So...what's the deal with BASS melodies? | Q+A 

Well yeah, a chord without a progression is really hard to just evaluate like that. There's no context or relationship to other notes. I can ask you how the word "cumbersome" makes you feel, and you might not have much of an answer. But if I gauge your reaction to the phrase, "sex with your mother is very cumbersome," there's enough information there for you to have some stronger opinions on the matter.

I think we need a video of Adam going through all the chord asks, and do like a spice level tier list

@@beepboop4846 oh God yes that's a great idea

My favorite parts of these

@@davidjairala69 I can tell you exactly how the word cumbersome makes me feel

ooh where do I go to learn Irish music? That sounds fun.

@@mallninja9805 seconding :)

The problem is in how it's taught. There are a lot of things that are taught as "rules" in order to teach proper orchestration of voice-leading. These are ingrained as hard rules and not guidelines in the same way that in English you're taught not to end a phrase with a preposition while there are many examples of writers from all periods doing just that.

Would you mind specifying in what areas unlearning is needed? I'm learning classical music theory and style in school, and I'm curious about how the "classical foundation" relates to other genres.

@@ejipuh I think a good argument could be made that Irish music is on a branch of Western music that takes it's foundations from the "classical foundation" or 18th century european music and even its roots from chant music. Irish music is modal and maintains the same kinds of fundamental western harmonic resolutions, V to I, IV to I, etc. Its complexity is melodic but because of that the harmonic context doesn't get too complex. So called Celtic music often uses a drone which keeps the tonal center at the same key. Modulation is rare.

Well... repetition legitimize

@@akunekochan True, I had no idea "Lady Madonna" was legitimate until I heard Sublime

Stealing is a dick move by default. How is one great for stealing someone else's work?

@@joriankell1983 because no creation can happen in a vacuum. Even the most original idea in the world takes influence from something else.

@Tanmay Jain then it's a twisted phrase

I was a trombonist in a brass band for a while, and I was very happy to know that I had a soli in one of my pieces.

I really like John Williams’ tuba solo for Jabba the Hutt from Star Wars. I don’t know if that counts, but it’s what I think of when I hear bass solo.

But Adam is right, that Mahler 1 excerpt sounds "fragile" because of the register, and even more so when it is first played on solo double bass. The opening of Prokofiev 5 has great melodic lines for tuba (and double bass).

You've seen the "tuba virtuoso" TEDx show, right? It's pretty wild, even for me, as a former trumpet/guitar player. With enough practice, any instrument can be anything it needs to be.

​@@sorak185 I disagree. Tuba and double bass soloists do not really exist as anything but gimmicks. You were amazed once, but will you look up other tuba music to listen to for your enjoyment? Øystein Baadsvik is a super talented tuba virituoso who tried his very best, but it is debatable if he succeeded in having a real solo career.

You took the words right out of my mouth

I was looking for this comment to upvote.

Yeah it was very nice. Didn’t hear it as awkward or comedic at all. Just more warm and cosy. “Hard to play in the upper register” is hard on double bass but...electric bass has a huge range for an instrument (it does become somewhat comically huge with 6 strings) and sounds really sweet in the upper register.

Agreed! For me, it wasn't comical, it was like something - much bigger had come to play. Instead of a human generating human music, this was - a mammoth or a whale singing mammoth or whale music. It was a really nifty texture!

There is a really point to his argument I believe, but his example was maybe not the best. But there is another reason why you will less often hear melody in the lower registers: We typically percieve the melody in the highest part of the music. So if there are many instruments, the melody will typically not be in the bass. If you chose to have melody in the bass, the other instruments (or voices) will change pitch mush less often, and often be muted. The basses in a choir will typically not sing the melody, but if they do, they either sing solo, or the other parts sing long oooohs or aaaahs. I think melody in the lower registers often works great, but to pull it of takes care and knowhow.

You know I have a friend that was a professional trumpet player and also a bassist and piano player that cut off the same two fingers with a cider saw. I don't know which knuckles you lost them on but there's definitely ways to work around it. If you don't mind me asking how did that happen?

nice, check out the sultans of swing guy picking without a pick, i kinda use it and it might fits you well. Django gypsy guitarrist is also a great great great reference, youtuber lucas (brär?) did a recent video explaining how his techinic is made in guitar!

One of the best saxophonists I've ever heard live (and even played with on one occasion) was missing a finger. His technique was incredible.

Keep playin!!! You’re a badass!!

