How much should you need to learn to enjoy music

This post was inspired by extensive watching of Adam Neely’s videos. Especially the one above. Adam Neely is Youtuber and bassist who is interested of complex and experimental music. Watching his videos has given me ideas and made me appreciate complex music. But video above goes way further than his normal videos. It is about Maryanne Amacher's album Sound Characters (Making The Third Ear). You can listen it below. I highly recommend watching video above before watching video below.

This is extreme case where you need to know how you need to listen the music and what you want to get it. It should be listened loud and then you ears make extra tones which are the point of the music. If you don’t know this music just sound digital noise. When you are told how the music should work you start to get it a little. You can see this on video above. This extreme case but same applies to Adam Neely’s own music to lesser extent.

It makes his music work better if you know what he is doing in song. I don’t know is part of his Youtube goals to teach people to listen his music. Mostly he is teaching and discussing about concepts used in his music genres and what he finds interesting. Videos give something something even if you don’t plan to listen his music.

This made me think how much you should know before you can enjoy the music. There are artists who seem to make music for very specific audiences who understand the technical and conceptual aspects of the music. There is classical music which everyone can understand and like. There is also classical music where you need to understand what composer is trying to achieve to enjoy it. Or at least it makes you appreciate it more. Best case would be if all the concept and technical difficulty is there but you don’t need to understand any of it to enjoy the music. Or just make simple music which people can enjoy unless they need higher level concept and technical difficulty.

I don’t need higher concepts or technical difficulty on my music but sometimes those can make music better. Sometimes I wonder do people think how accessible their music is or do they make it for people who already knows the language of the genre. Is thinking about accessibility selling out?

432

Trip to this rabbit hole started from one article which is in Finnish. It was good article and I wanted to know more. If you don’t want to watch the videos the debate is briefly should instruments be tuned based on 440 Hz standard or based on 432 Hz which should make the world futuristic utopia. There is lot of nonsense on 432 Hz tuning. You can find it explained in linked videos or from this article. If we drop all the nonsense fact is that some classical music is performed using other tuning than 440 Hz. Some is tuned lower and some is tuned higher.

I started to wonder could I actually change to 432 Hz tuning if I wanted. I have tuner which I can set to 432 Hz. So everything without digital control and autotuning can be set to use 432 Hz tuning. This include guitars, basses and fully analog synths. If there is digital control that is set to 440 Hz standard. With those instruments it is matter tuning them down correct amount. Question is can you hit 432 Hz tuning. It should be on range because it is so close but hitting it exactly may not be possible.

This is point where we come to fact that non-digital instruments are never perfectly in tune. With digital instruments we like to detune them a little and make pitch drift to make them sound better. There might be people who prefer perfectly tuned sounds but most liked synths tend to be ones which have pitch drifting and people use it to make them sound better. It would be hard to make good sounding music hitting perfectly those magical frequencies and keeping them.

I tried to google which of my digitally controlled instruments I can easily change to use 432 Hz. So far I haven’t found I one. There is one. Pianoteq which Adam Neely uses in video below. I didn’t try to google it and I have lighter version of it which don’t have those tuning options. I might not be using correct search words. Whole point of 440 Hz standard is that instruments can easily sound good together. It makes using other tunings difficult.

Falling Glowing Balls

This is more experimental video. I will probably start to make more of these to learn to use Blender. I have one other in works. These won’t be too long because rendering takes such a long time. This one took about 42 hours to render. Next one is shorter but it will take about 100 hours because I use Cycles engine for it. For this I used Eevee.

Music is done with Waldorf Pulse 2 and Arturia Pigments 2. Took some time to get Pulse 2 to work with filter type changes without noises. I originally changed filter type too close to next note. That caused noise. Next time I know not to do that. I also learned weird feature of Cubase. You have to save your settings as preset in device panel if you want to have your settings when you open the project next time. Cubase seem to load the preset you selected last instead of settings you had when you saved the project. I don’t know if there is way to change it.

Day after you change strings to your guitar

This goes really geeky on guitars. Being geeky about music has been theme of this weekend. I will post couple videos of other geeky music thing I learned earlier this weekend next week. These videos convince me I need to change to 009-.042 strings. Just changed new set of .010-.046 to one of my guitars yesterday because that was the set it came with. I have light touch so .009 set should work better for me. .008 set might be too much but I am curious about .009 set. Next set will be .009 set.

Before you say I should have watched the video when it was published I say I bought the string set day before video was published. I have nothing more to say here. Check the videos if you are into this short of thing.

SHISHAMO「君の大事にしてるもの」

Last post I told three albums on my shopping list will be released on same day next week. Shishamo’s next album will be one of them. Shishamo is closer to normal rock band mold than Tricot. I might have forgotten Shashamo if I had not seen this video. They are quite standard three member rock group with punkish flavor.

So what makes this stand out. It is the arrangement and use of small elements. Drummer is playing percussion. Guitarist singer is doing her thing. Check what their bassist is doing without her bass. She is elevating the song with cheap instruments everyone can get their hands on. The guitar is probably quite expensive but everything else they use is pretty cheap. Another thing is how they use dynamics with this setup. They leave room when song needs it.

Their music has these elements but electric instrument don’t give this much dynamics. With acoustic instruments elements get more room.

Best thing at the moment: Tricot

Founding Facebook group for Japanese music turned out to be quite expensive. My album shopping list have many new bands which you will hear more about here in future. I don’t think I found Tricot from there. It was Youtube recommendations which thought I would like them based on videos I found from the group. This is their first song I heard. It was interesting at first. Felt like needs more listening. When I watched other videos their style started to open. Before watching this video I had bit of overdose of female lead Japanese rock bands. It felt like every band had two guitars which were Fenders or copies of Fender and bass which was Fender or copy of Fender. Just like Tricot.

What makes Tricot different is how they use those instruments. It is the guitarist and how rest of the music works with her playing. I wouldn’t be surprised if their songs start from those guitar parts. Style might take little time to get used to listen but it is worth it. I can’t help but wonder why her Stratocaster is missing bridge pickup. Usually the bridge pickup is the one to use and other ones give more mellow tones if you want them. But she obviously knows what she is doing.

Tricot is releasing new album next week. Same day as couple other albums on my shopping list are released. This song will be on that album.