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hey welcome to twelve-tone I didn't want
to make this video I didn't want to have
to make this video I didn't want to live
in a world with this video had to get
made but a couple weeks ago professional
opinion have her ben shapiro decided to
reiterate his repeatedly disprove an
argument that technically speaking rap
isn't music so i guess now we have to
talk about it fine so to start with
let's look at which of hero actually
said in my view and the view of my music
theorist father who went to music school
there are three elements to music there
is harmony there is melody and there's
rhythm and rap only fulfills one of
these the rhythm section there's not a
lot of melody and there's not a lot of
harmony and so it's not actually a form
of music it's a form of rhythmic
speaking so beyond the subjectivity of
wages not enjoying rap what i've said
before is it's not music so tell me why
I'm wrong now longtime viewers may
recognize this argument because I
already made a video about it a year ago
where I explained why rap or as many
fans of the genre prefer to call it
hip-hop does often contain all three of
these elements but what you may not know
is that when researching that video my
primary source for that argument was an
article written in 2009 by none other
than ben shapiro which means he's been
repeating the same lazy definition for
at least a decade now still in spite of
my better judgment I'm gonna assume he's
serious when he says tell me why I'm
wrong so well the previous video focused
on why his definition doesn't even
actually exclude hip-hop today I'd like
to look at a deeper question is this a
good way to define music in the first
place spoiler alert
no now to be clear language is
subjective in Shapiro is free to define
music however he wants for his own
personal use but when he says things
like so beyond the subjectivity of age
is not enjoying rap at attributes to
claim to my music theorist father who
went to music school in order to argue
that it's not actually a form of music
he's invoking the concept of technical
language implying that his definition
reflects some sort of objective truth or
at the very least that it would be
supported by a majority of experts in
the field but here's the thing I am an
expert in the field I'm a music theorist
and much like Shapiro's father I also
went to music school and beyond that I
know plenty more music theorists
musicologist ethnomusicologists and
other music experts and i've never heard
any of them use anything even close to
this definition why not because it
excludes a lot of things that are
broadly considered music but to
understand how we're gonna have to
find our terms let's start with rhythm
does music have to have rhythm well that
depends what rhythm is in a broad sans
rhythm is just the spacing of events in
time but that's not a particularly
useful definition here because all
sounds occur in time so all sounds would
be rhythmic instead when talking about
musical rhythm we're usually talking
about a structured hierarchical of sonic
events or to translate that into English
we're talking about beats for example
this would count as rhythmic we have a
clear perceptible pattern of strong and
weak beats in the attacks fall at
regular intervals on the other hand this
would be non rhythmic because the
distance between attacks is literally
random so there's no way to feel any
real pulse of course this isn't to say
that rhythm has to be simple you can
leave out parts of the pattern combine
different pattern lengths or use
multiple patterns at once and they don't
even have to repeat but at the heart of
all of these is some sense of pulse some
structured hierarchy of stress and
duration that allows us to build a
rhythmic roadmap in our minds and I
think Shapiro would agree with me here
after all he described rap as rhythmic
speaking which implies there's such a
thing as non rhythmic speaking and thus
a need for a more rigid model of rhythm
so with this definition does music need
rhythm no there's a lot of ways to
demonstrate this but probably the
simplest is a concept called free time
which is exactly what it sounds like
music written and performed without any
clear meter or tempo for example early
medieval Christian liturgical music was
mostly done in a style called Kantas
planus or plainsong which was
traditionally performed without any
clear metric structure
plainsong is in a lot of ways the direct
conceptual ancestor of most Western
classical music so it's hard to view it
as non musical but plainsong notation
doesn't even specified duration because
that level of rhythmic hierarchy just
wasn't a part of the practice in Opera
free time appears in recipients Ted of
musical rhythms singers mimic the
natural rhythms of human speech and it
also shows up in jazz where it's often
called Roboto and again rhythmic
decisions are loose and unstructured
free time even occurs in modern popular
music although admittedly not often the
best example I could find is hunting
bears by Radiohead now it's worth noting
that listening to any of these examples
can still give you a momentary sense of
rhythm after all the attacks aren't
random they're being interpreted by
former who's controlling distress and
duration for expressive effect but the
thing is the stress and duration of
speech isn't random either in fact even
