Translator: Joseph Geni
Reviewer: Thu-Huong Ha I thought if I skipped it might help my nerves, but I'm actually having a paradoxical reaction to that, so that was a bad idea. (Laughter) Anyway, I was really delighted to receive the invitation to present to you some of my music and some of my work as a composer, presumably because it appeals to my well-known and abundant narcissism. (Laughter) And I'm not kidding, I just think we should just say that and move forward. (Laughter) So, but the thing is, a dilemma quickly arose, and that is that I'm really bored with music, and I'm really bored with the role of the composer, and so I decided to put that idea, boredom, as the focus of my presentation to you today.
And I'm going to share my music with you, but I hope that I'm going to do so in a way that tells a story, tells a story about how I used boredom as a catalyst for creativity and invention, and how boredom actually forced me to change the fundamental question that I was asking in my discipline, and how boredom also, in a sense, pushed me towards taking on roles beyond the sort of most traditional, narrow definition of a composer. What I'd like to do today is to start with an excerpt of a piece of music at the piano. (Music) Okay, I wrote that. (Laughter) No, it's not (Applause) Oh, why thank you.
No, no, I didn't write that. In fact, that was a piece by Beethoven, and so I was not functioning as a composer. Just now I was functioning in the role of the interpreter, and there I am, interpreter. So, an interpreter of what? Of a piece of music, right? But we can ask the question, "But is it music?" And I say this rhetorically, because of course by just about any standard we would have to concede that this is, of course, a piece of music, but I put this here now because, just to set it in your brains for the moment, because we're going to return to this question.
It's going to be a kind of a refrain as we go through the presentation. So here we have this piece of music by Beethoven, and my problem with it is, it's boring. I mean, you I'm just like, a hush, huh -- It's like -- (Laughter) It's Beethoven, how can you say that? No, well, I don't know, it's very familiar to me. I had to practice it as a kid, and I'm really sick of it.
So -- (Laughter) I would, so what I might like to try to do is to change it, to transform it in some ways, to personalize it, so I might take the opening, like this idea -- (Music) and then I might substitute -- (Music) and then I might improvise on that melody that goes forward from there -- (Music) (Music) So that might be the kind of thing -- Why thank you. (Applause) That would be the kind of thing that I would do, and it's not necessarily better than the Beethoven. In fact, I think it's not better than it. The thing is -- (Laughter) -- it's more interesting to me.
It's less boring for me. I'm really leaning into me, because I, because I have to think about what decisions I'm going to make on the fly as that Beethoven text is running in time through my head and I'm trying to figure out what kinds of transformations I'm going to make to it. So this is an engaging enterprise for me, and I've really leaned into that first person pronoun thing there, and now my face appears twice, so I think we can agree that this is a fundamentally solipsistic enterprise. (Laughter) But it's an engaging one, and it's interesting to me for a while, but then I get bored with it, and by it, I actually mean, the piano, because it becomes, it's this familiar instrument, it's timbral range is actually pretty compressed, at least when you play on the keyboard, and if you're not doing things like listening to it after you've lit it on fire or something like that, you know.
It gets a little bit boring, and so pretty soon I go through other instruments, they become familiar, and eventually I find myself designing and constructing my own instrument, and I brought one with me today, and I thought I would play a little bit on it for you so you can hear what it sounds like. (Music) You gotta have doorstops, that's important. (Laughter) I've got combs. They're the only combs that I own.
(Music) They're all mounted on my instruments. (Laughter) (Music) I can actually do all sorts of things. I can play with a violin bow. I don't have to use the chopsticks.
So we have this sound. (Music) And with a bank of live electronics, I can change the sounds radically. (Music) (Music) Like that, and like this. (Music) And so forth.
So this gives you a little bit of an idea of the sound world of this instrument, which I think is quite interesting and it puts me in the role of the inventor, and the nice thing about This instrument is called the Mouseketeer ... (Laughter) and the cool thing about it is I'm the world's greatest Mouseketeer player. (Laughter) Okay? (Applause) So in that regard, this is one of the things, this is one of the privileges of being, and here's another role, the inventor, and by the way, when I told you that I'm the world's greatest, if you're keeping score, we've had narcissism and solipsism and now a healthy dose of egocentricism. I know some of you are just, you know, bingo! Or, I don't know.
(Laughter) Anyway, so this is also a really enjoyable role. I should concede also that I'm the world's worst Mouseketeer player, and it was this distinction that I was most worried about when I was on that prior side of the tenure divide. I'm glad I'm past that. We're not going to go into that.
I'm crying on the inside. There are still scars. Anyway, but I guess my point is that all of these enterprises are engaging to me in their multiplicity, but as I've presented them to you today, they're actually solitary enterprises, and so pretty soon I want to commune with other people, and so I'm delighted that in fact I get to compose works for them. I get to write, sometimes for soloists and I get to work with one person, sometimes full orchestras, and I work with a lot of people, and this is probably the capacity, the role creatively for which I'm probably best known professionally.
Now, some of my scores as a composer look like this, and others look like this, and some look like this, and I make all of these by hand, and it's really tedious. It takes a long, long time to make these scores, and right now I'm working on a piece that's 180 pages in length, and it's just a big chunk of my life, and I'm just pulling out hair. I have a lot of it, and that's a good thing I suppose. (Laughter) So this gets really boring and really tiresome for me, so after a while the process of notating is not only boring, but I actually want the notation to be more interesting, and so that's pushed me to do other projects like this one.
This is an excerpt from a score called "The Metaphysics of Notation." The full score is 72 feet wide. It's a bunch of crazy pictographic notation. Let's zoom in on one section of it right here. You can see it's rather detailed.
I do all of this with drafting templates, with straight edges, with French curves, and by freehand, and the 72 feet was actually split into 12 six-foot-wide panels that were installed around the Cantor Arts Center Museum lobby balcony, and it appeared for one year in the museum, and during that year, it was experienced as visual art most of the week, except, as you can see in these pictures, on Fridays, from noon til one, and only during that time, various performers came and interpreted these strange and undefined pictographic glyphs. (Laughter) Now this was a really exciting experience for me. It was gratifying musically, but I think the more important thing is it was exciting because I got to take on another role, especially given that it appeared in a museum, and that is as visual artist. (Laughter) We're going to fill up the whole thing, don't worry.
(Laughter) I am multitudes. (Laughter) So one of the things is that, I mean, some people would say, like, "Oh, you're being a dilettante," and maybe that's true. I can understand how, I mean, because I don't have a pedigree in visual art and I don't have any training, but it's just something that I wanted to do as an extension of my composition, as an extension of a kind of creative impulse. I can understand the question, though.
"But is it music?" I mean, there's not any traditional notation. I can also understand that sort of implicit criticism in this piece, "S-tog," which I made when I was living in Copenhagen. I took the Copenhagen subway map and I renamed all the stations to abstract musical provocations, and the players, who are synchronized with stopwatches, follow the timetables, which are listed in minutes past the hour. So this is a case of actually adapting something, or maybe stealing something, and then turning it into a musical notation.
Another adaptation would be this piece. I took the idea of the wristwatch, and I turned it into a musical score. I made my own faces, and had a company fabricate them, and the players follow these scores. They follow the second hands, and as they pass over the various symbols, the players respond musically.
Here's another example from another piece, and then its realization. So in these two capacities, I've been scavenger, in the sense of taking, like, the subway map, right, or thief maybe, and I've also been designer, in the case of making the wristwatches. And once again, this is, for me, interesting. Another role that I like to take on is that of the performance artist.
Some of my pieces have these kind of weird theatric elements, and I often perform them. I want to show you a clip from a piece called "Echolalia." This is actually being performed by Brian McWhorter, who is an extraordinary performer. Let's watch a little bit of this, and please notice the instrumentation. (Music) Okay, I hear you were laughing nervously because you too could hear that the drill was a little bit sharp, the intonation was a little questionable.
(Laughter) Let's watch just another clip. (Music) You can see the mayhem continues, and there's, you know, there were no clarinets and trumpets and flutes and violins. Here's a piece that has an even more unusual, more peculiar instrumentation. This is "Tln," for three conductors and no players.
(Laughter) This was based on the experience of actually watching two people having a virulent argument in sign language, which produced no decibels to speak of, but affectively, psychologically, was a very loud experience. So, yeah, I get it, with, like, the weird appliances and then the total absence of conventional instruments and this glut of conductors, people might, you know, wonder, yeah, "Is this music?" But let's move on to a piece where clearly I'm behaving myself, and that is my "Concerto for Orchestra." You're going to notice a lot of conventional instruments in this clip. (Music) (Music) This, in fact, is not the title of this piece. I was a bit mischievous.
In fact, to make it more interesting, I put a space right in here, and this is the actual title of the piece. Let's continue with that same excerpt. (Music) It's better with a florist, right? (Laughter) (Music) Or at least it's less boring. Let's watch a couple more clips.
(Music) So with all these theatric elements, this pushes me in another role, and that would be, possibly, the dramaturge. I was playing nice. I had to write the orchestra bits, right? Okay? But then there was this other stuff, right? There was the florist, and I can understand that, once again, we're putting pressure on the ontology of music as we know it conventionally, but let's look at one last piece today I'm going to share with you. This is going to be a piece called "Aphasia," and it's for hand gestures synchronized to sound, and this invites yet another role, and final one I'll share with you, which is that of the choreographer.
And the score for the piece looks like this, and it instructs me, the performer, to make various hand gestures at very specific times synchronized with an audio tape, and that audio tape is made up exclusively of vocal samples. I recorded an awesome singer, and I took the sound of his voice in my computer, and I warped it in countless ways to come up with the soundtrack that you're about to hear. And I'll perform just an excerpt of "Aphasia" for you here. Okay? (Music) So that gives you a little taste of that piece.
(Applause) Yeah, okay, that's kind of weird stuff. Is it music? Here's how I want to conclude. I've decided, ultimately, that this is the wrong question, that this is not the important question. The important question is, "Is it interesting?" And I follow this question, not worrying about "Is it music?" -- Not worrying about the definition of the thing that I'm making.
I allow my creativity to push me in directions that are simply interesting to me, and I don't worry about the likeness of the result to some notion, some paradigm, of what music composition is supposed to be, and that has actually urged me, in a sense, to take on a whole bunch of different roles, and so what I want you to think about is, to what extent might you change the fundamental question in your discipline, and, okay, I'm going to put one extra little footnote in here, because, like, I realized I mentioned some psychological defects earlier, and we also, along the way, had a fair amount of obsessive behavior, and there was some delusional behavior and things like that, and here I think we could say that this is an argument for self-loathing and a kind of schizophrenia, at least in the popular use of the term, and I really mean dissociative identity disorder, okay. (Laughter) Anyway, despite those perils, I would urge you to think about the possibility that you might take on roles in your own work, whether they are neighboring or far-flung from your professional definition. And with that, I thank you very much. (Applause) (Applause).
