this video is sponsored by Skillshare. hey, welcome to 12tone. I didn't want to make this video. I didn't want to have to make this video. I didn't want to live in a world where this
video had to get made, but a couple weeks ago, professional opinion-haver Ben Shapiro
decided to reiterate his repeatedly-disproven argument that, technically speaking, rap isn't
music, so I guess now we have to talk about it. *sigh* fine. (tick, tick, tick, tick, tock) so to start with, let's look at what Shapiro
actually said: (SHAPIRO: "in my view, and the view of my music theorist father who went
to music school, there are three elements to music. there is harmony, there is melody, and there
is rhythm, and rap only fulfills one of these: the rhythm section. there's not a lot of melody, and there's not
a lot of harmony, and so it's not actually a form of music, it's a form of rhythmic speaking. so beyond the subjectivity of me just not
enjoying rap all that much, what I've said before is it's not music, so tell me why I'm
wrong.") now, long-time viewers may recognize this
argument, because I already made a video about it a year ago, where I explained why rap,
or as many fans of the genre prefer to call it, hip-hop, does often contain all three
of these elements, but what you may not know is that when researching that video, my primary
source for that argument was an article written in 2009 by none other than Ben Shapiro, which
means he's been repeating this same lazy definition for at least a decade now. still, in spite of my better judgment, I'm
going to assume he's serious when he says (SHAPIRO: "tell me why I'm wrong"), so while
the previous video focused on why his definition doesn't even actually exclude hip-hop, today
I'd like to look at a deeper question: is this a good way to define music in the first
place? spoiler alert: no. now, to be clear, language is subjective,
and Shapiro is free to define music however he wants for his own personal use, but when
he says things like (SHAPIRO: "beyond the subjectivity of me just not enjoying rap")
and attributes the claim to (SHAPIRO: "my music theorist father who went to music school")
in order to argue that (SHAPIRO: "it's not actually a form of music") he's invoking the
concept of technical language, implying that his definition reflects some sort of objective
truth, or at the very least that it would be supported by a majority of experts in the
field. but here's the thing: I'm an expert in the
field. I'm a music theorist, and much like Shapiro's
father, I also went to music school. and beyond that, I know plenty more music
theorists, musicologists, ethnomusicologists, and other music experts, and I've never heard
any of them use anything even close to this definition. why not? because it excludes a lot of things
that are broadly considered music, but to understand how, we're gonna have to define
our terms. let's start with rhythm. does music have to have rhythm? well, that depends what rhythm is. in a broad sense, rhythm is just the spacing
of events in time, but that's not a particularly useful definition here, because all sounds
occur in time, so all sounds would be rhythmic. instead, when talking about musical rhythm,
we're usually talking about a structured, hierarchic pattern of sonic events or, to
translate that into English, we're talking about beats. for example, this: (bang) would
count as rhythmic: we have a clear, perceptible pattern of strong and weak beats, and the
attacks fall at regular intervals. on the other hand, this: (bang) would be non-rhythmic,
because the distance between attacks is literally random, so there's no way to feel any real
pulse. of course, this isn't to say that rhythm has
to be simple. you can leave out parts of the pattern, (bang)
combine different pattern lengths, (bang) or use multiple patterns at once, (bang) and
they don't even have to repeat: (bang) but at the heart of all of these is some sense
of pulse, some structured hierarchy of stress and duration that allows us to build a rhythmic
roadmap in our minds. and I think Shapiro would agree with me here: after all, he described
rap as (SHAPIRO: "rhythmic speaking"), which implies there's such a thing as non-rhythmic
speaking, and thus a need for a more rigid model of rhythm. so with this definition, does music need rhythm? no. there's a lot of ways to demonstrate this,
but probably the simplest is a concept called free time, which is exactly what it sounds
like: music written and performed without any clear meter or tempo. for example, early
medieval Christian liturgical music was mostly done in a style called Cantus Planus, or plainsong,
which was traditionally performed without any clear metric structure. plainsong is, in a lot of ways, the direct
conceptual ancestor of most Western classical music, so it's hard to view it as non-musical,
but plainsong notation doesn't even specify duration, because that level of rhythmic hierarchy
just wasn't a part of the practice. in opera, free time appears in recitatives,
where instead of musical rhythm, singers mimic the natural rhythms of human speech, and it
also shows up in jazz, where it's often called rubato and, again, rhythmic decisions are
loose and unstructured. free time even occurs in modern popular music,
although admittedly not often: the best example I could find is Hunting Bears, by Radiohead. now, it's worth noting that listening to any
