Damn straight. This was a 'Psyche!!' for those with perfect pitch. I really hate it when I see the hand go down on a key, but the wrong pitch comes out.
Adam: I'll play a note Me: *guesses D" Adam: "it's a D natural" Me: "yes!" Adam later in the video: "this keyboard is tuned a half step sharp." Me: *facepalms*
Me too. But that's quite a coincidence that many of us had it nailed as a D, but we were all off exactly 1/2 step. Does that mean we all are only 1 tone away from perfect pitch? lols.
Imagine learning perfect pitch on an out of tune piano, no longer having the ability to listen to music without the feeling of something being off. That's an upsetting thought.
My piano teacher has perfect pitch (starting to fade now, I've heard it starts disappearing/becoming less reliable after you turn 50, and she's going to be 60 in March) and her piano at home was tuned a half step down. She had to constantly alternate between that and standard equal temperament A=440 pianos at her music school and university. Maybe it's for the best that it's fading, it must've been rough for her.
Well, you don't really learn it, like training standing next to a piano. You just memorize the notes as they are, irrelevant to the location ON the piano. YOu could one piano playing a note and an old piano's notes and know they're all there just lowered by a note or two ON the keyboard
That's not how it works bro. You develop perfect pitch at a super young age, and even if you were to later learn the names of the notes incorrectly, that would be -- while maybe annoying/confusing at first -- a pretty simple fix.
@@evantwo7862 nah, not really, I have perfect pitch and I learned it in b flat because I play clarinet, so my reference grid is from b flat, if you will. Even when reading music in c, it's still always in b flat and I always transpose the c music into b flat. It was confusing to learn to transpose to c, but I believe it would be impossible for me to actually hear a concert f and identify it first as an f and second as a g. Maybe that would be different if I had learned a c instrument at the same time as clarinet, but that's not how it works, at least not for me.
Ed' I didn’t “learn” perfect pitch, but I did start my musical training with trumpet (thinking in a Bb mindset) and a piano tuned a half step down (in a B mindset). So I guess as a result, C Major does feel a little bit annoyingly high sometimes
I *have* perfect pitch and I gotta say, I was pretty enraged when you said that "Eb" was "D"... and then I watched the rest of your video hahaha. You're right on the money 👍🏾
0:59 - Is your keyboard a half-step lower or something? I DO have perfect pitch, and I heard that as an E Flat. 1:31 - And that's a C, not a B! 2:52 - GOD DAMMIT
I want to thank you for your lack of clickbait. You straight up answer the title of your videos in the title a lot of the time, and give actual in-depth explanations in the video.
One point i began to turn 20ish and my ears changed and everything turned sharp. It was a nightmare. Im prepping for it it at 40. Since i know its gonna get sharper in the future. But now perfect pitch is back. :)
Hahaha. I thought something was wrong with my ears when you said the first two notes were D and B. Started to think it was possible to lose perfect pitch. Good one.
I also have a well-attuned relative pitch. I could have sworn it was an Eb, but then he said it was a D and I second guessed myself and had to go check it against the piano. Brilliant.
"If you had perfect pitch, you'd probably be really annoyed right now." YEAH. YEAH I WAS. I thought I was going crazy right after you played the first "D" (Eb) 😂
The 8 minutes you spent on Sir Duke was some of your best content ever. Also glad to hear you are a Dan Carlin listener. Makes sense, as his approach to history is similar to your approach to music theory. Thanks for doing what you do.
Fusion Tricycle most digital keyboards have a transposition button, where middle C can be set to any pitch. Obviously, all of the intervals shift relatively when you do that. He must have had the transpose button on to +1 half step.
I had grown attached to the lack of hair, but I'm not going to infringe upon an artists desire to express them selves or indeed, to revisit their pre university roots.
I really enjoyed this Q+A, Adam. I love how you answer the questions, and especially liked what you said about the "hyper-real" aspect of the gig vlogs. 👍
I’ve always been confused with whether or not I had perfect pitch. I thought maybe I was being too cocky and only had relative pitch. But when you played the D and it came out as Eb I noticed it almost right away. When you played the B and it came out C I instantly assumed you’d address it later or something because I was so confident of the notes I was hearing. That’s the difference between relative and perfect. Perfect needs no introduction. You hear a note and know it. Relative is just everything else. You can hear the differences but not the exact notes without introduction. Great vid as always man
Adam I think you had to record 46 takes of this video before you managed to drop the pen and thus securing a humorous outro bit, before that you unintentionally caught it 45 times.