T.I.: I did found and present trap music first.
I did not alone get it where it is right now today. There were other people who made very significant
contributions to it, that took it places that I didn't, that did things for it that I hadn't. But I started it. Rob Markman: What's up geniuses? Welcome back to For the Record.
I'm your host, Rob Markman. Now, today's guest is just one of the
illest rappers to ever do it, alright? He has number one albums. He has number one singles. Bars for days, okay.
He's a label head. He's an actor, a fashion label designer, and
he has a new show on BET titled The Grand Hustle.' Oh yeah, and if you act up he still might
whip your ass man. I'd like to welcome to For the Record, the
King. T.I.: No, no violence.
T.I.: You know people sue nowadays, man. You gotta keep your hands to yourself. Rob Markman: We gone take that back Tip, man. Rob Markman: How you doing man? T.I.: I'm chilling.
How about you? Rob Markman: I'm doing good man. Congratulations, man, new show on BET, The
Grand Hustle. Rob Markman: We all gone be tuned in it. It's really interesting to me because when
you look at your career and the duration of your career and all the things that you
do, I try to rattle off and give a picture of everything that you did throughout your
career, and this feels impossible.
Your hustle is kind of unmatched. You're the perfect guy to get on TV and give
game to a new generation. T.I.: Man, I appreciate the opportunity to
be here to be available, you know, to try to just offer some insight, or some helpful,
guiding tips on how to get from where people are to where they want to be. That's flattering.
It's a honor to do that. Rob Markman: What was the moment for you coming
up? When did that change happen right? Because hip hop is such a beautiful thing. I think most artists, you come in, and when
you're really serious about your craft, you come in just wanting to be the best rapper
... The best at your craft.
Rob Markman: And then, when you accomplish
that, all these doors open. And we seen it with you. We seen it with Jay-Z. We seen it with Dr.
Dre. T.I.: Sure. Rob Markman: We seen it with Diddy. At what point, if you could pinpoint the moment
when your eyes opened up, and was like "Man I could take everything that I may have learned
in my previous life before rap, and now that I rap and my talent is here, that I can open
all these other doors for me and people around me?" T.I.: Probably somewhere between, I'm Serious,
and Trap Muzik.
You know, when the first album didn't really
work as well as I had hoped, or we'd hoped or expected. You know what I'm saying? Like the process of us pulling it back together
and not waiting on the label to do nothing, but actually putting our boots on the ground
and operating as an independent label. You know, I think that that was probably the
first moment for me. Rob Markman: So you started realizing you're
more than a rapper and you can do more than? T.I.: Nah.
I realized that, that there was a dire need
for more than just rap. I couldn't sit back and wait on somebody
else to fulfill that need. I had to get out there and we had to mobilize
ourselves, align our efforts to do it together. Rob Markman: I remember man, and it was around
that time, that really made me a real, kind of fan of yours.
I was the type of kid coming up, I'd buy everything. Rob Markman: If there was a single that I
liked, I'd get the whole album. T.I.: Right on. Me too.
Because you a hip hop hit. Like it's things that's just undeniable. It's in your DNA. You had a joint with Beenie Man.
It was your first single produced by the Neptunes. T.I.: Yep, I'm Serious. Rob Markman: On I'm Serious, yep. And I was digging that, so I said, "Man, I'm
going to get the 'I'm Serious' album." T.I.: I appreciate that.
You are one of the 14,000 that staggered into
the record store and bought it the first week. Rob Markman: I aint say I got it the first
week now. T.I.: Damn. We still got to find out who those 14,000
was.
Rob Markman: I don't remember when I had bought
it but I remember I copped it. Being in New York, I wasn't around for it,
because there was a mixtape grind to it. It was a real street-level, boots-to-the-ground
grind with the "Dope Boyz" record and that whole movement. T.I.: Sure.
Rob Markman: If I'm being honest, as a
fan, being in New York, you had kind of fell off my radar for a minute. This is pre-internet where everything just
wasn't accessible. And I heard you give an interview on Hot 97
in the lead up to Trap Muzik. And, really, what made me a fan was just the
way you was talking about that independent hustle, that go-get-it and how you restarted
your whole career.
I said, "Man, I got to go check it." And I liked "24." So I was probably gonna buy the album anyway,
and maybe get Trap Muzik. And it was over after that. T.I.: Hey man, I truly appreciate it. That was 15 years ago, man.
August 19, 2003. That was 15 years ago. Rob Markman: So we got a anniversary we got
to celebrate, man. Rob Markman: What about these candidates on
The Grand Hustle? Are they music people? T.I.: Some of them.
Rob Markman: Who did you pull from? Who are these cast of characters that we get
to see? T.I.: The one thing that I had absolutely
no hand in, was the selecting of the cast. I didn't view them, approve them. I hadn't seen them before you saw me walk
in that room. That was our first time meeting.
Just quite honestly man, they come
from all walks of life. They have different backgrounds, different
experiences, different ambitions. But they all gone have to serve one purpose. Rob Markman: The king.
That's that King talk, man. It's good. It'll be interesting to see, man. Because I think you really are ...
As successful
as you are man, very relatable. People see your success and it inspires us
to believe that we can do it ourselves- T.I.: Well you can. I'm living proof that you can. Ain't no real difference in where I came from
than where anyone else came from.
Maybe the timing of when we had to endure. But for the most part, if I can make it out
of what I made it out of, anybody can do anything. Rob Markman: You definitely made waves. I want to talk about some music, too.
Because man, you're just one of the greatest
to ever do it. T.I.: Thank you. Rob Markman: And the musical moments that
you've provided for us have been endless. Be it, Trap Muzik, be it records like,
"Swagga Like Us", be it like, King, Again, going back to the record store, I remember
King, and ATL being out in the same week.
T.I.: Yeah. Rob Markman: Whitney Houston ... Like, we
hadn't seen that type of movement. That was the first time I think, I went to
the record store.
And that one, I went to go get the first day. The Friday it came out. T.I.: That's what's up. Rob Markman: And Best Buy was sold out.
I didn't get King the first week. T.I.: Damn. Rob Markman: I went to go get it, but they
was sold out. T.I.: Back then, they came out on Tuesdays.
Rob Markman: Right. It was Tuesday, that's right. T.I.: Yep. I mean, man, that was another milestone in
my career, to release an album on Tuesday, and a movie on Friday.
That's something that hip hop hadn't seen. I'm just proud and happy that I was able
to achieve such levels of success. And you still been giving us these musical
moments. Earlier this year you collaborated with Kanye
West.
T.I.: Yeah. Rob Markman: On "Ye vs. The People". It was one of those records, not a hit record
by any means, but one of those moments when every hip hop fan had to listen, had to get
a little closer to they speaker and figure out what was going on.
T.I.: It was a moment for the culture. I mean, honored to be a part of that moment. I think the discussion was an important one,
and it still is. And I think that using that piece of art as
a platform to kind of break the ice on some much needed dialogue that could possibly bring
people together to work for change.
Because it started as a conversation between
you and him, and then it was a conversation in the world. Did you know that it was going to release
in this way-? No. I had no idea. I never thought he'd let it out.
I never thought he'd release it to the world. I just didn't. But, I was wrong. I mean, hell, you know.
24 Hours later, it was out. Rob Markman: You're not used to working. I'm not used to it. But it don't bother me.
T.I.: You know what I'm saying? To be able to be that flexible, and move kind
of, I guess, at the speed of opportunity like that, I admire that. Rob Markman: It kind of made sense to me when
I heard that he got you on it, and the construction of the record, because it reminded me of a
record that you had done. You kind of mastered that style of record
with, "T.I. Vs T.I.P", the actual record on Trap Muzik, where you have a by-yourself
conversation where you going back and forth.
T.I.: I produced that record as a matter of
fact. Rob Markman: I'm trying to picture you on the beat machine. T.I.: I can still produce some heat. It gone take me a few beats just to get reacclimated.
Then it also would depend on what kind of
equipment we use. So what was your weapon of choice back then? T.I.: Was it the MPC 3? T.I.: MPC 3, and it was the ASR ... Rob Markman: ASR-10? And, the Phantom ... Rob Markman: Okay, yeah.
Triton was out, Phantom was out. Rob Markman: There were these big keyboard
sounds. That's what I use. Finna give Just Blaze a run for his money.
Rob Markman: I saw you and Just Blaze were
together recently, man. T.I.: Yeah, man. Rob Markman: Anymore heat coming? T.I.: Yeah, we were working on "The Dime Trap". T.I.: Yeah.
It's coming, freakishly soon. T.I.: But yeah, "T.I. Vs T.I.P.", Man, I produced
that record, and I think that conversational style of delivery, it came in handy for "Ye
vs The People," definitely. Rob Markman: You mentioned "The Dime Trap,
and I want to get into that, but I want to talk to you about ...
You dropped a very important
project that, for the life of me, I couldn't understand why it wasn't more celebrated. I think hip hop failed in a way. "Us or Else. Look man, you're a guy that's no stranger
to the news cycle to the media.
Rob Markman: We've seen your ups and your
downs. T.I.: Sure. Rob Markman: So, everybody knows who T.I.
Is, and everybody covers T.I. I was really disappointed when you dropped
songs like, "Black Man, "I Believe, "Letter to the System," and they don't spread
as fast as a controversy so to speak.
How did you receive that once that album put out? Did it meet your expectations? Or did the people meet your expectations? T.I.: I had no expectations. I just had some thoughts, some feelings, opinions
that I felt that I had to get out. I had to express myself in music that way. That was the most important thing to me.
The way it was received, I wasn't really tripping
off that. Rob Markman: As a fan, and somebody in the
media, I'm like why can't Black Man be the number one record in the country? Can we get to that? Because we see it all around us. It directly speaks to, still, what's going
on right now. And that was maybe, what? We're talking about two and half years ago,
at this point? 2000 And it was, 15- Rob Markman: Right.
15, 16. Rob Markman: So, on "The Dime Trap, man,
where you going with it? It's the evolution of "Trap Muzik. It's a commemorative album to celebrate the
15th anniversary, but it's definitely evolved to a place where once, trap music was once
the philosophy of present-day dope boys. It has now grown to a place where it is the
philosophy of former, retired dope boys.
And I think that making it through that life,
enduring and overcoming the pitfalls and consequences that come with that lifestyle while not compromising
the morals, standards, and principles that I developed within the lifestyle, the perspective
is much different, but the energy is the same. T.I.: I think about being former drug-dealer
like. The fact that I ain't selling no dope no more,
I ain't got no bricks, no keys, that ain't really the life I'm living. However, it's sort of like if you meet a alcoholic
and he's recovering, he's battling his addiction day to day.