Fuck yea! Keep on rocking, and keep on learning!

Hell yeah he does it still makes me envious of his skills from even back then

ichika does some really interesting things, hes been one of the pioneers of the neo-funk/soul japanese math rock aesthetic

thanks for recommending!

Is basically fingerstyle bass, Wich is more cooler to me at least

omg is he He

I totally agree!

Yea

I was hearing it the same way I would hear Paul Chambers take a bass solo, as a contrast against the high voices who've been playing all the time. I.E.: if you only have bass melodies it can be a bit daunting to listen to. If you like that sorta stuff 100% based but it's also somewhat taxing if all you have is super low frequencies. It can be kind of straining to listen to since you're more likely to be less attuned to those sorts of melodies in a western society, but definitely go for it if that's your thing!

The deeper sounds always set up a really different vibes

Hello

jeez, even here too? didn’t know you were a musician Mr. Mustache

Why do we watch all the same RU-vidrs bro, I feel we'd be good friends

@@MidiMaze178 But you are here too. Many of us are. Silently. In the darkness. Watching.

'Sup bro

The chorale at my college is performing it this month, So I recognized it very quickly.

Yes imo there are a lot of great melodic bass lines (in funk also). It juste has to still serve a rythmic purpose at the same time and stay quite simple.

As soon as I saw this my mind instantly went to Guns of Brixton lmao

Reggae has some really neat bass lines.

Aston Barrett, from the Wailers (that played with Bob Marley), said that the bass line had to be "Whistleable"

Thanks for mentioning this. It is impressive also how the lyrics can attain a very different vibe. "Imagine there's no Heaven" - sounds terrifying here, like there's no salvation/relief ever. "No Hell below us" - immediately sounds like implying Hell is only here on Earth.

I love that version so much

I wholeheartedly agree

Controversial: I enjoy that version more than the original. Because, you know, cynicism…🤷‍♂️

best version so far, you're right!

What?! Violists should stand out? If they learned to play actual notes, maybe.

"To hell with fourier transforms", me after barely passing with a degree in electronics engineering

Especially with how he kept making that face while playing it, almost like he's purposefully trying to put it down

While thats true its also just straight up harder to perceive those types of inflections in that register. There's plenty of great and catchy basslines, but they function differently in an arrangement than a melody, im not sure he really got that point across in the video tbh

I noticed it. That being said, it's still a bit harder for bass melodies to function as well on a lower register cause that's where you mostly expect the fundamental of the chord played to be. If you took a guitar solo/melody and lowered it 2 octaves, it would sound like a riff. Maybe it wouldn't sound awkward, but you wouldn't want any higher register melodies around it, if they didn't function as harmonies of the existing lowered melody, and its expected function would be rather rhythmic than melodic. Same thing applies to bass in my mind.

*Cries in Baritone Guitar*

I play tenor, standard, baritone, and bass guitars, so my face is all over the place.

I play guitar….but I’ve started on the bass. My Dad basically gave me his for accidentally losing my first guitar when moving….it was my first guitar yes. But not my first….love. That goes to my epiphone…..anyways. This bass has a fffricken aura around it bro. It’s some odyssey precursor made in the early 60’s or someshit for jazz. But it’s covered in skateboarding stickers from the eaaaaarly 80’s. It’s legit three pieces of straight up maple. Some dimarzio P cream pickups that came on it. And I recently had to change the strings cuz according to my dad, “you never have to change the strings on a bass. These strings are probably older than me.”….yeah. I’m all for using 60 years old strings. And keeping em on would have been the biggest bass player meme in history. But tryna use it to record into a mix was like not gonna happen. So yeah. Needa take it in for some dust cleaning and shit. But I gotta say. This thing is “the bass.” And it’s so much “the bass” that I’ve been learning it for the past year without even noticing. Because….its the most bass looking bass I have ever seen.

Update. Found what’s it’s called. It’s an Attila Balogh odyssey. Just sticker bombed. Shits glorious.

Adam also plays guitar lol

The fuzz pedal was invented so that bass players can play melodies all over their instrument!!

To be honest DFA1979 dont pitch up. They're pretty good at have melody while also serving the bass. Royal Blood are more what youre saying.

I definitely second this. It is a very rewarding experience once you get to it, it's key to develop your own sound and playstyle, combined with your own composition style, and once you're there the basslines and even soli will come to you naturally

Charles Berthoud says hello.

