Singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jacob Collier answers the internet's buzzing questions about instruments and musical theory. What is the difference between black and white piano keys? What makes up the rhythm section? What makes a bass line sound funky?
Director: Justin Wolfson
Director of Photography: Francis Bernal
Expert: Jacob Collier
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Paul Gulyas; Brandon White
Production Manager: D. Eric Martinez
Production Coordinator: Fernando Davila
Camera Operator: Christopher Eustache
Sound Mixer: Rebecca O’Neil
Production Assistant: Caleb Clark
Special Thanks: Sean Lefkovitz
Director: Justin Wolfson
Director of Photography: Francis Bernal
Expert: Jacob Collier
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Paul Gulyas; Brandon White
Production Manager: D. Eric Martinez
Production Coordinator: Fernando Davila
Camera Operator: Christopher Eustache
Sound Mixer: Rebecca O’Neil
Production Assistant: Caleb Clark
Special Thanks: Sean Lefkovitz
Category
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TechTranscript
00:00 What's up everybody, my name is Jacob Collier and I'm a musician
00:02 and I'm here to answer some of your questions from the internet.
00:05 This is instrument support.
00:07 [Music]
00:11 This is a question from @rachelgaza1
00:14 Why does a #piano have 88 keys?
00:18 It is indeed the case that there are 88 keys on the piano.
00:20 Should we listen to them all one by one?
00:21 [Music]
00:30 And over the last few hundred years composers have sought an increasing
00:33 amount of range to work with in their compositions.
00:36 So this note here, the C8, this is 4186 hertz which is actually a very high note.
00:41 And this note here which is A0 is 27.5 hertz which is a very low note.
00:45 Human beings can hear from about 20 hertz to about 16 000 hertz which is a great deal of range.
00:50 So the piano covers like a hefty amount of that.
00:53 So yeah 88 keys and much discovery to be found.
00:55 Here is a question about guitars.
00:57 Here's a guitar.
00:58 This question is from @zarhader
01:00 Why does holes in guitar exist?
01:03 They are annoying when things fall into them.
01:05 It is actually annoying.
01:06 I've lost plenty of my belongings.
01:07 I've lost passport, keys, all sorts of stuff.
01:10 When I play a chord the whole body of this instrument is vibrating.
01:13 The best sound is actually kind of inside the instrument.
01:16 [Music]
01:20 A hole in the guitar exists so that the sound can project.
01:22 A question from @teacherontopic
01:24 How does a theremin make music?
01:25 Is it through science or from being haunted?
01:28 Valid, valid question.
01:29 This in fact is a theremin and to rig this up I think I just need this which is one of two antennae
01:35 that makes this work.
01:36 I'm going to put this into here.
01:37 And then powers on the back.
01:40 Right.
01:41 Okay so the way this instrument works is by generating two electromagnetic fields
01:50 from two antennae.
01:51 So this is one antenna and this is the other down here.
01:53 This one controls volume so the further my hand gets away from this the louder the sound
01:57 and this one controls pitch which is kind of neat.
02:02 I'm not a masterful theremin player.
02:06 But it's in that process that you generate notes and things which is beautiful.
02:11 Our bodies conduct electricity.
02:13 What these antennae are measuring are essentially the electricity that our bodies are conducting.
02:17 So it's a kind of a beautiful process of measuring and proximity and things like that.
02:22 But anyway maybe they're also haunted.
02:24 This is freaking me out slightly.
02:26 @papa_gibby
02:28 Please what is treble?
02:30 And there's not even a question mark at the end of this question so it's really kind of quite candid.
02:33 Treble is the word that we give to the very high sounds in music.
02:37 You have bass like
02:37 All those low sounds that that there's bass reepsies.
02:42 Lots of reepsies in the middle.
02:44 And up here this is the treble end of the sounds.
02:48 Yeah so basically treble is high.
02:50 I could have just said that.
02:51 Treble is high.
02:52 Okay here's a question from @peculiar_yet_real.
02:54 Guess that's me too.
02:55 Do people know what a rhythm section does?
02:57 People do know what a rhythm section does.
02:59 I know what a rhythm section does.
03:00 A rhythm section is the part of the band or the part of the ensemble that plays the kind of
03:05 the underlying rhythmic parts that create the body, the bed of the sound over which other things can happen.
03:10 So say you're in a big band.
03:11 The rhythm section comprises of the drummer and the bass player, the guitar player and the piano player primarily.
03:16 And that provides the underbelly of all of those horns, flutes, trumpets, trombones,
03:21 whatever you have in your big band.
03:22 The rhythm section is the part that like holds down the fort.
03:24 Here's a question that I endorsed the asking of.
03:27 Explain to me the concept of microtones.
03:30 Do we ever use them in western music?
03:32 It does show up in popular music especially with instruments like the guitar.
03:36 You can bend notes on the guitar, trumpets, clarinets and flutes and things like this
03:39 where you have control over where you put your finger, where you place the note.
03:42 An easy way to explain microtones is through a game that I often play just for fun.
03:46 I like playing games for fun.
03:47 You take two notes, G and E.
03:50 How many notes can you fit between these two notes?
