hey, welcome to 12tone! it's Q&A time again, and joining me to ask the questions is my
friend Betty from the art education channel Articulations.
take it away, Betty!
alex ulysses nickel asked "Thoughts on Kendrick winning the Pulitzer?"
ok, so as a disclaimer, I haven't listened to Damn, the award-winning album, in its entirety,
so I can't comment on it as a complete work of art, nor do I know for sure whether or
not it deserved a Pulitzer.
that said, what I do know from watching this all unfold on twitter is that a lot of people
who are very confident it didn't also haven't listened to it, or if they have, aren't familiar
enough with the genre conventions and musical vocabulary of hip-hop to judge it on its own
merits.
that's not to say you can't enjoy hip-hop and still think Damn didn't deserve the award,
but most of the objections I've seen aren't really about the specific work, they're about
the idea of rap music being recognized as legitimate by a prestigious institution like
the Pulitzer prize.
but hip-hop's almost 50 years old now.
it's a part of music whether you like it or not, and Kendrick Lamar and other artists
of the genre are doing important work that deserves to be recognized.
if you want more thoughts on this, Adam Neely did a whole video about it, and I'd cosign
basically everything he said.
except for his opinions on specific jazz artists, for which you can safely assume I have no
stance.
next!
Max Headroom asked "How do you feel about your videos about certain songs becoming your
most popular content?
Are you ever tempted to just make those?"
honestly, I'm torn.
I love making the analysis videos, and I'm really glad they do well, but I have often
wondered if the channel might grow faster if I stopped doing everything else and just
published one analysis per month.
the algorithm would certainly like me more, but I don't think I'd be able to do it: I
really enjoy the more obscure, weird stuff that I talk about in between, and making 12tone
would be a lot less fun if I didn't get to explore those ideas too.
I like the way the analysis videos work as like flagship content to pull people in so
I can trick them into learning about things like All-Interval 12-tone rows, and I think
doing both is a big part of what makes this channel work.
next!
John M. Scott asked "Can you explain why western musicians choose Ionian as the home scale
as opposed to Lydian?"
so for those of you who don't know, Ionian is another name for the major scale (bang)
and Lydian is a major scale with a raised fourth degree.
(bang) if you want to know more about them you can check out our video on modes, but
to answer the question, I think it all comes down to tension.
traditional western harmony is all about tension and release, and Lydian has a very resolved
sound.
we can see this by looking at the most dissonant interval, the tritone: in Ionian, it's between
the 7th degree and the 4th, which surround the root and 3rd, giving us a really strong
pull back to the I chord. in Lydian, though, the tritone is between the root and the #4,
which means we can't really resolve it: it's hard to point to the root if you're already
playing it.
this means we can't really create the engine we're looking for, so even though Lydian is
brighter, Ionian is a better candidate for the major scale.
next!
Keenan Elijah Dolan asked "Do you think atonal music will ever be widely accepted in popular
music?"
depends what you mean by atonal. we tend to associate that term with movements like serialism
that are intentionally, aggressively dissonant, and while I don't like to say never 'cause
the future is a long time, I'd be pretty surprised to see that becoming a regular feature of
popular music within my lifetime.
however, some theorists argue that this sort of music should actually be called "anti-tonal",
and that the term "atonal" better describes styles like the impressionists and certain
late romantics, where the music just lacks a strong tonal center, either because the
key keeps changing or because it just doesn't really have one.
this is also sometimes called "post-tonal" music, and I see no reason why it can't exist
in pop.
next!
Flynn asked "Do you think your autism changes the way you experience music?"
probably, although I'm not sure how 'cause I've never had the chance to try listening
to music without being autistic.
one thing I do know is that I have a really strong aversion to background music.
not, like, film scores: that's meant to be there and it's designed to complement the
art that it's a part of.
but at restaurants, parties, and other public spaces, playing music is utterly irrelevant
to the surrounding experience, and I pretty much always wish they'd just stop.
next!
The Moon Raven asked "What, in your opinion, is the best key?"
my favorite key to play in is D minor.
I just really like the way it lays out on a piano.
but if I say D minor everyone will assume it's a Spinal Tap reference, so instead I'll
go with my second-favorite key, Bb. next!
