We're going : Let's talk about negative harmony again
Oh, yeah? Again? Ok : Ernst Levy doesn't actually use the term negative harmony in his book Yea : Could you explain more about the concepts
with an example or two So negative harmony... Ah it's funny everyone's like freaking out about it It's hilarious to me but What Ernst Levy lays out in his book, The Theory of Harmony, is the idea of like polarity so Something has, you know, for example one note has an overtone series and an undertone series and Essentially, if you flip the overtone series What you have is the inverse of what that tonality feels like, in its most natural state So, if you flip every interval in the C harmonic series, rising You get like... humph can't hear low C today It keeps going up So you have, an 8ve and a 5th and a 4th and a M3rd If you go down (by those intervals), if you flip that then you get an 8ve and then a 5th, so you get F in C, and then C (4th) And then a M3rd which should be Ab, and then F And then a already b7th, should be like a sharp #D kind of thing. Does that make sense? : Yea Cause like yea, the harmonic series is...
It's in nature, it's in physics. And I guess the idea, in the same way that like when a tree grows There's branches that come up, and then there's roots that go down What Ernst Levy essentially talks about, and then his ideas are extrapolated by this guy Steve Coleman He's sort of a fairly visionary thinker, in terms of music theory, is that "Symmetry", as he puts it, symmetry is one of the most natural things to music that exist And I think Steve Coleman talks about this idea of Rotational symmetry, which is like transposition And then another kind of symmetry... uh actually I can't remember Which is essentially like you flip it over the axis And there are a number of different axes about which you can flip a chord And the one that Ernst Levy talks a lot about is the 5th so between C and G and The fact that, essentially, if I/you rotate a scale around the axis of that interval Then you get the equivalent gravity to the center of the key But from the opposite side of the circle of 5ths So if you look at the circle of fifths As I'm sure you'll add in later on So C... there's C G D A and then C F Bb Eb And, so if I have a D major chord for example And I flip it over the axis of C and G, 🤘the rock-star axis Then that Dmaj... Basically everything major becomes minor
and everything perfect becomes plagal So Dmaj becomes Bbmin Because Bb is the same distance way from C (as compared to D to C), about the axis, on the circle of 5ths And the maj becomes the min So Bbmin is similar to C... ...has a similar amount of gravity to C than D does Because the F# in D wants to rise to a G, naturally And in the same way that, the Db in Bbmin wants to sink to a C So all it is really is A way in which you can gain access to more sounds And once you have access to the sounds I I guess it's important to say that ✮Sounds don't mean anything until you decide to use them in the emotional ways And so, I personally treat negative harmony Not as something that I sit down and study and study and study But more as something, from which I can sque-e-eze out more stuff, more sounds And once I've got the sounds... You know like weird plagal, like minor plagal cadences as opposed to perfect cadences That just gives me a more profound palate, and When it comes to harmonizing a melody, it might be that some of those sounds fit And for that reason negative harmony has its purpose, you know, but Yeah the man who taught me about negative harmony is called Barak Schmool And he learned it from Steve Coleman And Steve learned it from a whole multitude of different places But the people that Steve learned it from, were using it before they were talking about it And I think it's an interesting thing with talking and articulating things I think sometimes people think that,
the articulation is the whole of the thing, but Steve plays these stuff, you know. He doesn't talk about it, he plays it And Ernst Levy's book about theory, it's kind of, it's intended to be composed with So, these people would think about it for a while And then after that while, you know, it's not like people are going to try and only make "negative music" But sometimes they might reach a point where to be more emotional They'd flip the polarity towards that key center, and You know, and in that way, it might be A more satisfying harmonic choice to use a minor plagal cadence or, whatever One more thing I'd say about negative harmony is that, the way Steve Coleman describes it, is as It's like as a melodic concept not as a harmonic concept So he talks about [...] flipping C major And if you look at C major, in like intervallically It's a T T S T T T S (T) right And if you flip that over the axis of C and G, you get Instead of: You get: Right? So it's kind of like a G, I guess G Phrygian He would call that C negative major And what that is is You know, it's flipping C major "intervallic-ally" speaking, about the axis to the key center Where all the intervals are in the opposite position And tonally speaking, it leads to an equivalent place So, I've always had this massive crUsh on harmony, and I think you have too So I was really drawn
