This Video Proves Contemporary Music is a Joke 

Ok clickbait title aside, we’ll say it here again - there is plenty of beautiful, inspiring and/or artistically interesting contemporary music. Should we make a video about it? Let us know some of your favs!!

Remember brett, 50k likes then your going to compose contemporary music

Brett’s definitely the cursed music genius cause he learned the techniques quicker than Eddy.

I wonder what would happen if the right ear became a frog

inside eddy are two wolves: one wants to make fun of how absurd this is the other needs to know how they made that sound

9:36 "What a waste of paper." What an Asian thing to say.

How you managed to read those music sheets, I may never know. Underground ritual looks like a road blueprint to me TT

i think it’d be cool if you guys made a video on the other side of things talking about some contemporary music you actually appreciate. there’s so much out there and not all of it relies of extended techniques and such. for me, contemporary classical music is such a personal experience and while there’s a lot of stuff i don’t love, when i find a composer or piece i vibe with, i absolutely fall in love. i hope we, as a community of classical musicians, can eventually reach a place where music that is being written now in our lifetime is actually given a chance. it isn’t meant to be sight read or skimmed through. you say you’ve spent you whole lives trying to make the violin “not sound like that.” as composers, we spend our whole lives considering harmony, timbre, and other musical facets and what they mean to us personally. i encourage everyone who doesn’t take contemporary classical music to give it a listen with fresh ears and without expectations of “common practice music.” some of my favorite living composers that i could recommend are salvatore sciarrino, marti epstein, and reiko fueting. happy listening!

"we spend our whole lifes trying to male the violin not sound like this" so true😭 5 years later and i still sound like this

Brett has already composed contemporary music though with his lofi, film music and his reinterpretation of Mozart and Rimksy-Korsakov. But hell yeah!!! Totally here for another addition the Brett Yang's genius compositions!

As a polite update: Today, composer Alessandro Perini's RU-vid channel was taken down, allegedly for "spam, deceptive practices and scam," wiping out several decades of musical work he had done. RU-vid refused to explain, gave no warnings, and issued an automatic refusal of appeal. If there is any way to vouch for Perini, it's pertinent to do so. While he will be reuploading what he can on a new channel, this is an awful consequence and loss. The timing of the takedown is suspect, and only goes to show why we need to be careful ambassadors in our field. For any hypothetical fans who might have participated in negative behavior, I hope you can reflect and realize how unacceptable this is. The continuation of classical music, in all its forms, is predicated on building each other up.

This was all kinds of fun but from what I’ve seen, a piece written in nonstandard notation (which these are, right?) tends to come with a page or two of instructions so the players know how to interpret what’s on the page. Also, for a new piece it’s not uncommon for the composer to be in the room for rehearsals so the players can ask questions and the composer can get what he wants. Kronos Quartet’s ‘Fifty for the Future’ features loads of pieces written by musicians who weren’t classically trained, or who went their own way with how they wrote their pieces down. There’s usually a page of instructions as well as a video demonstrating any unusual techniques the composer calls for. The question arises, should a piece of chamber music require all this study and interpretation which makes sight reading essentially impossible? Opinions vary, I imagine, but I like how people are trying new things.

Video should have been titled “trying to sight read contemporary music without looking at the performance notes”

To be honest, a lot of these pieces sound like they could be soundtracks to films or contemporary art pieces in a gallery - more mood/atmospheric effect than music to listen to.

I love that you tackled and explored these pieces! Despite the unnecessary title of the video, it's an enjoyable and respectful exploration. As a composer, I think it'd be nice if you counterbalanced this with another new video of contemporary music you two appreciate - contemporary music which also explores sound, tonality, and technique in new directions. Continue to show people the value in learning, and you yourselves learning. You have a great opportunity to cultivate curiosity in younger generations towards living composers, new ideas, and some **extremely cool** stuff. Edit: Made a few edits to specify more nuanced language and interest in seeing new materials from TSV in this vein (am aware of old)

I think it's quite interesting honestly . It's own style and art for very specific things

