# New Youtube Music Theory Series - What do YOU want to know?



## Aion (Dec 7, 2014)

After a few weeks of internal debate I've decided to make a youtube series about music theory. Admittedly, most people find theory tedious, boring, or just plain difficult. My goal is to try and make it as fun, interesting, and easy to understand as possible. I have a lot prepared for it already due to a free eBook I'm most of the way through writing, but I'm also curious as to what general questions people from this site have. So what has made you resort to  trying to figure out and where has the internet let you down before? Also, what problems have you ran into when trying to learn theory in the past, what do you find most helpful in online theory lessons or lessons in general? I have a lot of my own ideas, but I'm not trying to teach me so I don't want to presume to know what's best.

Thanks a lot for you input, I'll hopefully start posting videos by the end of next week, it kind of depends on when the eBook is finished.


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## Solodini (Dec 15, 2014)

Unsurprisingly, I think there needs to be lots of mention of application. There's so much core theory tuition with little appreciation for the fact that it developed to explain what people do in music and that music is application of bits of it, not just scales straight through. Looking at applications in creativity is what I think is cool and would like to see more of.


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## Khaerruhl (Dec 15, 2014)

Something that bothers me when it comes to theory is that people tend to forget about making stuff accessible. I've had some massive troubles with learning scales and the like for instance. 

Idea in case you're going to cover creativity/improvisation: try to get a couple of people record their own solos over a backing track, so people can hear just how different solos/leads can be within the same scale.


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## wizbit81 (Dec 17, 2014)

For me, I'd like to see modern chord progressions covered in terms of actual application.

E.g. I have no idea what Animals as Leaders are doing harmonically, but I sure as sh1t know it's not a I IV V or a I vi ii V

Videos breaking down modern song structures and then putting the emphasis on the watcher to go make their own in a similar vein would, at least to me, be exceptionally useful.


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## AugmentedFourth (Dec 17, 2014)

wizbit81 said:


> E.g. I have no idea what Animals as Leaders are doing harmonically, but I sure as sh1t know it's not a I IV V or a I vi ii V



You'd be surprised. Simple harmonic progression does not make a simple song. Bands like Animals as Leaders can be quite adept at cleverly using progressions like that.


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## wizbit81 (Dec 17, 2014)

Dude, if you've done any analysis on them I would absolutely love to see it. Modern progressive music progressions are something I am aiming towards working on. I am rubbish at the anatomy of tunes and would love to understand and write that kind of material.


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## octatoan (Dec 18, 2014)

I would love to get an idea of what music sounds like to a _real_ musician with a trained ear an' all - you know, the kind of person able to hear and understand what the artist is actually doing instead of saying "shit that bend was cool" like us plebeians.


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## AugmentedFourth (Dec 18, 2014)

```
Animals as Leaders - Weightless

   | C#5 G#[add9](6/3) | E    G# | A   | B5   | C#sus2 :||
C#:| I   V(6/3)        | bIII V  | bVI | bVII | Isus2  :||
```

Above is a sketch of the outro of "Weightless." The [add9] is a reference to the first time the progression is played, on that dinging electronic piano-esque instrument. It is not actually played by either guitar. (6/3) is the first inversion, 3rd in the bass.

The first three chords are simple: the III chord can be thought of as borrowed or just the regular III if you consider it to be a minor key there. It only sounds cool because the V chord is in inversion, so the bass movement goes:

E |---9---8---0------|

Which is a great bass movement to steal. Sounds nice. Then he goes into the ascension part of the progression. This part is actually REALLY common in rock and pop music where you see this whole

bVI bVII I

thing. Just borrowing the 6 and 7 of the parallel minor. He then tops it off by making you fully expect an I chord, since it's already been 4 measures and that's where the progression resolves, but he delays the resolution by suspending the third... sort of.

The unique thing about this section of the song is the way that Tosin has this very clever way of not letting you know if you are in C# major or minor. It's important to consider the melody:







The numbers are the scale degrees relative to the chord underneath. Blue means the note is neutral to the key of C#, by which I mean it is neither major nor minor {C#, D#, F#, G#}. So, yeah. He kind of avoids playing tones that would give away the key except for in very specific spots. On the and of 4 in m. 1-2 (as well as 6-7 for that matter), a B natural is played, which implies C# minor but also is interesting since it is an altered tone because it is played over a G#7 chord both times (augmented 9th). The A natural (which would suggest C# minor, again, but is still not the 3rd of the key) is played on top of what feels like the inevitable A chord. So it doesn't stick out poorly or anything.

And finally, he decides to break everyone's heart by playing that one and only 3rd... (E# in this case, ignore the image which says it's an F) ...and on the sus2 chord, of all things. So you can think of it as a Picardy third, but remember the B# played in both G# chords... it's not clear who is borrowing from who.

So that's kind of what gives this part the "epic" sort of feel to it.



The contrast in dynamics from the part immediately preceding.


The strong, grinding quarter-note pulse of the rhythm guitars, bass, kick pedals and crashes.


The {9, 8, 0} bass movement.


The bVI bVII I progression.


The suspension of colorful tones to the key.


The sliding grace notes. Oh so sexy.


A little bit of magic. Maybe.


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## wizbit81 (Dec 18, 2014)

If you were a woman I'd marry you instantly!

There should be a sticky on this, i.e. compositional analysis of AAL and other awesome progressive bands. I consider what you just put there to be hugely useful, and I'll tell you now, I'd happily pay cash money for a book that consisted of that kind of thing on a larger scale. A few more examples like that and I'd be a hell of a different composer, instead of not having a clue about how to realise stuff similar to the music I love.


