16 Levels of Piano Composition: Easy to Complex | WIRED

so my name is Marisol I'm a pianist composer and I've been challenged to go through levels of music complexity at the piano what's amazing about music composition is that explores so much and the possibilities are really endless in terms of what you can do with all different pitches what's incredible is that composition can go to so many different places and the possibilities are really endless a quick disclaimer this is based on my interpretation of the word complexity in this context it can mean different things for different people and this all I'll be using happy birthday it's common it's familiar and if it's your birthday you're in luck at some point in history someone decided to arrange these notes in this particular order so let's first play it with just one finger in the simplest way possible and this is our melody with that I'm going to add just another finger I'm alternating notes and I'm creating the simplest form of a bass line by adding a third finger I'm supporting the bass line now we have a stronger sense of harmony these two fingers are called a drone and played together and you can hear it in rock shuffle by adding a third finger in the left hand that's a court we can move these chords around take it somewhere else but we eventually come back home so now I can take this chord I can break the notes up and now I have an arpeggio [Music] another way to break up the chords might be or I'm taking the notes of the court and I'm opening up like a fan this movement is now giving us a deeper sense of rhythm so what happens when we take our arpeggio break it up by skipping the second note these groups of three makes the piece more like a waltz you may be familiar with the waltz or waltz phase in groups of three one two three one two three we're beginning to find form I could choose different genres which are in different groups or rumba or stride [Music] but we're gonna continue with waltz for now so let's go back to the right hand melody the goal is to add more complexity and presence to the melody by expanding it I could make it more complex simply by using more than one finger at a time [Music] but for this level I'm gonna keep it to one finger at a time and add embellishments by simply adding notes around the melody I am decorating it almost like adding lacing to something and this makes it sound prettier there's more motion to it there's more color to the melody there are more elaborate ways to do it and in certain cases you can hear the melody less or more now a warning on decoration complexity isn't just about a bunch of added notes and craziness one way to interpret the purpose of this video might be something like this but for me physicality doesn't equal complexity we can make things much more complex in other ways so up until now we've been dealing with the melody and the harmony so two parts singer and a band what happens if we have two singers two voices now if we swap these parts the main melody is on the bottom it's much more complex add to that a third melody on the bottom so that the main melody is sandwiched in between the other two parts [Music] it's like having three singers singing together so now we're dealing with polyphony multiple voices and the complexity is in the interaction between all of them and what's harder is to hear the happy birthday melody but put away voices for a second how else can we make the melody less recognizable we can change the rhythm so far it's been in groups of three one two three one two three what about groups of four one two three four one two three four and now we're gonna make it more complex by making it five one two three four five one two three four five one two three four five one two three four five one so so far we've been dealing with adding stuff to the melody and rearranging it in different ways but now in changing the DNA of happy birthday it's becoming more of a composition so before we move on to level 13 let's see what it sounds like with all of the levels combined [Music] so there are different tools that we can use to change the color the mood and the personality of what we're dealing with say for example we add extensions you can enrich in the harmony [Music] so that we changed the harmonic progression or the scale [Music] or the arrangement of the scale [Music] these are all tools that we can use to create new material we can also combine certain techniques as well that's happy birthday in E major let's take those cords and apply the melody in C major so those levels were about manipulating harmony but what does it mean to manipulate the melody there are more tools that composers can use to transform the melody in unrecognizable ways these are more abstract let's say we play the melody backwards or flip upside down [Music] upside-down and backwards or fragments displace it in different registers these are all techniques that composers used to abstract the melody and find new material out of it kind of like what Picasso does with his paintings where he abstracts parts of the human body and displaces them around the canvas so we have one last final level the complexity of this last level is really hard to articulate because it has to do with creative alchemy and combining all the different parts so that they come together in a way that reflects me as an artist and what I want to express in music you can just prepare a dish but it's different from really cooking it with heart and with the soul so when you put all of the different levels together this is what I would do [Music] complexity isn't something that can be straightforwardly measured in music yet it's been an interesting exercise to notice the different nuances that are involved in creating something that's complex it was super challenging because I didn't really know what complexity means in the context of music because it can be applied to different things in this case I chose to apply it to certain aspects of music composition and it was about the architecture of things tomorrow I may look at this challenge if I were to revisit it and focus on an entirely different aspect of music whether it's sonority or textures something completely different there are a lot of creative choices along the way that affect how the final product will turn out to be whatever you do with music it always has to have some sort of purpose other than just being an intellectual exercise because otherwise you know what's the point so that's it thanks choir [Applause]

Channel: WIRED

Views: 3,395,677

Rating: 4.9665818 out of 5

Keywords: piano, 16 levels, easy to complex, simple to complex, amateur to expert, nahre sol, pianist, composer, pianist composition, composition, levels of complexity, happy birthday song, happy birthday, happy birthday piano, happy birthday composition, happy birthday on piano, piano happy birthday, wired 16 levels, 16 levels of piano, 16 levels of piano composition, piano song, expert pianist, expert piano, amateur piano, wired piano, wired

Id: m6buIdQacoM

Length: 10min 30sec (630 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 01 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/DaksTheDaddyNow]

3 years of band in middle School and 3 years in highschool. Really competitive bands, but only got me to like level 2 as far as understanding complexity of music. Taking a music course in college opened my eyes up to level 6, though without any sort of mastery. To see how complex she goes is mind melting.

People who can sit with an instrument and just compose as they play are fucking amazing.

[u/Baron_Blackbird]

The graphics should win best supporting actor.

[u/GrantLucke]

This video is one of the most excellent demonstrations of music theory and compositions in practice that I've seen on reddit.

[u/3SlothMoon]

Nahre Sol is amazing, check out this video.

[u/rockwilly]

I've never understood music at that level where it just loses all melody to me but her explaining it like Picasso makes so much sense.

[u/nomangazi33]

She is a genius and deserves more international recognition.

[u/TheChrono]

This is probably the best example of this type of video that I've seen.

If Jacob Collier and her had a baby it would literally 'solve' music theory.

[u/HTMLdotRemove]

fuck.. selling keyboard, $20 or best offer

[u/VehaMeursault]

I'm speechless. I actually could not find the right way to start this comment.

You see, I understand all of it, although I'm just an amateur singer, but to see someone explain it with this level of structure, clarity, and calm, only to then demonstrate what she has explained with that little apparent effort...

I wish I knew this woman—that she was somehow a part of my life—no matter in what way or context. Pure talent and dedication to a craft that I could learn from until the day I die.

I hope to see more from her. Thanks for sharing this, OP.

(Also: the visual effects were next level too. What a feast.)