Thanks for watching! Also, The numbers for the beats and claps are a little out of sync at parts, but I made this whole thing in Movie Maker so this was the most accurate I could get.
Hey everyone! I've released a new video, let me know what you think in the comments/what you would like to see next! Thanks! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-va5SL60IS6Y.html
Technical question from a non-musically inclined person: (1) how did he insert a *beat, and wouldn't that have also messed up the rest of the band who did not add that beat? And (2) why do musicians prefer clapping on beat 2 and 4 rather than 1 and 3? [*I I can understand how he could add a new note to an existing beat by splitting an existing note, but how does he add an entire beat to the predetermined timing of the bars?
@@joeradler he was playing solo when he added the beat. The band joined after that, when the crowd was already clapping on 2&4. I’m not sure about the reason of clapping on 2&4. Some guy said that was because beat 1 & 3 are for drummers to hit on, to keep tempo for the whole band. And naturally people clap faster and faster, so clapping on 1 and 3 will most likely mess the tempo up eventually. As someone who learned to play music from early age, I have always clapped in 2 and 4. No one taught me that but I just feel that how I should do. Whenever I hear someone clap on 1 & 3, or try it myself, it just feels wrong immediately.
@@joeradler I guarantee you that look with the smirk he was sending to the band was a "get ready" look. This happens all the time and they are used to improvising it. So, yes, the band DID play the 5/4 measure. I'd have to go back and see if it was phrased as a "split" beat, but that isn't what happened. It was just the addition of a beat. It is quite common in music to have various time signatures (4/4 time, 3/4 time, 6/8 time, etc) in one singular piece. It's really quite brilliant to watch Harry do things like this.
@@hienlethai3979 I find most drummers emphasize the 2/4 beat, a bit louder or sometimes striking the cymbal on same. Test it out next time you're at a live small band event. Clap on the 1/3 beats then do 2/4. You'll feel the difference. Signed, a banjo player.
This would be amazing... if he did it with a band. But hes just playing piano by himself. Ive done this before in a cover band we used to book wedding gigs for. People are always making up their own sets of timing when drinking
@@dangerrrnick5005 i dont think its that hard I would even say everyone has done it at some point. When you accidently get lost on the beat using a metronome or backing track while playing you would probably skip a beat or wait until you can relocate yourself and start the new bar which is kind of intuitive
@@marxer8665 in the case of a backing track (or click track) that's not quite the same thing: you're waiting for the next bar to start, which wouldn't relocate the audience's clapping. Here, inserting the extra beat swaps the downbeat and the offbeat around: you could do it with a traditional metronome quite easily, but the really impressive thing is doing it without a click to anchor you and shifting your own down/off beat mid-song without losing your groove. It's not insanely hard, but it's definitely not such an easy thing to pull off, either.
@@marxer8665 yeah i like the smoothness of it but if i was off beat of say a drummer who i expect to lead the beat, i would hold a chord or something to disregard the offset before make sure that i get the next measure started off correctly. never thought to fill in a riff like he did in the video great stuff
@@daallen7636 you can actually see the drummer put his fists in the air because he heard what Connick did and was excited the audience fit the more intuitive beat now. Having drummed a bit myself it is not as difficult as you'd think to follow his correction like that, especially when its during his piano solo.
@Shady Queens to be fair...that was the point of this 5/4 trick so it’s not going to be an obvious change. They were tricked and your brain is being tricked, so don’t worry about not getting it!
@@FriendlyNeighborhoodBallsack If you'd play it on drums, you'd hit the snare on 2's and 4's. It just flows better that way, and it applies to clapping as well, since it has the same function as snare.
@@FriendlyNeighborhoodBallsack when you clap on off- beats it actually strengthens rhythm, making the strong Beats 1 and 3 more pronounced internally. Watch the video and clap against the audience between their claps, you’ll physically feel how buoyant the music will feel.
Ha! Thanks for pointing that out, Moose! You gotta love an audience that can't hear when to clap and we drummers do rejoice when we can point this out! Tee hee.
This is how I understand this trick: It's kind of like if you and a friend were walking along a footpath and your footsteps were out of sync so you did a little "off-beat" skip to realign your steps.
