Notice how all the artists he named in the start of the video either worked with J Dilla numerous of times or was inspired by his work HEAVILY. Even being part of a collective together with jay dee ❤️🍩
If you’re newer to this stuff, 8:33 is one of the most important points you can gain from this whole video. Gives you a solid “left hand vs right hand” plan when playing complex chords.
Beautiful; track at the end. That flugelhorn solo was so delicious. Really nice lesson. One thing I ran into that immediately struck me as good neo-soul material was the maj9 common-tone chord-family or at least that's what I call it for lack of a better name. In C, it would be, Cmaj9, Dbmaj9, Eb69, Fmaj9, Abmaj9, Bbmaj9, (Spicy options: Gbmaj9#11, Emaj9#5,). They all have C in them so they work against rhythmic single pitch drones quite well together and it seems that no matter what order you put them in, you can hear a clear gravity toward C because of its omnipresence. You can do the same with min9/11 chords also but somehow, I don't like the arrangement of the bass notes in relation to the tonic as much as with the maj9s.
Neo soul makes very profuse use of clusters and upper structures to accomplish its interesting and colorful arrangements. It's an extension of the jazzy R&B vocabulary. Excellent video
You are a great teacher, thank you. Also, Sweetwater is the best. For others interested in this I also found Noah Kellman's RU-vid channel very useful.
Thank you Jacob.. I am an amateur jazz pianist from Nepal..learned until now on my own reading and practicing alone.. This was absolutely amazing.. So much learned and internalized.. Thank you..
By far the best video on here explaining Neo soul. Only video on here that's gone deeper into the theory of it and easiest to understand ha! Much clearer understanding of it all. Thanks Champ, well done!
Kudos to Sweetwater and Jacob for this video! It’s wonderful to see a company like Sweetwater, putting out more educational videos instead of just things that are equipment oriented (which is totally understandable, of course!). I enjoyed the video very much, and just wanted to point out to Jacob, that all the chords in his entire lesson can be heard in a much older tune by an artist, that he may not know - Steely Dan. Check out their tune “Aja” and hear all these harmonies being used back in the 1970s, decades before the people who are getting credit for innovating with them now. Of course, Donald Fagen didn’t invent them either, and they can be found in jazz music before Steely Dan hit the radio, but to my knowledge Steely Dan was the first group who brought these chords into popular use. Hell, Bartok used this kind of dissonance built into harmonies way before that. As they say in the arts: “nothing is ever truly new“. 😊 Thanks for well done and very enjoyable video!
So much better than those "put your fingers on these keys to play this cool sounding chord" videos that are flooded in youtube. The theory and context behind the music is just as important and is often missed in alot those videos. Thanks Sweetwater for filling in the gaps.
I still think Gil Scott Heron was the real originator of Neo Soul. He was performing it back when there wasn't such a thing. Loved the lesson and fat song at the end.
This video definitely deserves pure ❤️ even if I have to watch this a thousand times I will going to share this with my piano teacher 👨🏫 right now greetings from France 🇫🇷.. excellent skills wizard 🧙♂️..
Thanks for the lesson. Do you think you could utilise a keyboard display in the future please? That would make it easier to see the notes you're playing.
Steely Dan uses lots of m11 chords all through the song Aja. All those chords you played in the beginning of the video sounded like you were playing parts of Aja.
Just found out that the 4 right hand notes were actually playing "Oh when the Saints" haha ... nice trick to go down a whole step starting from the minor 7th
9:21 The B7 (#9#5) chord should originate from a B major scale. The bottom Eb would then be D# (such as in a major triad) and the top D would be a C## (two sharps) equaling D. Just saying.
Excellent way to explain this. I can hear "Hey Nineteen" with that C maj9 (#11) chord. This could definitely be taught as a class. Keep up all the great videos..