He could've been clean for 10 years. Although he's not waking up everyday going
to have a drink, he could still articulate exactly how alcohol tastes, how it makes you
feel. There are still very, very fond memories,
very vivid pictures in his mind about the things that he experienced while he was trapped
within the lifestyle, while he was battling his addiction. Just because he didn't have a drink today
or yesterday doesn't mean that he can't talk about the effects of it, how it made him feel,
and what it took away from him, and what it gave to him.
That's how I look at us as former drug dealers
making trap music right now. Rob Markman: You know, it's amazing. Trap music is obviously the most, I think,
popular moving genre within hip hop right now. It's no lie, and you're at the forefront and
at the origins of that.
There's a lot of debate that goes on for you,
social media debate. You, Gucci Mane, who started trap music? T.I.: There's no debate. Rob Markman: There is no debate because you
state very clearly that it was T.I. If you check the timeline- T.I.: The great thing about history is it
is documented with dates and facts.
I mean, there's data. So, for us to take our opinion and try to
override that shows that something is terribly wrong with us. There's nothing wrong with the facts. There's something wrong with you, not being
willing to accept the facts.
But I understand it. There were other people who made very significant
contributions to it, that took it places that I didn't, that did things for it that I hadn't. T.I.: What's everybody's favorite phone now? Rob Markman: The iPhone? T.I.: Okay. The iPhone.
Everybody loves the iPhone. We appreciate it, right? It's an evolved apparatus for cellular communication. However, you can never take anything away
from the Motorola block phone. The Motorola block phone was here first.
Rob Markman: Right. T.I.: It was here first. And then, you can't take away nothing from
that. You can't take away nothing away from the
flip phone, from the Nokia chirp.
You know. T.I.: All of the different phones that evolved
from the block phone, they led us up to the iPhone. Rob Markman: To get it where it is today. T.I.: You appreciate the iPhone for what it
is and where it is today, and what you are able to do and use it for, but you can never
discredit ...
You can't never say, "The iPhone was the first cell phone." You'll sound stupid saying that. Rob Markman: Right. T.I.: You'll just sound stupid. T.I.: You know what I'm saying? So, I think that when you have that knowledge
and understanding, it makes it easier for me to accept the outrageousness of others.
Rob Markman: And I bring that up just because
I appreciate the way that you articulated where trap music is and where you're going
with 'The Dime Trap,' just it being this appreciation for, really, guys that changed
they lives. T.I.: Yeah, man. This is a lifestyle. And that's another thing, right? Who would have thought, during the crack epidemic? Knowing that the government made deals with
Nicaragua to get cocaine in exchange for guns, took that cocaine and brought it back here
to our communities, taught someone in ...
Rob Markman: Los Angeles, right. T.I.: Los Angeles how to cook crack, took
that method to make cocaine less expensive, to be affordable by poor people, then changed
the laws to basically enslave us for increasingly large amounts of time, just by adding baking
soda and water and heat to the same substance, so, who knew that from all that destruction
and devastation that the activities that derived from that lifestyle would inspire a music
that we could use to change the lives and lifestyles of our families forever? T.I.: That's a true testament to what the
devil means for bad, God uses for good. I think that's the beauty of trap music. The fact that we narrating our experiences,
but regardless of how heinous the music may sound, or how irresponsible it may come off,
just realize, we could either still be out there selling crack, serving a lifetime in
prison, or dead.
You know what I'm saying? It ain't but so many ways to make it out of
the crack era or the crack epidemic. We took it and turned it into a revenue stream,
and used that to change the lifestyles of our families forever. I think that's pretty fucking dope. Rob Markman: Right.
T.I.: No pun intended. Rob Markman: Pun intended. That's a bar. Look, he got bars even just in his regular
speech.
No man, and I think that's also a testament
to the hustle because it takes- T.I.: Well, see. Another thing. When we talking about the discussion, the
back-and-forth between who did what, I mean, I think that you can't argue with the facts. But, from me just kind of trying to estimate,
how can anybody even argue that? I came up with an answer.
It's because who relates to who? T.I.: Everybody's different. Some people identify with different things
for different reasons. Let's take 'The Wire,' for example. Some people watch 'The Wire,' and they identify
more with Stringer Bell, someone who is in the hustle, and hands-on, and he's doing just
as much dirt, and has just as much to gain or lose from his actions and activities, faced
just as many consequences, solved just as many problems, but he just has an aspirational
view of where he's taking himself.
This is temporary for him. He's doing this right now, but while he's
in this game, he got his mind on building skyscrapers 10 years from now, somehow. So, you may identify with him, or you may
identify with Stringer Bell, the guy with dirt up under his fingernails, who loads his
own pistols, who standing out there on the block all day- T.I.: ... Actually standing over the body,
pow, pow, blood splash on his shirt.
That may be what you identify with. So, if you identify with Stringer Bell, you
gone pretty much side with me. And if you identify with Avon Barksdale, then
you probably gone go the other way. And once I understand that that's why, that
is the real root of it.
It ain't got nothing to do with me personally. They just siding with what they feel looks
more like them? You know what I'm saying? Rob Markman: I can't wait to check out this
album. Just the game that you kicking right now leads
me to believe we in for some shit. T.I.: Man, it's gonna be eventful.
Rob Markman: Yo, man. This is For The Record man. I want to do a quick game with you, word association. Rob Markman: For a little segment we call
"Record Break, I'm just going to throw out at you rapid fire questions, and you
answer the first thing that comes into your mind.
You ready? Cool. What's the record that made you want to rap? T.I.: "I'm Bad, by LL Cool J. Rob Markman: That's a good record. It's a great record.
Rob Markman: You got a long discography, now. What's T.I.'S best record, in T.I's opinion? T.I.: 'The Dime Trap.' Rob Markman: Just like that. Rob Markman: We got to see. I got to get this record, man.
Rob Markman: What's the one record that wasn't
yours that you hear and wish that you wrote? T.I.: I don't really hear nothing and wish
that I wrote it but I've heard records that I had, that were mine, and I didn't use them
quick enough and they came out later to become hits. T.I.: "Stir Fry" is one of them. Rob Markman: What's another one? T.I.: Nicki Minaj, Did It On Em. Rob Markman: You had that? That's Bangladesh beat.
T.I.: Yeah, Bangladesh. Bangladesh brought that to me first. Yep. Yep.
There's a few of them. Those two, they stand out to me the most. T.I.: Oh, well, this is one record that was
mine that I didn't ... O.T.
Genesis, "Cash On it? It was going to be on "The Dime Trap. I didn't move on it fast enough. He said, "Man, I'm gone just use it for me." "It's cool." I'm like, "Damn, bruh." Alright. Cool.
Let me see here. Those are the ones that just come and jump
off at me right off top, but I experienced those moments more times than that. Rob Markman: You've collaborated a lot with
the all time greatest, from Little Wayne, to Jay-Z, to Eminem. The list is endless.
And you hold your own. You're a damn fine MC. T.I.: Oh, I'm gonna burn your ass up in there,
you come in there playing around. Don't get it tangled up, twisted now.
Rob Markman: What's the one record you felt
like you might have got got on by somebody? Was it anybody? T.I.: Man, you got, "I'm Sorry" with Andre
3000 on 'Trouble Man.' Which record was that? Was it the Killer Mike ... The "Action Remix"
with Bun B? Rob Markman: Right. T.I.: Yeah, Bun B fired my ass up. Welcome to the rap game.
Those are the only two that really,
really stuck out. Rob Markman: I mean this, if you gone get
burned by some ... Andre 3000, Bun B are not- T.I.: Then, arguably, Eminem on- Rob Markman: Was it "Touchdown, was it? T.I.: "Touchdown, was it "Touchdown?" I think I might have got him on "Touchdown. I think I'm talking about "That's All She
Wrote.
It's one or the other, one or the other. Rob Markman: And you've burned many MCs
in your days. T.I.: Oh, yeah, man, swore it, stay driven. Swore it, stay driven.
Rob Markman: Alright, man. Two more things before we head out of here,
man. Now hip hop is full of these mysteries, these
urban legends that we just are dying to solve. Recently on Drake's album, Jay-Z, once again
confirmed that he did, indeed, lose 90 bricks.
And we're all trying to figure out how that
happened. That make my stomach hurt right
now. Rob Markman: It's been said that the Nick
player that Biggie was talking about on "...Story to Tell", it hadn't been confirmed, is the
late, great, Anthony Mason. That was another hip hop mystery that has
solved.
I wanted to know if we can solve one today. T.I.: What is that? Rob Markman: I want to know if we can still
clear up who T.I. Was aiming at on, "I'm Talkin' to You?" That's one of the great hip hop mysteries. T.I.: Hey man.
Just to be honest with you, the concept for
"I'm Talkin' to You" was really based on "How can I send several messages out?" Just in
case somebody might have been thinking sideways about me. T.I.: It was for the people who have quiet
conversations covertly, without me knowing. The things I never hear about in rooms that
I'm not in, how can I speak to them? I say, "Well, if I talk to everybody I'm not
talking to, then, if I don't say their names, and they were talking about me then they would
automatically know I'm talking to them. But, if I don't say their names, and they
weren't talking about me, they have no reason to feel guilty.
That was my approach. Rob Markman: Art of war. Nobody took the bait though, right? I felt like nobody felt froggy enough. T.I.: Listen man, don't nobody want this kind
of pressure man.
This shit tough now. You got to bring some ass to get some. Shit, sometime you can't save ass and your
face at the same time. You got to choose one.
You save your ass, you gone lose your face. You save your face, you gone lose your ass. I think people want challenges that they can
kind of dictate whether or not they're going to come out successful. They don't want this.
They don't want these issues. Rob Markman: That's a great answer. That's a excellent dance by the way, man. It makes all the sense in the world.
That was great footwork. We still didn't get the name we was looking
for, so we'll- T.I.: Ain't no name. Ain't no name. Man, it's a long list of suckers in my book,
at different times in my life I think back, and like, "Man, they hating,
man." "They don't want to see me make it." "They scared I'm coming for they spot." And you know, this is just conversations that,
as competitors, this is how we speak to ourselves.
This is how we feel. Sometimes we could be being paranoid, and
other times we could be right on the money, but just ain't got the substantiated justification
to actually take the action or initiative that we think we should. So, like I said, you got to find broad ways
to spread out in different directions. Rob Markman: Right.
No I hear you man. TIP, man, always love. It's always a pleasure to be able to talk
with you, get that insight from you. This show is For The Record, so I want to
leave you with this.