: =] to the harmonic possibility and the potential of this idea But you can use it melodically, with as much effect as harmonically And yeah, just "negative harmony" I guess Really caught my attention when it was mentioned by this guy Barak And so I really squeezed it dry, you know, found as many sounds as I could have, after that-- Move along and keep making the stuff you know
: Yea : Tuning! What's the purpose of using different tuning? Right interesting one. Um tuning, so... Put your hands up if you think the piano is in tune, first of all And then some put up the hand,
and then I say well... it's not, right Because the piano is equally tempered, which means that all the semitones are the same size And this was actually, I think it was implemented by the church About 4 or 500 years ago And the church didn't want to fund instruments built in every key And so, equal-tempered came about and thank goodness it did Because a bunch of jazz harmony cannot exist in just intonation But, essentially just intonation is
a key tune to the harmonic series of that fundamental So if I tune a C maj chord with a justly tuned 3rd, Then the E in a C maj triad is going to be about I think it's 14 cents lower than on the piano If I were to demonstrate that for you, which I cannot with one voice The purity of that sound... It's like you know the feeling when you sing a 5th, and it's so [...] in tune like: 🎆 If you ever, like you know, when you sing, can we sing a 5th? So sing a note Yeah. And there's like, a bit where it like, It stops beating and just lets us like hug each other : umm~ That feeling, with a 3rd, is SO glorious And basically the 3rd kinda disappears in the chord cause it feels so natural and wonderful to the chord I, yea I guess I realized I had a sort of epiphany a few years ago that That chord sound better when they're tuned to the harmonic series And so I endeavored to always tune stuff to the harmonic series by ear, because obviously autotune won't do that for you The sad... the sad case of autotune...
So, Yeah so I lower all of my M3rds; I lift all of my m3rds 7hs are crazy because A naturally tuned b7th in the harmonic series, it's about 31 cents flat. So like: Like that's Really flat, Really flat And, the amazing and exciting thing when it comes to that is that I can then treat that Bb as a new root to a chord And the whole axis of the entirety drops, by 30 cents And so if that's the root, then I've Moved my A from 442 to like around 432, And it's a really interesting to do to Tune something in a just way, and then to Essentially swing as if you're like a monkey, you kind of swing Everything swings like that to that new place That thrills me a lot But you know I think, it just sounds better That's the...the bottom line is it sounds There are certain chords that aren't possible in just intonation, like a 69 chord for example Because if you tune E in C maj down 14 cents And you want the A to be in tune with the E a 4th 4ths are actually 2 cents too big on a piano And to tune just you sink by 2 cents So that would be from [...] C is 0 cent different, and E would be -14 and A would be -16 But if the A is in tune with With... if I rise in 5ths from C, if I go: Yeah? And the A is in tune with the D Which is in tune with the G, then the G needs to rise 2 cents because 5ths are 2 cents too small And, so you get C is 0, G is +2, and D is +4, and A is +6 So you can't have an A that's +6 and in tune with the -14 of the E, the 3rd So you just can't do it. It's like GAME OVER There are ways you can get around, by like panning them to different ears So they don't interfere, but it gets kind of confusing But you know I think that tuning... Tuning system's like, something tuned in just intonation that's how major chords should sound Like people should know that feeling of Being a 3rd in a maj chord that sounds pure Cause it's like, so life-affirming~ : Yea. Speaking of 432 :Why did you start Hideaway in 432? For me D at A432 is, like it's indoors, and then A440 D major is like it's outdoors And, in some way, so I wanted to start that song really... I wanna bring people right into the room And I think that the ear leans into A432 in a different kind of a way Than it sits and listen to 440 Partly cause of what we're used to, right? So, yeah it begins in A432 and by By the end of the first verse you raise into A440, and you don't notice Oh unless it's you obviously. And so, Yeah I actually, I did something quite clever in the sense that The melody where it goes: If I were to justly tune that F# in the chord of D maj that would be 14 cents flat But instead what I did is I kept that 3rd... I lifted that 3rd up a little bit from where it is in a 432 To make it slightly more equally tempered which means that That M3rd is a "traditional" M3rd
and an equally tempered sort of m3rd, A to F# And that's the right size, which means that the whole axis can/could lift To tune that F# justly to where it is in A440 If that makes any sense So, that moment is quite magical because everything just shifts up But, it's like a psychological feeling of rising, you know It's, you start in this careful place And you're just underneath the surface of, like the horizon or something And by the end of the song, you definitely, definitely come OUT And you feel like you've been released. And so, I don't know, it was something I wanted to try And I enjoyed this sort of like cuddle, like the D Ionian cuddle in the beginning of that song And in the end, the D Ionian cuddle at the end Like if you flip between the two, they're really different Because the end is like: choo..!