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## Aion (Dec 18, 2014)

wizbit81 said:


> Videos breaking down modern song structures and then putting the emphasis on the watcher to go make their own in a similar vein would, at least to me, be exceptionally useful.



I have a confession to make, my ear is pretty crappy when it comes to melody/harmony. It's something I'm working on, we all have our weaknesses. Give me some sheet music and I can analyze a piece like I'm Freud watching Oedipus didling Jocasta on the patient couch (definitely an Electra complex if I've ever seen one). What I'm going to try and do in the lessons to make up for this is to write some songs/song fragments (enough to give everything context but not enough to be any kind of epic) and as the harmony lessons go on, make the piece more harmonically complicated. I'll probably go about it by having a classical style piece that slowly ends up being more chromatic and winds up being more romantic sounding, a 1920's jazz/pop song that gets turned into a Bebop tune and then into a modal tune, and a rock/metal piece that will turn into a neo-classical piece as the classical-romantic piece develops, and the same rock song will also turn into a jazzy prog rock/metal piece as the jazz tune develops.

Most of the lessons will be geared towards composition, but they are also meant to give the viewer the tools to take any piece of music and do a solid analysis of it and I will have lessons specifically on different styles and methods of analysis, especially because Roman Numeral Analysis doesn't actually work for a lot of post 1920's music.

Thank you guys so much for the suggestions, definitely keep them coming if you think of any. I'm breaking down all of the topics I can think of into lessons. At the moment it's looking like I'll have over 50 videos worth of topics. When I say I'm breaking the topics down, I mean I'm really breaking them down. The idea is to keep everything as short, specific, and easy to digest as possible. For example, instead of having one 20 minute video on nonchord tones, I'm making it into 6 shorter videos that are each specific to one or two types of nonchord tones.

When I'm done with this, the plan is to release two videos a week, one on Saturday and one on Sunday. The Saturday video will be focused on basics and what I'm calling music theory philosophy (example topic, Tension and Relief, which is all about how different forms of tension and relief drive most styles of music). After that it will move on to different styles of analysis and ways to approach songwriting. The Sunday video will be different topics in melody, harmony, and rhythm. Sunday videos will assume a basic understanding of how to read music, or at the very least how to follow along when something is shown and played. I figure if I split it up this way it will be manageable and the different days can target different groups. Saturday for those who know nothing of theory, and Sunday for those who know some and can either use the lesson or understand enough to work towards using it. I would love to hear what people have to think about this idea or any suggestions to make it more effective.


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## coffeeflush (Dec 18, 2014)

How was the major scale derived ? 
Why were those particular notes chosen ? 
Why are intervals counted on the major scale itself ?


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## Poltergeist (Dec 20, 2014)

Approaches towards creating dissonance in your music ( using notes outside of the diatonic key) and how to make it sound convincing and interesting.


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## Aion (Dec 20, 2014)

Poltergeist said:


> Approaches towards creating dissonance in your music ( using notes outside of the diatonic key) and how to make it sound convincing and interesting.



Don't worry dude, already done. There's a lot about how to add both chromatic chord tones and chromatic non-chord tones.


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## slowro (Dec 20, 2014)

How to play from notation.
I know how to read music (slowly after lack of practice) and I know my notes on guitar. Its the real world application of finding the positions to play them, Chords and melodies.

Does that make sense?


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## Aion (Dec 20, 2014)

slowro said:


> How to play from notation.
> I know how to read music (slowly after lack of practice) and I know my notes on guitar. Its the real world application of finding the positions to play them, Chords and melodies.
> 
> Does that make sense?



Unfortunately if it's not in the music there's really no one way to play something. I'll do some general sight reading tips, which will cover some of that, but unfortunately it's not as straightforward as, "and when you see this string of notes it always means xyz."


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## KJGaruda (Dec 29, 2014)

In addition to a practical application to scales, I think a quick glossary would be excellent. Just lay it out in layman's terms in the video with maybe a link to a pdf or something with everything so people can save it and memorize. 

When I first started my trek into learning music theory, I'd find myself sitting like "???" when it came to a lot of the terms being thrown around. 

Example: enharmonic notes like C&#9839; and D&#9837;. Hearing or seeing the word would throw me off when it was really just a fancy way of saying that they're equal notes that are just 'spelled' differently.


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## Aion (Dec 29, 2014)

Zenki_Kouki said:


> In addition to a practical application to scales, I think a quick glossary would be excellent. Just lay it out in layman's terms in the video with maybe a link to a pdf or something with everything so people can save it and memorize.
> 
> When I first started my trek into learning music theory, I'd find myself sitting like "???" when it came to a lot of the terms being thrown around.
> 
> Example: enharmonic notes like C&#9839; and D&#9837;. Hearing or seeing the word would throw me off when it was really just a fancy way of saying that they're equal notes that are just 'spelled' differently.



Actually, this whole thing started when I tried to write a, "quick guide to everything music theory," to answer some of the common questions that pop up here. That "quick guide" turned into a nearly 18,000 word document. I intend to edit each section as I release the video about that section. Maybe what I'll do is release it in parts as well as they correspond with the different videos. Slowly add to a google doc anyone can read but only I can edit or something like that.


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## Aion (Dec 29, 2014)

Just an update on this, the first video is made (but not posted yet). I want to make a few more, figure out how long they take me to make, figure out a few small editing tricks, that way I can start by having more than one, "hi, this is what this is going to be," video out and I can also have a little bit of a buffer for regular releases.


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## wizbit81 (Jan 3, 2015)

Hey man, if you need any collaboration or assistance I just thought I'd put myself up for it.