KnowingBetter asked "What top 40 pop song are you ashamed to admit you enjoy?"
none.
not because I don't like any pop songs: I enjoy quite a few. recently, for instance,
I've been pretty into Ariana Grande's Side To Side. but I don't feel bad about that 'cause
I'm largely just over the idea of guilty pleasures.
I like what I like, and I don't see the point in apologizing for enjoying something harmless.
plus, if you look at the production and arrangement of pop songs, they're often really intricate
and complex: it takes a lot of skill to be simple without being boring.
next!
Adrian asked "What celebrity or person of note, alive or dead, would you most like to
have a drink with?"
probably my grandfather.
he died 6 years ago and had Alzheimers for a long time before that, but I think he'd
be proud of what I'm doing and I'd love the chance to show him. and before you say he
doesn't count, he co-wrote the very first paper on the experimental proof of carbon
dating, his doctoral thesis is classified because he worked on the Manhattan Project,
and he helped lead the development of the national lunar sample research program so
I think it's fair to call him a person of note.
besides, it's my Q&A, so I get to make the rules.
next!
ellie asked "What if chords were represented geometrically, with each side being the frequency
of a note?"
that's actually a thing! it's called a tonnetz, and it's from a school of theory called Neo-Riemannian
analysis.
to build one, we start with a line of notes going up a perfect fifth at a time, so like
G, D, A, E, B, etcetera.
then we add a diagonal where the notes are a major third apart.
finally, we add the other diagonal, which represent movement by minor third, and bam!
it's a bunch of triangles.
but not just any triangles: if we look at the corners, each triangle represents a triad.
the ones pointing up are major triads, like this A major, and the ones pointing down are
minor.
the reason this matters is that it gives us a way to describe how close two chords are
without having to worry about something like a key center.
for instance, we saw this A major here, and if we go just two triangles over, we can find
F major, which tells us that even though we don't tend to see these two in the same key,
in a sense they're just as close as A and E. this can be a really useful tool for exploring
that post-tonal stuff we were talking about before, where keys are vague or non-existent.
next!
zac asked "does a song necessarily have to be complex to be good through the eyes of
someone who has studied so much music theory?"
nope! as far as I'm concerned, artistic quality is completely independent of theoretical complexity.
well, not completely: theory is really useful for figuring out how to express artistic ideas,
but there's plenty of songs I enjoy that are pretty musically straightforward, because
they've managed to capture something that moves me. if anything, I think it's more dangerous
to be too complex, because you risk drowning out whatever it is you're trying to create.
next!
Jake Fine asked "What's your favorite YouTube channel you wish had more exposure?"
oh, so many. for starters, everyone I've ever done a collab or Q&A with, including Betty's
channel, Articulations.
but y'all are looking for music stuff, so if I narrow this down to just music channels
then my #1 recommendation would have to be QuarterTuned, which is by a film composer
making videos about film and TV scores.
they're relatively new, but they're already doing great stuff and if you like what I do
you should really check them out.
next!
Nintendork64 asked "Can vague concepts like "soul" and "feeling" be analyzed in music
theory?"
sort of, but not directly: they're incredibly subjective labels, so it's hard to build clear
structures around them.
what we can do, though, is look at the characteristics shared by songs that tend to get those labels
and then analyze that as a sort of proxy. for instance, the concept of "soul" is often
associated with powerful, gospel-style deliveries and driving R&B rhythms, and we can look for
those as markers of how much soul a song has, even if we can't directly quantify the idea.
anyway that seems like a good place to stop but before we go I wanted to thank Betty again
for helping us out! her channel, Articulations, combines examinations of the world of fine
art with the more down-to-earth practices of professional design, looking at the work
of artists like Yayoi Kusama and also diving into questions about building codes and accessible
design.
it's a really interesting mix.
also, if you're gonna be at VidCon this year, Betty and I are gonna be on a panel together
called EduTube Beyond The Sciences, talking about the arts and humanities with Danielle
Bainbridge from The Origin of Everything, A.E.
Prevost from The Ling Space, Sarah Urist Green from The Art Assignment, and also some random
dude who does vlogs sometimes.
I think his name is, like, John Green or something?
I don't know, I guess he writes books too.
no big deal.
anyway thanks to everyone for the questions, and thanks to you for watching! if you want
early warning for the next Q&A, our Patreon patrons get notified first, and we also collected
questions on twitter, facebook, and through our mailing list, so follow us on any of those
platforms, like, share, comment, subscribe, and above all, keep on rockin'!
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