Pop, As Digested by a Classical Musician 

Sorry it's been a while! Feels great to get back into the "As Digested by..." videos. All year I've been working on my (debut) album of original works for keyboard titled "Alice in Wonderland." It's out on Bandcamp: nahresol.bandcamp.com/releases

It sounded like a soundtrack more than pop. 'A foreign exchange student arrives in a small upstate New York town, she challenges the dynamics of her host family's relationships and alters their lives forever' kind of thing.

This might sound silly, but this video kind of reminds me of how SpongeBob draws a circle by first drawing an amazing face and then erased everything until it was just a simple circle left

I really thought your original piece could be the theme for a pixar film! movie scores here we come!

I was trying to figure out why your piece doesn't sound so much like pop to me, and I realized that another thing that could define pop is largely the lack of dynamics. Pop music is so compressed that it doesn't really play with expression through changing dynamics. Your piece, and classical music, packs a lot more expression into the piece using dynamics.

Your graphics are always so on point... plus piano skill plus talking plus...

This sounds like movie music more than pop. I can imagine it behind a movie scene very easily but I can’t imagine it being sung. If the melody exists, I doubt it exists with these changes so I wouldn’t worry about it.

"if it sounds familiar, it's because it's only one chord away from Pachelbel's canon". Sorry nahre, but for regular people it sounds familiar because it's in literally every pop song that exists

The trick to pop music is simplicity without being boring. Make it too complex and it loses its mass appeal so you have to find this middle ground where it’s interesting and captivating all the while so simple a child could learn it. Its learning how to use repetition strategically.

The chords/note choices in your composition have a bit more dissonance and warmth (which for me I like) than what you would hear in most pop music - especially in the beginning

We need "Rock, As Digested by a Classical Musician"

when you spread your hands apart it sounds like the piano players at nordstrom that cover john legend songs

Brilliant! There is always a tendency to over complicate or over analyse something, but Nahre always seems to delicately balance her analytical classical mind with her love of pop music, and gives it a human touch. Another superb video Nahre!

My thoughts on this: In pop songs it's often the case that the lyrics of the verse describe a specific situation, and the chorus describes the broad-strokes emotion of that moment that can be shared by many others. This is reflected in the music in that the verses are often more muted, and then for the chorus the music blooms and spreads. In your piece, the verse melody has already some rather dramatic intervals. Purely stylistically I'd expect to see this more often in a ballad by a diva style singer, like Celine Dion or similar. Your chorus however is rather restricted in its movement. To be completely honest, to me it felt more like a pre-chorus that was using the static melody to build tension towards an exploding chorus. But good work! I'd love to hear more if you try to explore further in that direction.

As someone who spent most of the last 20 years primarily interested in classical, jazz, and rock/metal, I too have developed an interest in pop in the last several years. One thing I'd say is that your sampling of pop is fairly atypical. All those artists are more like adult alternative artists that just happened to have pop-level success. It would be a bit like trying to learn pop by listening to popular rock artists. If you want more typical pop I think artists like Taylor Swift, Carly Rae Jepsen, Justin Bieber, One Direction, etc. are more representative. If I had to try to boil pop down it would be these elements: 1. Strong, emphatic rhythms, usually danceable. 2. Short, simple (often no more than two notes), catchy melodies. 3. Verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-verse-chorus structure. 4. Emphasis on production techniques to produce the sounds/style. 5. 3-4 chord progression that's typically looped. It's hard to make pop that's too simple, but I think what pop loses to other genres in musical complexity it often makes up for in subtlety. If you listen closely with an attentive ear to pop production you'll often hear a lot of sound layering that can get quite complex in itself, and it's often very subtle the ways in which pop will introduce or reduce production elements to signal transitions between its sections. The same is true for vocal styles on top of that production. A key element, though, is how the emphatic rhythms combine with the vocal melodies to create hooks. To me, your composition focuses more on melody, but a hook typically makes the rhythm a stronger element. Think of the difference between Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata, which is melodic, VS his 5th symphony, which is rhythmic. In fact, the famous motif from Beethoven's 5th is a good template for how to construct pop material: two different notes, two different note values, structured into a 4-note phrase. Listen to something like last year's biggest hit, Billie Eilish's Bad Guy and how its verse vocal hook is a similar concept: two different notes, two different note values, in which the different note/note-value comes at the very end of the phrase. That's an easy way in which to line up rhythmic/note changes to make them memorable, and it's a very common technique in pop that's little commented on.