and the one being is like: choo..~ But that's kind of the emotion I was trying to achieve, ... : How do you build a groove :And why do you build grooves with uneven subdivision? Interesting. Groove... SoI I guess in the same way that I find it a little bit unsatisfying to have all the semitones the same size, sometimes To have all of the divisions, all of the subdivisions within one beat the same size Is it, can be a little bit limiting And obviously quantizing has its place Quantizing being when you play a bunch of random notes, not quite in time When you hit quantize button, they all go perfectly in time to the grid And that is fine, in the same way that autotune can be okay You know, in certain, for certain kinds of music But, for me a lot of the most exciting grooves in the world Have, you know the divisions aren't necessary straight. So if you take samba for example, You know: That is not straight man you know, but And similarly, there's a kind of music from Morocco called Gnawa music And they have a, similar kind of grid and they have one in three divisions, which goes: And if you slow that down and incrementally work it out And just for my own sort of pleasure of working out at speed I guess that's "4-3-2", and since it's like Uh 4-3-2? Yeah 4-2-3, 4-2-3 And that's actually the groove that I aimed for on In My Room Because that's a funky groove, that's not quite straight I think what it does to the groove is it adds This feel... it's like it adds an additional momentum It like adds a momentum on an alternative axis, to the axis of... Harmony, you know, or Moments in the song where the section changes It's a new way of generating, sensations If every beat rolls like an egg, it just, for me It makes you want to keep listening to it, in a different kind of way In the same way that, there was that like neo-soul fad, right : Like Close To You? Yeah right, Close To You, yeah.
🙋♂️I was guilty for the fad And yeah, what it is it's like the second division If there are two divisions, it's just nudged forward And everyone freaked out like, how can we theorize this And, I was part of those guys who I theorize it in a number of ways. So you can, Split the beat into 5, you know, and then have 3 + 2, so: And you can split the beat into 7: So 4 + 3: You know, there's a whole host of ways you can divide a beat up But, Really, like you look at the fundamental reason why that feels good It's because, I think it's because things that are straight and organized and regular ✵It's not really the way life is;
it's not the way the world works That works a lot more... It's a bit more flexible And I think that, if you listen to somebody deliver an idea in a very, very regimented way Or if you listen to somebody sing or play in a very regimented way Part of that for me, Isn't necessarily as kind of vulnerable or open As if it has space in it where things are wonky Being a sort of lover of information and emotion, sort of in equal terms I thought about why, why that is And, yeah so grooves in 3 divisions or 4 divisions that are wonky Just make me happy, I think But yeah, there's definitely like a lot of excitement when You know, D'Angelo Released that album Voodoo and it had a bunch of wonky grooves on it And I think that I've seen interviews with questlove where he just says "Oh you know wha it's like, 'play drunk'" Play drunk, like that's all he thinks about you know And yeah, there are definitely ways in which you can achieve wonks By theorizing, you know
So like there's a bit at the end of P.Y.T. where I do that 5 and 7 thing, right So it's like yea: whatever
it
is Cause I wanted to try and do that, where the beat stretches to accommodate these new divisions You know when you, divide one beat into 4 or 5 or 6 or 7 I actually, I invented a new terminology , a new sorta way of writing out... Time signatures where, you know you normally have like 4/4 And I figured there's a number missing at the top, which is like the number of beats within each beat So, you know you can have 4/4, but you can have like 5/4/4 Where it's like: And then 7, like 7/4/4 They are still in 4/4 You know so, that beat in Hideaway for example In the second verse when the metronome is a 49 BPM Really slow, and then the beat is divided into 5, so: And then the shakers are doing 3's, they're doing: And for me, that's like an extension of that "rolling-like-an-egg" idea I guess Because, you know the 3's resolve every now and then And then, the mandolins are actually doing 4's, they're going: Hmm, so they resolve every now then as well But then you have the kick and the snare on,
