Why are these chords SO beautiful? | Q+A

[Music] welcome everybody to the super fast instagram q a i hope you enjoy [Music] this video is brought to you by skillshare why is the bridge to stella by starlight so beautiful stella by starlight is the beautiful jazz belly that just has one of the best bridges i've ever heard it was originally written uh for the 1944 film the uninvited the original chord progression sounds like this check it out god just like tug on my heart strings why don't you there's a couple of amazing things about this first of all it starts on a dominant seventh chord normally in like a two five progression the dominant seventh chord the five chord is in a weak part of the harmonic cadence like the second bar or the fourth bar and then you resolve it to a stronger part in the cadence like the first bar or the third bar that doesn't really happen on the bridge to stella by starlight instead we start on a c7 chord and that's a little unusual it creates a feeling of tension and a feeling like the whole progression will topple forward into the next measure this whole thing is kind of heightened by the fact that in the orchestration we have these wonderful schmaltzy hollywood strings playing the melody and octaves and then we have this fantastic horror encounter melody playing a d-flat diminished triad in first inversion like this i love horn counter melodies like this they sound so triumphant anyway this kind of cadence actually has a name this is an example of a feminine cadence no this kind of gender terminology is not used that frequently anymore but it used to be the case that composers were criticized for their use of feminine cadences because they were considered weaker than stronger masculine cadences where the v chord occurs on the weak beat and the resolution occurs on the strong beat like for example chopin his prelude number 20 starts with a feminine cadence this g7 right here is on the third beat and then resolves to a c minor on the fourth beat which has as one writer called it an almost hysterical quality to it now if you wanted to use non-gendered terminology if you're being you know awoken i just call a chord progression which starts with a dominant seventh chord uh the stella cadence because you know stella anyway the c7 has a flat 13 in the melody it's a big note on top the strings are playing and normally that flat 13 would resolve downwards as it's cadencing to an f minor like this it's kind of actually how the flat 13 resolves in chopin's prelude number 20 except it doesn't do it this time no that flat 13 ratchets up the tension by going to the 11 on the f minor chord that precedes it so so far we have this dominant seventh chord unusually in the strong harmonic rhythm and then the melody resolves in this way that's ratcheting up the tension where do we go from here well now the melody goes to an a flat minor major seven the g in the melody has a pretty intense relationship with the c flat it's an augmented fifth integral intense and from here you might expect it to resolve to an e flat major chord the one chord and that's how a lot of jazz musicians do it but in the original recording it doesn't resolve to the one chord instead it resolves to the one chord over its third so it sounds a little bit unresolved at the end of this phrase so most jazz musicians play stella by starlight based on miles davis's recording of the song which is great but it's a little bit different from the recording from the movie it doesn't start on the diminished seventh chord that's a whole can of worms old-school jazz musicians will crucify you if you don't start your version of stella by starlight with a diminished seventh chord in the first place tell about star ideas that's what it is anyway there's a lot of great stuff in the original recording and if you're learning jazz it's always good to go to the source and learn what made a song great in the first place and in the case of stella by starlight there's a lot of cool stuff there g minor seven over c to f add nine okay if you fade an e in and out at 440 hertz would you hear the interval that this would produce well let's find out 440 hertz references the number of times per second something happens and if we hear something 440 times per second it equals the note a like we hear that as the note a if something happens 440 times per second like that's the definition of pitch so if we play the note e 440 times per second would it just sound like the note a well let's find out so i have here the sample of the note e and if we play it back at quarter note equals 60 bpm this will be once per second sounds like the note if we double that up to eighth notes this will be two hertz or twice per second still sounds like e we can keep that process going so this is sixteenth notes or four times per second four hertz still sounds like e this is eight hertz [Music] still e this is sixteen hertz [Music] it's really fast e this is 32 hertz hmm it's starting to sound kind of worked right this is 64 hertz hmm doesn't really sound like an e anymore this is 128 hertz [Music] like that's definitely not the note e it kind of kind of sounds like a c almost you double it up again to 256 hertz that's the same c up an octave and we can tune this note to the note a by speeding up the tempo of ableton live check this out so remember we started with the note e but because pitch is nothing more than just how many times per second something happens when we speed it up like that we now hear the note a even though in the sample rack this is the sample that's being played back wild right but that's acoustics that's music music and pitch is just how fast something is happening why does jared yee sound so damn good that practices [Music] explain more about 8d music please okay so 8d music is this fad from a couple of years ago that was essentially binaural audio you may be familiar with the kinds of microphones that asmr streamers use that mimic human hearing essentially binaural audio is how we're able to tell where things are in space just by hearing them our brains essentially calculate the minor differences in time that it takes the same sound to reach both of our ears there's a lot of math behind it and there's some other stuff that happens i don't pretend to understand any of it but you can emulate this effect with a free plug-in this is deer vr micro if you're listening with headphones this is the audio from