Instead of a skip, kinda the opposite of it, he actually adds an extra step with the same foot. (With 2 foots it doesn't make much different but when there are 4 beats it does ^^) Normal piece is 4/4 he makes it 5/4 for just one single bar. But yeah other than that the comparison is quite on point :)
@@demran "Instead of a skip, kinda the opposite of it, he actually adds an extra step with the same foot" Adding an extra step with the same foot is literally what a skip is.
@@TetzFiles @TetzFiles Skip is "Skipping" a beat while counting 1-2-3-4 and saying 1-2-3-1-2-3-4 instead. Adding a beat is literally "adding", as in; 1-2-3-4-5-1-2-3-4... and so on. On the video he doesn't skip, he adds a beat, turning a 4/4 into a 5/4.
@@demran That's one meaning of "skip": to bypass or leave out. However, the analogy you were responding to was _walking,_ where someone *adds* an extra step with one foot in order to sync with a partner: "a little 'off-beat' skip to realign your steps. " That's a totally different meaning of the word "skip", which is literally _adding_ an extra step with the same foot: See: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-LWUsF32jdFg.html Its doesn't mean " leave out" in that context. It's closer to meaning of "skipping" a stone; i.e. bouncing something.
I've been a percussionist for 8 years, so I know rhythms, time signatures, etc, really well. Let me just say, this is really hard to pull off while feeling the beat correctly. Brilliant trick, and to think that he most likely did this on the spot without premeditating it.... wow. Genius idea
It is a cool trick, and funny that the audience don't even notice, but I disagree that it's really hard to do, especially for a seasoned musician. Plenty of music, especially romantic and modern music, but jazz and rock too, features frequent changes of time signature, sometimes from bar to bar, and is something that most professional musicians are used to dealing with. In this case it's not even a complex change, he's just adding a beat and carrying on as before. Fun to see though :)
When you have a solo (speaking from a pianists perspective), you could do a run in the left hand, and than play a note extra somewhere for the 5th beat, it's not that difficult to add in an extra note, as a percussionist it might be a tad more tedious to get the hang of
I would say even for a professional musician, it can be hard. You already have the measures and rhythm in your mind. It isn't hard to inject a note but your internal rhythm will be thrown off. Physically adding a note is easy, but mentally adjusting your internal rhythm is the hard part, especially if you have practiced that bit of the song countless times. Doable, but risky.
He also did it without showboating as I've seen so many musicians do. They stop the song to correct the audience or start having someone on stage clap when they're supposed to, or have the percussion correct the audience in an obvious way. He just let the audience naturally fall in sync with him.
@@TheRogueX it's really simple. Music is usually written on a beat. Beats are counted. It helps your timing. Get it wrong and it throws your timing off. Also You want accented notes to fall on certain beats. If your counting on 1 and 3 instead of 2 and 4 ( if thats the way the song is meant to be. ) it can sound off as if the beat is falling behind. Theres many other reasons but I suggest you study how song writing works to learn more.
Harry was probably thinking "This is going to sound terrible when the rest of the band kicks in and the audience tries to switch to 2 & 4, so I better fix it between the chorus and the ending". He probably does this often, especially with that song.
@@VincentPhotoCom same thing with the Germans. But then again, music consumption and understanding of music in Germany is barely existent haha. At least with the average listener.
He noticed that the audience was not clapping on the backbeat and so he decided to play off of that rather than fight it. How smoothly he did that really demonstrates his proficiency and depth of groove.
I don't feel that you showed us how the clap was initially on one and three. Perhaps if you showed the song from the beginning, it would be more obvious. If the audience came in on the one, where did they get off of the 12 bar sequence? They didn't start clapping the instant the song began, but presumably some time on the next 12 bar section. It feels like they are always on 2 and 4, but perhaps if you played the part they began clapping, with the rest of the song before, I could see how they were off.
Harry Connick Jr. Wrote the music for a kids book adapted into a musical, and my local theater was one of the first to put it on, Harry himself ordered 100 some cookies from a local bakery and had them sent to us on our first performance with a long-handeritten note of how grateful he was we were doing his show. Such a nice guy!