This picture of poppies popping up when Andrew said "poppiness" made me exhale swiftly out of my nose

I guess what this demonstrates is that pop music is often “simpler” in theory to make way for the emotional narrative in the lyrics, but “simpler” in theory doesn’t mean less thought through or less well crafted to it’s purpose! Thank you Nahre this is an amazing video 👍

Pop music reminds me of minimalist art. It is music boiled down to the most fundamental ideas and then polished so much that it can still be enjoyed. Because it is so fundamental, it can be enjoyed by a much wider audience.

I’m impressed you could make a 16 minute video about a genre dominated by 4 chord progressions!

best example of pop is Elton John's original 1968 Skyline Pigeon version versus the 1972 version same song, same singer, totally different arrangements first one is not pop at all, very weird and experimental second song is a much traditional pop piano ballad and no surprise, is the version that everybody knows

Classical musicians: So, I've heard there's this thing called "pop" that you kids are listening to?

The composition you came up with gives me such movie soundtrack vibes! Say in the Avengers, or the Harry Potter movies, there's a main theme song that gets reworked and shifted to help tell the story. And tbh I feel like a lot of pop songs aren't resolved so fading out works lol

When she took out the syncopation for her version of A Thousand Miles it almost sounded like a Ghibli film score melody

Loved this! As many pointed out it sounds more like a soundtrack than pop, and the biggest reason for that (in my opinion) is that the melody wasn't written as a song. I know it's very singable, because it's a very distinct and simple melody, but it doesn't feel like it was made with lyrics and sentences in mind, at least in english. I can imagine some kind of Japanese anime song with this melody though. Either way, really liked how you try to understand and analyse, and finally use the learnings to create something of your own! I learnt a bunch of stuff myself from just watching!

If the aim was to write something catchy you definitely succeeded, I can't get the melody out of my head now - I guess that means it get's a Pop Pass

Can i just say, the editing in this video is really great!

I lloooovvveee your show so much! Doesn't matter how long you take to make the episodes, your mind is pure gold!

Your original piece sounds so much like a piece of Ludovico Einaudi. The genre he plays is classical and minimalistic and are often used in movies!

This sounds very adult contemporary-ish, which is... pop, basically, just aimed at a more adult audience, I'd say, not as dancey and electronic. It gave me Tori Amos vibes -- and Tori is a prime example of piano pop excellence! Great job, great visuals, great content as usual. I love your "as digested by a classical musician" series, keep it up!

The payoff of that A Major chord at the beginning of the bridge genuinely gave me goosebumps. I could listen to your composition forever!

Thank you for putting in so much work into the videos. It really feels like you care for the audience and that fills the audience with gratitude!

I love how you perfectly aligned Andrew Huang video into the background grid :D and the whole video is awesome off course!

Nahre: *puts Adele's Someone Like You and Lewis Capaldi's Someone You Loved in one video* Todd in the Shadows: *TRIGGERED* 😂😂, joking aside I like the Bossa Nova tweak on SYL 😃, made it breezier and still a tinge melancholic 🎹

13:23 - 15:10 Sounds like Ludovico Einaudi. I dig it.