Jazz degree here, although I quit playing for years after it because I was so down on my own music. I don't know everything by any means, and I know precisely nothing on the classical side, but happy to help if wanted.


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## Aion (Jan 4, 2015)

I'll keep that in mind. I think I'm pretty good at the moment, but if at any point you have any opinions about what I'm doing, whether you think I'm doing it right or wrong, feel free to let me know.


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## wizbit81 (Jan 4, 2015)

Cool man, stick a vid up and I'll have a watch and give you some feedback. 

I've been starting out on the video thing recently and I'm learning as I go. Get a decent video editor like Power Director 13, it makes life a lot easier!


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## Legion (Jan 4, 2015)

Okay so here's what I am absolutely desperate for:

1) Take a band like Exivious. NO other band sounds like them. That combination of jazz and rock/metal is something I have been trying to explore ever since Exivious came out with their first album (4 years now?) but I find myself so woefully unprepared to break it down. I'd like someone to help me break that down from a theory perspective. How various chords work together, even if they are NOT AT ALL from the same key, what logic to use to pick those chords, and how the hell it manages to sound so amazing despite being dissonant theoretically.

2) (Not exactly theory but) SONGWRITING. OMG. I have so many crazy musical ideas as guitar pro tabs but I find myself reduced to tears (very literally) when I try to string it together into a coherent song. I play almost exclusively instrumental progressive metal so I am desperately looking for ways to NOT make things sound repetitive and make meaningful songs. 

Please, please help. Thank you so much.


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## Aion (Jan 4, 2015)

Legion said:


> Okay so here's what I am absolutely desperate for:
> 
> 1) Take a band like Exivious. NO other band sounds like them. That combination of jazz and rock/metal is something I have been trying to explore ever since Exivious came out with their first album (4 years now?) but I find myself so woefully unprepared to break it down. I'd like someone to help me break that down from a theory perspective. How various chords work together, even if they are NOT AT ALL from the same key, what logic to use to pick those chords, and how the hell it manages to sound so amazing despite being dissonant theoretically.
> 
> 2) (Not exactly theory but) SONGWRITING. OMG. I have so many crazy musical ideas as guitar pro tabs but I find myself reduced to tears (very literally) when I try to string it together into a coherent song. I play almost exclusively instrumental progressive metal so I am desperately looking for ways to NOT make things sound repetitive and make meaningful songs.



1) I'll have to check that band out, they sound awesome. I will say it's definitely going to go over jazz theory for bebop and modal music. Most metal bands tend to mix the chromaticism of bebop with the chord-scale theory of modal jazz to get that "jazzy" sound. From the quick listen I'm doing right now, it sounds like they're pretty much doing exactly that. Those concepts will be covered, but I will also say that they're going to get covered later rather than sooner. To me, most of basic harmony is "how do I play everything nice and diatonic like a good little boy." Advanced harmony is, "how do I break all of those rules I learned while not sounding like I'm just punching the fretboard." And I would categorize what I'm hearing as advanced.

2) Going to have a whole thing about songwriting. Mostly because it's the application part, and application of how these ideas actually work is one of the most important things in my mind. Also because I notice a lot of bands that are really great technically that are basically just throwing riffs and melodies together with no real reason.

So even if I never do a full on analysis of Exivious, I will definitely cover the theory behind what they're doing so hopefully you'll have the tools to understand them and hopefully be able to analyze them yourself.


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## Aion (Jan 4, 2015)

Starting posting videos. I haven't gotten to a lot of the more interesting stuff, but it exists now. Also I should note that at the moment I'm just doing it with my webcam, but if a bunch of people start liking or subscribing or whatever newfangled thing people do on the yertubs I'll try and get some decent video equipment.


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## Solodini (Jan 5, 2015)

Legion said:


> 2) (Not exactly theory but) SONGWRITING. OMG. I have so many crazy musical ideas as guitar pro tabs but I find myself reduced to tears (very literally) when I try to string it together into a coherent song. I play almost exclusively instrumental progressive metal so I am desperately looking for ways to NOT make things sound repetitive and make meaningful songs.
> 
> Please, please help. Thank you so much.


 
Take the end bar or two of one section and the first bar or two of the next and put them next to each other. Don't flow? Why not? Is there too big a leap between them, but each part moves in small movements? Try revoicing each section a bit to make those leaps more familiar: invert 2nds, 3rds 4ths to make 7ths, 6ths, 5ths respectively. Are the rhythms too drastically different? Try chopping the rhythms of each part into beat 1, 2, 3, 4 and alternate rhythms from each part: 1a 2b 3a 4b, to blend the rhythms a little. These might sound terrible but it'll give you a little more idea of what is causing problems.


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## Legion (Jan 6, 2015)

Solodini said:


> Take the end bar or two of one section and the first bar or two of the next and put them next to each other. Don't flow? Why not? Is there too big a leap between them, but each part moves in small movements? Try revoicing each section a bit to make those leaps more familiar: invert 2nds, 3rds 4ths to make 7ths, 6ths, 5ths respectively. Are the rhythms too drastically different? Try chopping the rhythms of each part into beat 1, 2, 3, 4 and alternate rhythms from each part: 1a 2b 3a 4b, to blend the rhythms a little. These might sound terrible but it'll give you a little more idea of what is causing problems.




This is part of the problem.

The other is that sometimes when I get into the zone and write, I write for a while with BRILLIANT flow but it invariably reaches a point where everything shuts down. After that, nothing I ever write fits with that section to carry the song forward. It just...stops. Like that. 

Often the stuff I write sounds less like a song and more like what I call a "Riff Salad" if you get what I'm saying. Rhythmically and melodically I can maybe justify why I put certain riffs in a certain sequence, but then like Aion said, there's no purpose. They just feel like...riffs. Not like parts of a song.