At the end of the show, we ask every guest
to just finish the sentence to clear up whatever they might wanted to clear up, or anything
they want the people to know. So the floor is yours, if you can finish this
sentence. "For the record T.I.: For the record, trap music was conceived
on I'm Serious, with Dope Boyz, and "Trap Nigga. It was permanently established August 19th,
2003.
No cap. Rob Markman: And there you got it. Rob Markman: T.I., Man, thank you for coming
through. T.I.: Right on, bro.
(Peter) Welcome to our most glorious nation. Papers, please and we'll get you on your way. Please provide some identification. Tell me now, how long do you plan to stay? (AJ) Please sir, let me through! My family has the flu! They're dying in Arstotzka while I'm stuck in here with you! (Peter) Sir, your state ID.
Is out of date, I see. But since you've implored it, I simply ignore it! The rest seems good to me. Welcome to greatest country, Arstotzka. Papers, please or you will not be allowed.
Just a few simple questions to ask ya- I will stamp your passport once these things you have avowed. Is this here your name? Your visa's not the same. (Miss Bird) I changed it only Sunday- (Peter) Where's the proof to back your claim? (Miss Bird) Please, I have not lied! I am a brand new bride. My husband's awaiting consumating! (Peter) Your entry is DENIED.
(Miss Bird) Hmph! (Arstotzkan Leaders) We, the leaders of Arstotzka hereby raise security. Every permit must be signed upside-down or you'll be fined. Glory to Arstotzka! You will tear up every visa from a person with a beard. Every woman, child and man from Antegria is banned.
Glory to- Glory to Arstotzka! (Peter) Welcome into our beautiful country. Papers, please or I'll have you thrown in jail. Please forgive, I must put this quite bluntly- On this card, it says that you are a male. ("Woman") Oh, I got that changed! I've since been 'rearranged'.
(Peter) If you're no man, this body scan sure looks a little strange... ("Woman") Surely this could make it all a small mistake? (Peter) A false alarm, ma'am. Do no harm! ("Woman") I've got some LIVES to take! (Arstotzkan Leaders) In the interest of Arstotzka we impose new protocols. (Explosion and car alarms in the background) Every migrant overweight you must now interrogate Glory to- Glory to Arstotzka! (Rebel) Hey! Yes, you! Do you back the rebellion? 'Gainst the state and its grip upon the land? Vile, corrupt! Truly Machiavellian! Join the revolution! Now's the time to take a stand! (Peter) Listen, sir, you seem suspicious and extreme.
(Rebel) It's true, my covert goal's- To overthrow the whole regime! (Peter) Which side should I choose? When either way I lose? My occupation, or my kids and wife? My aspirations, or my worthless life? DENY, or APPROVE! (Peter) Cause no trouble. (Rebel) I'm a hooded figure, it's what I do! (Peter) Next! Papers, please. (Beard) Oogh! (Peter) Nope! I quit..
Let's try There was a lonely guy named robert, who was feeling kind of down, so he got himself a coffee He's depressed, he wouldn't drink coffee there was a lonely guy named robert, who was feeling kind of down so he got himself a beer Sound drown clown So he got himself a beer and he saw a weird clown No, that's weird. So he got himself a beer, and then he started to drown So he got himself a beer and he made a weird sound. So he got himself a beer and then he was wearing a gown So he got himself a beer, then he had a nervous breakdown. Oh.
I got it. Was a lonely guy, named robert, who was feeling kind of down so he got himself a Beer and he sat there with a frown. His girlfriend just broke up with him that day, so things were not okay. So he got himself an uber Roberts broke.
So he got himself a lift without any hesitation driver said Where are you going? I don't have a destination, he said -that's pretty weird Why you order a car if you don't know where You are gonna go. Are you stupid or something? What the f*ck is wrong with you? It's way too aggressive Driver said where are you going? I don't have a destination, he said i know a nice bar that has great Booze i don't know what rhymes with Booze What rhymes with booze he said i know a nice bar that has great booze. I'm a big fan of tom cruise So he got himself a lift without any hesitation Driver said where are you going? I don't have a Destination. He said i know a nice bar that has great booze.
Well, I have nothing to lose So he got out of the car and made his way inside the bar. The driver out the window Yelled- please give me five stars! He then sat down to get a drink from the bartender, by the sink, that's when he saw The very thing that changed his whole reality Oh Was the prettiest face in the world She was unlike any other girl She smiled at him, her teeth as white as pearls oh, yeah~ Like any other girl So he got up from his seat cuz His heart skipped a beat, it was time to change his day, he knew just the thing to say, he said hey, she said Hey, he said hey He said sorry to interrupt Robert walked Back to his seat as he accepted his defeat, then he finished up his beer as he lost all of his cheer and he felt a hand upon his shoulder, as the air grew even colder, she said before you drank another, sorry about what happened with My brother. I thought that was your man. It's just my brother Dann.
Hey dan. Hey man. So he got right up off of his chair, then ran his fingers through her hair and There was a lonely guy named robert Who was feeling kind of down, so he got himself a beer and he sat there with a frown His girlfriend just broke up with him that day but things will be okay. Hello, make sure you click here to watch full episodes of best cover ever, which i'm also in.
And make sure to subscribe to best cover average channel only on youtube.
Translator: Eren zbay
Reviewer: Denise RQ. Thank you very much. It's true I was born into a band; very literally, I mean that literally. When I was born, my four older brothers
who were already playing music, knew that they needed a bass player (Laughter) to round out the family band.
I was born into that role. As I'm older I'm looking back right now,
now that I'm called a teacher. When I look back on that,
and how I was taught, I realized that I wasn't really taught. Which is why I say
that music is a language; because if you think
about your first language, for me, and probably
most of us here might be English, so I'm just going to go with English.
If you think about how you learned it,
you realize you weren't taught it. People just spoke to you. But the coolest thing
is where it gets interesting because you were allowed to speak back. If I take the music example, in most cases, our beginners are not
allowed to play with the better people.
You're stuck in the beginning class. You have to remain there a few years, until you are elevated
to the intermediate, and then advanced; and after you graduate the advanced class, you still have to go out
and pay a lot of dues. But with language, to use a musical term, even as a baby
you're "jamming" with professionals. All the time.
To the point that you don't even know
you're a beginner. No one says, "I can't talk to you until--
You got to go over there. When you're older,
then I can speak to you." (Laughter) That doesn't happen. No one tells you what you have to say.
You're not made
to sit in a corner and practice. You're never even corrected
when you're wrong. Think about it: when you're 2-3 years old,
and you say a word wrong over and over, no one corrects you. If you say it wrong enough times, instead of correcting you,
your parents learn your way.
(Laughter) And they start saying it wrong too! The coolest part of that
is that you remain free, with how you talk. And so you never have to follow
the musical role of learning all these years and then,
going and finding your voice. With your speaking voice,
you've never lost it. No one ever robbed you of that.
And so, when I was young
that's how I was learning; I was learning English
and music at the same time and in the same way. So I tell this to people; I usually say,
"Yeah, I started when I was two or three." And I say that just
because that's more believable. But when did you start speaking English? Did you wait until you were two or three? No. You were speaking,
I'd probably say, before birth.
Whenever you could hear
is when you probably started learning it. To me, that's very, very cool,
and very very clever of my brothers - my oldest brother, out of the five... I'm the youngest, Reggie is the oldest - He's only eight years older than me. So how he was this smart, I don't know.
That's the real question.
That should be the real TED talk. How he figured out the ingenious way of not teaching us,
younger brothers, how to play! He didn't start me
by putting a bass in my hands. No. The first thing they did
was to play music around me from my earliest age that I can remember.
I can remember living in Hawaii, my brothers would set up,
and I can remember seeing a plastic stool. A lot of times
we'd set up in the front yard where I can see a plastic stool, with a little plastic toy,
Mickey Mouse wind-up-guitar, laying on top of that stool. No one had to tell me
that that was for me. The same way no one has to tell you
when it's your turn to talk.
You know how to do it
and so I knew that stool was for me. I knew that instrument was for me. It had plastic strings on it, you would
wind it up, and it would play a song. But you couldn't really play it from
the strings, and it wasn't about that.
By the time I was old enough
to hold an instrument, they gave me something to hold
Just for the sake of holding something; preparing me for the later years. It wasn't about playing that instrument. That's the mistake
a lot of us, music teachers make: we teach kids how to play the instrument
first, before they understand music. You don't teach a kid how to spell.
Teaching a kid to spell "milk" before they've been drinking
a lot of it for a few years doesn't make sense does it? But for some reason,
we still think it does in music. We want to teach them the rules
and the instruments first. But by the time I was about two,
and they put that toy in my hands, I was already very musical
because I believe you're born musical. Just listen to anybody's voice.
Listen to any child's voice.
There's no purer music than that. So my brothers somehow knew
I was born musical, but they wanted me to be a bass player so when I was old enough,
they put a toy in my hands, and they would play. I would just bounce up and down
and strum along, too. But the coolest thing about it, again,
is it wasn't about the instrument.
I was learning to play music
not an instrument. And I continue that hopefully today. Again, what I did know
was I knew what it meant when my brother opened up his high hat
at the end of a four-bar phrase. Or I learned these phrases
versus that phrase.
The same way a baby knows what it means when the mother raises
the pitch of her voice versus the father lowering
the pitch of his. You know these things, and even though you may not
even understand what the word means. And so you're learning all these things. By the time a baby can speak a real word, they know already a lot
about the language.
So I was learning music the same way. By the time I had the instrument
in my hands, I was already very musical. When I would turn about three years old, Reggie took two strings off
of one of his six-string guitars. He took the two high strings off,
and that became my first real instrument.
So Reggie actually started teaching me to put my finger
in certain places to produce notes to songs I already knew. I wasn't starting from the beginning.
I was musical first. Now, I just had to put
that music through an instrument. And looking back on it now,
I realize that's how I learned to talk.
It wasn't about learning
the instrument first. Who cares about
the instrument you talk with? It's about what you have to say. I've always musically maintained
my own voice. I've always had something to say.
And I've learned how to speak
through my instrument. So if we think about a couple of things not being forced to practice,
not being told what you have to say - I'm speaking English again -
not being told what you have to say. When the teacher teaches you
a new word in English, she has you put it into a sentence;
in the context, right away. A music teacher will tell you
to go practice it.
Practicing works but it's a slower process
than putting it into context. And we know that with English. And so this was the way I learned. As I grew older, about five years old,
we were actually on tour; the five of us.
We were fortunate enough
to be able to tour opening for a great soul singer
named Curtis Mayfield. So if I was five years old,
my oldest brother was only 13. But when I think about it,
we could speak good English at that age. Why not music? So I've always, since then, approached
music just like a language, because I learned it
at the same time and in the same way.