of these examples can still give you a momentary sense of rhythm: after all, the attacks aren't
random. they're being interpreted by a performer,
who's controlling the stress and duration for expressive effect. but the thing is, the stress and duration
of speech isn't random either. in fact, even things that are random, like
falling raindrops, can create a sense of rhythm is you listen to them the right way, but the
problem is that there's no clear structure or hierarchy to that rhythm, which means that
if you follow this line of reasoning we wind up with a worthless classifier. if we want
to use rhythm to differentiate between music and non-music, we need a way to differentiate
between rhythm and non-rhythm, and since Shapiro seems to believe that the natural rhythm of
speech doesn't count, structured beat patterns are probably our best bet, and free time doesn't
have structured beat patterns. so that's rhythm: what about harmony? well, what is harmony? for the purposes of
this video, I'm going to use the broadest definition of harmony I know: two or more
distinct pitches sounding simultaneously. now, this does create a bit of a problem for
us, since Shapiro says that, in hip-hop, (SHAPIRO: "there's not a lot of harmony") whereas an
actual examination reveals that many hip-hop songs have fairly standard chord progressions.
for example, Where Is The Love by the Black Eyed Peas is built on a loop of F, C, Dmi,
Bb, which you might recognize as the Four-Chord Progression, one of the most common harmonic
figures in Western music. and this shouldn't be surprising: hip-hop
is a genre that was founded on sampling, or borrowing musical passages from songs in other
styles, so it's only natural that it'd pick up some of the musical vocabulary of those
styles. I'm going to assume, though, that Shapiro
is simply ignorant of this fact, because I don't know how to define harmony in such a
way that straight-up traditional Western chord progressions don't count. that said, if we do use a more restrictive
definition, perhaps one that assumes a certain level of harmonic complexity, the fact that
we don't need it becomes even easier to prove, so no matter what Shapiro meant, as long as
it involves multiple notes at once, which it pretty much has to, my argument will still
cover it. so with this definition, does music need harmony? no. and this one's pretty easy, because there's
an entire musical texture that's defined by its lack of harmony. it's called monophony, meaning one sound,
and that's what it is: a single melodic line presented without accompaniment. or, well,
depending on how strict you want to be, it can include multiple voices singing in unison
or octaves, and it can even have percussive elements added in, but the point is there's
only one pitch at a time, so no harmony. a good example is our old friend plainsong,
which, in addition to having no meter, was sung by a single performer, alone. harmony didn't appear in these liturgical
songs until the development of the organum, or second accompanying voice, which first
showed up around the 9th century. but monophony is far from dead: you hear it
every time you listen to an a capella singer, or a solo piece for a melodic instrument,
like a flute, trumpet, or oboe. it's also pretty common in non-Western cultures: traditional
Korean music, for instance, is often monophonic. and unlike free time, it does show up occasionally
in modern Western popular music, too: in my last video on the topic, I mentioned Queen's
We Will Rock You, where for most of the song, Freddie Mercury's voice is accompanied only
by body percussion and some octave doubling. there's no harmony until the guitar solo at
the very end. but some people objected to this point, arguing
that even though no one was playing chords, the song still had them because melody can
imply harmony. and that's true. take this. (bang) to my ears, at least, it's pretty clear
that this: (bang) is the correct harmonization. but how did I do that? I mean, there's basically only one melodic
note per chord, and these are not the only chords that contain these notes, so in theory
it could just as easily have been this. (bang) how did I know it wasn't? well, because I'm familiar with traditional
Western harmony, and in that system, this one's much more common. that's an extreme example, but it demonstrates
an important point: unless your melody is literally arpeggiating a chord progression,
which We Will Rock You is not, there's probably going to be more than one valid way to harmonize
it. to see this in action, check out Adam Neely's
video on the 7 levels of jazz harmony, link in the description. this means that the implied harmony isn't
actually an inherent property of the melody itself, but a product of the interaction between
that melody and your pre-existing harmonic vocabulary, and what kinds of chord progressions
you're used to will change which potential harmony you hear. this becomes especially relevant when we look
at non-Western music derived from monophonic traditions: I mean, how can you imply a harmony
if your culture doesn't have a harmonic vocabulary in the first place? effectively, while melody can imply harmony,
implying harmony isn't the same thing as having it. which brings us to our final element: melody.