A song, the way I see it, is greater than the sum of its parts, but mine are less than or equal to. 

This is further compounded by the fact that I write instrumental music. When there are vocals you can get away with a relatively simple/boring riff in the background because the vocals are the center of attention there. Usually. But in instrumental music it gets repetititititititititive.


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## Solodini (Jan 6, 2015)

You need to determine what you want the music to represent, then. You need a topic to represent musically, so you can check whether it makes sense aesthetically to that theme.


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## Legion (Jan 6, 2015)

A spacey, sci-fi, trippy-ass vibe. Metal's heaviness+weird chords and atmospherics. Without the dj0nt haha.


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## Aion (Jan 6, 2015)

Okay, well now you need to figure out how to translate that idea into music. I'll use an example that has nothing to do with metal but really illustrates how this thinking works. My composition and theory teacher, Kyle Gann, made his own musical interpretation of The Planets. Only instead of being astronomy-based, it was astrological. This meant that it would include Pluto, the Sun, and the Moon. Each movement was based around one (or a small number) of aesthetic/metaphoric ideas that were translated into a number of musical ones.

Here are his notes and the score: http://www.kylegann.com/ThePlanets.pdf
Venus: http://www.kylegann.com/Venus.mp3
Uranus: http://www.kylegann.com/Uranus.mp3
Mercury: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5kLiX3y8To&list=PLKuNf0Luog9BsU0g38IhECKroGg8TXWc4&index=47

At this point if you want to hear more, I leave you to fend for yourself, as this is enough to give an example of my point. Let's quickly focus on Mercury. Taken from the liner notes:

"Mercury is the quick, darting, mercurial planet whose retrograde phases everyone seems to know about; bad luck for contracts, repairs, and so on. Two retrogrades are audible in this Mercury movement, points at which the music turns backward briefly before going forward again. Since this is the planet of communication and logic, the disconnected phrases (articulating different tempos) cumulatively combine themselves into longer phrases that begin to make more rhythmic sense. And since Mercury is a kind of gender-neutral planet, the harmonies all combine major with minor triads."

So astrology is based on a earth-centric model of looking at planet positioning (not scientifically accurate, but astrology isn't science). Because of this, it sometimes appears that Mercury is moving backwards, which is referred to as retrograde. The obvious way to translate this musical idea (and being obvious is a very underrated quality in music) is to play part of the piece backwards. Which, in music, is also referred to as retrograde. I think this is one of the easiest conceptual ideas in the piece to grasp. Even if someone can't hear it, they can understand that musical idea, in part because it's so literal. You don't always have to be literal, and if you listen to any of the other movements and read the liner notes sometimes the ideas are very conceptual or qualitative, but that's part of why I'm not using those as the example.

If you're going to deal with absolute music (i.e music that is essentially just music for music's sake) you want to take a musical idea and base everything around that. Beethoven's Fifth is cohesive in a way that was (nearly, if not completely) unprecedented. That opening rhythm appears in some form or another throughout the entire piece. There's no meaning behind it (though some have ascribed it as being the "knock of fate," but there's no indication that there was ever any true program or conception of this on the part of Beethoven), but by focusing on one musical idea you can get a piece that remains consistent across what are ultimately wildly different movements.

A more modern example of this latter can be found in Ron Jarzombek's guitar playing in Blotted Science. It is based off of the 12 tone system originally developed by Schoenberg. Personally, I think Schoenberg's 12 tone system is both stupid and dumb, but the way Jarzombek uses it to create a slightly different system is extremely creative and awesome. He talks about it here way better than I ever could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVyUHFl0iB8

In all of these cases one thing remains constant. It is that a piece of music is not just put together willy-nilly, but is constructed around a relatively small number of ideas used in many different ways. There doesn't need to just be one idea, the idea might be obscured, and sometimes two ideas may never actually come in contact, but by having something to connect everything one ends up with music that makes sense. Whether or not it's actually good, as opposed to just making sense, well, that's a subjective quality for you to judge. But I hope this shows how to keep your music cohesive and not so much riff-salad.


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## FRETPICK (Jan 6, 2015)

Fact Of The Day.


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## Legion (Jan 6, 2015)

Aion said:


> Okay, well now you need to figure out how to translate that idea into music. I'll use an example that has nothing to do with metal but really illustrates how this thinking works. My composition and theory teacher, Kyle Gann, made his own musical interpretation of The Planets. Only instead of being astronomy-based, it was astrological. This meant that it would include Pluto, the Sun, and the Moon. Each movement was based around one (or a small number) of aesthetic/metaphoric ideas that were translated into a number of musical ones.
> 
> Here are his notes and the score: http://www.kylegann.com/ThePlanets.pdf
> Venus: http://www.kylegann.com/Venus.mp3
> ...





My god, this is a gold mine.

I NEVER thought of an approach like this.
Subscribed to your channel, and eagerly waiting to lap up all the wisdom you have to offer. Thank you very much!


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## AugmentedFourth (Jan 7, 2015)

Legion said:


> A spacey, sci-fi, trippy-ass vibe. Metal's heaviness+weird chords and atmospherics. Without the dj0nt haha.



Have you considered rhythmic sequencing? Irepress does an absolutely smashing job of this. (Lots of lessons are to be learned from that band. )



The initial heavy part seems unrelated but keep it in mind.
At about 0:07, you can hear the ride play something like







This develops into the motive for the entire A section. Listen to the similarities to classical music... I hear a lot of people saying that Irepress sound 'jazzy' to distinguish them from other bands that may otherwise be labeled as 'metal' or 'post-metal'. They are unique to be sure, but I don't think it's the jazz influence. You can hear the imitation of the theme being played across many 'voices' (some of which aren't even melodic). The ride, the kick, the bass, the guitar, all at various interspersed times--sometimes you might not even notice.

