What's in between Major and Minor chords? | Q+A 

That neutral chord sounds like when you ask your gf where she wants to go out and she shrugs her shoulders and tells you to pick.

Major: Happy Minor: Sad Neutral: Angry

The feel of 6:04 to 6:08 is like seeing the most beautiful sunset, then getting abruptly run over by a bus.

Re: The fact that a D neutral chord sounds like a car horn: In Europe, ambulances and other sirens are two alternating notes a tritone apart. A tritone on top of a tritone is an octave, a perfect interval. A neutral 3rd on top of a neutral 3rd is a perfect 5th.

Normal Musicians: I wrote this weird progression. Is this a thing? Jazz Musicians: Not only is that a thing, but we have a name for a it, theory that covers it, and a nickname for it.

Man, adam making that “repetition legitimizes” joke at every opportunity seems less odd over time. Weird.

That D-neutral triad scared away my cat :(

The neutral chord takes me back to our primary school string orchestra. We were very experimental at age 7 lmao

I LITERALLY laughed out loud when you played the d neutral chord at the end of the lick

6:04 - cursed licc

That "neutral chord" almost sounded like a massive church bell. It's a bit dissonant but so beautiful in its own way

That neutral sound with micro-tuning is SUPER popular in traditional and even modern middle eastern music. I basically grew up with it lol

That guy: Is high school music theory enough Me: You're getting music?

"Things come naturally through many years of practice." I'm going to be quoting this for many years to come.

It'd be interesting to hear music utilizing a "neutral scale", where the third, sixth, and seventh are tuned in between the major/minor notes.

If major chords are "happy" and minor chords are "sad", then neutral chords are "angry"

You’ve taught me more than any professor I had at Berklee.

The neutral chord sounds EXACTLY like a train horn it's scary

I was just at a music camp and I convinced one of the composers there to end his piece on a neutral triad, I was laughing so hard after the performance

I wonder how those with perfect pitch are affected by the "neutral" note.

D neutral is like Schrödingers D: both major and minor until it is observed

That neutral chord sounds like a clock that’s wound down too far trying to chime

To me, the "neutral" chord sounds like a major and minor third played at the same time, but without the acoustic beat that would result from that.

I think the reason the neutral third sounds like a car horn is because it is the same interval as an 11:9 in the harmonic series. If you listen to a train whistle or a car horn, there are very strong 7th and 11th partials present in the sound! This is my best take on it anyway :)))

"Different theme song for every season" Weebs: Amateurs.

That neutral chord sounds exactly like my family's untuned piano when you play anything

":Are you consciously thinking about every word as you say it?' Yes. A not insignificant percentage of the time. Yes.

I love how aggressively neutral that chord is.

3:55 - The D 'neutral' sounds like a train whistle. Some train whistles are also 6th chords :)

Non-jazz musicians: We like to create new stuff. Jazz musicians: Impossible, since 1968, everything has been tried out.

"You need organs transported overseas...?" "I know a guy."

"Teacher, what is between Major and minor chords?" "We don't play polytonal instruments in my classroom."

6:04 When that makes me laugh out loud, I wonder what my sense of humor has become. I do at least know it's ruined lol

"You can't get bullied by bassists when there is no bass!" - Metallica, around 1988 (sry I thought it would fit in here)

I was wondering What keys these Primus songs are in: “Tommy The Cat,” “Jerry Was A Race car Driver” and “My Name Is mud” It’s obviously very dissonant and spicy. What scales and or modes are they using?

Watching Adam Neely reminds me simultaneously why I love music and why changed majors from music. I enjoy listening to music and I find it fascinating to learn about music theory (classical music theory and otherwise), BUT I hate playing music (or at least I hate playing the trumpet, theoretically I could try to pick up piano but I think my main problem is that my fingers are just bad and dumb). Playing music almost made me despise it to some degree. It’s better that me and her just know each other casually now.

I had "did you seriously not play the lick on the ukulele?" all typed out...

One interesting thing about Barbershop (and one reason it has *that* sound): no vibrato.

The neutral chord is the new “is the glass half full, or half empty”

My brain just makes that "in-between" chord "major".

Hey adam! I'm a lebanese musician, in our "arabic music" the neutral chord sounds just fine, although we don't focus on harmony, but it exists, because, instead of having 2 main scales (major and minor) we have 8 main scales, including many quarter notes

Adam Neely is incapable of saying “repetition” only once

you are honestly one of the most impressive working musicians I have never even met.

The 24-hour musical sounds crazy but fun! In the game development world we have similar events called Game Jams.