03:54 On the piano, there are two notes between.
03:57 Right?
03:59 What happens if we try and squeeze in more notes?
04:02 Right?
04:04 [Music]
04:15 Right, you could go forever.
04:16 These are all microtones.
04:17 These are notes that you can't find on the piano.
04:18 Here's a question from Pisskink.
04:21 Wow, what a username.
04:22 Bro, why do people even play bass?
04:24 You can't even hear that shit.
04:26 Laugh my ass off.
04:28 That's crazy to me.
04:29 Okay, well let's get this shit bass here.
04:31 It's handy.
04:32 Bass player is extremely important in music.
04:34 As a bass player, you can be the drummer.
04:37 You can play melodies.
04:41 And you can also play chords.
04:47 So the bass is a beautiful and very important instrument in music
04:55 and I'm a huge fan of the bass.
04:57 From @hexacordal.
05:00 Why do minor chords sound sad?
05:01 I would probably say that I think the reason why minor chords potentially sound sad
05:05 is that a minor chord is actually an exact reflection of the relationships of a major chord.
05:09 So a major chord sounds like this.
05:11 This is E major.
05:13 One of my good friends.
05:14 And that is E minor.
05:16 Another one of my good friends.
05:17 Major chords exist in physics.
05:18 They exist in nature.
05:19 For example, there's a harmonic series in your mouth.
05:21 If you go...
05:22 What you actually make here is really, really quiet notes here in my mouth.
05:31 Every note has these overtones.
05:32 If you yell in a chapel or a cathedral...
05:35 I'd recommend yelling in cathedrals in general.
05:37 It's just actually quite a fun thing to do.
05:38 But if you go...
05:38 In a massive room, you will hear all those overtones shining back at you
05:43 and you hear a major chord, which is crazy.
05:46 A minor chord, which you could say is derived from the undertone series
05:50 as opposed to the overtone series,
05:51 it doesn't actually really exist in nature in that exact state.
05:54 In a nutshell, I would say minor chords don't always sound sad.
05:57 But perhaps one of the reasons why they can inherently feel a little heavier
06:00 than major chords is that they are the exact opposite in physics
06:03 to what a major chord is.
06:04 It's actually not a question, it's a statement.
06:06 I think we're entering a post-riff world.
06:09 All the riffs have been used up and there are no more riffs left to be written.
06:13 All new riffs are either bad or a copy of another riff.
06:17 I disagree, personally.
06:18 Yeah, I think you can make up riffs.
06:20 I think there are new riffs.
06:21 Like, let's make up one right now.
06:22 [Music]
06:31 Right, I've definitely heard
06:32 [Music]
06:33 I've heard that before.
06:34 And I've heard like
06:35 [Music]
06:36 or something like that before.
06:37 Perhaps no one has collided.
06:38 I mean, let me know in the comments if this riff is taken
06:41 and I won't write a song with it.
06:42 But it's my ability as a riff maker to combine things that I like
06:45 that maybe aren't normally put together.
06:47 That's what's cool.
06:48 That's what's interesting and that's what's worth doing.
06:49 So don't be afraid to take something you like
06:52 like a riff or a chord or whatever
06:53 and make it your own in an interesting way.
06:55 From @rodgoelz
06:57 What makes a bassline funky?
06:59 That's in capsuletos there.
07:00 What makes a bassline funky is also a little bit subjective, but
07:03 stable time.
07:04 [Music]
07:08 Right, so just having something that's stable that you can move your body to.
07:12 Repetition.
07:13 [Music]
07:18 I could sit on this all day.
07:19 [Music]
07:20 And then making variations on that.
07:23 It's not just the notes that you play or when you play the notes.
07:26 It's actually the duration of the notes, like how long the notes are.
07:28 [Music]
07:31 If I play all those notes long, that is maybe less funky in my opinion.
07:36 So it's actually a mixture.
07:38 [Music]
07:39 See some of those notes are longer.
07:40 [Music]
07:45 And the control you have over the length of your notes,
07:48 you can go a huge distance.
07:50 Here is another bass related question from @adcomfortable8467
07:54 Do bassists always tune the octave down from the guitar?
07:57 The answer is fundamentally yes.
07:59 Actually, the bass is essentially tuned an octave down from an ordinary guitar,
08:03 not this five string Taylor.
08:05 This is a six string Taylor that I have just stowed down here.
08:08 E, A, D, G, B and E.
08:12 These four notes here are the same as these on this bass guitar here.
08:22 Okay, this is a drum question.
08:23 So I'm going to answer it here at this drum kit.
08:25 What are your favorite tricks to keep your drum tracks interesting and or evolving?
08:30 Well, I think about this all the time.
08:31 If you take an ordinary beat.
08:33 [Music]
08:38 That's one of the most legendary beats of all time.
08:40 You can make that interesting without adding any notes or even changing any notes.
08:45 All I'm going to do is I'm going to nudge certain things forward and certain things backward.
08:49 Say for example, I move the snare drum backwards just a fraction.
08:53 This is what that sounds like.
08:54 [Music]
08:59 And already I'm kind of like
09:00 [Music]
09:02 If I move the hi-hat forwards.