Yes, I will be that person, but as someone who actively seeks out contemporary music to experience what classical music is creating today, not "all" contemporary music is like this. There is so much out there that is extremely accessible to the ear, like Julie Giroux, Bryce Dressner, etc. Contemporary classical music also gives an amazing opportunity for unrepresented groups of people within the classical world to have a chance to contribute to the canon. Titles of videos such as this one make my heart sink a bit, because it will continue to reinforce stereotypes that contemporary music is solely a bunch of craziness, and people may then not give a piece a chance if they see someone who is alive/someone they don't recognize on a program

So this is the video that caused Alessandra's one to be taken down?? Watdafuq is wrong with RU-vid or the person reporting?? Come on, tha frog sound might be a joke to someone but it is no where near to be serious like that. In fact, he isnt the only one who make violin sound like an animal! Interesting tho

Confused Eddy tries to understand what's going on, happy Brett goes wild😂

The editing is much better and easy on the eyes today. Thank you for reverting back to the usual, editor-san

You guys should definitely check Salvatore Sciarrino's "Capriccio No.2" for solo violin. Though Sciarrino's music is often more disonant (but even then so subtle and delicate), this one is quite consonant and is astonishingly beautiful. Go give it a try!

13 minutes of TwoSet not reading score instructions and then going "What does THIS mean???"😂 But I relate to what Eddy said about not relating to this kind of music - even as someone who has dabbled in this style before. It is very niche and can definitely be exclusionary in its nature HOWEVER I'm not a super big fan of the negative tone of this video😬 Agree with a lot of what was said, but it mostly feels like making fun of a certain kind of artists just because you don't get it. No hate, though, just my thoughts ♥

"it sounds like a horror movie" - that's rich coming from Brett xD

Brett and Eddy, ironically enough, discovering this channel and gaining a larger appreciation for classical music is a significant reason to why I now study contemporary composition at university😂 But tbh the title hurt a little bit🥲

Meanwhile I like contemporary music because its the only period where people even acknowledge my instrument (euphonium). The only older music I can ever play is Holst or transcriptions of cello/bassoon/cornet music ;-;

I played the first violin on this recording of "Underground ritual" by Anton Koshelev. It is a great piece of art, and I'm so glad to see our work in your video, guys ❤

Hey guys. I haven’t watched through the full video but the title caught me off guard a bit. Contemporary music is quiet important beyond the realm of “enjoying music.” It serves to be an expression through music in its rawest form. Much like how Perendecki depicted the victims of Hiroshima through something that in all honesty didn’t sound “pleasant” yet still captured the horror. Hence why I feel as though contemporary music should be understood and appreciated more than it is. Which tbh it’s really mocked a lot today and I don’t think it deserves to be mocked. As someone who knows contemporary composers, as I’m sure you 2 do too; aren’t we supposed to stress the importance of the progression of music. Bach was likely considered contemporary of his time, as was debussy of his time. Again. I’ve been playing your video in the backgrounds whilst writing this, and whilst I can see why you titled your video in the way that you did, I’d really appreciate a different perspective towards this genre. I never used to appreciate it much, but I think everyone can come to understand it.

So this is how the horror ambiance music is made! I love it

0:59 The "8 above the treble clef" moves it up an octave. It's fairly common in choral music to move clefs up and down this way. Mostly I see an 8 below the g-clef to transpose it down in TTBB music.

8:19 it sounded like a phone alarm on silent

unpopular opinion? but i love these pieces, thanks for showing them to us!

All of the facial expressions are killing me! 😂 love your videos! ❤️So excited for TwoSet to come to the USA!

Weird stuff. Even though I don't like these pieces though as something I would listen to I can respect that they're trying to do something different since it's on purpose (and sometimes they achieve something cool like with the frog one). These are really just proofs of concept if you think about it though, since they just want to show off one cool weird never before seen technique that they thought of. If you think about it in that way they are actually kind of cool since they are deliberately stretching the bounds of what you can do on the violin, without trying to stand on their own merit, like that frog sound was really nice. Though you have to admit the pieces fit the titles lol. In an actual musical piece though I don't think what technique's used matters as long as the harmony and melody are good. Which is subjective. Like, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky and Mozart are three super different composers but still make great music that people like to listen to and achieve what they want in the piece on the merit of the piece. In a great composition you can get enjoyment no matter what instrument it's played on or what techniques are used since the notes are well thought out. Even if the emotion in the piece changes (the composer intends on it to sound a certain way).