Great answer to the 3rd question! As a music major at UNT, sometimes I feel like I'm so engulfed in learning music I forget about the outside world and all my other interests like math, science, and history and politics, and I love when I can connect music with those other subjects like you did here (and in a lot of your other videos too). When you mentioned the dividing of the Ottoman Empire after WWI, it reminded of these 2 videos by AlternateHistoryHub where he talks about that and what the middle east would be like if it didn't happen. If you haven't heard of it, I'd check it out.
Bro I thought that was a d sharp because I am writing a song that starts with that note, but I don’t have perfect pitch and I assumed I was wrong when I saw him play a d. He’s fucking with my hearing lol I’m pissed
I don't have perfect pitch but I knew something was off about the first part of the video because I'm able to identify pitches like C pretty well *sometimes.*
Same, I didn't catch the Eb that well (althought it did sound a bit weird), but man, that B was totally a C for me (it's like THE note that I've really got internalized)
@@pablox98 Pitches are like a language, you just have to memorize one by one like words, with pretty much effort and patience. You have to practice the "listening" and the "speaking" parts, where: 1) "Listening" is the ability to identify a specific note (word) in every instrument or thing, like the noise of the motor of a bus (every speaker of a certain language, with their different accents). 2) "Speaking", is the ability to produce a specific note by yourself, singing it without a reference. This is like when you can express yourself in a foreign language without the help of a dictionary or translator. Pablo, you've internalized the "C" note because you've just listened it a thousands of times in your life, in songs and instruments, that was played by other people or by yourself. For the rest of the notes is the same process. You just have to associate the rest 11 sounds with its names, like when you associate the basic colors with its specifics names, or when you associate the "face" of a person with his/her name/age/address (everything is a language, an association). There's no such a superhero power where only a few are "gifted" or borned with perfect pitch. The "gifted" are simply the people who were just *immersed intensily* in music (listening or playing instruments); some of them associated the notes involuntary in their lifes, some voluntary and conscious. Again, this is like when some people travel to an another country to stay and live there, but without knowing the language. Years pass by, and with time they can communicate fluently, and that's because they were "immersed" in the foreign language every single day of their lives, listening and speaking, and not because they were born with that language. PD: I have perfect pitch by the way.
@@LukeDayInTheUK hey I know nothing about music, can you please answer a question of mine? What does it mean for a song like All of Me to have CEG pitches? I tried singing in front of a chromatic tuner and It went haywire even while saying just words. I also keep hearing singing on pitch and in key... These seem like related questions. Thanks in advance.
Does the intro song get stuck in anyone else's head or am I weird like that? I find myself an hour later in the kitchen like ..'Adam Neelyyyyyy. . . ya!'
Oh, it's terrible, I find myself going "question, and answer time, with Adam Neeeeeelyyyyyy!" at the most random moments, and my wife just gives me the evil eye each time I do it.
Perfect pitch? Bah, useless, and I have pity for you. Unless, of course, you have perfect pitch A=432. Then the pinata of musical understanding will split open and shower you with wisdom.
Adam, you are brilliant for annoying me and the rest of your viewers who do have perfect pitch in the way you did. Thank you for so clearly explaining and demonstrating your beliefs.
I definitely not have perfect pitch but I have imprinted in my head the sound of C. You said you played the D note (D# on reality) and I was like oh okay nothing's wrong, I can't recognise this note alone, but then you played the B note which was actually a C and immediately I said with so much confidence "that's a C" and I was like "WHAAAT?! I'm sure it's the middle C and usually I'm right, how did I got fooled?" And then I realised... and I was relieved that I can still trust my ear xD
dubashroomXD No. The first two notes were a D on the piano and a B on the piano. That means they were Eb and C. He even said they were a minor third apart, while your notes were a perfect fourth apart.
Real life example where perfect pitch actually made my life harder: I was in a mandatory choir at uni/college and the choirmaster regularly wanted pieces performed in keys other than what was written in the score. If you had relative pitch this was no problem - she would play a V-I on the piano and say there's the key and off we go. Except I was "stuck" hearing the pitches as written so that added extra challenge trying to do the transpostion in my head (which I'm terrible at doing on the spot so yeah...there was a lot of awkward mumbling my way through).
Thanks, Adam! For your next Q+A: Do you believe that any instrument can support any genre of music? I would like to hear your thoughts about this, for example bouzouki in Jazz and so on... Keep up the good work!
@@thingonometry-1460 In this video is not the case but in some videos like the one about "Hey Joe" it leads you to think "hmm why is it on E, though?" so you click the video, at least for me. I'm more intrigued by the "why" instead of the answer
Glad you brought up story, because stories are how we teach effectively, communicate meaningfully and connect. We think and feel in story, and I have no problem with the idea that we live in story as well. Have a good one.