11:29 The cutest "oh no" I've ever heard 🤣

I love how you try so many different styles! Brilliant! Thanks, Nahre!

i've never actually considered what makes pop piano accompaniment 'pop' - this is an awesome topic! it's also fun to see how much harder it is to define pop as opposed to say, ragtime or bossa nova the ending piece was so strange to listen to - im not sure when was the last time i heard so much restraint from somebody who knows so much about music HAHAH

This series alone and the fact that as a musician you actually put in this amount of time and energy to do something this awesome is pretty epic even if it was all you did, but the fact that it's just one small part of how much you've got going for you pretty amazing Thanks for you, Nahre.😎

It would be amazing to see if Andrew Huang could attempt to reverse-engineer the "original" pop song that this would be a "piano cover" of...

One of your comments on the second "intro cousin" was "consistent and predictable"; that is huge in pop music. (Not that pop music cannot have a surprise here and there, and sometimes that "surprise" is what sets the tune apart making it into a hit.) To me, the "fancier" your variations get, the more "move soundtrack" they sound to me. Amazing playing as always. and a very fun video! With vocals and good lyrics, your piece could be a pop hit, I think. I hear... "It could have happened last night... and where would we be this day..." then "It should have happened last night, I should have asked you to stay..." then "when would we, when could we, maybe then there would be... there would be love... then we would be in love." Or, blah blah blah... but lyrics, perhaps not mine, can pick the whole thing up into some other realm which amplifies that musical idea. Fun video!

This was so interesting to watch! I noticed that your sense of simplicity is still complex to mine. I’d say your rhythmic pattern and harmonies still include elements that’d be irritating / hard to follow / hard to set in musical context for a less musical trained ear. This might make it less accessible for “the average ear” and therefore less of a pop song - since it’s intentionally made for a bride spectrum of people. I’d place the song more in the yellowish-greenish section of the Pop Meter. Which just shows how we as listeners can understand music on different levels, which is fascinating! I really loved watching you experiment with these different parameters and approaches of understanding music. And also you just proofed how complex and impressive your understanding of music is in the sweetest way possible!

can't wait for "salsa/timba as digested by a classical musician" c'mon people, just imagine nahre sol doing some montunos. if that doesn't make your day, i don't know what will"

watched the ads because I love your content, editing and the clear effort you put into it. i always learn something every time.

HOW are all your videos so beautiful?! Perhaps i'm just obsessed with piano, but there is genuine creativity, care , and love put in each one. I'm not kidding, every time I feel i'm in a slump with music creativity you come out with something immaculate, that inspires me to do better. Thanks for making these videos Nahre

funny how hard it seems to be to get a grasp on the poppy feel

One of the more fascinating things to me when it comes to studying pop is that 'line' Andrew mentioned between what makes a pop song. As he said, some artists also borrow aspects from other genres or time periods in music, to make their music more memorable. It's this concept, in my mind, that is the driving force to why pop keeps changing in sound, making it harder to study as time goes by. Although I don't listen to pop frequently, my favorite artist has got to be Charlie Puth for two things mentioned in the video. It's apparent he borrows from other styles of music, so the sound of his work makes it unique to other famous pop artists. But what I truly enjoy with his music is how he handles the bridge, leaving the key entirely, giving the ear new flavors to taste. You also applied this in your piece at the end, which I enjoyed. Thanks Nahre, for another great video! I can't wait for the next one.

Another great vid! Love the self-deprecating self-editing graphics. they not only keep the content moving, keep it relatable and humorous, as in from a real multi dimensional person. but they also bring us into the mind of the artist, where we sit in on the editing process, and in the distance between the live content and the later-added graphics, there is a growth. as there is in the distance between thesis and antithesis. the finished work is the result: synthesis. nice format. can hardly wait for more.

Your videos might be the most inspiring here on yt! Hearing you talk about compositional approaches is so interesting and provoking. As for this specific video, I think it really goes to show how intrinsic your influences are. This comes out through the variations and arrangement of the piece which made it so much more than a pop song, and I say that as a good thing. To me, pop song are even simpler than this. So well done. Every aspect of your production! The video and graphics, the music itself. Your character. Keep up the great content!

