Why do people look at Twitter,
when they take a shit? Well, for the same reason that there’s
counterpoint in music. Now then. Counterpoint: point, counter, point.
Basically, if we get rid of all the technical stuff, that’s when
two melodies complement each other. You remember the Rohan theme, which had
a primary melody and a counterpoint. The primary medley needs
to rest now and then, to have spaces in which nothing is said. But you get bored in those spaces and
have to pull out Twitter and look at it. So they give you a second melody,
a countermelody, we can call it that fills those gaps
and complements the primary voice. Let’s talk about Pokémon. Who is that Pokémon? Now then, do you remember
the Pokémon theme? “I wanna be the very best
Like no one ever. To train them is my cause
after my great real test” Good, well, the theme has
a clear melody, right? When I sing the Pokémon melody
accompanied by a guitar, in reality, seven distinct
melodies are playing. That of my voice and the six melodies
(one for each string) of the guitar. For example, the second string starting
from the top, is doing this. If we only used my voice
and the second string, it would sound like this. There are two voices there, two voices
are playing: a string and my voice. A voice from a melodic line. If we do it with four voices,
that would be playing these three strings from only the guitar
and my voice, it would sound like this. That already sounds a little more
like the final result. And if we play it with the six strings
of the guitar and my voice and add a bit of joy,
it sounds cool already. Okay, well, from there, to
expand the Pokémon theme there are several options. One, obviously, is going to be
to add a bass, drums, a synthesizer, a chorus
and whatever you have around. But, at a composition level, there are
more tricks, and when I was playing it with the guitar, although technically
had seven voices, the seven were following exactly
the same rhythm and very similar melodies. So in the Pokémon theme, they add a countermelody
like that in the Rohan theme. That second voice,
that is like the Twitter in the bathroom, that holds your attention
when there is nothing else to do. It’s the key of the song,
is the cement between the bricks. When I sing the theme to you a capella, it’s somewhat monophonic,
because there is only one voice. When I sing you the theme with
the guitar, there are seven voices, but they all do the same thing, so it’s homophonic,
because the voices are the same. But when the countermelody appears is
when we finally get into the poliphony, which, incidentally, is
where we want to arrive. If I sing the Pokémon
song on the piano now, I have to do it with the accompaniment,
with a bunch of homophonic voices that I make up depending
on which chord I play in each moment, and I have to make the countermelody
to complete the song. The lyrics are not important for this, ok? If you take anything
away from this video, although there’s still more,
let it be that: learning to pay attention to the countermelodies
that appear in the songs that you regularly listen to. So important are the countermelodies
that when someone sings a song with very significant
countermelodies a capella, it often goes off tempo, because there is a huge gap there where
you don’t have anything to do and you don’t know what to do,
and he keeps singing. “All you need is love” “All you need is love” “All you need is love” The countermelody
is fundamental there, “All you need is love” “All you need is love” Another example: Imagine by John Lennon. “Imagine all the people” “It's easy if you try” Man, I don’t know what you think... “No hell bellow us” Hey, have you seen this, mate? “Above us only sky” No, let’s see, what I was saying... It needs the countermelody. “Imagine all the people” “It's easy if you try” Etc., etc. Okay, good, up to now
what we have seen is polyphonic. There were two voices and
when one sings, the other is quiet. A bit like people that
when they put chicken with potatoes, they take a chicken
and then they take potatoes. You know? They don’t take chicken with potatoes,
but it’s as if they had two plates: one with chicken and one with potatoes
on the same plate And you say: good, different strokes... Well, it’s the same here, then, for the people
who like to mix chicken with potatoes, we have songs such as
Stand by me, for example. In which there are
two very differentiated voices speaking simultaneously
nearly the whole time. First, the bass comes in. Then, a second parallel voice comes in
equally important and equally complex. Okay, and here you might tell me:
But Jaime, all the songs have bass. What’s special about that? Neither is the bass the most complex
thing ever, but it’s a catchy bass line and that the people sing
and it’s really a second voice, and singing the melody of Stand by Me
without the bass Without the pampampampaaaam
papapampaam Is inconceivable. Now then, I’m going to give you one more
example of this that touches upon a theme that I want to talk about
in future videos, which is the concept that we are now in the era of timbral complexity vs.