If it is to swing, the claps HAVE to be on 2 &4. It is too square otherwise. That point was missed in the original rather brilliant explanation in the video.
It's amazing to see world-class musicians fix things like this in real time. Most of us would be trying to get through the song, mean while, Harry can think ahead and figure out where to add an extra beat to get the audience to clap on the backbeat.. Sure it seems easy, but having enough experience to pull it off on the fly on camera is next level. I'm not a huge Harry Connick Jr. fan but I'll probably check him out now that I've seen this.
This is the first video of yours of watched and I would love to see more! Just please don't have the visual indicators on opposite sides of the screen next time please 😅
I can't stand them clapping at all because their timing is never great and they often wander all over the place. But I don't think clapping on the 1 and 3 is musically a bad decision on their part. You might as well say tapping their feet anywhere other than 2 and 4 is wrong too. If their hands made a bassier sound it would be fine. It's not really their fault hand claps are better suited to the back beat.
What this tells me about Harry connick Jr is that he cares about his music and he cares about his audience and he doesn't want either one of those things to sound bad he treats them like part of the band they belong there clapping just as much as he belongs there playing the piano
Jesus Christ. I knew Harry Connick Jr. was a singer, but I had no idea he had chops like that on the piano. Really clever trick he used to get the audience to clap on 2 and 4, too.
The easiest way to understand Harry’s trick and be able to replicate it yourself is to listen to the piano bass notes. The root note hits on the ONE count. So all his did was extend playing the bass note in the 3rd bar of the solo by adding a 5th (hence 5/4) beat to the second bar. So the bass which always signifies the ONE count got moved by one which switched the claps from odds to even beats.
Yes! This was ingenious!!!...I'm a pianists myself and I noticed and heard just how he did it and just like you said,he added an extra chord stroke in that bar ...The audience stayed the same in their syncopation but he changed to make them fall in line with his agenda without them knowing it...BRILLIANT....
EVERY live performer SHOULD know this. He did what great performers do. Who cares if the 4/4 was interrupted and reset on the "3" when the crowd is clapping. This is live performing 101. I'm no Harry, but I'm a live performer. HCJ is a GREAT performer, and what a great song!!!
my jazz band director had to supervise a bus full of mostly non-jazz students (band students, though). There was a song that everyone started singing (i forget what it was) but everyone started clapping to the beat, but it was on the 1 and 3. The jazz director halted the song, and declared "I may not be your band director, but while you're on MY bus, you will clap on the 2 and 4." I miss her
You can see @3:47 the guy on stage bobbing his head on beats 2 & 4, and after Harry does his incredible timing change, he starts cheering with hands pumping in the air haha
Naah, he just doubled the little 8th-note pickup going into the next measure. Almost a musical stutter. :-) To me, that's actually part of what makes it clever -- it's something your fingers can do without thinking about it, since getting into your head would screw up the timing.
I used to play drums and a guitarist once did this to me (unintentionally) when we played together at a party--he spent all his time playing alone in his room and when he was learning Iron Man, he didn't bother adding the extra eighth-note rest at the end of the riff, so every other measure was 7/8. Every second time through the riff, it sounded like I was playing on upbeats and it turned into the Iron Man Polka.
Reminds me of what we used to do in church when people started clapping on the other times as well. Very well done, however, it is not even apparent if we are not expecting it!
I love how he dealt with it on his own performance but he knew the BAND would get thrown off with the clapping so he made it his mission to fix it before the band came in. Just an epic performance he could literally just let them clap off key and the band would hate the audience for it but he saved everyone the trouble and fixed it.
I felt my eyes start spreading out to be able to see both sides of the screen. Still clueless as to when the switch occurred but I can see predators coming from my former blind spots.
This is brilliant! I’ve once managed to turn a (smaller) crowd to 2 and 4, when I was part of a musically inclined group in an audience - but generally this is hard to correct from the audience side. I’ve never heard any artist solve it this way - very elegant. As far as I could tell, 5/4 of the audience never realized what hit (or rather beat) them.. ;)
As someone who doesn't know this song, it's hard to hear the actual downbeat where it's apparently meant to be. I just hear the audience claps as 2 and 4. 😅
Great video, Joshua! Thank you! I’ve played guitar since I was a little kid but have never really studied music theory. I have a major love for musical improvisation and the level of skill shown here blew my mind. Thanks for making a video that explains this to lesser-trained musicians and non-musicians, alike.