2:47 I thought he was doing this on accident and I thought he’d never say it. I was listening to this with my eyes shut like it was a podcast and jolted awake when this man called Eb a D.
Dude! I love the comparison to history, such a good reference. I am a history major and just finished a Middle East class. It is so important to understand history to correctly interpret our world. Love you Adam!
The biggest downside of having perfect pitch is psyching yourself out when playing a transposing instrument. I'm learning saxophone and I've totally abandoned trying to read saxophone sheet music cuz I can't get past the fact that the notes don't line up. 😭
Mind blown by this Music Theory : Music :: History : Present analogy! I'm on board, can't wait to hear more! Deeper awareness leads to deeper appreciation, which leads to deeper enjoyment.
I am so thankful I cam across this channel so long ago. Thank you for such in-depth answers. In general thank you for all the information you bestow upon us!
Is it possible to have semi-perfect pitch? I can usually guess what a note is by the sound of it, but not with 100% reliability. Maybe this is relative pitch, with me comparing it to notes I've heard in the (fairly) distant past?
Yeah i think it is perfect pitch, i usually tune my guitar by ear and sometimes when i hear a note and i have no reference i think of the EADGBe notes that i usually tune my guitar to
That's having a good relative pitch and memory. If you had perfect pitch you would probably be close to 100% accuracy and you certainly wound't be in doubt
If you had perfect pitch you would have 99.99% accuracy, what you're referring to iirc is called atonal memory. What it is, is basically your brain can remember the tones of the instrument since you've played it for so long, and since you have strong relative pitch you can compare the two.
Tristin Tardif true, if you had perfect pitch you would be able to name in miliseconds any note from anywhere from birds to drums to trains and planes. UNFORTUNATELY, and adult cannot develop perfect pitch as its something that csn only be aquired within the first three years of your life due to brain development. Many later realize they have it, but it was developed as children. What can be done is develop really strong relative pitch that is damn near perfect pitch.
No, it's a very long term pitch-memory. You have a certain note or sound you've heard in your head a thousand times over and you're able to reference that to a pitch you hear. A lot of guitar players do this with an open E. It's still not perfect pitch though. If it was perfect pitch you would have 100% reliability every single time. I can get an E without any reference about 80% of the time, but it's because I think of the opening chord to The Sentinel by Judas Priest, where they play a sustained E.
Actually, I have a relative pitch and I knew you were messing with us from the first place. Some people just remember pitch without having a perfect one.
Hi Adam. I'm a fairly recent subscriber (it feels recent, maybe it's been a couple of months), and I mostly just want to thank you for creating so much interesting music content on youtube. I was involved in music for most of my youth and through college, but since graduating I haven't really kept up with it. I have always struggled with performance anxiety that my instructors never really helped with (their solution was always to practice more, but that didn't help my dry mouth at my trumpet recitals). Part of the problem, I think, is that I also have a perfectionist streak (like so many others), and that really sucked the joy out of playing music for me. Anyway, now I'm over a decade out of college and am slowly finding the joy again. I can play one of your videos in the morning and just listen to you talking about music in a really educated but accessible way. My biggest struggle has been invalidating my own creativity, but your perspective is helping me see past that. On that note, is your critiquing series ("Why you suck at music") going to make a return? I found it really helpful and enlightening. (P.S. I put my money where my mouth is, so to speak, and just joined your Patreon. I hope I can give you more support in the future, because I love what you're doing.)
It's always wise to tread carefully when in historicist waters. I believe your alternative analysis of the Fm7 chord is valid, maybe (although unlikely in this instance) even moreso than the others, because it is my view that every part of an analysis of art, including the viewer/analyser, author, performer and theory, can be wrong.
I can answer: Increasing the pitch by an octave multiplies its frequency by 2. Increasing the pitch by a perfect 5th multiplies the frequency by 3/2. Increasing pitch by a major 2nd multiplies the frequency by 9/8. If you want to split the octave into equal parts, and end up with frequency ratios very close to the ideal ones, the best way is to split it in 12 parts, because 2 to the power of 7/12 is 1.4983 (almost 3/2), and 2 to the power of 2/12 is 1.122462 (almost 9/8). This is why we have 12 notes.