2:34 My cat was concerned

I did a Composition degree and was the only one there not to do "plinky plonky" totally abstract music - I quickly became an outcast :-(

honestly, i was a bit wary seeing the title for this video, considering i'm a contemporary classical composer myself haha, but i'm glad you put the disclaimer in there, and honestly you were more respectful than i thought, which is nice! honestly i'm not really the type of composer who uses extended techniques, but not because i dislike them, because i like to express myself more with conventional ways of producing sound (and also because i have no clue on how to do extended techniques on instruments i don't play 😭). honestly though, i find them so cool, because it unlocks a world of possibilities of what pieces can sound like - the first piece for instance was so cool! i didn't expect it to sound like that haha the main problem i have with some contemporary classical music is that it can often come across as too academic and unemotive (i think the john cage piece is a good example), but i think extended techniques can be extremely emotionally powerful - an example i'd give is the piece 'black angels' by george crumb. it starts with an absolute sonic assault, it sounds absolutely unpleasant to listen to, and it did put me off at first. yet when i learnt about this piece's context - it was created in protest of the vietnam war, and the movement was likely imitating the sound of attack helicopters - it made a lot more sense to me. it's an incredibly scary movement, it is designed to give you a heart attack, and in the rest of the piece you just anxiously anticipate when it's going to return, and it perfectly captures the anxieties and fears of soldiers during the war. honestly, when i understood this it instantly became one of my favourite classical pieces of all time. it's also just a really cool piece in general - the instruments sound like bones and flutes in one movement, in another the instrumentalists play crystal glasses and it sounds so beautiful :D so yeah, i just consider it as a way of expressing extremely dark and unsettling emotions haha, it's pretty deep

"Underground Ritual" is just _Minecraft_ cave noises.

Those notations always come with an instruction sheet to explain it, it should have been phase 2, otherwise it's quite pointless. First just notation, then with instructions, then with recording. (And to be frank I'm kind of amazed that you can be a professional music communicator and seemingly not know those kind of things? 😅 Didn't you have the sheet music in its entirety?)

You have an audience who listens to and takes much of what you say as Gospel. You writing off all contemporary music - EVEN if "just a clickbait title" - EVEN if you "admit there is plenty of beautiful, inspiring and/or artistically interesting contemporary music" - causes harm to the progression of music and exploration of new techniques. I don't love all of these pieces you played, but I certainly find them more interesting than the neo-romantic music that you seem to encourage young people look to instead of looking forward. If you care for classical music, you should understand that the contemporary period we find ourselves in is a time of experimentation with new sounds and new ideas - extended technique isn't a joke, it is a statement on the philosophy of music and what is possible. We as a musical culture are still fleshing out how we will use these techniques in order to make "beautiful, inspiring and/or artistcally interesting contemporary music," and your position as figureheads of music culture for the youth should not diminish this!! I hope that in your followup video of "good contemporary music" you include music that still explores pitch, timbre, and new sounds, and isn't simply 21st century tonal music. I would love to see something like the Ben Johnston string quartets featured! Or something like Carrot Revolution by Gabriella Smith! Please, you have a powerful platform, don't use it to continually feed the negative discourse surrounding contemporary classical music.

Like if you want to see them react to, and attempt Mari Kimura's subharmonic technique for producing notes below the regular violin range!

If you can find a video of Irvine Arditti playing the Freeman Etudes I’d really suggest watching it. Also any videos of JACK Quartet or its individual members (especially Jay Campbell).

This one is called "forgot the rosin"...

Oh another Twoset video educating us about InTerEstIng music!

I like contemporary music, especially orchestral one. ❤

Hey twoset, please try to help Allesandro Perini get his channel back.