you know 1, 2 And then a(nother) snare on 4 So, you know anybody's ear can hear there's a pulse But, I wanted to hide these delights of, you know, different rhythmic things in there, and it was fun! : On the harmonizer you sometimes do this really funky stuff : What do you call that and why do you love doing it? There's something in production called sidechain compression And it's how a lot of pop music works. And what you do is you compress something So compression is essentially when you, look at the dynamic range of something And you compress it, so that all of the loudest things are slightly quieter And all the, quieter things are slightly louder to, squeeze it in I think that lots of people's psychologies are very compressed, in 2017 Because their attention spans are so small, and so Lots of ideas in the foreground is very reassuring for people Those poor ideas in the background are... neglected sometimes But anyway, I digress. A sidechain compression in pop music is A lot of the time, people sidechain all of the synths, and all of the... Even sometimes the vocals, and a lot of the, sort of harmonic content About just the kick drum, so If you have like: Or something, like a chord or something. And then you have like: Essentially what happens is that, every time there is a kick drum, the dynamic range increases And so to average out the dynamic range everything else needs to sink I realized quite soon after making the harmonizer that that's possible. Just by going: I just do it manually, you know And it makes people jump up and down : Yeah~ And it's pretty fun I mean it's... The thing about the harmonizer is
anything you can sing you can harmonize, so If you can sing sidechain compression
then you can harmonize sidechain compression And, especially if you add really low notes It like, you know, we can rattle the room. Especially with good subs, you know You know, like Skrillex type of stuff, it is fun : Do you remember playing Crazy She Calls Me
with Jamie Cullum? Ah I remember that, yeah! : The set of chords you played there really struck me : Particularly the voice leading
Yea : How do you combine the vertical nature of chords
with the horizontal nature of voices? That's an interesting one So Bach is the master of this right. Bach with his four-part chorales Where the chords can all be understood vertically and functionally But every single melody in the chord has momentum, it has motion I guess it's something that as a piano player, I had to struggle with a little bit Because of first, as a piano player So easy just to go like: bundles of notes, bundle notes, bing bang bung Cause they're all there in front of you, just waiting to be played And yeah, it took a little bit of time just to be
courageous enough to not play them all at once And that's something I'm still learning, but I think that when it comes to voice leading As long as you sit down and concentrate on each note having a place to go Then, I think you're safe you know And obviously last time we talked about microtonal voice leading Which is like a sort of hyper extension of Effective voicing. Because a lot of the most effective voicing is like chromatic So, you know triads moving side by side, that's strong The bassline having a strong motion, that's very strong And then you can have bi-triadic voicings, where you have: a triad on triad on the bass notes So if you have like: That's like an F#maj over an Emaj over a D. So, that could be like (D) super-ultra lydian if you wanted to say it like that. But also The reason it's strong as a voicing is because, triads are so strong And, if the motion of the bottom is strong
and the motion at the top is strong They don't even have to be going to the same places As long as they're both strong And as long as you have the foresight to know that when When everything resolves, Fmaj for example, it's like... Ahhh~~
We are okay we are in F... like it's all okay And it doesn't matter what you do to get there, as long as the motion in every part of the voicing is strong But, I guess one thing I think about is
you can split a voicing into different zones And each zone is to have
a strong motion to move somewhere So, you know if the bassline's going: Then, the triad on the top
can be moving in the opposite direction Which is something that Bach, Father Bach, sorta likes to do. It's contrary motion, it's very strong In the sense that a triad has a strong enough nature And in the voicings with 5ths in them and 3rds in them is, you know, these are really strong voicings Because if you look at harmonic series Going back to what we were saying about that The triad, like the reason why triads are so apparent in our "Culture" you know, western musical culture, is because It's the first sound you get in the harmonic series that Has that kind of tonal bias, you know.