You know, I had a really interesting idea when I was listening: I think pacing might be really important when making pop music. My experience listening the "verse," and "chorus" kind of merged into the same sort of bigger phrase in my brain, and the first real noticeable contrast came from the bridge section. I guess I learned that I expect the different sections between pop songs to be longer and similarly repetitive throughout--compressing the form the way you have made it feel less "poppy" to me. Also, i think that maybe that a big part of modern pop music is the "rise" and the "drop" that you will find before a chorus section. But still the effectiveness of that gesture is really affected by its length. Don't get me wrong though, I absolutely love the ideas you're exploring! And seeing what that process means to you taught me something about how I experience music! And I just wanted to share that with you :D

The chorus section somewhat reminds me of Indian cinema music, which is the 'POP'ular music here, especially Tamil language (since it's my language:) ) Here all the movies have 4 or 5 four minute songs... The format is like, Intro - Chorus -Interlude music 1 - verse - Chorus - Interlude 2 - verse -Chorus - end In the interlude we have just instruments, so every song has vocals and instrumentals But we do have symphonic elements too in the songs... For example , songs in Marathi movie Sairat all have symphonic orchestra playing Indian style music

This is so interesting! I think what makes it hard to really distinguish pop is how it burrows from all kinds of different genres and fuses everything into a simplistic, industrial form that's easy on the ears but still effectively engages the mind and emotions, and this is how it achieves this fast appeal, and why when we listen to a catchy pop song we feel like the melody is familiar and welcome and hence it sticks with us. Your original piece is sooo beautiful!! Sounds like it can fit in a historical/autobiographical movie (The Imitation Game came to mind as I was listening for some reason) This was my introduction to your channel thanks to the algorithms, and I'm here to stay!

This serie of videos is so interesting ! Made-up Intro #2 is beautiful !

pleaseee do "Bossa Nova, as digested by a classical musician"

Looking at the chord progressions that get lumped into "pop progressions rarely found in classical", I think it's interesting how some Scandinavian classical music seems to have 'pop' quality to it due to the chord progressions that may be found more in western pop than classical. Composers like Alfven, Gjeilo, or heck even Grieg sometimes, have these qualities which can make it accessible to students (every youth choir I've played for has loved Gjeilo 😉) even though it's part of the "Classical Tradition"™️ of Norway or Sweden or wherever. And yes of course I have the recent Neely video on the brain 😂

I love how you improvised the songs to express complex dynamic relationship between different styles music. I really like what you played to “song-ify” a song between pop and classical music.

Seriously glad I randomly landed on your channel. Your flamenco video was just amazing! Keep it up!

It's always interesting to see where you end up when you mix what you learned from a genre with your own style. Here it sounded more indie/alt rockish to me, like a piano cover of a Radiohead or alt-J song. I think that mainly has to do with your chord progression. On piano, I think you need to stick to a more traditional I V vi IV or similar to keep the poppy feel.

Please, metal as digested by a classical musician.

It's just so much fun to see you play with music... thank you!

wow, usually when you do the digested videos, you end up putting a lot of your classical feel in the final piece, but this time you nailed it!! Very poppy indeed, and very melancholic, nice work!!

To me, your piece sounded almost like an "alternative/pop/rock" band playing a "sad" song. So, I think, it was interpreted and done quite well. Of course, everything is subjective. Fantastic content as always.

Suddenly, researching "micro-slaps" becomes more important than work.

Your arrangement sounded really beautiful ❤. Great work! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

This is one of my happy place channels. Great to see it I can learn a lot from you as a bassist and diverse viewpoints keep everything fresh. Plus I love your style

That was a cool little piece! At the start, it felt very much more classical than pop - I think the melody didn't feel distinct within the arrangement? - but somewhere in the second verse or second chorus, I think the melodies begin to stand out more and the structure became clear. By the end, it felt a little ... I don't know, Suzanne Vega-ish? It felt like complicated pop - like someone bringing classical or jazz technique into pop. The fadeout was great. I thought that worked extremely well.

