Adam Neely

Just wanted to share that I've been watching Adam Neely on YT and he's been absolutely amazing at explaining musical theories and techniques. He's a jazz musician but goes over fun topics like irrational time signatures (like 8/5 lol), Jazz harmonies, techniques, etc.

Here's a link to his video "," which sets a pretty good tone for what his other videos are like. He's been an invaluable tool while studying music and just casually getting better at performing since he tends to explain things at a very fundamental level (as long as you know at least some music structure).

His videos can get a little dense (Think Vsauce if he was always talking about jazz chords) but they're quite entertaining and sometimes weird and fun. One of the hardest things for me is finding a teacher who can make learning music fun, and that's what I think Adam does.

Adam Neely recently made a video about the minor 9th and why he 'kind of agrees' with the advice that it shouldn't be used outside of a dominant 7th chord (as a harmonic interval). This prompted me to make a video arguing that it shouldn't be avoided so much and I give examples of some of my favourite tunes that is use it to great effect. Here are the timecodes to each example Bach - Air on the G string 1:23​ Bill Evans - Waltz for Debby 2:20​ Bill Evans - Star Eyes 3:33​ Bill Evans - Nardis 5:27​ Bud Powell - Autumn in New York 6:47​ Chopin - Ballade no.1 7:47

Also listen to the opening of Starman - David Bowie

Hey !

I'm Adam Neely, NYC session bassist, jazz fusion composer and YouTube guy who makes videos that blend music theory, history and practice. Ask me stuff.

Peace, Adam

So, there's a bunch of arguing about whether Cupid is plagiarized. But one thing I've noticed is that most people are using a very Kpop centric lens to analyze the situation.

I think we've already seen this discourse play out in Western pop over the past five years though, as the successful Marvin Gaye Blurred Lines lawsuit completely changed the landscape. Since then there have been famous lawsuits alleging Katy Perry's Dark Horse and Ed Sheeran's Thinking Out Loud are plagiarized.

And we've had many songwriters comment on the subject. Adam Neely is a musician-YouTuber and has a where he argues that chords can't be copyrighted. I think this idea has pretty much been absorbed into the public consciousness.

I've seen people defend Cupid by saying it uses the common 2-5-1 progression, and I think that's correct but also it's very obvious that the Turkish song has something else going on in the harmony with it's descending chromatic notes and emphasis on (I think) the 7th note of the scale.

The harmony is not what makes them sound similar, it's the opening 5 notes of the melody which are definitely shared. However this is where I think is relevant. It's about how you can't copyright a descending minor melodic phrase. The situation here is a little different, but it's just 5 notes matching instead of 4 (and for a further coincidence 4 of the notes from the Cupid melody in question make up the Dark Horse ostinato).

And then what follows is the natural way you'd resolve this melody. Off the top of my head (and I don't even know that many songs), the and share similar melodic destinationa although the rhythms and how they reach them are different.

Additionally, more recently, Olivia Rodrigo's Good 4 U and Dua Lipa's Levitating have also been accused of plagiarism with many people becoming convinced of wrongdoing by back-to-back comparisons of songs that do sound very similar. And Adam Neely has shown that start to fall flat when you start finding other similar pop songs.

The conclusion from all of these videos is that new music is not dreamt from nothing, but rather it is drawn from a common well. It's inevitable that songs will sound similar given that there's only so many notes and everybody is working from the same cultural context where specific sounds evoke specific feelings. Despite what courts have ruled, to say any individual can own the well when they themselves drew inspiration from it is troubling. Adam has that's kind of his magnum opus on the subject where he lays out what's wrong with copyright and how the system should be reformed to one that embraces quotation from the cultural canon.

One can disagree with Adam's take on the subject. There are certainly arguments to be made about how small artists need protection from their work being stolen by mega-labels. But I don't think it's defensible to decide whether a song is stolen based on two recordings played back to back and judging whether they sound similar. And we should develop an understanding of what intellectual property rights should be that doesn't automatically accept what courts currently recognize.

The stakes here aren't just whether some company and its songwriters broke the law and now that's Kpop discourse. Songwriting as an art form is at stake, and the conversation should reflect on that.

TL;DR: the essense of songwriting is a deep subject and you should really take the time to hear what actual songwriters have to say about modern copyright.

Edit: Adam just released today, so if you want a short overview of his thoughts go check it out.

In his lastest video, Adam talks about the upper and lower perceptual limits of music. I decided to make a crazy challenge for myself and write a piece of music that’s above the upper perceptual limit for the entirety of the tune. So basically a tune that’s really fast the whole time.