Like at 0:44, the ride/sidestick is the only voice carrying the theme.

At 1:52 it starts to get even more interesting. Remember the intro 7 seconds? The fact that they are the same is more identifiable at 2:02. Then at 2:15 there is a new rhythm that kind of functions as a new motive:






At first it seems distinct from the original one above, but it's similar too. The first hit encompasses the first two hits in the original, the 3rd lines up perfectly, then the 4th note of the original motive is omitted and the last two of each are identical. And more importantly, the emphasis is different, so the syncopation (and thus the 'groove') are different. In a way it's an A' motif.

So maybe try some ideas like that?



Aion said:


> Personally, I think Schoenberg's 12 tone system is both stupid and dumb, but the way Jarzombek uses it to create a slightly different system is extremely creative and awesome.



 Not sure if you're joking here, or you miss the point of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. The system is neither 'stupid' nor 'dumb' for a few reasons.

Part of why it is/was cool is because 12-tone music gets rid of 'dissonance'. At first that might seem an absurd statement since 12-tone music general sounds dissonant to most people. What I mean is that, in earlier music, there were general principles by which composers guided their note choice to maintain a sense of tonal gravity. Certain sonorities were/are considered 'dissonances', and must thus resolve in one or one of a few manner(s). For example, the 7th scale tone in major (raised 7th in minor) basically always resolves up to the 1st scale tone (tonic).

Schoenberg was the first to really decide that it was justifiable to create music that didn't contain any of those gestures but instead relied solely on theme. By creating themes that were maximally colorful (contain all 12 tones in about equal proportion), you accomplish that type of music in two ways. One, there is no longer a tone(s) that is more central than the rest, therefore no sense of tonality. Two, since the theme is so colorful and has many different kinds of motion, it can be manipulated many many many different ways without destroying the information from the original theme.



Rudolph Reti said:


> "To replace one structural force (tonality) by another (increased thematic oneness) is indeed the fundamental idea behind the twelve-tone technique," arguing it arose out of Schoenberg's frustrations with free atonality, providing a "positive premise" for atonality.



The ways that Schoenberg and the composers/theorists after him (like Babbitt) manipulate themes can get very complex and mathematical. Often at this point you hear a lot of people objecting. Then it's math, not music! Turns out that mathematics is an art form of its own and that music has always been applied mathematics. In the end, using your ears is always the 'final' judge of a piece.

Jarzombek does it differently... it is a "12-tone technique," but it's not Schoenberg, in fact it has no serial elements of any kind. He structures his melodies just like in a non-12-tone composition, but just uses his tone rows (or circles, whatever the case may be) to group notes and thus create structure using clusters, if you will.


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## Aion (Jan 7, 2015)

No problem dude, and thanks for subscribing. I won't get to songwriting for a while (I think there are something like ten "basics," lessons that need to happen first), but it'll happen eventually. Though I'm also happy to answer questions. Just trying to be a generally helpful person.


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## Solodini (Jan 7, 2015)

Legion said:


> A spacey, sci-fi, trippy-ass vibe. Metal's heaviness+weird chords and atmospherics. Without the dj0nt haha.


 
That's a vibe, but not something you're actually trying to express. An equivalent is like me telling you that I'm going to have an angry conversation with my boss. What about? Well it's going to be angry. What are you angry about, Adam? Angry. Tough to know what to say when you're not specific about what you're trying to express and you only know the general mood of it. 

Try to create some characterisation, prompts for emotions or vague plot.


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## Aion (Jan 7, 2015)

AugmentedFourth said:


> Big Post with lots of good info



Kind of joking. Joking in that calling something, "stupid and dumb," is juvenile and redundant. Not joking, in that I hate 12 tone. But I won't hate on anyone else for liking it. If you want to know why you can read this rant. Otherwise feel free to skip to the second to last paragraph which is just why I like Blotted Science and how you're totally right about it not being TRU 12 T0N3 BRUT41ITY.

The problem that I have with 12 tone is that so much of what's happening is happening on a theoretical level rather than an aural one. I have always found that you gain almost nothing by listening to a 12 tone piece, only analyzing them seems to give them any real value. And on that level that can be very interesting. How tone rows are stacked and manipulated in different ways can be really cool, but they're so thorny and dense that they become nearly impossible to understand without a score.

Once again, I must acknowledge the pure subjectivity of this entire argument before I let forth the most pretentious phrase one can let forth: my entire artistic philosophy is based on the idea that a great piece of art is layered. It's what makes you come back to certain music/movies/books is when you think it's really cool, and then you look at it again and there's this awesome thing you didn't notice, and then you come back again and... I think you get the point. 12 tone lacks the first layers, which is arguably the most aesthetic and subjective, but I at least have always found it to be incredibly lacking in making me want to hear more. I once remarked to a friend that 12 tone is like musical sudoku, to which he responded, "and having your 12 tone piece performed is like framing your sudoku puzzle on the wall." And I'm not knocking sudoku, I really like it. But 12 tone music ultimately ignores the listening experience. And that's part of the nature of the music, it isn't a value judgement, and if you don't mind that it doesn't care about the listening experience, that's fine. Schoenberg didn't care about the audience, it wasn't his goal to make beautiful music, that was never the point. Perhaps to judge the music on a criteria it is not trying to meet is unfair of me, but I beliee the removal of that goal is a huge mistake. And while there are some 12 tone pieces I have heard that I liked. But I liked them in spite of being 12 tone, not because of it.