"If you need organs transported, I've got a guy." Haaaaah

“I’m not a ukulele player” Proceeds to professionally play ukulele*

Well, the "neutral" third is a half fifth the same way the tritonus is a half octave. A regular third, be it big or small, does at least have some approximate harmonic relation to one of the other tones in the triad.

The neutral chord at the end of the theme at 6:09! Brilliant!

Adam: The wire is the best because it had a different intro for each season. Adam that is called anime.

6:04 I've never laughed this hard in a while, thank you Adam, your musical memes never fail to make me laugh.

6:46 multiply the loudness by 2 corresponds to an increase of 10db. Decibels follow a logarithmic scale, so in fact you'll have to multiply the energy used (i.e. the quantity of instruments played, all other things being equal) by 10.

We use this pitch in Arabic music a lot in scales like (Bayat - sika - rast ...) And it sounds good Here's an example of Bayat maqam (scale) You took (A min) for exp: 🎹 A - B (-50) - C - D - E - F#(-50) - G - A

6:04 I had a violent laugh reaction at this, and I don't know why. It's like musical slapstick.

"it sound kinda like a car horn" Who knew the Vengaboys were such an avant garde act.

That D Neutral sounds almost exactly like the horn of the car the Iron Giant bit into and chucked.

You can make the neutral chord even spicier with a C half sharp on top to make a D neutral seventh chord.

Adam Quaranteely. That is all.

"All The Gigs Are Gone" - Sounds kinda bluesy.

congrats on 1 million!

7:17 my mom actually taught in the Baltimore school system for a while before moving away and having children later on and she constantly tells me how the school system was very flawed but the children were amazing

It's funny, when you asked if the "neutral tone" sounded major I thought it sounded more minor and vice versa. Maybe I'm just a contrarian.

Oh, damn... when he did the neutral chord at the end of the lick, I felt like a speeding train was about to hit me.

EXCELLENT, as always!!!

If I fail playing the neutral chord in a song, tell my band leader: “hello”.

"Think about when you're talking with another person. Are consciously thinking of every word that you're saying?" *Nervous sweat*

The half sharp third reminds me of a baby tritone because it's also exactly in the middle of two tonal markers. In this case, those markers just happen to be a root and a fifth instead of a root and an octave. Music ideas? Half-sharp substitutions, half-sharp blues, etc.

Phrygian dominant is a mode of the harmonic minor scale, and it's used all the time in metal and middle eastern music :)

A neutral third is also half a fifth (350 cents out of 700 cents, or approximately √(3/2):1)

6:08 I said no out loud to this most cursed licc

6:09 It increases about 3dB for every player doing the same thing at the same distance to the listener. It happens because even though the acoustic pressure is actually doubled, our ears percieve intensity logarithmically, not in a linear way. Awesome video as always btw!

This is a question I've had for a long time and I would love to hear your thoughts in the next Q&A video. As history and time has progressed, we've always adapted our definition of what we'd call "classic music", "vintage music", "oldies" or "retro". As an example, "Classic Rock" is generally considered today to be a period of Rock and Roll music between 1958 and 1989. (I'm sure there is some debate to be had with the period here, and that is part of the point). During the 20th century, music recording and preservation had been a slow and specialized process. Vinyl recordings, then 8-tracks, then cassette tapes, and CDs before we finally had early online streaming at the tail end of the millennium. What this meant in the past was that less people had easy access to music productions and methods of distribution. You needed physical instruments, a place to record, a way to capture the sound and most importantly a way to get that music in front of a lot of people. In short, less people had the opportunity or the resources to get their sound out to the ear of the public. Fast forward to the current century and thanks to the internet, anyone with a laptop and some creative vision can start producing their own music and put it in front of millions of people in a matter of hours. Right now, the general public (excluding musical niches) still looks back fondly on music of the Beatles or Rolling Stones, which is now 50 years old. As people of the current generation grow older, are we perhaps looking at more current and contemporary artists as "classics" at a faster rate than before? Think about Backstreet Boys, Nirvana or even Coldplay. Earliest albums by these artists, despite only being 20-30 years old are already considered "retro" by some people today. Even some artists and albums that released 10-15 years ago are already being looked at with nostalgia. Do you think that our technological technological advances of the 21st century has shortened the amount of time that will pass before something is considered "retro" or "classic" music? Are we creating music at a faster rate that will be considered "hits" in the next 20-30 years? Maybe even shortening to 10 or 15 years? Simple math would tell us that having more music in general out in the public eye will statically generate more "hits" than we had before. Your thoughts?

