
You ready? Charlotte: I'm ready.
Peyton: Oh, hell yeah.
Kevin: There's a parallel fourth. Bartok?
Isaac: Perfect fourth.
Elizabeth: I like this arpeggiating vocal line.
Henry: You hired a bassist…
Elizabeth: Ooh… that's acoustic bass. That's upright bass!
Henry's happy. Henry: [is very excited]
Kevin: Like, most of the time the guitar riff is higher than the voice. And that creates a really cool effect.
Elizabeth: He's definitely speaking very, like… focusing a lot on the consonants and the vowels,
so that it sounds more like a… articulation, than it does like a note.
Um… and the arpeggiation is not something you usually hear in a vocal melody. It's usually something
you hear in accompaniment.
Henry: [excitedly] HE HIRED HORN PLAYERS.
E: Ooh, and the distortion on, like, the screaming voice too, makes it sound—
H: [loud excited noises] E: [is startled]
H: What trumpet player?!
What trumpet player was like: [imitates high lip trill]
WHAT did you do, mister?!
James: See, the way he's producing his vowels right now, it's very, like, conversational.
Melissa: Yeah… like he's like basic… Sprechstimme.
James: It's like sing-talking. Melissa: Yes, you've studied atonal theory… what?
J: It's like sing-talking-y. M: Yeah, (J: A little bit.) Sprechstimme. J: Yeah.
Fiona: Is that his mouth? [imitates body percussion sounds]
Ahh!
Oh my gosh!
K: Ah, the voice — it's not always in rhythm. Occasionally you hear something that's a little off, in a good way.
Ooh.
Oh, we just "ooh"-ed at the same time.
Peyton: You would definitely feel like a badass walking to this.
E: Ooh, I hear the… the… body percussionist.
H: Oh!! [imitates bass run]
YOU, mister. YOU… (E: I like…) are a good bass player. E: I like the body…
I like the body percussionist a lot, actually. 'Cause that, like…
H: I like that triplet line is done in unison. It's gonna do it again… (E: Yeah…) …No.
E: It definitely (H: Pro'lly do it again right now.) adds a more, like…
H: There we go! Yeah. Whoa! Goddamn! How many times you gonna play it?!
[excited noise]
E: This is the video where Elizabeth doesn't have a chance to talk.
H: …What? E: [internal laughter]
J: It's in 4, but there's so mu—… It's in a clear 4, but there's still…
…so much going on (M: Yeah.) that it's like really interesting to listen to.
Fiona: Oh, that was cool! That distortion on the voices, like, sounded like a guitar.
Electric guitar. Aaron: Oh, yeah! F: [imitates electric guitar]
P: Yeah…
P: Yeah! Umu: So you both made lots of noises…
Care to put them into words?
P: [laughter] C: SICK.
P: Yeah, that's pretty dope. I liked that.
C: This is like… I'm sitting in a swanky bar, and I'm drinking a gin and tonic…
P: Always gin and tonic. C: And the guy that comes to talk to me… is drinking scotch neat.
That's that kinda song.
M: I love that one. (J: It's really funny.) I love how… there's… it's like… such a, like, simple texture,
but there's so much going on. (J: Yeah.) And everything has their own little ostinatos,
like in their own little worlds. J: Yeah. I actually kind of didn't like the screaming at first, 'cause I was just like…
It made it sound a little juvenile to me.
But then, like, after like the third time, I was like "okay, it's kinda cool."
'Cause it was pitched. Like (M: Yeah.) it wasn't just like…
[raspy unpitched scream] (M: Yeah.) Like, it was like… [sings part of vocal line]
M: It's not like… screamo. (J: Yeah.) It's just screaming. J: Yes.
F: This piece… song… evokes, like… different images of like, busy city life. And it's raining, for some reason.
It's like snapshot, from above.
Cars moving really fast, like in time-lapse.
It's a… it's a stratified texture, so everything's laid on top of each other.
Not (A: And I definitely…) necessarily correlating. A: I feel like you could just keep going on,
and on, and like… you could listen to this song on repeat, a lot.