There's also the fact that I think the development of 12 tone worked backwards. Whereas most musical systems advance by looking at the rules and trying to find ways to break them, the development of 12 tone was serialism which added more rules rather than take them away. 12 tone started with a simple rule, "use each note once in every tone row," and serialism just took that idea and applied to other parts of music such as rhythm and dynamics. The only exception to this pattern that I can think of is the idea of overlapping tone rows, but that's not enough to swing the entire system.

Part of what I like about Jarzombek and Blotted Science is that it gets rid of the rigidity of 12 tone. You're totally right, it actually bears very little resemblance to 12 tone outside of using the tone row. In many ways its closer to the thematic transformation of romantic music than it is to 12 tone. But that's part of why it appeals to me. He takes what is ultimately a very rigid system and rearranges it to allow for freedom within limitation.

Of course, I didn't want to say all that in my post about songwriting so just saying 12 tone is both stupid and dumb is a much more succinct way to sum up my point


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Jan 10, 2015)

> Part of what I like about Jarzombek and Blotted Science is that it gets rid of the rigidity of 12 tone. You're totally right, it actually bears very little resemblance to 12 tone outside of using the tone row. In many ways its closer to the thematic transformation of romantic music than it is to 12 tone. But that's part of why it appeals to me. He takes what is ultimately a very rigid system and rearranges it to allow for freedom within limitation.



This sentiment reminds me of something Robert Wyatt said in the Prog Rock Britannia documentary.



(1:30 or so)

"One of the things that proper musicians objected to with punk was that they were always out of tune, the punk bands. If you listen to Schoenberg and Cecil Taylor, there's no such thing as out-of-tune. It's just another bunch of notes. In fact, if you're going to play the same three rock-and-roll chords, instead of, like, learning all kind of fancy ones, why not just have them play guitar out of tune? That'll give you something different. I thought that was kind of a very lovely homemade solution to harmonic inventiveness. Just don't tune up, you know. Don't sing in tune. How far out can you get, you know? The notes between the notes: we're hittin' 'em."


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## Aion (Jan 10, 2015)

Mr. Big Noodles said:


> "One of the things that proper musicians objected to with punk was that they were always out of tune, the punk bands. If you listen to Schoenberg and Cecil Taylor, there's no such thing as out-of-tune. It's just another bunch of notes. In fact, if you're going to play the same three rock-and-roll chords, instead of, like, learning all kind of fancy ones, why not just have them play guitar out of tune? That'll give you something different. I thought that was kind of a very lovely homemade solution to harmonic inventiveness. Just don't tune up, you know. Don't sing in tune. How far out can you get, you know? The notes between the notes: we're hittin' 'em."



Really interesting take on that. I always think of twelve tone being rigidly in tune because it requires 12 equally spaced notes. To me it's the bastard son of equal temperament. I see microtonal music as being closer to punk than 12 tone. Though some microtonal uses just-intonation, which once again requires a rigid focus on tuning. However, I think it's worth noting that a lot of the musicians who explored just intonation in the past 50 years or so were post-classical (minimalist, post-minimlaist, totalist, etc.) musicians. And starting in the 70's, many of those musicians were influenced by Punk and New Wave bands and musical philosophies.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Jan 10, 2015)

Aion said:


> Really interesting take on that. I always think of twelve tone being rigidly in tune because it requires 12 equally spaced notes. To me it's the bastard son of equal temperament.



Well, of course his statement regarding Schoenberg is incorrect, as the constituent tones of the row are very important for the melody and harmony. In much of that music, similtude is preferred to uniqueness. I was drawing a parallel between your assessment of Ron Jarzombek's loosening of constraints in dodecaphonic music and the loosening of everything else in punk music.


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## Aion (Jan 10, 2015)

Mr. Big Noodles said:


> Well, of course his statement regarding Schoenberg is incorrect, as the constituent tones of the row are very important for the melody and harmony. In much of that music, similtude is preferred to uniqueness. I was drawing a parallel between your assessment of Ron Jarzombek's loosening of constraints in dodecaphonic music and the loosening of everything else in punk music.



Ah, I get what you were saying now. Whoopsie.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Jan 10, 2015)

No worries. There clearly was a red herring in the quote.


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## Aion (Jan 10, 2015)

Also, if anyone's interested, new video on harmony just went up. Learn how to sound just as boring as Mozart! That's mostly a joke... kind of.


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## octatoan (Jan 10, 2015)

Aion said:


> Also, if anyone's interested, new video on harmony just went up. Learn how to sound just as boring as Mozart! That's mostly a joke... kind of.




Woohoo, sounds like fun!


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## Aion (Jan 10, 2015)

It is actually really important to know in order to understand classical music and to understand how to start breaking all the harmony "rules." But since those are pretty much "the rules," in their most unbroken form it just doesn't make for the most interesting sounding harmony. But then what comes next is how to totally avoid playing that straight and do weird and interesting things with it.


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## octatoan (Jan 11, 2015)

sharp all the 11s


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## Aion (Jan 11, 2015)

Possibly my favorite music meme:


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## Legion (Jan 11, 2015)

octatoan said:


> sharp all the 11s



If you're shoving #11s in every powerchord you play you'll get a weird-ass, shifting lydian vibe. Which is kinda cool.


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## octatoan (Jan 11, 2015)

Will try that, thanks.


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## amberawakening (Jan 12, 2015)

I'd really like to see a video on improvisation.

I like to improv to help me write some of my pieces, and I'd like to see your view on it because your words don't have such a hard time imprinting themselves into my conscience unlike some other people lol.