I would love to hear vocals over your arrangement

Wow, the composition that you came up with is really lovely! ♥

ugh. it makes me SO HAPPY that you and Andrew know one another. that's so cool :3 you're both so nice and so hard working

The only trope you missed is the one half step higher modulated chorus at the end.

9:38 If this sounds a little familiar, I think it's because it's the same chord pattern use in EVERY POP SONG EVER. Lol

This definitely felt like a leitmotif in a movie score that builds into a character's main theme. I had images of the main character here crossing a sea under gray skies to arrive at her destination, her expected sanctuary, to find it in rubble. The place we'd been seeing her remembering as a solace during challenging times of her journey, in dreams calming fitful sleep, now a ruined husk of the place she once knew. It was now not the end of her trek - it was the beginning.

IMO, Nahre, you've begun to discover those timeless, haunting chords, in just the right register, that so many classical and popular composers have unearthed. They find the listener in an emotionally vulnerable way and move them from point A to point B musically. Isn't that what we live for in music, even with a simple 4 chords, to be transported? Your explorations are awesome. ♥️

4:27 THIS sample is beautiful and I want this as a full 5 minute song now, please! Anyone...!

15:34 "If it already exists, it's probably just subconscious regurgitation." I have experienced this so much; you don't even know!!! I was fooling around on my classical guitar one time just picking away at an arpeggiated D major chord, and I decided to have a little fun over one chord and start changing the bass note like a melody. Well, I find myself intuitively finding the next note that I think sounds great, and now I've got this cool bass melody over a D major chord. Well... There's one problem. I WAS JUST PLAYING MOONLIGHT SONATA'S INTRO TRANSPOSED UP BY A HALF STEP. This has also happened when coming up with metal riffs. Usually something that I come up with will be derivative of something that I'd listened to around that time. ALSO I'd LOVE do see your take on METAL. Though that one may be a bit tough as there's a lot of styles of metal as it is, so you'd have to either narrow it down to one genre or distill them to their similarities while keeping note of the things that make them different from each other. I'd honestly love to hear thrash metal or death metal combined with your unique style of piano playing.

I´m really happy to find you, Nahre. You make so easy to explain the music, the structure, the genders, and everything sounds so beautiful... Thank you, I meant it

I just found your channel, it's amazing! As a beginner self taught composer I'm excited to watch all your videos.

Whenever I think about pop, I think it's wrong to define it as a genre in by sheer popularity as populary stems from the relationship with the audience and thus cannot applied in composition (only once the piece is composed that the world can know about it and like it). However you could define it by "actively trying to be popular". That doesn't imply any stylistic choice per se, by try and mistake you could eventually infer them - if you define pop that way that would mean that in pop, style is an "emergent" property rather than defining trait of the genre. That makes it resilient and impermanent at the same time. Throughout the years there were many kinds of pop music, but even so it's not impossible to acknowledge the most resilient emergent stylistic choices; duration, time signatures, harmony... But of all those traits, there is a single biggest one. To me this is "the line": the impossibility to fully convey your lyrical statement in the music form, and thus resorting to other mediums, most often literature and imagery (lyrics and theatrics/movies). And that is expected right? You want people to be tribally hooked to your music, so you need all the symbolism you can find. I particularly like that "line" because it implies that lady gaga, kiss, and opera are all somewhere in pop-spectrum and I think that that's about right.

I think the biggest thing separating this from pop is that there was a lot of audible dissonance, both in the third chord and the contrast between the chords and the melody. This gave it sort of a brooding contemplative feel, which, while cool, doesn't quite fit the profile for pop music. You did an awesome job keeping the structure simple and predictable, but I think the next level of the concept is to extend that simplicity to your choice of notes and harmonies.

Andrew Huang gave a nice explanation. Nahre Sol did a good job playing the piano and figuring out the theory

This video is so so good and helpful I really appreciate the effort that goes into it all

Chorus just sounds like mozart. The verse (this is a stretch) has elements of a song called "american boy" the dah dahdah part (a _ mer_ rican) just what i hear

It’s simply so inspiring to see someone taking influence from a commonly disregarded idea that’s at the lower end of a somewhat arbitrary hierarchy with such professionalism and impartiality. It was such a beautiful rendition of the conventional pop structure and melody-centric concepts infused with a great sense of personal style.