the beginning it's now on the right side it's now on the left side that's going around this in itself is a total gimmick but spatial sound and spatial audio is actually kind of a cool thing dolby atmos is now on itunes a few bands have remixed songs with spatial audio but yeah that's what 8d audio is it's basically just like fancy panning what is the flow state and can it be entered on command so yeah i kind of understand the flow state to be the time where you're just so engrossed in a creative activity and time seems to stand still and you're just so hyper focused on doing this one thing you're kind of like in the flow i'm not sure if you can like enter it at will but like my mentor jim mcneely said there's nothing quite like a deadline to get the creative juices flowing and i think just having a deadline is a great way of literally getting into the flow state i think we really kind of got there when ben levin and i did the 24-hour albums where we were writing and recording an album in 24 hours we really didn't have any time to not be in the flow state we had to constantly be creating new things and throwing new ideas at each other kind of like at will we had to turn off that judgmental side of our brain just for the sake of practicality like we couldn't afford to not create ideas in the moment hey adam how do you come up with so many different ideas in such a short time this is like a job we have to we have to do it and that hard deadline of 24 hours i think really helped us get into the flow state if you get too caught up in any one little detail you lose sight of what the big picture is i guess so yes set deadlines for yourself there's nothing quite like a deadline to get the creative juices flowing any tips for people with perfect pitch your video about losing it scared me so in my video on perfect pitch i talked about how everybody with perfect pitch eventually loses it as they age like by the time you're 50 or 60 you won't have perfect pitch anymore but you could just as easily say the same thing about your hearing you know as we age we lose our faculties and our hearing goes the same way that our perfect pitch goes and just being aware of that and being ready for that is just an important part of confronting our own mortality how to get rid of muscle memory playing and how to get the playing from mind okay so muscle memory is not a bad thing when it comes to improvisation or playing music you really want to feel the music and use what your body has learned over the course of its study of music to your advantage because those are all the things that like go into making music your body is the thing that actually makes the music what you don't want to have is what my teacher dave lee been called fingeritis that means your body is like just going on autopilot and there's there's a fundamental disconnect between your ear that thing which gives you the musical inspiration in your body which is the thing that's able to execute it that back and forth between hearing a phrase and living the phrase through the execution of muscle memory kind of like the real meat of the matter when it comes to studying music and playing music would you use mixo flat 9 flat 13 on a secondary dominant of the two given that the flat nine isn't diatonic alright so in the key of c that chord would be an a7 chord and your question is should you play a b natural which is from the key of c or should you play a b flat which isn't from the key of c and the answer is both sound pretty good if you're playing it in a cadence like this so i don't know pick whichever one makes you happy do you see yourself these days as more of a musician or youtuber yeah i definitely think of myself more a musician than youtuber because i achieved like the tiniest bit of notoriety on youtube a lot of people see me as a youtube burr whatever that is but that's not really my community and that's not really how i think of myself and to be honest music is just a lot more fun you know youtube's great for connecting with people and it's a lot of fun making youtube videos but honestly at the end of the day i just want to sit in a room with other people and play bass it's really just what i want to do how does it feel to be finally going places and doing things great what chord sounds yellow to you like c major is so yellow to me like that right there that's that's c major is the blues kind of like a b flat chord in first inversion that's kind of how i'm feeling it right now so the whole backdrop is kind of like c going back and forth to a b flat in first inversion what was your favorite ride at cedar point on one of our days off sungazer went to cedar point and rode a bunch of roller coasters my favorite of course was uh millennium force that first strawberry that first drop is so nuts i may have been a bit of an enthusiast back in the day same thing with sean by the way we can name all of the different manufacturers of all the different roller coasters in this park right b m arrow intamin of course with the uh millennium force right over there what's today's sponsor adam i'm glad you asked skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes to choose from for creative and curious people skillshare has many great classes that might appeal to you depending on your skill level and your experience on things like photography design illustration and of course music one of these classes for example is taught by the memester himself charles cornell if you want to check that out if that's not your vibe you could also check out learn how to mix music with young guru a fantastic clear and coaching introduction to the wonderful world of audio engineering common things that are on all compressors skillshare is curated specifically for learning so there are no ads and they're always adding new premium classes so you'll always have new things to explore so if you're interested in skillshare and are a fan of free things i've got some good news for you because if you're one of the first thousand people to click the link in the description you'll get a one month free trial of skillshare go check it out if you're interested and i hope you guys have a lovely rest of your day peace

Channel: Adam Neely

Views: 662,273

Rating: 4.9719458 out of 5

Keywords: adam, neely, jazz, fusion, bass, guitar, lesson, theory, music

Id: NU9jx8vRW_E

Length: 13min 8sec (788 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 07 2021