Good music is color-style-gender-blind . The fact Germans were more developed than rest of us doesn’t make a case against their approach

@@yurkellis The point is that they weren't ACTUALLY more developed than the rest of the world, it's just that their styles/innovations are held up as high art achievements while the styles/innovations of other cultures are ignored and valued less

@@sdw-hv5ko other cultures where not developed enough to systemize, record and share with it with brother humans. Fact.

@@yurkellis Other cultures obviously had systems or frameworks for understanding their music, just because you don't know them doesn't mean they didn't exist. And passing music traditions orally rather than writing them down is not indicative of a lack of development. Besides, other cultures did write down their music, they just had different notation, but that music still doesn't get taught in mainstream music programs in the US

As a stupid uneducated person, I would like to add my simple thoughts to this important discussion. Nowadays both Jazz and Classical music have become rather niche and sophisticated. In music schools the rivalry may be Jazz vs Classical. Outside it's the elitist formal music education vs the pitiful/despicable normies. It's like the political compass avatars vs the centrists!

the reason why we hear higher frequencies better isn't just that, it's evolutionary. our ears are designed to hear high-pitched noises (rustling, screaming, etc.) to alert us to danger around us and allow us to hear human distress from very far away. play a pure tone without changing volume and slide its pitch upward. the perceived volume will change as the pitch increases, reaching its maximum in the thousands of Hertz

I think it's indeed the case that we expect the leading part in a song to be in a vocal register. Very high tones also often don't feel as making up the main melody. I think another factor is that the harmonic overtones of the bass instruments often works to create the harmonic context in the same frequency range as the melody, creating a feeling of connection between bass and melody. Putting the melody in the bass and establishing the harmony in a higher register makes it often more disconnected because the overtones don't play in the same range as the melody. This is a similar effect to why a chord with the tonic as lowest note feels "stronger" than a chord with the tonic in a higher position.

The middle registers are the most comfortable to the ear. Upper registers can be annoying or overly compelling if they're too loud (like a baby crying) so I guess orchestras keep them relegated to a spice roll because otherwise it would be overstimulating to base the majority of a piece's primary melody in the high end. Your ears need a rest. And the low register is where the rhythm sits, probably because it's easier to feel them physically in other parts of your body besides your eardrums. High registers are sounds of distress Middle registers are sounds of casual conversation Low registers are sounds of physicality That's my theory.

Hmm

It's true, you were in before it

I feel like that’s cheating

a not super fast instagram q+a

As we all know, music is a competition

I watch everything at 1,5x speed so joke's on you

This needs to be higher up.

Same, really confused here, bass melodys usually don't have a high range because the sub is loudest aroud G to F but it certainly doesn't sound comical or bad.

+

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-hzGmbwS_Drs.html

Probably pregnant

Fun fact! When Wooten is doing his solo looped stuff, he's on a tenor bass, bumped up a fourth. Raises the register, and keeps everything from muddying up.

Bass melody reminds me of humming any song while at work or during any activity

yeah red hot chili peppers comes to mind. you can absolutely make good melody on low-end notes

Right but the bass melody supplements the main melody of the music, so it's not really the melody of the song

I think the difference is in whether it's a melodic bass line or the main melody. Even when the bass line is melodic it's usually supporting a main melody, unlike in Adam's Autumn Leaves example where he played the main melody

I think hes just saying generally it's not designed for melody but definitely not impossible

"Melodic" is not the same as "playing the melody"

Nothing you can know that isn’t known

"If you play it, Louie already played it."

Your genetics and language aren't even original. It's all inherited from those who lived before you.

don't be shy, drop the link 👀

Or any second Japanese rock bassist, Tetsuya Ogawa (L’Arc-en-Ciel) easily being my favourite, often carrying the melodic aspects of the song with his highly catchy lines, while the guitar stays firmly in rhythm mode.

(Shreds in Cliff Burton)

That's cool!

Haha, it is a MIGHTY instrument. Makes the concert hall shake on the lowest notes. ;)

Yeah its the best haha

When I was hearing "Autumn Leaves" for the 1st time I was like "Duuuude, that bass actually slaps as heck"

I think part of the charm of rock is the simplicity (relative simplicity), not that it would be a bad thing - that's why it's popular. It's a wide genre too, so the theory you could apply to one artist (heck, even one song) might not apply to another. The origins of rock come from the fusion of "country and jazz" (according to my music lessons, can't really absolutely aggree with that definition), so maybe both classical harmony, blues harmony and so on could be applied to rock. Because it's been around for 60+ years, it also accumulated a lot of other influences. Which is the same problem contemporary jazz has, the harmony of different eras of jazz is not applicable to contemporary bands like Sungazer or Snarky Puppy. Hard to say what to do with this.