It this a cultural thing...becuse I notice that French jazz allways has an accent;)... really French has a very distinctive flow and it's allways 180 out if phase with Angelo German languages.. hard soft...not soft hard. Or maybe I am just imagining it..
Having played the B3 in church for a few decades, I picked up on this immediately and can't tell you how many times this has happened. This is quite common in church services where medleys are played or songs segue into other songs. Excellent video and thank you for sharing!
My dad was 80 when he told me how much he loved Harry Connick in 1992. I never heard about him 31 years ago. But since my dad told me about him I became amazed at his ability. I wish I could’ve taken my dad to a Harry Connick show.
I only heard the audience clap on the 2nd and 4th beat. It did seem a tad delayed when you mentioned it, and I did notice the "trick" you called out. However, they still clapped on the 2nd and 4th to me! Which is a much more incredible trick to my ears!!!
He just slaps the audience into place, some of them are sure they heard him make a mistake. I guess if he can teach J Lo what a scale is he can accomplish almost anything. Thanks for doing this, nicely done and super easy to understand.
Loved the video but I just have a quick suggestion. With the visuals in the bottom left and right corners, it would be great if you could make them bigger and closer together so people can really see the relationship between the two
This video is so fascinating. You can see him registering the out of sync clapping the whole time, you can see when he gets the idea to do his lil trick. I know nothing about music-reading or notes or anything, but something about this has truly fascinated me. Thanks for the video
I do this often as a drummer if I find myself emphasizing the wrong part of a song or if I’m one beat off in an odd time signature. Just adding an extra snare hit or an extra down beat is sooooo much easier than trying to reorient yourself into a song
What I love about it is the second bar after the trick, you can hear the very *faintest* of delays from some of the audience, as they innately pick up what’s happened and get confused for a second. Genius.
Very very slick, man that is some talent to make that difference and then just bring it back home as smooth as he did. Count me in as a new fan hahaha.
Another approach to this is by multiplying 4 by 5 or 5 by 4. (Hear me out, I suck at math, but as a musician, it can make it sound like you're "out" without actually being out and vice versa.) Since 4x5=20, you need either 5 measures of 4 or 4 measures of 5 to arrive at the same place musically. In Herbie Hancock's "Tell me A Bedtime story", he has a section of 5/4. In Robert Glasper's rendition, he does the same section, but the drummer is playing 4 over the 5. Another cool way of illustrating this is when you need a song to technically be in 4/4 while sounding like it isn't. Using some combination of 2's and 3's with a least common multiple of whatever irregular time signature you would like to mimic. I love the way he handled the crowd without making them feel bad. Not all musicians are capable of doing this in a humble way.
If im understanding your strategy correctly, which I highly doubt, yours would take a lot longer cause you'd have to do it over 4 bars or something, no?
I think it' actually more subtle and more ingenious than you describe. In their head, the audience is clapping at half time on what they perceive as every beat. He tricks them to clapping on what they perceive as the off-beat.
I just hate when the audience starts clapping when I just paid big bucks to hear my favorite artist play my favorite song. I love it when most of the audience refuses to clap and the clappers die down to one or two clueless clappers who hopefully finally get the message.
it's almost as annoying as seeing a see of mobile phones in front of me which is the reason I stopped going to gigs yeas ago. Put them down you stupid twats, why do you need to film it.
@@AndrewKay @Rabonour I mean yeah but, since we're all on this video ima guess most people watching listen to the likes of either blues, jazz, funk, soul or any type of rock. Unless it's NOT a musician you're going to appreciate that you truly goddamn love - clapping sucks.
@@Dana21283 I wholly agree. Unless they are playing Kumbaya, it sucks. And clapping in or out of time is tolerated by the musicians because the audience paid to see them. As Andrew Kay said, it depends on the genre.
I once played the last part of the “Santeria” solo on the upbeats, then landed it perfectly...who knew I’d one day inspire Harry Connick Jr. to take it a half beat further! True pioneers.