this is probably the hardest to define: the simplest version is that melody is a series
of notes played in succession, but in this context, what's a note? is it just any frequency?
is it limited to some tuning system? is there some stability or range requirement? see, this is the problem with arguing about
definitions: once you start, it's definitions all the way down. fortunately, Shapiro helps us out here by
clarifying that, in rap, (SHAPIRO: "there's not a lot of melody") so we have some indication
of where the line is, at least for him. of course, many rap songs, like Ready Or Not
by Fugees, or Empire State Of Mind by Jay-Z, also contain explicit singing, and even in
songs that don't, there's a good chance the beat features melodies performed on synthesizers
or other non-vocal instruments, a concept that, as a classical violinist, you'd think
Shapiro would be pretty familiar with, but for the sake of argument I'll assume he's
referring only to songs where the vocal delivery is exclusively rapping and the beat is entirely
percussive, because otherwise we're forced to conclude that he just doesn't know nearly
enough about rap to be speaking so authoritatively about it, and what are the odds of that? so in order to define melody, we're going
to have to look at the difference between speech and singing which, conveniently, I
just made a whole video about and it turns out there's not a lot. but there are some things that are more characteristic
of one than the other, so let's try them out. like, maybe the distinction is range: speech
tends to be narrower, while melodies often run all over the place. but that seems unlikely: if you saw my video
on Losing My Religion, you'll know the vocal melody of that song has a range of a perfect
4th, and studies show that, depending on context, human speaking voices can cover nearly an
octave, so it seems likely that many rap artists would show a similar range. but what about tonal stability? maybe melodies have clear, precise pitches,
while speech slides around haphazardly. except music has plenty of slides too, we
just call them glissandos 'cause we're fancy. besides, if tonal stability is a requirement
for melody, how do you explain a singer like Bob Dylan? anyway, I could run through a bunch of other
possible answers, but let's cut to the chase: the best definition I could come up with is
that melodies contain intentional pitch. that is, they use notes in such a way that
you can tell if one of those notes is wrong. now, speech also does this to some extent:
the contour of a phrase can carry a lot of semantic meaning: compare "that's how you
define music." to "that's how you define music!?" but if
I'd gone like a half-step higher on that last syllable, it still would've conveyed the same
idea, whereas if I'm singing, say, Happy Birthday, and I go a half-step sharp on the last note:
(bang) that changes everything. now, to be clear, just because a note is intentional
doesn't mean it can't be spontaneous. like, if you're taking a solo in a jazz song,
you may not know in advance that you're gonna play an F# over that E major 7 chord. your hands may have just gone there instinctively,
but it still creates a specific effect in that context that would be lost if you'd played,
say, an F natural instead. this means this definition is still difficult
to apply to rap, because, consciously or not, many rappers will tune their voice to match
the key of the track, because it just sounds better that way. this is a fairly nuanced point, though, so
again I'm just going to assume ignorance on Shapiro's part, but just like before, I don't
think his definition is gonna be less restrictive than mine, so even if he's purposefully excluding
that, we're probably still fine. so with this definition, does music need melody? no. admittedly, this is a bit harder than the
others: melody is incredibly common across musical cultures, but that doesn't mean there
isn't music without it. besides rap and other spoken-music traditions,
this mostly takes the form of strictly percussion-based music like drumlines. now, it's worth noting that drums can create
a sort of pseudo-melody: for instance, on a traditional trap set kit there's three toms,
high, medium, and low, and you can move between these to create a basic sense of melodic motion. (bang) but, while these toms can be tuned
to specific notes, they often aren't, and for the most part listeners perceive tom runs
as having a rough melodic contour, not an intentional, definite pitch. like, when a song changes keys, you don't
see the drummer stopping to retune their instrument, because the difference just isn't that noticeable.