things that are random like falling
raindrops can create a sense of rhythm
if you listen to them the right way but
the problem is that there's no clear
structure or hierarchy to that rhythm
which means that if you follow this line
of reasoning we wind up with a worthless
classifier if we want to use rhythm to
differentiate between music and non
music we need a way to differentiate
between rhythm and non rhythm and since
Shapiro seems to believe that the
natural rhythm of speech doesn't count
structured beat patterns are probably
our best bet and free time doesn't have
structured beat patterns
so that's rhythm what about harmony well
what is harmony for the purposes of this
video I'm going to use the broadest
definition of harmony I know two or more
distinct pitches sounding simultaneously
now this does create a bit of a problem
for us and Shapiro says that in hip-hop
there's not a lot of harmony where as an
actual examination reveals that many
hip-hop songs have fairly standard chord
progressions for example where is the
love by the Black Eyed Peas is built on
a loop of FC D minor B flat which you
might recognize as the four chord
progression one of the most common
harmonic figures in western music and
this shouldn't be surprising hip hop is
a genre that was founded on sampling or
borrowing musical passages from songs
and other styles so it's only natural
that it pick up some of the musical
vocabulary of those styles I'm going to
assume though that Shapiro is simply
ignorant of this fact because I don't
know how to define harmony in such a way
that straight-up traditional Western
chord progressions don't count that said
if we do use a more restrictive
definition perhaps one that assumes a
certain level of harmonic complexity the
fact that we don't need it becomes even
easier to prove so no matter what
Shapiro meant as long as it involves
multiple notes at once which it pretty
much has to my argument will still cover
it so with this definition does music
need harmony no and this one's pretty
easy because there's an entire musical
texture that's defined by its lack of
harmony it's called monophony meaning
one sound and that's what it is a single
melodic line presented without
accompaniment or well depending on how
strict you want to be it can include
multiple voices singing in unison or
octaves and it can even have percussive
elements added in but the point is
there's only one pitch at a time so no
harmony a good example is our old friend
plane song which in addition to having
no meter was sung by a single performer
alone harmony didn't appear in these
liturgical songs until the development
of the organum or second accompanying
voice which first showed up around the
ninth century but monophony is far from
dead you hear it every time you listen
to an acapella
singer or a solo piece for a melodic
instrument like a flute trumpet or oboe
it's also pretty common in non-western
cultures traditional Korean music for
instance is often monophonic and unlike
freetime it does show up occasionally in
modern Western popular music - in my
last video on the topic I mentioned
Queens we will rock you where for most
of the song Freddie Mercury's voices
accompanied only by body percussion and
some octave doubling there's no harmony
until the guitar solo at the very end
but some people objected to this point
arguing that even though no one was
playing chords the song still had them
because melody can imply harmony and
that's true take this
[Music]
to my ears at least it's pretty clear
that this
[Music]
is the correct harmonization but how did
I do that I mean there's basically only
one melodic note per chord and these are
not the only chords that contain these
notes so in theory it could just as
easily have been this
how did I know it wasn't well because
I'm familiar with traditional Western
harmony and in that system this one's
much more common that's an extreme
example but it demonstrates an important
point unless you're melody is literally
arpeggiating a chord progression which
we will rock you is not there's probably
going to be more than one valid way to
harmonize it to see this in action check
out Adam Neely's video on the seven
levels of jazz harmony link in the
description this means that the implied
harmony isn't actually an inherent
property of the melody itself but a
product of the interaction between that
melody and your pre-existing harmonic
vocabulary and what kinds of chord
progressions you're used to will change
which potential harmony you hear this
becomes especially relevant when we look
at non Western music derived from
monophonic traditions I mean how can you
imply a harmony if your culture doesn't
have a harmonic vocabulary in the first
place effectively well melody can imply
harmony implying harmony isn't the same
thing as having it which brings us to
our final element melody this is
probably the hardest to define the
simplest version is that melody is a
series of notes played in succession but
in this context what's a note is it just
any frequency is it limited to some
tuning system is there some stability or
range requirement see this is the
problem with arguing about definitions
once you start its definitions all the
way down fortunately Shapiro's helps us
out here by clarifying that in rap
there's not a lot of melody so we have
some indication of where the line is at