The best part of it all is I've maintained something
that little children are born with. And that's freedom. A lot of us are talked out
of our musical freedom, when we are first given a lesson. Because we go to a teacher, and the teacher rarely ever finds out
why we came in the first place.
A lot of times,
that kid playing that air guitar where there's no right or wrong, it's not about the right or wrong notes,
it's not about the instrument. They're playing because it feels right. It's the same way and reason
that you sing in the shower. Or when you're driving
to work; you're singing.
You're not singing
because it's the right notes or you know the right scales, you're singing because it feels good. I spoke to a lady at breakfast who said, "I'm Ella Fitzgerald
when I'm in the shower!" (Laughter) And of course she's right! So why does that change
when someone outside starts to listen? That freedom becomes lost
as we grow and as we learn, and we need to find
a way to keep that freedom. And it can be done! It's not gone forever. A kid playing air guitar will play
with a smile on their face.
Give them the first lesson,
the smile goes away. A lot of times you have to work for your whole musical life
to get that smile back. As teachers, we can keep that smile,
if we approach it the right way. And I say approach it like a language; allow the student to keep the freedom.
As I got older, a little bit older, and my brothers and I started
to tour and play a lot, my mom would ask a question
that I never understood really until I got much older
and had kids of my own. My Mom would ask us boys, and she was saying,
"What does the world need with another good musician?" Think about that. And I'm saying music,
but insert your own career. What does the world need with you? It really made me realize
that now, as I've got older, music is more than just a language,
music is a lifestyle.
It's my lifestyle. Don't get me wrong: I'm not talking about
the lifestyle a lot of musicians lead. Because we can look back
at our musical heroes of the past and realize that they were
huge successes in music, but just as huge failures in life. I could name a few of them,
but I don't want to upset anybody; but if we think about our heroes,
a lot of them were like that.
I think our parents were
preparing us for something that we didn't know at the time,
but I think she could see ahead. "What does the world need with another good musician?" So we're practicing all these hours. We turned our whole house
into a music room where all the neighborhood, all
the state-wide musicians would show up. We would practice, my parents would spend money
they didn't have to make sure we had
the next newest instrument.
Every Christmas,
Santa would bring the newest thing. What was that about? Was it just so that we could make money? So that we could stand on stage
and bask in the glory? I realize now, that it is
much more than that. Music is my lifestyle. And now as I'm going into
really studying music, so that I could share it with
other people in a teacher's role, I realize that there's a lot
that we can learn from music and apply to our lives.
To be a good musician,
you have to be a good listener. Doesn't matter how great I am
as a bassist, or any instrument. Doesn't matter how great I am. We can put five of the world's
best musicians on this stage.
But if we're great
separate from each other, it's going to sound horrible. But if we listen to each other
and play together, individually, we don't have
to be as great, and it'll sound much better. I was invited a couple years in a row
to go to Stanford, in California, and put together a musical team
to address the incoming freshman class. And we were able to use music
to give them an idea what the next four years
of their life might be like.
It was fun using music to do it
because music is a way that I can talk about anything
that could be kind of touchy: politics, racism, equality,
inequality, religion. I can do it through music,
and I'm still safe. We were able to pick
someone out of the audience who'd never played an instrument before. Usually, it was a female; have her come up,
we'd strap a bass around her neck, and then I would get the band playing.
And as soon as the band starts playing, that person starts doing this. (Laughter) And I say, "That's music!" If you listen to that bass,
like any instrument in a music store, when it's sitting there,
it doesn't make a sound. So if you want music to come
out of that, you have to put it there. And that groove that's in your neck,
you just have to put it in the instrument.
So I just had her
with her left hand squeeze the neck - because everyone knows how
to hold an instrument, that's not new - squeeze it and then, let
your right hand dance, on the string. She starts bouncing on that note,
and the band kicks up around her. All of a sudden, she's a bassist. More so, she's a musician.
A dancer never has to ask questions
before they dance. A singer doesn't usually have to ask
what key are we in. Musicians have to ask too many questions. So what that taught me is that, "Wow! Because we're great,
she doesn't have to know anything." (Laughter) And all of a sudden, anyone who were
to walk into the room and see this band with this newcomer on stage, no one would know
who was the newcomer.
So that let me know, "Wow! If I use my greatness in the right way,
it can help others rise up quickly." And the coolest thing about
that whole thing in Stanford is she got to take the bass home! (Laughter) I saw her recently,
she is still a bassist so that's great. Listening is a great musical key
that we can use for life, working together, of course, being great
to help other people become great. When people put you up on a pedestal, don't come off the pedestal
acting like you're humble. Stay up on that pedestal, because if they put you there
that's showing you how high they can see.
Stay there and pull them up. And they'll grow faster
than if you come down. So we're going to help these people
because we're great. In music, usually, I'm not great
until you say I am, anyway.
They say,
"He's won all these Grammy's." I can't win anything without you all. Another thing my mom
always taught us is, "You boys are already successful. The rest of the world
just doesn't know it yet!" I didn't understand that then,
but I really, really do now. Really quickly, before I get out of here
I just want you to think about this: If I were to play two notes,
Let's say I play a C; - just want you to use your imagination - if I play a C and a C-sharp
right next to each other, it'll probably sound
like those notes clash; "Wrong!", "Bad!" But if I take the C up an octave, play the C-sharp and the C again.
All of a sudden, it sounds beautiful. Same two notes. That C becomes a major seventh
to the C-sharp which is a key element that makes a chord
almost too beautiful, too nice sounding. So how can the same two notes
sound bad and clash in one instance and beautiful in another? Just take that to life.
When we see something bad,
or awful, or horrible in life, maybe we're just reviewing it
in the wrong octave. Maybe we could change our perspective. Actually, if you see
something that's wrong, you should know
that you're seeing it in the wrong octave and find a way to change your viewpoint. Or to use a musical term -
change your octave.
Countries make bombs
with the goal of hurting people, instilling fear, killing people,
proving a point. Countries, governments bless
the bombs before they're sent. This happens from the top-down,
the government down. This is our answer.
Makes me realize that the solution
may have to come from the bottom-up. Is anyone working on a bomb
that makes people love you? Maybe a cupid bomb? I believe we already have it. It's called Music. And every country has
their own version of it.
And it works. It brings people together. You don't have to know
a thing about it to get it. It's a language.
It's a lifestyle. And it can save the world. My name is Victor Wooten. I'm a musician.
And I hope you'll join
me on the battlefield. (Laughter) Thank you. (Applause).
[THEME MUSIC PLAYING] [AUDIENCE CHEERING AND
APPLAUDING] "Nick Jonas was cute back when
he was in the Jonas brothers. And now, he looks like
(LAUGHING) a ferret." [AUDIENCE LAUGHING] "Usher seems like he'll stop
in the dead ass middle of sex because he got chilly." [AUDIENCE LAUGHING] "P!Nk makes music for
obnoxious white bridal parties that drunkenly walk into
a Denny's and (LAUGHING) ruin everyone's evening." [AUDIENCE LAUGHING] I would have said Waffle
House, but whatever. "Watching Alice Cooper,
and all I can think of is that he looks like a ball
sack with face paint on." [AUDIENCE LAUGHING] Well, that's fair. "The Lumineers are the musical
equivalent to a triple venti half sweet iced
caramel macchiato.
[BLEEP] them and this." [AUDIENCE LAUGHING] "Common is the Pottery
Barn of rappers." [AUDIENCE LAUGHING] What the
[BLEEP] you know about rappers? "Like honestly,
saying Blink-182 is your favorite band
is like saying I'm OK. (LAUGHING) living with herpes." [AUDIENCE LAUGHING] "Used anti-frizz
shampoo on my pubes, and now my penis (LAUGHING)
looks like Steve Aoki." [AUDIENCE LAUGHING] "Waterfalls by TLC
has to be the worst song about waterfalls ever." [INAUDIBLE] That's-- you know
what, that's just some like natural earth bitch,
you know what I'm saying? That said that. "Fallout Boy is the
Comic Sans MS of music-- they're both (LAUGHING)
entirely overused." [AUDIENCE LAUGHING] "Zendaya's skinny
A-F. Damn, looking like a (LAUGHING) whole spaghetti." [AUDIENCE LAUGHING] That's awesome! That's awesome.
"I'd rather be homeless and
watch two cats bang in an alley than to go to a
Ludacris concert." [AUDIENCE LAUGHING] "Adam Levine is if a flaccid
penis could kind of sing." Bro. This is riddled with mistakes. [AUDIENCE LAUGHING] "Niall Horan is ugly. Good night, everyone." [AUDIENCE LAUGHING] "Erykah Badu tits
look like [BLEEP]."." [AUDIENCE LAUGHING] [CHUCKLES] I had three babies.
- "LOL.
Meghan Trainor looks like that
girl my parents would force me to listen to If I were white." [AUDIENCE LAUGHING AND GROANING] "If you're a guy
and you're listening to Depeche Mode,
reach into your vagina and pull your balls back down." [AUDIENCE LAUGHING AND
APPLAUDING] "I left more
talent in my toilet this morning than
Green Day has ever had. Green Day sucks [BLEEP]." [AUDIENCE LAUGHING] I'm glad that you're
thinking about us while you're taking dumps. We're doing something right. We'll think about you
while we're sucking [BLEEP]..
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So this talk is not just going to be about
polyrhythms, what they are, how to perform them, but also we're gonna try and connect
polyrhythms to other things. So, on my YouTube channel, I have a show
that I'm not calling New Horizons in Music, and this is going to be the first live episode,
I hope you enjoy. That obnoxious thing. Alright, so that was an introduction animated
by Simon Franzmann, really funny guy.
So we're going to start with an introduction. On my channel
I get to explore a bunch of different topics, and one topic I explored recently was something
that was very near and dear to my heart. Something called synesthesia. Now, synesthesia
is the pairing of two or more senses.
And it's something that we actually all do,
especially when we're talking about music, we'll pair adjectives that describe things
in once sense and we'll use it with our sense of hearing,
for example, If you've ever heard
a bright sound or a dark sound or maybe a warm tone or a fat and punchy snare
or a melody might be sweet to the point of cloying These are all terms that describe our sense
of sight and our sense of smell and taste, but not our sense of hearing, but we understand
the emotional impact of those adjectives and we will relate it back to our hearing. And synesthesias like this, except...
Kind of like takes it up to the next level. This is called a cross-modal relationship,
whenever you have senses relating in this way, when you have adjectives with one,
using it as a metaphor for another, and people with synesthesia
really kind of experience this in a very literal way. There's a form of synesthesia
called chromasthesia which basically means that when
you hear a sound, if have chromasthesia, it's a neurological condition, when you hear
a sound you will literally see a color.