You guys (and the subscribers) should really check out Krzysztof Penderecki's famous "Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima" for 52 string instruments. Trust me, it's a great piece of modern composition, and you'll be amazed!

great job representing us contemporary composers guys loved the video was definitely my favorite in a while please make more like this so i can get my daily fix of snobbery

I used to feel the same way. Charles Ives got me hopeful about this stuff. Then I started composing for film and we use this stuff all the time. Sometimes you want to make people feel a certain way, and this extended technique stuff does that. Instead of using synths and guitar pedals etc to create the chaos, using acoustic instruments is so powerful and organic sounding. It’s more like sound effects created nature. Wood, bow, string, experiment. Seeing stuff like this as concert music isn’t usually my bag. But when I’m trying to highlight a murder scene, or build suspense ala Johnny greenwood there will be blood, this is the vocabulary

8:24 r.i.p headphones user!

You guys uploaded right before I start practicing, maybe I’ll practice later…?

I for sure prefer 4:33 by John Cage. I even learned how to play it on any Instrument I could find.

They should do a video on tango violin effects. it's quite interesting how they are used in tango pieces

Although i don't think contemporary music is quite my cup of tea, it's still interesting to learn about these techniques and experiment with them! I feel torn lol. Classical music nourishes my soul the most, but it's fun to explore new things once in a while :)) There's a whole world of repertoire in contemporary music, (is Fantasia considered part of it?) and Im sure I'd like some of them. But then again, music is purely subjective, we're all here to learn new things! (I'm looking forward to seeing Brett's contemporary composition XP)

I remember seeing the score for Trittico per G.S by Brian Ferneyhough, a solo double bass piece. The music reminded me of the plans i saw when worked on lighting for a Cirque du Solei show... Massive respect to musicians who regularly perform these more "carefully composed" pieces.

I actually kinda liked that. Weird sounds - something I would do on my modular synth 😅

I would enjoy more videos of sight-reading recent music!

Please do that video where you differentiate human music to Al music again! I need part 2... (Or just make Al music youself and see how it go...)

This all sounds very interesting to me. I don't really know much about the violin itself but got some deeper knowledge about the flute. So I can relate to how contemporay music feels soetimes. 😂

Those notes look like rocket scientist

More classical nerdy content again! With violinists and stuff like the guessing one! Also violinist charades

6:46 I thought I was looking at blueprints for a rollercoaster...

You sent me right to RU-vid to see if I could find someone performing these! I don’t think I’d sit for a concert of this kind of thing, but I think it might be analogous to theoretical mathematics or physics where no practical application is yet known. Later discovery or need may reveal some or all of it has application!?!?! PS Piazzolla wrote some of these sounds in very cogent pieces.🤔

As a classical violinist, after watching this video, I would like to apologize to every non musician out there for all the times I’ve made fun of you not being able to process music properly 😭 I swear this is a foreign language

„This video proves contemporary music is a joke“ + „look at our apparel“, Bravo 🎉

I mean to be fair its pretty cool how they creatively made their music make cool sounds and effects

I guess this is how the opening of Mozart's string quartet no. 19 sounded to his contemporaries 😂

50K likes !!!! U gonna need to compose Brett

You should react/analyse Bridgeton's string quartet pop covers

8:28 Eddy discovers the phrase “that’s like nails in a chalkboard to me” 😆

6:39 damn that mosquito be buzzing

Brett just has the cutest "Bada boboo".

Having played a lot of new music, a lot of these made perfect sense to me on the page; I don't know what that says about me 😅😂 Watching you guys try to figure these out ranged from cringe at first to actually hilarious. You weren't wrong @9:00 when you were saying it requires a lot of re-learning!

Sight-reading contemporary music. Please, come back sight-reading videos!

I'm really loving Brett's sound effects

Can you review Laufey please? She's jazz musician (cmiiw), but she can play piano and cello

If anyone can play this kind of music, it must be Brett, the genius of cursed music.

2:37 I thought Brett’s voice was the violin but it was not

Underground Ritual reminds me a bit of the Shostakovich quartet piece but the rest wasn't the same. Just that high violin note slowly being played.