least for him
of course many rap songs like ready or
not by Fugees or Empire State of Mind by
jay-z also contain explicit singing and
even in songs that don't there's a good
chance the beat features melodies
performed on synthesizers or other non
vocal instruments a concept that as a
classical violinist you'd think shapiro
would be pretty familiar with but for
the sake of argument I'll assume he's
referring only to songs where the vocal
delivery is exclusively rapped and the
beat is entirely percussive because
otherwise we're forced to conclude that
he just doesn't know nearly enough about
rap to be speaking so authoritative Lee
about it and what are the odds of that
so in order to define melody we're going
to have to look at the difference
between speech and singing which
conveniently I just made a whole video
about and it turns out there's not a lot
but there are some things that are more
characteristic of one than the other so
let's try them out like maybe the
distinction is range speech tends to be
narrower well melodies often run all
over the place but that seems unlikely
if you saw my video on losing my
religion you'll know the vocal melody of
that song has a range of a perfect
fourth and studies show that depending
on context human speaking voices can
cover nearly an octave so it seems
likely that many rap artists would show
a similar range but what about tonal
stability
maybe melodies have clear precise
pitches will speech slides around
haphazardly except music has plenty of
slides too we just called him glissandos
cuz we're fancy besides if tonal
stability as a requirement for melody
how do you explain a singer like Bob
Dylan anyway I could run through a bunch
of other possible answers but let's cut
to the chase the best definition I could
come up with is that melodies contain
intentional pitch that is they use notes
in such a way that you can tell if one
of those notes is wrong now speech also
does this to some extent the contour of
a phrase can carry a lot of semantic
meaning compared that's how you define
music - that's how you define music but
if I gone like a half step higher on
that last syllable it still would have
conveyed the same idea whereas if I'm
singing say happy birthday and I go a
half steps sharp on the last note that
changes everything now to be clear just
because a note is intentional doesn't
mean it can't be spontaneous like if
you're taking a solo in a jazz song you
may not know in advance that you're
gonna play an f-sharp over that major 7
chord your hand may have just gone there
instinctively but it still creates a
specific effect in that context that
would be lost if you played say an F
natural instead this means this
definition is still difficult to apply
to wrap because consciously or not many
rappers will tune their voice to match
the key of the track because it just
sounds better that way this is a fairly
nuanced two point though so again I'm
just going to assume ignorant son
Shapiro's part but just like before I
don't think his definition is gonna be
less restrictive than mine so even if
he's purposefully excluding that we're
probably still fine so with this
definition does music need melody no
admittedly this is a bit harder than the
others melody is incredibly common
across musical cultures but that doesn't
mean there isn't music without it
besides rap and other spoken music
traditions this mostly takes the form of
strictly percussion based music like
drum lines now it's worth noting that
drums can create a sort of pseudo melody
for instance on a traditional trap set
kit there's three toms high medium and
low and you can move between these to
create a basic sense of melodic motion
but will these Tom's can be tuned to
specific notes they often aren't and for
the most part listeners perceive Tom
runs as having a rough melodic contour
not an intentional definite pitch like
when a song changes keys you don't see
the drummer stopping to retune their
instrument because the difference just
isn't that noticeable as such with the
exception of instruments like the steel
drum which are specifically designed to
have them a lot of qualities most drum
based music isn't going to have a strong
sense of melody unless someone's singing
or playing a melodic instrument on top
of it and yet drum line pieces are an
iconic and important part of marching
band repertoire so there you have it
there's music without harmony music
without melody and music without rhythm
heck there's even music without any of
those things although we'd have to go
pretty deep into experimental territory
for that and I feel like I'll lose
Shapiro if I start setting composers
like Lamont Young but the point is none
of these things are a good way to
differentiate between music and non
music and requiring all three of them is
even worse if you're curious what a good
definition of music might look like I
actually already made a video on that as
well link in the description it'll tell
you this much good definitions tend to
care more about reflecting cultural
experiences than nitpicking about
technicalities anyway I think we're
basically done here but in the interest
of fairness Ben
any last words Rock was an actual
degradation of skill for music from jazz
which was actually a degradation of
skill from classical but seriously Ben
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