On the topic of how to get into listen to jazz I actually disagree with your reccomended starting point of hard bop. When I was first attempting to get into jazz I bought Giant steps, a Duke Ellington collection, and a Louis Armstrong collection, and as a beginner I was totally alienated by the advanced soloing and blistering speed of the hard bop tunes, while the Ellington and Armstrong Cd's I could easily relate back to either a New Orleans sort of regional sound, or a classic musical theatre vibe with some of the tunes Louis Armstrong was playing. After some time and many records in between I can enjoy Giant Steps and Hard Bob just fine, but I think from my own experiences and from others I've known it's better to start in earlier, simpler jazz and work your way through the history, rather than just picking a good record in the middle like you reccomend. I similarly had a friend who has always hated jazz but is into musical theatre, but when I showed her some older stuff it immidiately clicked that it's very much what Chicago (the show) is based on. Good video as always.
I'd also have prefered the answer: "Listen to lots and then stick with what you like". Stuff I'd recommend: Vince Guaraldi Trio, Weather Report, Material (Memory Serves album), Keith Jarrett Cologne Concerts, Esbjørn Svensson Trio. 🐻👌🏻
On the discussion of perfect/relative pitch, I have a question for someone: I play Viola as my main instrument but started with a Violin and i don’t know if I have perfect pitch. Thing is, I can pick out the notes A, D, G, C and E outside of any musical context at all, simply because they ”feel” like the appropriate open string. Is that something other string players experience? I’ve usually thought that I ”merely” have a really good pitch memory since tuning the strings of my instrument makes sure I pay attention to it. Lately however I have been surprising myself by feeling other notes. Am I pitch perfect without knowing? How would I know?
as someone *with* perfect pitch, the "D" part really threw me off until i saw the comments after coming here lol- i'm not formally trained, so i didn't know "OH THAt'S E-FLAT", but i knew that wasn't a D haha
10:04 - Now we'll need another crew to cover you videoing your performances? ;) Better yet. Urge members of the audience to send in their videos and sync them all up (all shot in 'landscape' mode, of course)! ;)
Question for a Q&A, I don’t know of this has been asked before: do you have advice for someone who’d want to get into composition but works full-time? Are there good courses online? What software/books would you recommend?
You're channel is evolving into something cool. The gig vlog is great. I envy your lifestyle. Makes me want to go to New York and play bass. We all now have a window into a world we would otherwise have no insight to so thank you. Also, you're giving your self an edge no other bass player has. Your channel is blowing up, so anyone who uses as their bass player automatically has 543,000 person audience.
For some reason I thought your comments were related and instantly imagined two cats in a very dark and cozy bar, listening to your gig, nodding to each other and saying in an old sailors voice "now that one is a smooth cat!"
cause it deals with death, was recorded when Bowie knew he was going to die, during rehearsals the hired band often said "where da fac is Bowie gone, we never see him, is he dead?" and all this is why Blackstar is so tense and heavy No, i'm joking, but i am not too far from reality :D It's a masterpiece in sound and harmony if you ask me (got it on vinyl) and Bowie's impending doom influenced both lyrics and music as a whole thing, then his actual death influenced the listeners too.
Haha i watched the video and I was saying, he’s wrong because he’s transposed! I’m so glad you moved it back to the original lol! My ears and eyes were hurting lol! Great videos!
I posted a similar comment on another episode. My wife has chromaesthesia. Since she was a kid. She started on piano at age five, and went to the Miami School of Music in the late 1970’s. She’s a B3 jazz organist (I’m the guitarist who moves the B3 around) and in her case she remembers songs basically forever, and has the knowledge of theory to go with it. We live and play music in Hawaii now, but lived and played in L.A. for 21 years. While there her keyboard instructor, the late great T. Lavitz of the Dixie Dregs, once tested her by playing a jazz chord with alterations (while he was rehearsing with Billy Cobham), and asked her what note was MISSING from the chord. She got it. Each note to her has a color, and it was as simple as looking at the colors the chord had (in her mind’s eye), and with her knowledge of music theory calling out the correct missing note. As yes, she also reminds me when my b string is flat. She has been tested by an online study on chromaesthesia by Leeds University in the U.K. They were interested in testing her because she’s a professional musician. In her case chromaesthesia has helped her through many pick up gigs. If she’s heard the song the band calls out before, she plays it from the color pattern she recalls. If not she knows the chords being played and has the theory knowledge to know where the changes are most likely going. She doesn’t make many mistakes. And by the way any tuning other than 440 is bothersome to her. It throws the color scheme of the notes off.
What you said about the way the live brass band music impacts your body vs. hearing it on speakers is so true. As a student pianist, I was having trouble moving forward using a digital piano. Practicing was very tedious. My teacher said it was time for me to get an actual acoustic piano. The experience is quite different and I was shocked by how much difference it made being able to FEEL the music I’m playing, the actual vibrations. Also, there are harmonic overtones from the other strings occurring so it sounds more “full” and interesting. TL;DR: everyone should experience live music.