I really… you know what it made me think of? It made me think of, like, a burlesque club, or something, with like…
First you have the snaps. And then you add, like, the heavier percussion. And then you get the mouth stuff.
I thought it was really layered well. And I thought that was…
…just… I don't even… I don't know.
I wanna say "arousing", but… Umu: [laughter]
A: It was… like… wow.
K: Is this a drone piece? Like, are there any chord changes in it?
I don't recall. For… for me… I: [mumbled] I was just so…
K: I felt like, you know, ever since the first riff, [sings riff]… it stayed in that B♭ minor (I think it's B♭ minor)…
that tonality… from beginning to end. I don't recall any chord changes.
And if there are… and I don't remember… that's how good the song is.
You know, you forget… you stop thinking about chords.
E: The… the thing that struck me most was the way that, like… I know you were saying that, like,
in order to make the song marketable, it had to have words, it had to have vocals. But I think…
He was really smart, in the way he chose to write the vocal line, because a lot of times, it was
arpeggiating, or it was very… more focused on the actual, like, syllables he was saying, than focusing on…
timbre, or pitch, or like, resonance of the note.
So… even within the context of all of this percussion happening, the voice itself is acting…
…almost as a percussion instrument. And then… it also acted as sort of like a harmonic instrument,
in a lot of the points where he was saying, like, "I've got jazz in my…" I couldn't hear the last word, but…
Like, that was very, like, un-enunciated, and it was very sustained, and that, in that moment,
functioned more as like, a harmonic instrument, adding to… like, the chord.
So… you know, even in the moments where the voice was more melodic, it didn't feel like it was…
…a melodic line. It felt like it was part of… the… like, harmonic structure.
H: This is what everyone should be listening to.
This is really good. This is how people should be making pop music.
Because… it… requires musicians, who have a lot of talent at their craft… it uses organic elements of music…
…alongside a lot of other, like, really creative… like, other like, editing things, and like,
distortion things, and computer things that were going on… you know, like…
…y'know, keyboard patches in the background, or whatever, like…
Tech… I'm not a luddite, y'know… technology is important to use in music, as music progresses. Like…
That's important. This… really gets at the human element of music. And it's one of the reasons why
hearing a really good bass player… made me go… berserk.
As opposed to hearing a really cool bass patch.
That human essence is captured EXTREMELY well in this. And I…
That's the reason why I wasn't listening to it, so that I could talk about it.
I was listening to it… and then freaking out about it.
And I accidentally ran you over a billion times. (E: [chuckles]) I'm sorry.
E: It's okay. H: Um… in my opinion, as a reactor, as a musician, as a composer, as a person who enjoys listening to music…
This… is how you should do pop music.
Umu: Okay, so now you'll be listening to a B-side song called "Keep It Simple", which is the second track on UNITY.
In an interview, Samuel said that he often has to think really hard before he does anything,
like choosing what to eat for lunch, what to wear that day, what to do that day , etc.
But for this song, he didn't really think at all. It just happened. The lyrics are literally about trying to keep life simple.
C: Hit it.
P: Yay, brushes!
P: Ooh!
K: Move to minor… I: [imitates bass sound]
K: There's this really subtle major/minor back-and-forth that I really like.
F & A: Ohh! F: Just sounds so good!
A: I love it when they delay… like when you're in the pocket of a beat or something…
I learned that term today. F: "In the pocket"?
A: Yeah, "in the pocket". F: I've heard that 40 times.
H: He's just…
…SO in the pocket! I'm sorry… I get off to like, REALLY in-sync studio playing.
[noise of immense pleasure]
P: I like the mix of the electric bass, with the like… jazz brush drums.
K: He never sings on the intervals I expect.
[sings] Sim-ple…
Lots of 9ths… 7ths… 11ths…
A: Mmm. F: This makes me wanna keep things simple. A: Yeah.
F: This sounds so good. A: It's very relaxing. F: Yeah.