This ended up being a really fun and challenging piece to write, and I go into the writing process in the video. It will probably be at least somewhat interesting to theory nerds!

Manually crossposting from . Here's the .

Musicking

So in this video exploring his dislike of Contemporary Christian Music Neely brings up the term "musicking"... essentially how we experience music either on the playing or listening end.

He brings up an example (with shots fired at Twoset) of the rule about not clapping between movements being a modern invention (news to me).

It reminds me so much of the way memorization is a fairly new performance practice that everyone now enshrines as the only way to do classical music... ironically started by the guy who was fucking smashing pianos on stage and acting like a rockstar... whom ever pianist loves despite now thinking classical events should be incredibly chaste (Liszt).

I'm reminded also of my example of "interpretation" and how narrow an accepted interpretation is based on the Herbert L. Clarke cornet recordings of his own music and how people would consider them "wrong" now. This is definitely a think in the piano community where everyone thinks any interpretation other than the one that people have decided is acceptable in the last 20 years is even allowed any more.

I'm reminded of so much grief I'd get growing up about dress and decorum of classical concerts. Heck, it used to be that conductors even though ensemble members were below decorum if they didn't show up in a 3 piece suit to rehearse. The echos of that shit are still rampant even today.

But why does any of this matter? Why can classical music just live and breathe? Why can't we enjoy performances? Why can't we clap? Why can't we wear what we want both on and off stage?

This isn't upholding actual tradition, but a FAKE tradition that we've slowly curated in relatively recent time to sterilize and "properize" classical music. It's argued that this is to preserve it, but we're not preserving it as it was... we're preserving however we currently envision it.

In that way it's a lot like preserving "traditional marriage" in that some people don't want gays getting married... but they also don't necessarily think people should have multiple wives that are passed down as property to the brother if the husband dies. They want their current iteration of "traditional" marriage.

RE: Christian Music

I mostly agree with Adam about finding the idea of holding back in worship distasteful.

Though I honestly don't necessarily agree with him that music boiled down to its most basic elements for mass consumption is a problem. I can definitely see how for him making it dense and interesting would be worshipful for him but to me playing CCM or even traditional church music is the same as playing covers in a cover band.

I'm playing music that people recognize and can easily enjoy. Music they immediately can grasp onto and sing along with and not get worried about the difficulties of the music.

I don't personally hold back like that guy he was referencing did. But as a person who has to play lots of different worship styles, I'm trying to bring the music to a given service that serves the purpose of the people worshiping... not myself (an atheist).

It's a a very one way "musicking" and I'm very comfortable with that. hell, that's my whole ethos as a freelance musician. I'm just a person who is providing a service for whoever is paying me at whatever expense to myself. That frequently means learning styles I don't personally like and even sometimes putting myself in positions I don't necessarily feel comfortable (though I would definitely draw the line somewhere... not gonna play and Klan rallies for example). But when I'm hired for a job, I'm just trying to provide what will create the best experience for the audience.

With all of the religious work I do, mostly that's keeping it very simple. Hell, Taize music is almost entirely based around the concept boiling it down to be so repetitive that there's no more than 1 line of lyrics.

That said, I think he's entitled to his opinion here. I think we just live in different spaces musically. I'm much less interested in the creative end and don't personally feel there's much to be said creatively, particularly by me. Hell, his videos actually do a great job of pointing out just how reductionist it all can get. There's virtually nothing new under the sun without going into the really weird stuff which I can sometimes enjoy as a musician, but also don't think will ever find grasp on a broader audience so for me it's just not worth the effort. Everything else is just new people rehashing I-iv-IV-V and thinking they've tripped onto the deepest musical discovery of all time.

We're definitely on the same page about the sterilization though. For him it's in CCM and for me it's what classical music has become. And these serve two different ends. In CCM it's done to BE inclusive. In classical music it's done almost explicitly to be the opposite. Be as elitist and exclusive as possible.

Adam has been suffering over and thinking about music copyrights. He's not the only one.

That's it I'm just proud of myself for that little achievement

Hallo liebe Wirbelvollen.

In Folge 123 ("Arrrrr!") empfehlen Florentin & Stefan den YouTuber Adam Neely, der musikalisches EduTubing macht. Dank dieser Folge wurde ich auch Fan von ihm, und am kommenden Samstag ist er tatsächlich mit seiner Band "Sungazer" für einen Abend in Berlin :)
Sie treten am 18.11. im 'Gretchen' auf und es gibt noch Tickets. Vielleicht sieht man ja jemanden vor Ort :)

anyone's following adam neely here? great content not just about the technique. he was like vsauce of music content. check it out in youtube if some of you interest. greetings, btw. new u/ here.