And this chromasthesia means that the sound
of a violin might actually sound orange, or potentially sound blue. And this is really interesting to me,
the idea of pairing color and sound. And when you have these experiences
of pairing color and sound, they're called photisms, which I found a really fun word cos it almost
has like a science fiction aspect to it. And, you know, this idea of a photism,
I don't have chromasthesia, I have another kind of synesthesia,
but I do have...
I do pair letters with colors, that's something called
grapheme-color synesthesia. But when people have a kind of synesthesia
where you actually hear a color I found that really interesting.
I really wanted to explore that idea a lot more, I wanted to explore the idea of color and sound
and see how far down the rabbit hole I could go. And turns out I'm not the first person
to think about these things, in fact there's a long lineage of people
who've thought about the relationship of color and sound. One of them was this guy: Alexander Scriabin.
He was an early 20th Century
Russian composer, pretty amazing composer, and he composed a piece of music called
Prometheus, A poem of Fire. And in Prometheus, A Poem of Fire,
you have an entire orchestra playing, but you also have this instument playing, which he calls Luce,
but we know it as the color organ. And with a color organ what you do is a piano,
a normal keyboard on a normal organ, but every one of the keys
represents a different color, and all the keys trigger
a different colored lightbulb. And so when you're hearing Prometheus,
A Poem of Fire, you're not just hearing the music, but seeing the colors.
And so when you have a performance
of Prometheus, A Poem of Fire, you see these colors as if you're a chromasthete,
seeing colors and hearing sound. Scriabin got these ideas of color and sound
from this guy. Isaac Newton. Excuse me.
Isaac Newton wrote the definitive book
on color science, known as... Is titled: Opticks, in 1704. And in Opticks, which, by the
way, is where we get Dark Side of the Moon, the whole refraction of color and light
and getting the colors of the rainbow, In Opticks... He uses a lot of color...
Sorry, music metaphors
to describe the relationships of color. And I found that really fascinating
because he uses phrases like this one to describe which colors go well together,
he says: So, okay, that's pretty cool. And he also says: I found that really interesting,
because these modern Hollywood blockbusters all color grade their films with orange and blue. And we like this contrast
between orange and blue and if you think about this as like,
hey, they're color grading with fifths, it's an interesting idea that we don't really think
about, like we don't really think about intervals with colors, but Isaac Newton sure was.
He was doing this many hundreds of years ago.
And it makes a certain degree of sense,
when you look at this 19th Century color wheel, you see the around them.
And you see that orange and blue are kind of like halfway across from each other. If you start at orange and you go a little bit more
that half way around you get to blue, and you come back around where you started,
you get orange again. Same thing with a major scale: you start with C,
orange, I guess, and you go up a little bit more than halfway
and you get to blue, you get to this nice G which is blue, fifth,
then you get back to orange. Now...
Isaac Newton was thinking about these things
and in the original color wheel, the original definition, how we understand color,
he drew it like this: where there are musical notes
all the way around it. He was thinking the seven notes of the rainbow,
in fact, he defined the rainbow as being seven notes... So, it's kind of the point here, he's thinking
of color and sound as the same sort of thing. And, you know, I wanted to make this
presentation asking this question, this is like the thesis of today, not polyrhythms,
polyrhythms come later in the polyrhythms talk.
I wanted to know if Isaac Newton is speaking
metaphorically when he uses musical terms to talk about color, or is there something more? It depends upon
what the meaning of the word "is" is. So Bill Clinton raises a good point. We need to figure out what the meaning
of the word "is" is. We need to try and take a deeper look
at this color-sound relationship.
But before we do that we have to sort of talk
about the nature of sound and the nature of sound as it relates to music.
And so we're going to put a pin on this we're gonna come back to this Isaac Newton
thing, and now we're going to get into part 2. Pitch and rhythm are the same thing. So, I mean this fairly literally
and I'll sort of explain it to you real quick. 1: Pitch is defined by cycles per second.
So how many times per second air around your ear vibrates per second
is how our brain perceives pitch.
Air will hit the inner-ear in something called
the basilar membrane they'll get converted to electrical signals and the brain will perceive
and interpret that as pitch. So, if something is vibrating 300 times per second
we will hear a note that is at 300 Hz, that's the definition of pitch,
how we understand pitch. So, number 2: there are 60 seconds in a minute. This has nothing to do with music,
that's how we measure time.
But number 3: Rhythm.
And this is how I'm defining rhythm fairly broadly. It say a steady tempo, so basically a rhythm
is a steady pulse... Is determined by beats per minute: BPM, so,
120 BPM, 200 BPM, whatever. It's our understanding of steady pulse
is defined by beats per minute, so, basically...
Rhythm and pitch are the same,
they just occur at slightly different speeds. And this is something
that we kinda instinctually know, I don't really need to explain this to you
but just to give you an idea... If you have a car engine starting up
or a fan starting up, like, these two things you'll hear like a 'whir'
in the beginning, just a rhythmic motion of blades, but eventually they go faster and faster
to the point where there's a hum, an audible hum. And that's essentially
the phenomenon that we're talking about here.
So human pitch perception lies between
20 Hz and 20,000 Hz, this is something that audio engineers
have to deal with all the time in terms of equalization. Basically if something is moving at 20 times
per second or 20,000 times per second regularly, we will hear it as having pitch. This is a fairly kind of common knowledge
sort of thing, if we have like hearing loss, like, it maybe gets down to about 15,000 Hz
or something like that, but that's 'ish' ballpark. What not a lot of people know is that there's
a limit of human rhythmic perception.
And this is very much an 'ish' but it's about 10 Hz,
and when I say rhythmic perception I mean our ability to distinguish between beats,
so if you're playing something really fast like, ridiculously fast, like 10 Hz,
like 10 notes per second... Our ability to distinguish between the notes
starts getting very very blurred. And it's actually... It can get a little bit
higher than this, like maybe upto 12, 13 Hz, but 10 Hz is a good ballpark, so my question is,
anything faster, meaningfully distinguishing beats, my question is: what happens between
10 Hz and 20 Hz? If we hear something
that is at 15 Hz or 17 Hz, what is it? Well, let's find out.
So here's a kick drum. It's gonna slowly speed up - I want you to pay
close attention to the moment that it turns into a pitch. Okay, about now, it sort of has a pitch now,
and you can slowly hear it rise. But there was a moment in there where we didn't
really know what the hell was going on.
It was just this (makes sound)... Whatever. So this chart explains why.
This blue line right here is our ability to perceive the differences
between stimuli, so our rhythmic perception, and the higher it is,
the less we're able to perceive the differences. And the red line is our pitch perception,
and there's this weird netherrealm in there which I found really fascinating, because it basically means
there's a large gap in our perception and you heard that gap,
you were not able to tell what was going on.
So, what does this have to do
with Isaac Newton? And what does this have to do with polyrhythms? Polyrhythms. I need to say that better.
Po-ly-rhythms, okay. Well, not a whole lot but let's put a pin in that. Pitch and rhythm are the same thing
and there's a gap in our perception.
So, part 3. How to play polyrhythms. So, this is the practical, fun part. "Fun".
We're gonna figure out how to actually play
a polyrhythm, and how to play actually really complicated
polyrhythms, we're gonna learn how to play 15:8. It's going to be very simple,
everybody's gonna be doing it. So this is the technical definition of a polyrhythm: The mathematical relationship between
two or more simultaneous, regular events, (rhythms) This is a very dry definition but it's kind of
what we're going to be working with. Basically two things are going to occur
at the same time and every so often they're going to line up.
That's all I really want you to be thinking of.
Not anything in terms of tuplets or quinn-tuplets
or anything like that, it's just 2 separate things which are occurring
at the same time and eventually at some point they both line up
in the cycle. There's another thing that I want you to learn,
or know... And it's the term Composite Rhythm. And that's the sound of both streams
of a polyrhythm occurring at the same time.
So if you listen to the sound of a major chord
or some sort of chord, let's say it's a major chord,
you can pay attention to and listen to the individual component parts
of this chord, like the C, the E or the G, I'm assuming we're in C major, by the way... And you can listen for those things but most
of the time we hear it as a composite, we hear everything together
and we put a label to it. So that's the composite sound of a major chord, I want you to pay attention to the composite
rhythm of a polyrhythm it's essentially the same idea, you wanna listen
to the general feel of the whole thing of it. So I'm gonna basically play 2 metronomes,
each clicking at a different tempo.
And they will have a 3 to 2 relationship.
So the mathematical relationship between them will be 3 to 2, one will be clicking at 150 BPM
and one at a 100 BPM. So this is the 100 BPM one. And this is 150. Both of them together.
There's a composite there. You're not really paying attention
to the individual streams, you're hearing both of them together, and that's what I want you
to really be thinking about here, because that's how we perceive the rhythm. Now we were perceiving
this as kind of 2 metronomes each clicking at different tempos,
each playing quarter notes, cos' that's usually what a metronome is set to. And that's our musical conception of this,
but there's a bunch of other ways that we can conceive of this
particular composite rhythm.
We could think of it as a couple of quarter notes
and quarter note triplets in one tempo, so for every 2 quarter notes you smush
in 3 quarter-note triplets that's one way of doing it. Another way is having a couple of dotted
quarter notes. And like a measure of 3/4 that's 2 notes
per measure, and then 3 regular quarter notes in 3/4,
that's 3 notes per measure. All 3 of these things essentially
are the same thing, they're just different ways of conceptualizing it.
It's different ways of conceptualizing this.
2 Evenly spaced events
in the same amount of time as 3 evenly spaced events. So how do we actually play these things,
how do we conceive of them? Well... I'm afraid we need to use... Math.
So not that much math,
I just really wanted to use that Futurama clip. So, the pen-and-paper method.
This is how I learned and this is how I encourage everybody
to do this, cos' this is so easy. So straight forward and it's a great way of basically conceptualizing really complicated
things in a very straight forward manner. So...
First, we're gonna draw X rows of Y numbers. So, in the case of this 2:3 sort of thing
we're gonna draw 2 rows of 3 numbers. Now... Each one of these rows is gonna
represent a pulse, how we're gonna feel at the heartbeat of this
polyrhythm, and then each one of the numbers is kind of
the sub-division of that pulse, if you want to think about it that way.
So... Grab a piece of paper, draw 1-2-3, 1-2-3,
great, cool. So, that 1-2-3 again, 1-2-3, X is the pulse,
Y is the sub-division. So next we're going to circle every X numbers.
In this case X is 2 so we're gonna go left to right, left to right
in order of how we would read, we're gonna circle 1-2, 1-2, 1,2...
So this is now our map on how to perform
a 2:3 polyrhythm. And this is important, so we're going to go
hand 1 is gonna snap on number 1. Sorry, hand X is going to snap on number 1,
and hand Y is going to snap on the circle, this is why I named it X and Y, so we'll get hand
1... Anyway...