09:04 [Music]
09:11 Right, so it's kind of sluggish, falling all over itself.
09:13 One of the absolute pioneers of this was of course Jay Dilla,
09:16 the legendary hip-hop producer from around 2000.
09:18 He was just absolutely masterful at creating these kind of recipes,
09:22 sonic recipes for grooves that had gravity in them,
09:25 grooves that had momentum in them.
09:26 So certain parts of the groove pulling back,
09:28 certain parts of the groove pulling forwards.
09:30 All that stuff makes your drum tracks far more interesting
09:32 without having to add a bunch of crazy fills.
09:34 This is from a core user.
09:35 What is four on the floor?
09:36 There are a few different elements here before me at the drums.
09:38 There's cymbals, there are toms, there's a snare drum,
09:43 but most importantly for four on the floor is a kick drum.
09:45 Four on the floor, every beat of a 4/4 bar is filled or anchored by a kick.
09:52 So something like this.
09:54 [Music]
09:59 As long as those four beats are going, you're fine.
10:01 You can call it four on the floor.
10:02 Here's another question from WalloSqueegee.
10:06 How the hell do you count odd time signatures in music?
10:09 In music we have these things called time signatures.
10:11 Within every measure or every bar,
10:13 you can divide that amount of space into a variety of different numbers.
10:16 So a lot of music is in four beats in a bar.
10:19 One, two, three, four.
10:21 One, two.
10:22 So if I go...
10:23 [Music]
10:28 One, two, three, four.
10:30 One, two, three, four.
10:33 That's a grooving four.
10:34 If I were to go one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
10:38 One, two, three, four, five, six.
10:39 [Music]
10:45 Right.
10:46 [Music]
10:51 That is cool.
10:52 That's a bar in seven, seven, four.
10:53 You can basically divide time into any number of beats or subdivisions as you so please.
10:57 This is a fun question from @jp_bse.
11:00 And the question is, "Hey music nerds, I'm trying to understand the concept of polyrhythm.
11:04 Aren't we all?"
11:05 I've long been fascinated with the idea of polyrhythm.
11:07 Polyrhythm just means many rhythms at once.
11:09 If I play three in my left hand and five in my right hand, that sounds like this.
11:12 See?
11:15 So one, two, three, four, five.
11:17 One, two, three, four.
11:19 When I was a teenager, I set myself a challenge.
11:22 What if I could do five rhythms at the same time on the fingers of one hand?
11:26 So like a five-way polyrhythm.
11:28 Here goes.
11:29 So one, two, three, four, five, six.
11:37 One, two, three, four, five.
11:40 One, two, three, four.
11:42 One, two, three.
11:44 One, two, one.
11:48 They happen at the same time.
11:49 It's funky.
11:50 It's fun.
11:50 It's cool.
11:51 This question comes from @charleswelcher.
11:53 "How does a musical piece played with unweighted keys compare to it played with weighted keys?"
11:58 This is a Nord keyboard, and this keyboard has what we call weighted keys,
12:03 in the sense that when I play a note, the key is a little heavy.
12:05 Essentially, it's mimicking a real piano, and inside of a piano are hammers,
12:10 and a hammer will hit three strings per note.
12:13 Many of us who play keyboard instruments, we kind of seek that feeling.
12:15 There's just more degrees of nuance that you can find.
12:18 It's nice to be able to lean into the dimension of the sound.
12:20 Now, in this drawer here, what have we here?
12:23 We have this lovely Minilab 3 by Arturia.
12:26 This keyboard is unweighted.
12:28 We say unweighted in the sense that the keys are light as a feather.
12:31 This can be really fun, especially if you're playing fast stuff.
12:35 You can whiz around it.
12:36 Your fingers don't get so tired.
12:38 If I whiz around on here, it just takes a bit more muscle power.
12:42 This is easier to fly around on, but it's harder to maybe find some of the depth,
12:46 to maintain some of the nuance and performance with something like this.
12:49 Here's a question.
12:50 What is the difference between the white and the black keys on a piano?
12:52 The white keys on the piano are all the notes of the C major scales.
12:57 The black notes are all the notes which are not in the key of C major.
13:01 So there are seven notes in C major,
13:03 and there are five notes that are not in C major.
13:06 They're in a completely different part of the musical key.
13:08 Question here from VegetableOil_.
13:09 Why do some chords sound better together in chord progressions than others?
13:13 It's a great question.
13:14 If I pick up this five-string guitar here, this is in the key of D.
13:18 So certain chords when you're in D, they sound nice.
13:21 Or you could say they sound constant in D because they have common notes.
13:25 So for example, the chord of G major, right, does not sound too foreign in D major
13:32 because both chords contain a D.
13:34 In fact, this G major I played also contained an A
13:38 because it had a little bit of color in it.
13:40 It's about the notes that carry over between chords.
13:47 Okey-doke, that's everything we have time for today.
13:49 Thanks for such amazing questions.
13:50 Hope you learned something.
13:51 I sure did.
13:52 And I hope to see you out there very soon.
13:54 Okay, cheerio.
13:55 Bye.
13:57 [BLANK_AUDIO]