P: I like how they go back and forth between, like, the double… and the, um… half time.
E: I mean, the texture is… is sort of… minimalist. You know, basically just bass, drums, piano, voice.
So, in that regard it's simple, but the way that the voices work together, um, to create the texture,
is very complex. Um…
So I don't know if that's commenting on anything.
M: I feel like the words are simple, but like, the harmonies aren't.
J: Yeah.
K: See, every time he… has a…
Every time he does four bars where he does sing thirds, the next four bars, he avoids thirds completely.
And I think it's not intentional, it's just subconscious. He just wants to have fun with it.
But that just shows how good of a musician he is.
E: The… the rhythm of the bass… doubles in the chorus sections.
It's like, very, like… slow and steady in the verses, but like…
In the chorus sections, like it… it doubles in time.
A: It's like a stylized… way… of singing.
[mumbled] Is it over?
Umu: It's like… speaking through tones. [chuckles] A: Yeah.
"Jazz In My"… I thought there were… definitely more similarities than differences.
I thought the piano was… more active, in "Keep It Simple".
But, you know, and like I think that… in ways, "Keep It Simple" was more complex than, um… "Jazz In My".
F: "Jazz In My" grew linearly. (A: Mm, yeah.) Like… it was simpler, because things added, like every 8 beats or so,
or, you know… like, everything added,
like, as you went on, so it looked like this [gradually opens hands] when you got to the end.
But, um… "Simple" was… you have everything at the beginning. And it's pretty simple, like, you have the piano,
like, doing its thing, bass doing its thing, vocals… you know, everything just has its purpose.
And as you go on, it gets more, like, complex. But it's more of like a…
[moves hands horizontally] A: Yeah.
J: I feel like a lot of the care that sometimes might go into a song…
Maybe… maybe "care" is too… nice of a word. Maybe, like, obsessive, kind of like "oh, this has to be right"…
sort of feeling… it was just… none of it was there. It was just like…
…dudes just jammin' out.
M: But not in like a lazy way. You can tell that he's just like, you know, such a good musician
that he just kinda like, whipped out… mm, like… just like… writes a song like
"yeah man, like we're just gonna like, have this song, cool beans."
Um… J: But I think it WAS lazy in a way, (M: Yeah.) but it works.
M: Like, lazy but like, he's good enough that he can, like, pull it off. J: Yeah! No, and it… it was MUSIC somehow.
M: Yeah. J: It was cool. I liked it.
Even some of the scatty-ish stuff he was doing at the end… it was just kind of like
"whooo!", like… (M: "Whooo!") "whooo!"… it was just kinda like… really, really kind of like…
"whup!" M: Yeah.
J: I actually… I kind of enjoyed it. It was… it was really neat. M: Yeah, I like it.
K: [whispered] simple
I: [whispered into mic] simple…
K: That was nice. The vibe was simple, but the musicianship was not. That's all.
Let's keep it simple!
I: Even the way they record… you can tell it's like, very… I don't know. It's like very
complex to record such, like, um… the purity of the sounds.
Like, you can hear the nice grazing of, like, the drum skin, and you hear, like, the resonance that comes off as you
hit the tom-tom, it's just like… it kinda… it resonantes for a little bit longer than… than, I don't know, a synthetic…
…synthetic soundtrack. It's not… completely simple. If you, like, (K: No, no, it's not.) if you dive very deep into…
But it's… the simplicity in it is just like… you have less instruments… less in lyrics… but he does make it
so attractive, because of just, like, the pauses, the spaces, and the complements with, like… a very…
…extravagant piano line, which sometimes just goes out of the box, so it's like… in a completely different key,
and floats back in. It kinda goes in and out of conscious.
So it's like, some things come forward, some things come back.
He's very… very knowledgeable, and very aware of, like, what he wants in his music. So it's like…
…this whole entire music… um, as I was listening to it, it was a… magical journey… into his… whole jazz world.
It was very cool.
Umu: Hello everyone! I'm Umu, ReacttotheK 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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