So I'm gonna kind of do it into this... Yeah, there we go. Do it right into here. I'm gonna sort of walk us through this.
So hand 1 is gonna snap on the numbers: 1 2 3, 1 2 3, 1 2 3...
This hand is gonna snap on all the circles:
1 (2) 3, 1 (2) 3. So both of them together will sound like this: So pretty soon I can get
into this composite rhythm. This is the same composite rhythm
that we were just hearing earlier. The goal of this is to achieve
this composite rhythm, the goal is not to count really quickly
the goal is to feel it.
I'm not counting when I go: I'm just feeling it, man, that's basically all it is.
I'm using the sort of mathematical approach, which we'll do a couple more times
so everybody gets the hang of it. We can do it for anything and the goal of this
is to achieve this composite rhythm. So, what about another one? Let's do something a little bit trickier.
This one's gonna be a little bit harder to feel. But the process is exactly the same
as the first one.
We're gonna do 4:5. Okay, so this means there's gonna be 4 notes
the same amount of time as 5 notes, 4 evenly spaced notes in the same amount
of time a 5 notes. We're gonna do the same process,
we're gonna draw X rows of Y numbers, yeah? Our 4 rows of 5 numbers, cool. We're gonna do that, 1-2-3-4-5.
4 Rows.
And then we're gonna do the same thing we did
the first time and we're going to circle every X numbers. I sped it up to much on the... In quicktime, oh well. So: 1 2 3 4 (5)
1 2 3 (4) 5 1 2 (3) 4 5
1 (2) 3 4 5.
This is 4:5. Sweet. Now hand X is gonna snap on number 1,
hand Y is gonna snap on the circles. And so if we do both of them together: Everybody now.
So that is kinda tricky. It does require a fair amount of practice
to really get into that groove of that thing. But it's not undoable. Or indo...
Yeah, undoable? It's not impossible, that's the word.
Yeah, English is my first language. Okay, so let's do... That's the process.
And we can do that for anything, you can do it for some absurd polyrhythm
that makes no sense whatsoever, you could do like 32:31 if you wanted to,
it's the same process. Now, whether or not you're able to eventually
feel this composite rhythm is tricky, like that question comes down to a lot of
practicing these things, and really doing it over and over again,
and really getting into the feel of it.
Let's do a really tricky one. And this is the one
I mentioned earlier. Let's do 15:8. Okay, we're gonna draw 15 rows
of 8 numbers a piece, and circle every 15th number.
So we're gonna do this for you,
I'm definitely not gonna be feeling it at all, and just gonna be counting it, I'm just gonna be
at the intellectualization stage of things. So I'm gonna go: Okay, that's one cycle of 15:8. So if you go back to the tape
and you sped that up, you would hear 15:8. Now, here's the thing.
I'm not feeling that,
nobody can really feel that, at least on the first couple of practices. It might take many years to be able to feel
that at a fast tempo. So what we can say is the more complicated
the relationship is between X and Y. The longer it takes for the polyrhythm to resolve,
and the harder it is to FEEL.
So... 3:2 Is the same thing or 2:3 is easy to feel.
15:8 Definitely is not. So that was the practical polyrhythm
side of things, that was the point of the talk, that's why maybe some of you came. What does this have to do with Isaac Newton?
Oh my god, okay, we have 3 separate thoughts that we're kinda juggling here.
How to play
polyrhythms: pitch and rhythm are the same thing Isaac Newton really likes his color music.
So we're gonna start tying everything together. Everything is rhythm. So this is the fun part, the really fun part, I think. If rhythm is pitch...
POLYrhythm should equal POLYpitch, right?
If we have a bunch of different rhythms occurring at the same time, it should give us harmony
if we speed it up. It sure does. All intervals and all harmony
are polyrhythmic, is polyrhythmic. Cool, so, this is not that new of a concept.
Honestly, this goes back to Pythagorus of the Greeks,
in addition to giving us the Pythagorean Thearem and laying the basis for modern mathematics,
he also layed the basis for modern music.
And he did a bunch of experiments with this thing
which is called a monochord. And basically what he did is he divided this string,
monochord - one string into different lengths and compared the proportions
of the different lengths to one another. And tried to figure out
what the best proportions were. And it turns out:
simple proportions = sounds good.
That's the simple thing, that's basically the straight
forward way of understanding how music works. Simple proportions = sounds good. Now the exact proportions that Pythagorus used
have changed over the many centuries, millenia, but the ones that we use today, roughly,
the ones that we use today, are these. Major 2nd is 9:8.
That means that if you had
a string length, like, 9 inches long and compared it to a string length
that was 8 inches long they would produce a major 2nd. Major 3rd is 5:4, perfect 4th is 4:3. Perfect 5th is 3:2. Major 6th is 5:3,
major 7th is 15:8.
Where did we see that one? An octave is 2:1. You can do this with chords too, because when
you combine different intervals together you can find the common denominators
between everything then come up with chordal relationships,
so our major chord: is 4:5:6. So, my question is:
what is the relationship of these string lengths to the polyrhythms that we were talking about?
Well turns out it's the exact same thing. Polyrhythms and string lengths end up being
the same sort of proportions and I will prove it to you.
I want you guys, in this next demonstration,
to pay close attention to the feeling of the polyrhythm of 4:5:6.
4 Evenly spaced pulses in the same amount of time
as 5 evenly spaced pulses as in the same amount of time
as 6 evenly spaced pulses. Pay close attention to how the polyrhythm
makes you feel. Then I'm gonna speed it up and like magic
it will turn into a major chord. I might have just ruined it for you,
but let's try it.
So this is a regular kick drum. I'm gonna layer in the polyrhythm. Feels pretty cool actually. When you speed it up: Major chord! Slow it back down.
I always found that funny,
that it's such a triumphant rhythm, the major chord has such a... It sounds like a major chord. And this is the case for any chord, any harmony
any time you have more than one note you can break it down to its polyrhythm. And here's the thing:
Polyrhythms that are easy to feel are easy to hear when they're sped up.
We had a good time listening to... So that means consonance,
the idea of something sounding good, that's kind of an... Over-simplification, but constanance is just
polyrhythms which are easy to hear/feel, that's all it is. Any time that you hear something
that sounds good to you and sounds stable...
It's just a polyrhythm
which is easy to hear/feel. Now, I mean, the term "good/sounds good" is...
I mean it just in the sense of something of something that sounds rested,
there's no tension, maybe tension feels good to you,
maybe tension sounds good to you. So if tension sounds and feels good to you
maybe you need a polyrhythm which creates tension. So, we're going to start with a perfect 4th,
which, if you think about a perfect 4th, there's not a lot of tension to it.
And if you look at the ratio of a perfect 4th: 4:3, that's not particularly complicated.
But if we then listen to a major 7th, that's a fair amount of tension in the interval
of a major 7th: 15:8.
And when you compare the two of them
and we put the two of them layered on, so in the key of C, this would be a C,
an F and a B, it's gonna be a pretty spicey sort of chord. So I want you to listen,
when we do this next demonstration to first where I'm gonna layer in the perfect 4th, so it's just gonna be
this nice constant 4:3 polyrhythm, and then I'm gonna layer in the 15:8.
And then you're gonna hear a cacophony it's gonna be really dissonant,
it's gonna be a dissonant polyrhythm. And then we're gonna speed it up
and you're gonna hear that's the result and you'll hear that dissonance. So...
Feels good. 15:8 Is not gonna feel good. If you really spent some time with it
you'd be able to hear it maybe but ah god, it's hard,
it sounds like popcorn going off. And when you speed it up: So, polyrhythms that are hard to feel
are hard to hear when they're sped up, so dissonance is just polyrhythms
that are hard to hear/feel.
We like sort of the juxtaposition
of tension and release. We like the release that comes from being
able to hear when the polyrhythm resolves like in the major chord: We like to hear the beginning of that phrase: But we also like it when there's tension because then it makes
those moments of resolution so much sweeter. And we just heard it play out on two planes:
we heard it play out on the rhythmic plane, and then also on the pitch plane. And I found that really interesting
when I was first getting into this stuff one book that sort of illuminated a lot of things
for me was this book by Henry Cowell: New Musical Resources.
And he talks about something
called Tempo Scales in this book. It's a very influencial book for a lot of different
thinkers of the 20th Century, including Conlon Nancarrow,
who's a pretty amazing... If you don't know Conlon Nancarrow, it's probably
the most insane music you'll ever hear. But he was very influenced by this book
and the idea of tempo scales, polyrhythms, BPMs and notes are all the same,
there's this chart in this book where he basically says, this is the ratio from C,
these are the tones of the Chromatic Scale, these are the equivalent BPMs -
all of them are the same, we just think of them slightly differently
depending on our musical needs.
And, you know... Here's the question though:
what does this have to do with Isaac Newton? We're getting there guys,
we're getting there. We're building an argument from scratch,
that everything is the same. Essentially, the point of this lecture
is that everything is everything and Isaac Newton is the key to it.
So we just figured out that polyrhythms are pitch and rhythm is harmony and there's all sorts
of things we talked about, but you can kind of, you heard everything so far, so I'm gonna
kind of like take those ideas and build on them a little bit.
So... Part 5. It gets crazy now. You didn't think everything else was crazy?
Oh, it gets a lot crazier.
What happens when we speed a rhythm/pitch up
beyond 20,000 Hz? So in the beginning we had the rhythm over here
and then we sped it up and there was like
this weird netherrealm in perception where we didn't know it was happening,
and then we had pitch. And this is the audiable spectrum
of human hearing. What happens if we go faster than that?
Is there another sort of phenomenon that happens we have two sort of ways
of experiencing the world and experiencing sound, we had rhythm,
we had pitch, what happens over here? So, erm... Let Samual L Jackson explain: Hold on to yer butts.
So we have an octave. This is an important thing,
it's called Octave Equivalence. When you have a pitch, like at 440 Hz,
the international standard for A. And it is 440 Hz, be clear about that.
So, when you have that and you...
Let's listen, that's 440 Hz. If you multiply that frequency by 2
this is also A. And that's a pretty instinctual thing.
We hear them as being both the same, like, one's higher but it's kind of the same thing
it's like going all the way around the color wheel and getting back to where you started,
it's just higher somehow. So we can keep doing that.
I'll turn it down just a little here. This is also an A. This is also an A.
All of these pitches are also A, we keep going higher and higher.
What about this one? That's pretty high, that's 7040 Hz,
that's also an A, and then this one is gonna be
really, really high. OK, sorry about that, guys.