Like the M3rd is profoundly, like physics It's physics. So a triad in our ear, it just sounds like something that should be/ that should exist, you know Yes, so triads that move you know There's that thing in gospel music where, a lot of time you can harmonize Just with two triads from the scale If you take the triad of the I. So in C, C And the triad of the ii You can go like: Like that thing, is nice. Because, Every motion, the motion of every one of those three notes, is sound and lovely And so knowing that, you could maybe do something utterly different with the bass And go in a completely different direction But watch your momentums
and watch your voice leading for that reason Because, all you need is strong motion going
in a certain direction And they might not be all equivalent, but that's fine, you know What were the chords in
Crazy He Calls Me/Crazy She Calls Me So it's that contrary motion thing, yeah It's a fun challenge to
find a note on the top of a voicing And you think," Oh, that's a challenge, how am I going to get that to resolve" Then you just move and move and move and move and..
And normally you're ok You know, if you trust
Trust yourself... : You said, invest in the emotional exploration of the sounds, as opposed to the information of the sounds : How do you balance emotional exploration with information? : Music has to come from one's emotion, right?
But, it would be impractical to say : Just play what you feel Absolutely. Yeah, it's not left-brain & right-brain marriage to strive for, right Umm, it's interesting I think as a kid I learned... I fell in love with the sounds of music.
I didn't fall in love with the labels that That people assign to the things. And actually, it's only when I was about 17 or 18 that, I learned, you know, that this is a lydian sound,
or this is a locrian sound, or whatever Because, I knew the sound of like: You know. I knew that sound before someone said,
"Hey, that's a lydian chord" Everyone goes through a phase in their life when they're, hungry for information, right And I think for me that was Between about 16 and 20, I was just ravenous.
Like, I wanted everything, I wanted all the stuff And I think, around when I made in my room I realized that in order to make an album, that was more than What's like, what exists,
what makes sense in my own head Which is often very very crazy and, complicated I think I wanted to... You know I wanted to find the courage to, put the information I'd gathered across my whole life, just to one side for a second And then just, write some songs And, inevitably what comes out is information But, my goal was to not build it from the information's point of view, and to Just try and let things flow out, you know. As far as learning stuff, I remember when I was a really little kid... My mom has perfect pitch And she sort of, I guess "taught",
taught me or encouraged me to have that skill By, just by pointing sounds out that were around us You know like someone's car alarm will go off, or you know the microwave will go: Boo or whatever And we're like, hey what no does that feel like You know, but what note does that FEEL like, not what note IS that It's like, how'd... you know, look at your emotional framework for one second I shouldn't say this, but this is me translating it. It's like, What does that note feel like? How is that note fit in with the way, you've built your ⭐︎You know, the way your memory has organized notes And so, you know I might say something like,
"Oh that feels like an A" and actually it was a D Which for my mom, that's great, because that's close Cause, if you look at the circle of 5ths Those are kind of the notes in order of color
in the same kind of a way If I said, it feels like an A but it's an Ab, that would be, Now if I looked at that, I think that was further away (from A) than D, from the sound of that note But I think you know, I think I loved that process of, you know I learned a song at school or something, that I come home and harmonize... I'd sing all the parts And I think, "Ok, so how do I color this in? How can I make this more colorful than it is right now?" And then you know, everyone, I think everyone's ears find certain sounds, Like for example a 2nd or a 6th, to fill out that pentatonic That's quite a natural way of, making something more colorful And once that's gotten old, then M7th, and then #11th But I didn't call these things these things at the time, there were just sounds It was like, "Oh, that's the feeling when it's like: Or that's the feeling when it's like that" and, And a lot of things that you can't put into words,
which is kind of the The majesty of music.
