Musician Explains One Concept in 5 Levels of Difficulty ft. Jacob Collier & Herbie Hancock | WIRED
Video Statistics and Information
Channel: WIRED
Views: 11,492,545
Rating: 4.8955817 out of 5
Keywords: explainer, explaining, harmony, music, musician, musicians, notes, sounds, melody, herbie hancock, triad, jacob collier, harmony explanation, explaining harmony, harmonize, music explanation, how music works, how harmony works, harmonizing, herbie hancock music, herbie hancock jazz, musical harmony, major chords, minor chords, musical notes, explaining music, harmonics, negative harmony, music tutorial, piano tutorial, maiden voyage, chameleon, watermelon man, music theory, wired
Id: eRkgK4jfi6M
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 15min 41sec (941 seconds)
Published: Mon Jan 08 2018
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Herbie Hancock is a jazz legend, but he also was the 1st artist to bring "scratching" into the mainstream with his Grammy-winning recording of Rockit. Rockit, and the Future Shock album, was actually written by producer/musician Bill Laswell. Check out Laswell and his related groups if you're interested in going down a really weird music rabbit-hole.
For those of you who don't know whats going on, I think I can break it down for those of you in sort of simpler terms. As the comment section has pointed out, these guys are legends, and are referencing songs and harmonic ideas at a million miles an hour. I'm admittedly not even close to that good, but i have a college education in music, and hopefully I know enough to help y'all get what they're saying.
Firstly we're thrown into the video without a whole lot of context about what they're talking about, because op linked to a super confusing part of the video. If you go back 20 seconds, you'll find that Jacob brought up a song by a bassist named Bill Lee called "Don't Follow the Crowd." Jacob references a progression in the song that goes Bbm7, E7alt., Ebm7, DM7+5+9, DbM7. The point he's trying to make is that the penultimate chord in that progression doesn't have any of the characteristics of a dominant chord, but still functions as one because people understand where he's trying to go, the Db.
You see there are 3 different types of chords in traditional music theory: Predominant, Dominant, and Tonic chords. Tonic chords are the defining chord of the key (in this case Db), Dominant chords lead to the tonic in one way or another, and Predominants do for dominants as dominants do for tonic. Ordinarily, Dominant chords feature a note a half-step below the tonic in order to make the listener want to resolve to a tonic. The chord a half-step above the tonic is typically used as a dominant function chord in it's major-minor form due to a concept called tritone substitution, but in this case it's a weird kind of augmented construction, so it has none of the characteristics that would make this very stylized chord work, but it does anyway.
Anyway, after this Herbie starts talking about moving to the tonic from the Major-minor 7 below. This was a common extrapolation from a common tone progression that was popular in the late 19th early 20th centuries, where one holds the key note in a tonic chord and moves all other notes down by half step. Assuming we're in Db, If one gets rid of the common tone and stick a note a third below the bass of the ensuing chord, one gets a C Major-minor 7 chord (C7), which is another nice example of the audience filling in the gaps because they know what you're trying to do.
I'll keep going a little bit later.
Edit: After this I think things get a lot more self explanatory. Herbie talks about a technique where one will have a tonic construction in the bass, and a multi-note suspension in the upper voices. Which is pretty cool. They go on an odd tangent comparing the tension in the progression to life in a way?
Then Herbie tells a really cool story about him and Miles Davis. Jazz pianists are typically taught that when altering chords to always keep the 3rd and the 7th unaltered in the voicing, otherwise people won't know what the chord is supposed to be. I guess Herbie stopped doing that, and found some new avenues to explore creatively.
Edit: After rereading this, I guess it isn't as simple as I wanted it to be, go figure. If anyone wants me to simplify more just ask.
As someone who doesn't know anything about music, I felt like a kid again listening to adults speak. I didn't have the slightest idea what they were saying but I felt inclined to understand and decipher it. Understanding music and visual art is a different world man.
And yet you can still get the gist of what they're communicating to each other.
John Hancock? , ha - it's Herbie Hancock...dehhhhh
the whole video is good. especially the reaction from the professional piano player
if you love music, go thru the whole video . This is gold for us
I started watching this video a couple of days ago and found myself watching Jacob Collier videos for 2 hours.
Incredibly smart guy. A lot of it went right over my head but his skill, enthusiasm, creativity and knowledge is captivating.
Musicians just so happen to be Herbie Hancock and Jacob Collier.