SUBSCRIBED!!!

Thanks


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## Solodini (Jan 12, 2015)

Improv is just writing on the spot so working on writing on the spot, to improve your writing may just be a case of practise. You probably just need to develop your musical vocabulary further. Do you feel that you're just not expressing yourself when you're writing without improvisation? What's blocking your creativity?


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## Aion (Jan 12, 2015)

amberawakening said:


> I'd really like to see a video on improvisation.
> 
> I like to improv to help me write some of my pieces, and I'd like to see your view on it because your words don't have such a hard time imprinting themselves into my conscience unlike some other people lol.
> 
> ...



Thanks for the subscribe! As Solodini said, improv is just writing on the spot. Anything more specific suffers from inaccuracy as different styles of music require different approaches to improvisation. I had initially written out some pretty limited lessons on improv, which was a mistake. Thanks to you, I've added in some improvisation lessons and this mistake has been corrected.

To build a bit on Solodini's post, basically what you want to do is internalize the ideas of music theory. You do this through a combination of ear training and experimentation. I have two ear training lessons that sort of go along with the harmony video I posted on Saturday. They will have videos but I'll do the truncated versions here.

Diatonic chord movement: There are really only three types of diatonic chord movement. Movements in seconds, thirds, and fourths. Movement in fifths, sixths, and sevenths are just the inverted forms of those movements, and you should know them, but from a theory standpoint they are the same thing. So take a scale and go through it in seconds, then in thirds, then in fourths. There are four versions of each of these. You can go up, you can go down, you can go up inverted, you can go down inverted. Using C major scale in seconds as an example that would be:

Up: C, d, e, F, G, a, bdim, C
Down: C, Bdim, a, G, F, e, d, C
Up inverted: C, Bdim, a, G, F, e, d, C
Down inverted: C, d, e, F, G, a, bdim, Cl

When you start to get too high up what you do is fold back down. So going up in sevenths (which is up inverted) my root movement might go:

M7U, M2D, m7U, M2D, M7U, M2D, m7U

M=Major
m=minor
U=up
D=down

Down inverted would just be the same intervals just switch the U's and D's.

Don't try and do all of these in one day. Do up and down in seconds one day, thirds the next, fourths the next, and then do up and down in inverted seconds, thirds, and then fourths. When you get quick with them maybe start doing more than one a day. You eventually want to be able to do these in any scale that you will commonly play. You can skip over modes for now, you're brain will probably pick that up naturally. If you really feel like that hasn't happened later on then you can always go back and do the modes. It's just, doing this with modes makes the exercise way longer and modes have significantly diminishing returns that different scales don't.


Movement between chord types:
Keeping it to just triads for now (but you can do it for sevenths and extended harmonies). Go from CMaj to every Major chord:

CMaj-CMaj (you'll see why this is soon), Cmaj-C#Maj, Cmaj-DMaj, etc.

Cmaj to every minor chord:
CMaj-CMin, CMaj-C#min, CMaj-Dmin, etc.

At this point you can guess where this is going. C major to every diminished and every augmented chord. After that do the same thing but start with C minor. Then do it again with C diminished. Then one more time with C augmented. All told, there are 16 versions of this exercise. It's not actually important to start with C, in fact you should do it with every single starting pitch (leaving you with 192 permutation). But don't worry, once you do it in two or three different keys you'll really start to pick up the pace, and all told, 192 different 12 chord progressions don't take nearly as long as what most people think when they first realize that's how many there are. You also don't need to do all of them in one sitting, I actually recommend *not* doing them all in one sitting. Start by doing one or two a day. Then when it starts getting under your fingers start doing four a day. Then when that's under your fingers you can bring it up to sixteen. It might take you about a month the first time around, but if you ever decide to come back to it, you can probably just jump to doing 16 a day and you'll be done with all the permutations in 12 days. That's the thing about a lot of these exercises, you do the math and see, "holy crap there are hundreds/thousands of these I need to do," but once you get a few of them into your brain and fingers then you can do a lot of them fairly quickly and when you want to do them (even the ones you haven't gone over yet) you just can.


So by doing these exercises what you end up with is a really strong ear for harmony. You can hear how the chords are moving as well as the quality of those movement (i.e, from major to minor or whatever it happens to be). The application of this is that when I say, "you can hear..." I don't just mean when you're listening to music, but when you have an idea in your head. By doing all of that abstract and rigid work you get to the point where you don't think "I'm going to move from X-Y-Z," but instead you just hear it in your head and your hands automatically follow.

Like I said different types of music require different approaches to improvisation, and later on there will be more ear training videos that go over different exercises to develop the connection between ear, brain, and hand for different elements of music. These just happen to pair well with the harmony video I just posted.

Did I do a good job of explaining the connection between these exercises and being able to improvise something musical? One of the things that I notice happens a lot that I'm trying to avoid is people see ear training exercises like this and don't understand how it applies to actually playing. And one major downside to explaining stuff like this online is I can't visually get any confirmation that my babling is coherent and makes the answer to the question clear. If I didn't do a good job of that then definitely let me know because I want to make my explanations as effective as possible. So yeah, if this didn't make sense or didn't really answer your question let me know or ask a different question and I'll do my best to figure out what I did wrong in explaining things. But hopefully this was totally helpful and now you can magically outplay Vai. Okay, that one might be unlikely... but not impossible


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## amberawakening (Jan 12, 2015)

Solodini said:


> Improv is just writing on the spot so working on writing on the spot, to improve your writing may just be a case of practise. You probably just need to develop your musical vocabulary further. Do you feel that you're just not expressing yourself when you're writing without improvisation? What's blocking your creativity?