You don't have to say everything you can just do it So you know if you have: And you add a: Like a Bb to an Fmin9 chord
That is so, Warm And I knew that was warm
before I could tell you that Because I found it, and... I can member those like two months where that was my favorite chord You know: AHHH everywhere~ I do it everywhere it's great And I just got, I seeped myself in the sounds that I loved You know I loved, you know: Like that sound, like lydian sound Why is that? Why does that feel so good? And why, if I sing this note
do I feel like I'm adding more shine Than if I'm singing this note, which is like I'm sitting in the center of the chord Or, you know why if I take out that note,
is that not as satisfying as taking out this note And so what I built is, a sort of hierarchy I guess It's like a hierarchy of what notes have importance in chords And, you know as an all-time lover of harmony, I just My ravenous nature for information
by that stage was feeding, like even more ravenous Like right brain that was just wanting sensations and wanting things that I could use to express stuff, you know So, this is you know, this is just so tender, or I'm arriving here, or You know I might lead... With voice leading you might lead somebody to somewhere, and then defy their expectation And the whole thing of defying expectations was, I found it thrilling And I can tell you a story about that actually,
a bit later on, but It was a real epiphany for me to realize that The reason why I liked music was because it made me feel like stuff And so You know, interestingly when I was younger, like you know 16, 17, 18 Like I wasn't the kid with the chops;
I was the kid with the ears, you know So I could, I could feel all this, all this Little details in the chord, and I get emotional about,
you know one little note in the chord It's like, "Awwhh look at that Eb!
It's just such so lovely and warm~" And there was like, "Come on man, swing harder"
you know And it wasn't like that, but I think it's hilarious right now, cause I'm kind of semi representing a generation of chops people And for me, it's only, ever, gonna be about
the reason why that makes me feel something And it's not that simple stuff is the only way, cause For me, the idea of promoting or projecting "JOY" of sorts That is... Joy is a very varied emotion and it's not just about Being pleased. It can be about being angry and joyful,
or can be about being reassured and joyful Or is that.. Like the kind of joy you get when you leave home,
and the kind of joy you get when you return home Like SO different. And that, in my brain, for some reason, can directly correlate to like a cadence Ok so, how are we going home? You know, are we going: Like C, poosh. Every voice, reach! Ahhh reach so warm~
And there's a D in the C chord Or are we going, you know or are we going: You know? Cause that's so unassuming And the melody note is the same, you know,
and neither of those chords are in root position, so You're never going to feel like you've really arrived,
nor have you ever really departed But, like I like getting close to those sounds and then just examining them And taking the time to get to know them as
sort of my "friends" or something, because ✾ It's these characters that move people when they listen to music It's the attention to those kinds of details, which Thrill Me And so thus I, have invested a lot of time in that
as a framework And I think once that's established, you can
gather and gather and gather On occasion, you need to remember that. You need to remember that, Why am I gathering so many stuff?
Oh because... you love this first! You know and, I know lots of people who've spoken about this And I think a lot of people can fall out of love with the basic, kind of joy of a plagal cadence It's just so Lovely! And, The more chords you know,
the more courage it takes to not play them :Uhhah guilty 🙋♂️ And you know so, I think yeah I think every now and then, it's a process of
stripping down all the stuff that I've gathered And all the, crazy notes that you've added to chords Like there is this one chord, I know that has all twelve notes in it Did I [...] last episode already? I don't think so So this chord is, it's like D7 But it has everyone of the twelve notes And my voice/my range isn't big enough to do the whole chord, but it goes: And then an octave higher: Like that, and it's just like: And all the notes are present. I remember when I found that chord I was like, "YEAH" You know it's like, I'm the winner.