This is kind of at the highest echelon
of what we could probably expect for pitch perception, in fact, this is so high
I didn't hear that for myself, as being too pitched,
cos' I've had hearing damage like, playing loud music for too long. So this is kind of at the upper-range
of my hearing. But then we have this note,
we didn't actually program, because nobody here
would be able to hear it. This note, we can't hear,
this is beyond our range of hearing, that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist,
just that we don't perceive it as having pitch.
It's still an A, according to our definition
of octave equivalence. It still exists in the real world,
as your dog will be able to tell because this is the register of dog whistles. It's just that we can't perceive it.
Our gap on our perception has kind of like gone off the high end. So there's
a gap in the perception between rhythm and pitch, and now there's gonna be a huge gap
in our perception of this phenomenon...
Of waveforms. And we can keep doubling it.
Each one of these frequency numbers is still an A - these are all octaves of A. Eventually, when we just keep going
higher and higher, and I didn't actually do...
This is not the right number, but... I forgot to keep pressing enter on this,
but anyway...
Let's pretend that's a high number.
It is a high number. Eventually you get to a pretty ridiculous place. When you get to vibrations occurring
at trillions of times per second you get into Mr. Isaac Newton's realm
the Visible Light Spectrum.
So when we're in this visible light spectrum,
remember, every multiple is still an A, we can calculate the color of A.
Turns out A is orange. This is a great slide, I love this slide.
I got this from FrankJavCee who's another YouTube person. This gives the calculations of all the pitches. What we use today.
Just up 40 octaves.
So when you're talking about these colors, you know, A literally is orange.
And if you think back to Isaac Newton's orange or blue or fifths, well check it out.
A is orange, E is kinda this indigo-blue sort of thing, depending on...
Yeah, indigo-blue sort of thing. He was right. But he was, you know,
maybe not thinking in terms of tetrahertz because he didn't have the ability
to measure that precisely. But maybe intuitively he was right.
He understood that A and E are fifths.
Now this is a really exciting revelation
that I had and wanna share with you guys. Because, once we make this connection
between color and sound in this literal way, not just a synesthetic way,
because individual with synesthesia will have different synesthetic experiences
to different colors, this is literally what A is: orange.
A is orange. We can not analyze visual media
based upon the notes in the chromatic scale. And this is a really exciting sort of thing.
Because we can take a look at this: Van Gogh's Starry Night...
And we can analyze it musically.
So we got this yellow sort of thing, the yellow moon and then it's fairly blue
and yellow, we can say. Maybe some different shades of blue,
so we can check out our organization of this thing and we can see that, hey, yellow is a B-flat, and then we have these couple shades of blue,
let's say in between D and E-flat. So we got B-flat, D and E-flat.
All really consonant intervals, there's a consonant polyrhythmic ratio
between them, between B-flat and D, it's a major third,
that's a 4:5 polyrhythm. 4:5 Relationship in the frequency in tetrahertz,
in the visible light spectrum.
And the same thing with B-flat and E-flat,
it's the perfect 4:3 polyrhythm, 4:3 relationship in the visible light spectrum.
So, if we're gonna put a song... To this particular piece of artwork,
it would be the Violent Femmes' Blister in the Sun. B-flat, D, E-flat, D, B-flat. We're getting pretty far out there guys,
thank you for being here with me on this journey.
But this is a... That's the song that goes
with this piece of artwork. At least if you analyse the color harmony
in terms of music. Let's do another one.
Let's do Picasso's "Night Fishing at Antibes". Wow, there's a lot of color in this one.
There's a lot of things we can say about this one. 1: We immediately understand that this somehow,
on an instinctual level, not just for form and everything,
this is a more dissonant painting. There's a lot more stuff,
there's a lot more colors going on.
In the upper-center area... There's kind of this red, yellow and blue thing
at the very top. And that's kind of where my eye is immediately
drawn to when I'm trying to make sense of this. Red, yellow, blue.
And if you try and analyse
the color harmony of that that's G, B-flat, D - that's a G minor triad
that Picasso has given us, so that's kind of like this consonant sort of realm
in this piece of artwork. But there's this bunch of other areas
where we see blue and green right next to one another. And remember from Isaac Newton, he said that
blue and green don't really go well together in this sort of sense, and you can kinda get the
sense that blue and green create this sort of like tension here. And there's a lot of blue and green kind of
smushed next to one another in this particular painting.
There's all sorts of different colors.
And if I was trying to make a sort of
musical analysis of what this painting would be, I would say this is kind of like atonal music
or serial music. Music which requires a lot of attention
to be payed to it. Now, when we were talking about 15:8,
and the dissonant polyrhythms... I'm not saying it's impossible to feel,
it just requires a lot more work, you have to work really hard to understand
what 15:8 actually feels like and what it actually means.
So, I'm not the first person to make this
connection between this style of artwork and twelve-tone music. This guy was: Wassily Kandinsky. Kandinsky was a turn of the 20th Century artist who made these connections
and he liked to compare... He was a contemporary of Schoenberg
who was the inventor of the twelve-tone system.
And he liked to compare his artwork with the thoughts that Schoenberg was doing
at the time, trying to liberate music from tonality. And so, it's a really fascinating sort of experiment
in color and sound and he was definitely thinking along these lines
when he painted this guy. So... We've sort of reached the conclusion
of this Isaac Newton side of things.
So to recap: pitch, rhythm and apparently color
are all kind of the same thing. And we can use those ideas to analyse artwork
if we wanted to. That's a fun sort of thing that we can do.
And I like doing that. We can take this even further.
Alright, this is where it gets even further out. Harmony of the Spheres. This is an ancient
subject, an idea that the Ancient Greeks had which basically said that the orbits of the planets
represented a sort of celestial music, a celestial harmony. And they meant it fairly metaphorically.
They didn't literally mean that it was music, but they meant it in the sort of higher order, like this higher order
that we couldn't hear this music, but it was still music nonetheless.
And these ideas have influenced
a lot of astronomers across the ages. Including this guy, Johannes Kepler who wrote this book: Harmonices Mundi where he came up with this really interesting,
and I find this really fascinating, he came up with this chart of the songs
that all the planets sang, quote on quote, I think was the term he used. And he did it by measuring the speed at which
each one of these planets moved at its fastest to the speed at which they moved
at its slowest. So for Saturn, for example, you see
you have a G going up to a B.
And returning down to a G
and so for him he was measuring the ratio of 5:4. In terms of that was Saturn's polyrhythmic ratio
in terms of speed, how fast it was moving how slow it was moving.
Each one of the planets has an associated song. And also here, the moon also has a place.
Good on the moon. All of these planets were discovered in his day
but there's of course more planets and planetoids and asteroids which also
have "songs" that they sing.
There's a more modern understanding of this
which is called Orbital Resonance. If you take a moon as its orbiting planet
and it takes maybe every 4 months to rotate around a given planet. And you have another
moon that rotates every 2 months, they form a 4:2 relationship, or a 2:1 relationship. And the point at which they're both in the same
place is called the point of orbital resonance.
And that point keeps those bodies
in the same sort of orbit. And there's a whole bunch of different examples
of this, this is one example: Ganymede, Europa and Io
for this sort of tripartite system around Jupiter in this sort of orbital resonance
so you can see the little flashy guys, that's when they're being reinforced. There's a bunch of wikipedia entries of known
populations of resonance, we got 2:3 resonances, we got a bunch of those,
we got 3:5 resonances, which are either major 6,
we have 4:7 resonances which is at an interval
called the Harmonic Seventh. We got a whole lot of them.
They're just
populating our solor system in the outer... Outer parts of our solar system. I'm gonna kind of, yeah, skip around a little bit. Are these polyrhythms? Is orbital resonance, is harmony of the spheres,
is light...
Are these polyrhythms, the relationships between these two things?
And I intentionally made this definition very vague. Because yes, according to this definition
all these are are X evenly spaced events in the same amount of time
as Y evenly spaced events, that's really the crux of the whole thing. And... I want to kind of contextualize
what the hell we just covered because we just covered a lot of things,
we basically just said polyrhythms are everything.
And it's basically what I wanted to get across
to you guys, but there are two main astericks
as I wrap this thing up: 1: this whole basis of speeding up polyrhythms
and turning them into harmony is not literally always going to happen
because that was a form of JUST intonation, JUST intonation is the system where we have
simple mathematical relationships between two notes.
Today we use Equal Temperament. Where those simple relationships are skewed
ever so slightly and the reason why they're skewed is a little bit
beyond the scope of this presentation, but just know that the math is almost there,
it's not 100% there but you still heard the major chord and it's the same thing for a lot of different kinds
of polyrhythms and music. So just know that today
we use equal temperament but you just heard examples of JUST intonation. More importantly:
technically light is EM radiation and not a compression wave like sound.
So, no, technically speaking,
when you speed up a pitch it's not gonna turn into light. It never is
because sound is a compression wave, it needs a medium through which to propagate
and light is a form of EM radiation so they're two different things,
technically speaking. So, to answer Mr. Isaac Newton's question: or to answer my question
about Mr.
Isaac Newton... Is he speaking metaphorically when he uses
musical terms to talk about color? And yes, he is speaking metaphorically. But. Metaphor extends perception.
So, this is kind of the crux of the whole thing.
Metaphor extends perception: our ability to take these ideas about polyrhythms
and apply it beyond what we can acually hear and we can understand them through metaphor,
we can extend our perception of the world a little bit more. So I'm gonna leave you with this question:
Do polyrhythms need to be explicitly heard/felt as sound to be music? Because we could analyze these paintings
in terms of the color relationship, in terms of the sound relationships. And we felt the ideas
of consonance and dissonance. We almost, I guess we could even say,
we felt the idea of a G-minor triad maybe there.
We could use these sorts of musical ideas to understand these visual mediums.
And I just wanted to leave you with that question
because it doesn't need to be answered, like, yeah, maybe technically it's not music
but you can still use musical ideas, or maybe it literally is music, who knows. We can use these musical concepts... And feelings and intuitions that we all have
as musicians or music lovers or sound designers, and we can use it
to analyze any other form of art. This is really exciting to me.
Making these connections between things
because now my musical mind can take a look at a Van Gogh and say, ha!
That is Blister in the Sun, or whatever. It's a fun way of making connections because you can understand the world
around you a lot better. We can make connections between things
that are our immediate PERCEPTION cannot. So, I'm gonna leave you with this sort of idea.
When people resist the idea of learning music theory, or thinking critically about something
that they are really passionate about because to them,
the magic of it is in the mystery of it...
I want to leave you with this idea that
thinking critically for me is the magic in learning about music.
Because you can... It... You can extend what it is that you know
and what you hear way beyond what you think you know
and what you hear. And you can only really do that
through critical thinking and I hope I gave you some ideas
to chew on here.
And thank you, everybody, for attending
this live edition of New Horizons in Music.
And until next time....