the era of harmonic complexity, which is why we’re here. In the song 20 de Enero
by Oreja de Van Gogh, the countermelody of the stanzas
is no more than a sound, a kind of chiuuuu. That holds your interest
while the singer rests, while her melody rests. I can’t play it in full
due to copyright issues, but it kind of goes like this: “I thought it was a good moment” Do you hear that noise? That chiuuu? That is the countermelody. “I thought it was a good moment” “It was finally coming true”
“chuuuu” It’s strange, but it works,
it works because it holds your interest. And however, in 20 de Enero,
in the refrain, we have a conventional countermelody,
one with notes. “The moment I saw your gaze
looking for my face” “On the morning of January 20th.” I love that song,
and I love that there are timbral and melodic countermelodies.
It strikes me as very interesting. And now we come to
the second part of the video. We have talked about monophony, homophony
and poliphony, now the moment has arrived: Imagine I give you a theme. I could treat that theme
as homophonic, making it an accompaniment without voices. To take an example, what I have done there
is to add chords, harmonize it a bit and a nice accompaniment. But I could have done other things.
Let’s see. That theme is from the Little Fugue
in G Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach, who lived in the 18th century. A fugue is a composition
with several voices, where the first voice sets the theme
and goes off. Then, the second voice follows it
repeating the theme, and then a third voice arrives that follows the two,
repeating the theme, and so on, up to the number
of voices that you want. From there, the theme will appear
in each of the voices according to what the composer wants. Really, none of those voices
is the primary or secondary medley: they are all exactly equally
important. For one of the melodies,
all the rest are accompanying it. But for another one, it’s the
others that are accompanying it. It’s a bit like the cover
of Gödel, Escher, Bach A figure that really could be
a B, a G or a Y, or all three things, or none or what do I know?
I only know that that book is really cool. What we’re going to do now is something
I love and it’s going to be really cool. Let’s listen to the little fugue
in G minor by Bach together and start breaking it down so that you go from listening to noise
to listening to information. The version that we’re going to hear
from the fugue is a bit rough, I made it years ago when I was
learning to master the Logic and I wanted to test the instruments. I knew nothing
about mixing, midi, antyhing. But it’s a super didactic version, because
each voice is made by an instrument that has a distinct timbre. Because, imagine that these fugues
are made for the organ or the piano and all the voices sound
like an organ or a piano, and it’s more difficult
to distinguish them. Playing them on the piano is cool, because if you are making
four voices with two hands, it will be like this is a voice,
this is another voice, this is another one and this is another one. And in the case of the organ,
you create a voice with your feet. But it is the first fugue that
we’re going to see, and each voice has its own sonority. The first voice sounds like this. It’s the theme
that I played for you before, but with a bit of swing. To give it a little kick. This voice, this instrument,
let’s call it Bling. It’s a mix of three distinct samples. The second voice is a synthesizer,
and let’s call it Synth. You see that it starts to play
the theme as well, right? The third voice is electric. And the fourth voice is a bass. And then, I added drums. Okay, let’s listen to the beginning
of the fugue together. Ok, ok, do you see? Up to
there was the fugue's exposition, now the development would begin. In the exposition, each voice
has been introducing the theme in an order and at no time has any voice
stopped to accompany the rest, to repeat anything, to duplicate anything. Each one was singing its part,
all important and all primary. Everyone makes the primary medley. In the development of the fugue,
the first thing that we will hear is a dialogue between Bling and Synth. They are going to be filling
the gaps, one for the other. I’m going to take away the guitar,
the bass and the drums. Only Bling and Synth’s audio
tracks so you hear the dialogue. But what makes that dialogue
even more interesting, is that the electric voice is telling
its stories underneath, it’s doing its own thing, but
this thing has personality. If we use Synth and Bling’s dialogue
and the electric underneath, we’re left with this. And at the end of that same passage,
if you listen, there is a change: Synth goes off to do its own thing and
it’s the guitar that responds to Bling. I’m going to take away Synth
so that you hear it. So We have had the exposition, in which
one speaks, goes off, another speaks, follows it, another speaks, follows it,
another speaks, follows it, the exposition ends, the development
and the dialogues begin. -Hey! You like fugues, too?