as such, with the exception of instruments like the steel drum, which are specifically
designed to have melodic qualities, most drum-based music isn't going to have a strong sense of
melody unless someone's singing or playing a melodic instrument on top of it, and yet
drumline pieces are an iconic and important part of marching band repertoire. so there you have it: there's music without
harmony, music without melody, and music without rhythm. heck, there's even music without any of those
things, although we'd have to go pretty deep into experimental territory for that and I
feel like I'll lose Shapiro if I start citing composers like LaMonte Young. but the point is none of these things are
a good way to differentiate between music and non-music, and requiring all three of
them is even worse. if you're curious what a good definition of
music might look like, I actually already made a video on that as well, link in the
description, but I'll tell you this much: good definitions tend to care more about reflecting
cultural experiences than nitpicking about technicalities. anyway I think we're basically done here,
but in the interest of fairness, Ben, any last words? (SHAPIRO: "rock was an actual degradation
of skill for music from jazz, which was actually a degradation of skill from classical.") nope. I'm done. I'm out. but seriously, Ben, if you want to learn more
about the craft of making hip-hop, Skillshare's got some great courses to help you out. I'd recommend starting with their Trap Music
Production class, where songwriting duo K Theory walks you through their process of
making music. it's focused on hip-hop, and specifically
trap music, but I think part of being a good musician is learning from as many influences
as you can, and a lot of their advice is useful in any genre. and that's just one of the thousands
of classes on Skillshare, covering all sorts of different musical topics, as well as cooking,
programming, and marketing, which is a pretty important skill for a working musician. and
Skillshare's even offering 12tone viewers 2 free months of premium membership with the
link in the description, which gives you full access to all their classes so you can try
it out with no risk. and if you do like it, plans are super affordable, starting at less
than 10 bucks a month, so why not give Skillshare a shot? and hey, thanks for watching, thanks to our
Patreon patrons for making these videos possible, and extra special thanks to this video's Featured
Patron, Susan Jones. if you want to help out, and get some sweet
perks like sneak peeks of upcoming episodes, there's a link to our Patreon on screen now. you can also join our mailing list to find
out about new episodes, like, share, comment, subscribe, and above all, keep on rockin'.
Surprised that someone with a degree in music and one of the most popular music theory channels has a more nuanced opinion than a guy who was kind of good at the violin as a child.
Ben Shapiro is wrong about pretty much everything
This is one of Ben's "bait the left" opinions, it's not worth responding to as he doesn't believe it himself.
Any response will just be seen as "triggered libs"
Just read his last "novel", "True Allegiance", if you want to see what Ben really thinks of black folks.
For those who don't want to suffer brain rot from reading it, just watch Jose's video on it. It's some Turner Diaries shit.
Good video, although it doesn't take a supergenius to see that when Shapiro talks about not liking rap, he's actually referring to not liking black people
I think Ben conceding this point will actually be a bigger deal than it seems. I hope he watches this video, and if this doesn't get to him, he already made up his mind that he doesn't like
black people making musichip hoprap.Between this and the 1791L video, Ben Shapiro gets fucking destroyed by both sides.
Ah... the old evergreen still hitting the Top 10 each time it gets played again:
Reactionaries, the old farts (brain wise, doesn’t need wrinkles to be a nasty old meat suit) come together to cry about ”This new music will destroy the youth and society, muuuuuaaahhh!”
I bet even the old kings sang this song, back then when Mozart hit the dancefloor and rocked the shit out of these velvet gowns!
Can we stop covering Ben Shapiro unless it's about his murder?