Hey Adam, potential question for your next q and a. I had an idea for a different way of looking at neutral chords. Chords are typically stacked thirds, which is how we get major and minor. The neutral third feels a bit misnamed here though as the chord itself is theoretically neutral but sonically really at war with itself. I put forth a sort of neutral chord that sounds neutral rather than is theoretical neutral. The root, the fourth, and the octave. A suspended chord with no color if you will. When I heard this, it was the closest musically I've ever come to feeling balanced, a sort of sonic neutrality. It didn't need to go anywhere or do anything, and moving this around you can achieve some really interesting pandiatonic melodies. Thoughts? I do know that this cluster of notes might be hard to justify as a chord given traditional understandings of what a chord is and the functions they serve.

11:51 DUDE THATS INSANEINTHERAINMUSIC! No wonder he made a whole auditorium sing the lick in his k.k. cruisin video haha

When you played the neutral twice with “major?” and “minor?” it genuinely sounded more major when “major?” was shown and vice versa. Musical priming? 🤔

6:08 neutral lick absolutely brilliant adam neely is a treasure

"Super Fast Instagram Q and A" *makes 13 minute long video* We love you, Neely. Never change.

Question for Q+A: I've met people who CLAIM to be able to tell, just by listening, whether a song is written in F# major or Gb major. It's one thing to have perfect pitch, but deducing the exact enharmonic spelling of the key signature the composer intended... seems farfetched. Is there any truth to this ability? Thanks!

Adam: Uploads super fast instagram q+a Me: *Clicks super fast*

A great neutral chord is the pure nine, use roots fives and ninth. This can have a majestic feel as a strum. It brings to mind the tolling of a big bell

Thank you, Adam. Despite tinkering with music for about 40 years, you have just caused my own Dunning-Kruger moment. I thought I knew a little bit about music.

4:23 when you're a minor trying to buy beer and try to convince the seller to just sell it to you

"I talked about this in my TedX Talk" I hope we can all strive to be that humble

Magic Sam, the great Chicago bluesman, had a bunch of songs with no thirds in the rhythm guitar or bassline. It’s the lead guitar or vocal that determines the minor/major nature. Very interesting sound.

His voice is my sound therapy

For the doubling of loudness, I can say this: when I was in my speech acoustics class, our professor gave us an example with candles. If you have 1 candle, it has a preceived brightness of X. To get to 2X, you would need 3 of these identical candles burning with identical brightness. To double that 2X brightness (and get to 4X) you would need 8 of those candles. Just remembered this example and decided to post it

The "D-Neutral" sounds like a Punch in the nose.

Question for your next Q&A: How would you go around notating a brush kit? Is there a standardized way of doing it?

My favorite thing about Neely is Adam's casual humble brags are always so subtle, they don't register as annoying.

I took part in a 24 hour comic once, and it was an incredible experience. I heartily recommend doing any creative 24 hour thing.

Word combinations like “ardent microtonalists” are of the various reasons why I watch this channel. 🙋🏻‍♂️ @ 4:22

No apologies need to be made for being that guy, The Wire is the best show ever made. Big fan of your videos, thanks for existing :)

I learn a lot from your videos. Thanks!

6:04 spilled my coffee at that one

So that “neutral” triad is vertically symmetrical, like a diminished or augmented triad, isn’t it? Meaning that the interval from D to Fhalf# (7 quarter tones) is the same interval from Fhalf# to A.

What's in between Major and Minor chords? In terms of ratios of frequencies, sus4 and sus2 are inbetween, not as basic as the major chord but not as complex as a minor chord. When the tonic is at the root we have, in order of complexity: Major (4 : 5 : 6), sus4 (6 : 8 : 9), sus2 (8 : 9 : 12) and minor (12 : 19 : 24)

At 4:40, I use that double stop shape a lot on bass; it does have application. It can induce a feeling of vague worry, alarm, or even hopelessness or sinking sadness; a sensation of something slipping away. In the proper context, it can drag a person down into incredible lows.

The “neutral” third reminded you of a car horn. It reminded me of the tritone, which would be a neutral third above the neutral third. Could you play a triad of the tonic, neutral third, and tritone? I’m curious if it would give the tritone a more stable sound- or even sound major.

Damn he probably got copyright claimed for that smoke on the water part

Me: I can play an E Chord on guitar in E standart. Adam: Shreds saxy solo on ukulele.

No joke im watching this sitting in a parking lot waiting to go into work. When you played that neutral chord I was looking around for someone honking their horn. You kept playing it and thought it was some one wanting me to move.