Found the chord with all the notes and it makes sense But, you know like once you've/I've pushed myself that far Cause I'm always, I've always been quite addicted to,
pushing myself in those kinds of ways. It's like, That has no more or less value
than something which with way fewer notes in it As long as you, pay attention to the notes in that chord and where they're going Cause, you know the more notes in the chord The more responsibility you have as an arranger or as a singer, to lead them all in the right direction Cause it's like having like, if you have two dogs or something. Like if you're a triad, two dogs like You can take care of those guys, they're gonna be fine. And they're probably gonna stay quite Close To You But, if you have like eleven dogs Then, just to make sure they're all going the right direction They all have the right amount of momentum,
and they're all fed the right amount, and they're all... Like, that's really hard! And, So as an arranger, it's just, it's something to think about, you know. The more notes you add, the more momentums you need to attend to And no, no chord with more is
more valuable than a chord with fewer notes But, they can show out some cool colors if you
learn how to use them, you know : Close To You, during the bridge, Ab major: Yea : There's a counter melody going: : The chords are, I guess the first chord is Abmaj : Second is some sort of Ab13, third chord is Ab69maj, and the fourth chord is : Fmaj over Ab? Right : So... : All the chords aren't really functioning in a traditional, functional way Yea : So, would it be fair to say that voice leading trumps functional harmony? : Yes. No I think it absolutely does The most important thing about voice leading
is the resolution, right Cause you can do sound voice leading
and then you can end up in some like... Pothole... And it's awful But, those four chords for example.
You know FMaj7, like: You know, but over Ab That is satisfying because, if you watch every note Like the E, which is pretty slightly quieter than the F That has motion to go back to the Ab, you know So, well the E can go
either to the Eb or up to the F And like the D, can go up to Eb.
And the C can stay where it is, right The A can rise to a Bb So you get: And all the motion in that chord
is strong enough to get you back there And, obviously the melody: Like that's a strong melody, right That's just a stepwise up and down,
and so that if that can stay intact Then you can do all sorts of skullduggery
underneath the surface And people's ears don't mind
because it's strong enough And all the voice leading is leading to
something, you know : Why is human voice your favorite instrument? Hmmph, everybody has one, and That's awesome And everyone has one
and every single one is different And, the voice can do so! much! It can be the drums; it can be the bass;
it can be the harmony; it can be the melody It can be textures; it can be Weird sound effects, and it can be speech,
and it can be... Uhh...It's a really special instrument
because it's so fundamental to us It's the most fundamental instrument there is. And, Back in the early days of The Land Of Jacob,
I only had an SM58, and That was it. And I didn't have a bunch of instruments And I loved, I loved, building the sounds of instruments Just using the voice, and seeing how far I could push that Because I found that really exciting : ] And Bobby McFerrin for me
was like a MaSSive hero growing up There's an album of his, with Yo-Yo Ma with Hush, and It's a mixture of, you know
Bach, and Rachmaninoff, classical music, And also, folk song and groove and all sorts of stuff. And Bobby, Does that thing where he sings all the parts But he leaves Ma for you to hear the rest of them So, you know he goes like,
you know that where he goes Well, I did the blackbird thing, he just: You know. Like he does that thing where he lays out the bass, and then he does the melody And your ear just knows how to hear what's going on And I just think that's so~ wonderful.
And he's like a superstar But, he inspired me as a kid to try that.
So, I experimented with my voice And I couldn't wait to/for my voice to break Because then I'd be able to sing like: ah......
And just no way I could sing it my lowest was like: ah~~ And I was actually a bit worried that I'd lose my my high end And for a while I did, and then it came back
which I'm just feel so grateful for. But, You know it's, amazing because everyone uses their voice every day And a lot of the language of using your voice
the same with singing and speaking, and Someone like Stevie Wonder, like he speaks the same as he sings, like: You know, cause it's just like there's no separation...
:LOLL Between his singing at his speaking I love that. That for me, that makes, it makes sense And that's like the way it should be, you know : Does it affect your way of recording things? The voice you mean?