A video like this seems dangerous to me, because many people that are ignorant about contemporary music or art in general might find - and considering some comments, have already found - in the jokey approach to the matter of Eddy and Brett a validation to persevere the stereotype of this discipline being a low effort, lazy way to make intellectual, incomprehensive and inaccessible products. As bad avant-garde composers of course exists (in the same way as bad pop, classical, rock, etc. composers and performers do), some other people devote their life to research on sound and music in order to write their pieces, and their results are outstanding. The modern approach to music and soundtracks wouldn't exist without the ferment that took place in the 50-60s in "cultured" music. I want to bust a myth: avant-garde music is not inaccessible as many think. It "just" takes a different mindset in its approach, alongside a pair of ears that are willing to be emancipated from tonality, the main musical language of our society, the one we are immersed and most familiar with. And of course, a whole lot of open mindedness. The easier way to do it is to listen and follow the history of music from the first half of the last century, trying to understand the motives behind its transformation and what brought the tonality to slowly fall apart in the classical music world. It's a thread: just follow it. :)

What ever the second one was, I play like that all the time. It actually sounds so nice. To me it sounds like being lost or wandering in a mystical forest. I love playing like that sooo muchhh!!!❤❤❤

7:16 sounds like how I imagine a UFO landing to sound like 👽

2:33 WHAT IS BRETT DOOINGGG😂 He got me on the floor rolling 🤣 11:30 That one mosquito when you are sleeping😂

no way one minute ago. I LOVE YOU GUYS!!! I came to see your concert with my two best friends (i'm a pianist, and theyre both violinists) and it was genuinely the best night of my life. thank youxx

Hey, this is actually surprisingly fun and interesting! I thought you guys were just going to hang shiton it, but you’re really giving it a go.

A twoset video.. on my birthday??!! Todays gonna be fire 🔥🔥🔥

Well my ears could have gone without that this morning. The only redeeming quality was watching you two try to figure it out and Brett going “babo boodoo”. 😂

Are you going to respond to the fact that Alessandro Perini has had his YT account deleted by YT for "spam, deceptive practices and scam" since this video was posted, canceling 20 years of work and content? It appears that he was part of a report campaign by your followers.

4:52 i love how he said the word, then remembered the meme and repeated with the right tone lol

Swing and a miss.

Underground ritual was really cool. It sounds like riding on the subway

Sounds like someone set their Violin Charades on paper.

Wow, I didn't expect to hear a piece by Alessandro Perini here, nice work friend!

My ruminations on Contemporary Music- that’s such a broad classification. George Crumb for example- he’s classified as Avant-Garde Contemporary. Lots of mid-20th century compositions, atonal stuff, extended techniques.. is that the same category as Joe Hisaishi? How far back (or ahead?) in time do we go and still call it Contemporary- or is that a term that will be reserved for music from 1975-2025, like Baroque, Classicism, Romanticism? For my own part, I like some John Cage, Aavo Paart, Phillip Glass, Max Richter etc. My city’s symphony orchestra performs, commissions and premiers living composers, as do the ensembles and chamber orchestras I subscribe to, a lot of which I enjoy, but these are all ‘easier’ works- with harmonies and tones I can engage with. The experimental extended technique stuff is not my cup of tea though, I just find it unpleasant to listen too, and i don’t feel the need to take it on as an intellectual exercise. I don’t think music has to always be pretty, or relaxing (i love my Shostakovich Quartet 8) and to be honest a lot of what’s called contemporary classical sounds soppy, bland, and ‘easy-listening’ and this in the video is the opposite of that, so that’s a big plus! I would LOVE to go to live performance of George Crumb’s Black Angels, but I’m never going to just download and listen to it, or add to my play list.

I love contemporary music but these pieces are really crazy. I can't wait to hear Brett's composition! I'm sure it will be brilliant!

Classical musicians try not to make shallow jokes about “contemporary music” (impossible challenge)

Why is the last video privated? What happeneddddd😢

What happened to the out of tune violin recordings video?

Yaaaaaaay, on the Underground Ritual recording I'm playing the violin! 💘💘💘

Straight out classic twoset content with camera-san NOT recording.

10:07 fun fact; that line on the natural means that the note is a microtone