I agree with your suggestion on developing my musical vocabulary. HOWEVER, I do believe that with proper technique, you can use improvisation as a tool to create music. 

I will sometimes pick a scale or maybe an arpeggio and experiment with it in different ways until I find something that I like. I'll play to a metronome and keep driving at it until it really starts to shine.

Unless you wouldn't consider that to be improv? 

Anyways, I think the only thing blocking my musical creativity is sometimes a lack of motivation but definitely a lack of musical knowledge. I've been spending a few hours every day closely examining videos on theory so eventually that shouldn't be much of a problem.


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## amberawakening (Jan 12, 2015)

Aion said:


> Thanks for the subscribe! As Solodini said, improv is just writing on the spot. Anything more specific suffers from inaccuracy as different styles of music require different approaches to improvisation. I had initially written out some pretty limited lessons on improv, which was a mistake. Thanks to you, I've added in some improvisation lessons and this mistake has been corrected.
> 
> To build a bit on Solodini's post, basically what you want to do is internalize the ideas of music theory. You do this through a combination of ear training and experimentation. I have two ear training lessons that sort of go along with the harmony video I posted on Saturday. They will have videos but I'll do the truncated versions here.
> 
> ...



This was a good suggestion and I found it pretty funny because I was actually playing around with the diatonic chords in my scale earlier. (harmonic minor, hungarian minor) 

Once again you've given me another epiphany, and once again I'm sitting here with my pencil and paper. 

Good stuff to press into my grey matter.


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## Solodini (Jan 13, 2015)

amberawakening said:


> I agree with your suggestion on developing my musical vocabulary. HOWEVER, I do believe that with proper technique, you can use improvisation as a tool to create music.
> 
> I will sometimes pick a scale or maybe an arpeggio and experiment with it in different ways until I find something that I like. I'll play to a metronome and keep driving at it until it really starts to shine.
> 
> ...


 
If you're refining and developing it and practising it to get it good, I wouldn't necessarily call it improv. You can certainly develop ideas to use when improvising, but that's equivalent to reading up on different philosophers, scientists, poets, finding new words in the thesaurus or dictionary, so you can be more eloquent in conversation. 

Really, though, improv is made into more of a dark art than it really is. It's just writing on the spot. Consider the difference between having a conversation or reciting a speech or poem. The conversation is improv, the recitation is what you do with songs you play note for predetermined note. 

I stand by my suggestion: learn more of the language of music, learn to elaborate what you're trying to express, combine the two and you'll improve at writing and thus improv.

I'd strongly suggest reading, as well as just watching videos. Take other songs that you like and look at the elements which make it fit your tastes.


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## Aion (Jan 17, 2015)

I made another video. A lot people here will probably have intuitively figured this out, but use these terms to sound smart impress your "friends," while they shove you into a locker!


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## Aion (Jan 25, 2015)

Minor Chord Progressions! Which means that we're just two harmony videos away to start getting chromatic and it'll only get weirder from there.


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## octatoan (Jan 25, 2015)

Aion y u no text link? Windoge Foen noob iz crie ;.;

You could make separate playlists for harmony, theory etc.


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## Aion (Jan 26, 2015)

octatoan said:


> Aion y u no text link? Windoge Foen noob iz crie ;.;
> 
> You could make separate playlists for harmony, theory etc.



I did not understand that first sentence at all.

And I'll turn them into playlists soon. It's not high priority until there are more of them. But it's getting there, didn't realize how many I've already put up.


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## octatoan (Jan 26, 2015)

Please add a text link in addition to embedding. I'm on Windows Phone and my browser can't handle embeds. Better?

Also, your Philosophy video is downright brilliant. "You can see I'm wearing a fancy philosophy robe . . ." (Where'd you get it from?)


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## Aion (Jan 26, 2015)

octatoan said:


> Please add a text link in addition to embedding. I'm on Windows Phone and my browser can't handle embeds. Better?
> 
> Also, your Philosophy video is downright brilliant. "You can see I'm wearing a fancy philosophy robe . . ." (Where'd you get it from?)



Ah. Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJaJLwFCB4g

And this robe is a hammy down from my grandfather. Believe it or not, it's just a regular robe. But it makes me look more philosophyish. Because philosophy is super serious






There are going to be more philosophy videos (as well as some ear training videos and then some other types of theory videos) as soon as I get enough of the basics done that I no longer feel the compulsion to get those out every week. And I'm glad you found the philosophy robe to be humorous. I have a kind of dry sense of humor so I'm it's good to know at least one person found it funny


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## Aion (Jan 31, 2015)

It's almost like I do these weekly or something... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50BlxSg0yqw


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## octatoan (Feb 1, 2015)

Is that a pic of a young Aion?


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## Aion (Feb 1, 2015)

octatoan said:


> Is that a pic of a young Aion?



I see no pic. But that's a video of young Aion. And by young, I mean I think I filmed that one about three weeks ago. I was so youthful then. My hair was so much shorter, my eyes filled with hope, and I was wearing a completely different shirt than I am at this moment. Oh cruel sands of time, even the rock of youth degrades under the force of your fury.


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## Aion (Feb 1, 2015)

Oh... you were talking about two comments ago, weren't you. Uhhhhh, I STAND BY MY POST. THAT'S WHAT I LOOKED LIKE THREE WEEKS AGO.


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## Aion (Feb 9, 2015)

I posted a new video about different definitions of technical terms. In all honesty the difference between some of these words always seemed really grey to me and was wondering if anyone has disagrees with me. 



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBDGC5diTq0&feature=youtu.be


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