: Yea Yeah. I mean most of my recording techniques
I learned from the voice, you know And, I guess within the "voice category" I'd also say things like body percussion So, for example on Fascinating Rhythm, the clap, [...] that: That clap is, two claps in each room of my house One recorded this close to the microphone,
and one recorded on the other side of the room So, yeah music room, back room, bathroom, bedroom, you know corridors, And I did one in every room of the house And I alternate between
left on right and right on left And, it sounds like a group of people Because all the acoustics are different,
and the way I'm doing it is different, and The sizes are different. So it's like: You know, but there are some close enough, and And I love playing with that because There's no end to stuff you can do! You know there's no end stuff you can do And even like a funny riff on a piano,
like some crazy jazz piano line You know like, I can sing that line And you know, even if I sing it
you know three or four notes at a time You can achieve that line and it sounds To me it sounded more interesting
than just playing on piano Because playing a piano
sounds like a piano Instead with a chord, you know if you sing a chord It can feel a lot more exciting
than just playing on a piano Just because the voice is so emotional. It's like velvet. You can treat it in all these different ways You know I remember last time
we talked a little bit about this, but You know if I have a chord, and I sing all the notes Then each note is gonna have a different feeling;
it's gonna have a different amount of breath in it You know from like: To: You know, everything in between.
That's my palette! You know And, the voice has more dimensions
than the piano, for me. Because, It's the amount of breath, is the amount of volume It's:
and all of those, you know variations with a voice For me it feels like there's, it has more capacity
for that kind of nuance And, you know I think that horn instruments
like clarinet, and saxophone and things You can achieve that, but I'm not, I don't play those instruments So, I guess, because I just had that one microphone At that young age I just tried to do
what I was hearing the horns do Or I was hearing the, you know, what I was hearing the keys player do or something But I tried to do with voices because,
I wanted to stretch myself And because I loved the way that it sounded at the end You know... "bachh"💢 I remember that, I have a memory of sitting in the studio With Herbie and Quincy, like they came to visit.
And I was finishing the album and mixing with Ben, and And, we played them You And I,
and that chord, that Eb That chord Herbie was like: "Stop stop..." Like, "What is that chord???"
It was really nice Wow, that's quite a compliment! Yeah, I just thought like
that's such a precious memory to me Just like Herbie digging it.
I was like, aww, man!
honestly june, thank you for your detail (and the dedication to that detail), your passion, your time in editing and educating. just...thank you. you're the man. as someone who wants to continue my musical education, you've been such a blessing. jacob's cool too i guess ;)
This has made my day - thanks for sharing! On a side note, I find it weird how so few people talk about Aphex Twin's sense of harmony and tuning when he is clearly incorporating some mad things on that front.
This made a lot more sense than how he explained it last time.
What I hate about a lot of resources and people talking about theory, is that they don't do it with music.
The words are really kind of meaningless. What it sounds like, is what's important. If they talk about it, and you don't hear it, you didn't learn much, really.
There was a little bit of example in this video, but I would have much preferred hear multiple examples.
Sometimes I feel like after 26 years I still know nothing.
he is absolutely insane, in a geniusly good way
Wow this reminded me how mathematical music can be
Glad to see him give shoutouts to jazz saxophonist Steve Coleman, whose M-BASE theory dating back to the 80s/90s is somewhat related to what has lately been rebooted as "negative harmony" and something I loved learning about back when I started learning jazz, as it was a very refreshing alternative to the Marsalis museum jazz approach that I found quite stifling and unimaginative.
Here's a great feature of Coleman's playing, from a Dave Holland record (he was the bassist who replaced Ron Carter starting in Miles Davis' Bitches Brew period) that also features guitarist Kevin Eubanks (best known as Jay Leno's seemingly perpetually-stoned Tonight Show bandleader) and drummer Marvin Smitty Smith, who was also on the Tonight Show. Like most Holland records, no piano to allow for more harmonic exploration; can't recommend pretty much all of Dave Holland's output enough.
https://youtu.be/tyw-kurG-4U
Edit: this song, Nemesis, also opens with what I think is easily one of the funkiest 11/4 riffs of all time, and not for lack of competition
Saw him live just a couple weeks ago, he is amazing. Love his voice modulator and creator, his one man show is extraordinary. He has so much talent and raw knowledge of music. And he's just a really fun artists to watch and be a part of! (I picked seeing Jacob Collier over Travis Scott at Bonnaroo, would make that decision again)
Thanks for sharing, that was outstandingly great to listen to!