I just discovered your channel today and I’m officially hooked! Love the content !❣️

I learn a lot from this video. Thank you, Nahre Sol!

how about a dissection/digestion of heavy metal music that have obvious classical influence? and maybe some examples of complimentary collaborations between the 2 genres. like Yngwie Malmsteen - Icarus' Dream Suite Op. 4 or pretty much anything by Transiberian Orchestra.

This may not be worth much, coming from a stranger on the web, but I felt compelled to share my thoughts. Pop music does not have a specific, well-followed, formula in terms of style or music theory. In essence, I believe it emerged as a result of a handful of businesses (record labels) looking for a class of music that was highly marketable to the public. This hypothesis would explain why pop music has diversified so much over the years. Andrew Huang mentions some strong points that I agree with. Pop music, in my humble opinion, has always been simplistic; easily replicable and played by a young population, perhaps with very little musical training. I conjecture that the low difficulty contributes to the spread of this type of music amongst young adults because it is easy to share with friends. Perhaps if you approached the task with the goal of writing an enjoyable piece of music for an average high-school band, you would meet with some success. This also lends credence to the argument that pop music is vocal-centric. Most persons, regardless of social or financial status, have a voice to speak or sing with. Singing is free and, if you write lyrics that resound with common fundamental human experiences, you may just find that more people will want to sing those lyrics. Romance and matters of love and sex will always be popular. I enjoy the content that you output. I would be very interested in seeing this topic revisited if you approached from the perspective of a music industry professional whom was pressured to write a song for a band of 4 or 5 low-skilled teenagers. If you had a month to write and arrange a piece of pop music for your unimpressive teen band that could be played at a stadium in front of a massive audience what would it sound like?

Love your insight and perspective in these type of videos.

It's so beneficial for those of us at the less sophisticated end of the musical spectrum to get these insights. Slowly, gently & with no pressure we absorb it & improve a little. Thank you.

Brilliant!

That final part is so relatable. Every time I write a melody, chord progression or riff that sounds instantly good, I feel like I must have unwittingly plagiarized it from somewhere. :) Love to see this "series" returning!

This is my favorite thing you've done so far!!

Definitely one of my goals in life is to become in a humble person as you are, Nahre. We need more people like you!!!!

I really iked your composition! It's been in my head for the past two days, so it's definitely "memorable"!! I agree with some other listeners that it has some Einaudi qualities, some Thomas Newman, and some Thom Yorke/Radiohead. I was trying to play it on the piano; barely got the basic structure down, no sprinkles yet but it's fun and sounds nice. I'm curious (and trying to train my music theory) , you say the main chord progression is C# - B - F#. I'm sure you're playing more advanced chords than I am capable of recognising/labelling, but just curious if you could elaborate just briefly on the key, chord structure, with respect to voice leading, inversion, omission of 3rd interval, etc. if you have the spare time? Again, really enjoying the piece!

"Mama" by Genesis was a hit single yet feels almost entirely antithetical to what someone would consider 'pop' music, though it does retain elements of accessibility/immediacy. You should check it out, it's basically Son of "In The Air Tonight"

Wow this was a really interesting excercise to watch you go through. I learned how to listen for the character in music (texture, voicing, etc.) This is a great page!

I really like the dual commentary of your spoken word and the overlayed text.

Your original composition sounded like Gary Jules' version of Mad World to me. "All around me are familiar faces". Probably because they both have that Dorian sound, with the major 6th.

Cool video

Loved the use of the supertonic in the chorus! Almost feels like an homage to a recent Andrew Huang video.

I loved seeing your thought process through all of the different experiments! The final song turned out great too. Would be awesome to a collab or you and Andrew turning it into a full fledged radio classic ;)