-Ah! Well yes look, and you too. Yes! And how’s everything at home? - Good, John is studying, and you?
- Nothing new. One speaks, the other responds. If you are a bit lost,
don’t worry, because it’s all going to make sense
in the end, trust me and let’s keep listening. Now what happens is that the electric
begins the theme from the beginning, and when it’s barely on the third note, Bling is already playing
the theme over the top. They spend some time like that, and then,
the electric and Bling start up a dialogue and when their dialogue is finished, Synth
plays the primary theme of the fugue. Let’s listen to it with only the voices.
First the electric plays the theme. And Bling imitates it. Together, it sounds like this. And now they start the dialogue. And there Synth comes in with the theme. And now a very cool thing happens:
the electric makes one sentence a bit long and when it finishes, Bling says: “Damn!
I’m going to imitate it just like that”. There, when the two play
at the same time, it sounds like this. Now that you have it in your head
how it sounds with Bling, Synth, the electric and the bass. Let’s listen to the whole thing,
I’m going to be quiet. Let’s listen to it from the beginning
and I’m going to put up some signs and make gestures that in my head
help a lot and probably don’t work at all. If that’s still difficult, just pay attention
to when the top of the theme appears, the recognisable part is going to be heard
in the distinct voices, several times. Pay attention to that and the more you
accustom yourself to listening to that, the easier it will be for you to follow
the rest of signs, dialogues and additional information
that I’ll be giving you. Now then, I want you to imagine Bach
composing this. As there is no guitar
providing chords, there is no accompaniment.
When a voice is producing its melody if its melody is over a D Major
chord, the other voices are responsible for providing the rest of
the notes, at least the significant notes of the D Major chord they are in. But at the same time,
for one of her voices, she is producing her melody in D Major and needs the other to be the one
to give her the significant notes needed to complete the chord. It’s very similar to a Rubik’s Cube. When you make homophonic music,
you are making a face of the Rubik’s Cube and you can sacrifice all of the others If I want to move the white piece
that I need on the white face, I can simply do it like this
and I move it, and there it is. I could have finished what I had
on any of the other faces, but it doesn’t matter, because the other
faces don’t have their own identity until you try to complete
the Rubik’s Cube. The problem now is when I want
to complete the final pieces, because whatever I do, it’s very likely
that the white face will be finished or the red face, the rest of the blue,
the yellow, the orange and the green that are already nearly done. This is like a fugue with six voices. Man, if you can’t get it, you can always pull out the piece
and to put it in and there you go, you’ve made a Rubik’s Cube. I feel that I have to say this:
does this mean that the works of Bach are better or worse
than other musical works? For me, no. For me it means that they
have a lot of polyphonic complexity, which is one of the types
of musical complexity. Simply put, there are more types
of musical complexity. The clouds block the light. I was going to that value
judgments mean nothing, but that’s a value judgment. I want us to get
two things out of this video: the first, a new ear
for hearing countermelodies in songs that you already know but that
you could begin to hear differently. If you find cool countermelodies,
send them to me via Twitter or via Instagram;
I’d love to take a look. The second thing was to give you a little
introduction to a complex world, the world of the counterpoint,
which includes the fugues. We haven’t seen the last of fugues,
but I’m going to leave you a few links to cool fugues
in the description that I love and that are probably worth listening to. The first is a fugue in four voices
with lyrics by Glenn Gould, whose lyrics explain
how to make fugues. The second is a YouTube video about
how Bad Romance by Lady Gaga would sound if it had been a baroque fugue. And a few more things. If you’re looking
for fugues you love, remember to first read the title to know how many voices there are.
Look for fugues that if you didn’t know that it was one
or that it had distinct voices you wouldn’t even notice it. Even then
you'd hear it because you love it. And also, those who interpret the
fugue influence it a lot. There are those who strive more
to distinguish the voices and have everything clear, and those who strive more to give a more
lyrical and emotive feel to the fugue. Anyway, this is the end of our first video
about other ways of listening to music. There are many more things to talk about,
many more things to mention, and I’ll do that in future videos. See you next time. Thanks a lot for doing a cameo, okay?