Is there such a thing a rock music theory though? I feel like with rock you can apply jazz, classical or blues music theory depending mostly on the piece. Maybe rock is seen as "beginner" theory because it can give you a foundation for many different styles

Nope Jazz is an upgrade

The question is: Are the analytical tools you have in other theories sufficient for understanding rock? You have an extensive theory of blues, which for a lot of rock music is pretty good at analyzing songs. And you have the tools of classical music to get at a lot of prog, which heavily borrowed concepts from there (or neoclassical metal for that matter) and the same holds true for Jazz. You don't build theory out of reverence for a style of music, you build additional theory, if you need additional theory to understand it. Now, I think you could make a case for looking at the use of feedback and the harmony of distortion (the non-linearity introduces intermodulation between notes that add frequency content that can be understood as notes not played - for instance a power chord played through an overdriven amp adds the fundamental of the root an octave below the played note) as two aspects of rock not covered by either.

​@@massimovareschi1963 I think it's because it's such an insanely wide genre and has its roots as an anti-establishment art form of the people

Yes to this so much! I think pop, rock and folk music can use bass melodies over static/ ostinato higher registers really well. Like Norwegian Wood - the “drone” chord is the highest guitar strings whilst the melody is below it.

@@haroldushawkinsi5804 well even Norwegian wood has a static bass line underneath the melody. I was thinking more classical music where certain moments have very prominent low-end melodies. Holst's Planets has plenty of moments like these

You don't need to understand all of it to enjoy it or learn from it. Sometimes just exposure to ideas is a good starting point.

I appreciate your humility, wiggimus. I often feel the same

Honestly that's one of the things I like about Adam - he'll keep it fun and light, and then he'll go into some much more technically involved thing if someone asks about it. Even if a lot of that's over my head, I appreciate that he doesn't shy away from it. He's a cool dude who knows a bunch of stuff and he'll share what he can And I mean, he's a professional musician, his career path from school has been learning about this stuff. Don't feel bad if you don't get everything he talks about, most people won't! But there's always something that can pique your interest, or just some cool sounds to hear that might inspire you. You've got your own music path to follow, y'know?

@LCL the real reason is "because i disagree with the way things are and i want to change these things by talking about them; especially given how much influence i have with a youtube channel this size, i feel like i can make a difference". there is no other reason to talk about politics unless you want to convince people of your ideas

@@ikbendusan So did he lie? Why didn't he just say that, assuming it is his real reason? I don't want to come off as if I think you're wrong or that I know better, it's just that there's a lack of something for me to believe it.

@@ikbendusan But all art *is* political. Refusing to engage with the political place of art *is* also itself political, it's saying "I am comfortable and do not want to consider anything else." Willful ignorance of social context is an endorsement of the status quo.

@@hhoopplaa I believe it´s a mix between what Dusan said and what Adam said, which basically could be understood as everything you say or not say is making a statement, so if you analyze music and music history without mentioning the influence of politics behind it you´re still making a statement, so you might as well do it consciously and aware that you´re doing so.

@@BonnibelLecter welp, that´s just a smarter and more eloquent way of saying what I tried to say, so kudos to you sir

Kim taek Yong represent!😁

He did the music for some games too. Hyper light drifter’s soundtrack starts with this song vignette: panacea, and it is just outrageously beautiful. Such a fucking masterpiece of an intro. Catapults you right into a world

Is Yngwie Malmsteen's Rising Force a rock/metal album, or a collection of Baroque works played on rock instruments?

Its not, you can try apply the theory of central european bla bla in rock without it sounding like it came from the era of Bach. Else a huge chunk of our music today would sound like classical music, and it doesn't. He is right that academically that theory is whats being taught in music schools, all the way down to still preaching the H chord

I knew about dark vs light roasts, but not that the shape of the glass affected things. I know what I’m trying later!

Yeah but the thermal conductivity of 3mm of glass is alot higher than ceramic so idk i guess wear gloves if you want to drink it?

@@NoTengoIdeaGuey or just grab it from the lower part, like you do on wine to avoid heating it

@@javixo1997 thank you for spreading the good word of our lord and Savior Joe, cup of

@@javixo1997 Is this a Portlandia sketch