 That's it for this week's episode of intros that have absolutely no meaning what is going on everybody so this as You can kind of already already see this is the new studio I was gonna do like a studio tour, but I realized that I don't really have anything interesting to show I mean, I'm looking at the camera right now. I have a new monitor So if you see me glancing up like I'm looking not at the lens and at the monitor That's because I cannot get it together and figure out how to look at the lens and not the monitor So occasionally you might see me do this and that's just because I'm making sure I'm in frame. I don't know the cameras lock down It's not going anywhere. I don't know why it would not be in frame. I got a light and other than that I mean, I just uh we moved and that we moved into a house that has a basement with a wide open look at this space I've never had space we were looking at places to move and we checked out this house that was available for rent and I took one look at the basement. I went can I paint and they went We'll buy the paint because this this was all like 70s pan here. I'll show you before picture Yeah, so it was all 70s paneling. It hadn't been touched since the 70s I imagine and so the first thing I did when I came down here is I just painted everything black and I stole This geometric shape idea from I think David Dobrik has has it in his house somewhere, too But I love The idea and so I was just like oh, I want to do that I think that'd be a cool backdrop then I bought these lights which are super cool They can be literally any color. I don't know why they're red and blue now I just kind of like it so but this is it. This is the setup the pianos the same I'm the same sort of this microphone is the same, which is the mxl 990 by the way I get questions about that all the time I like it. I think it's a decent microphone. So that's what I've been using. There's no pop filter So I don't know and I'm standing right now because I just I like the ability to move around if I want to and yeah It just makes me feel a little more free so I can sit here and play and do all kinds of things and make I don't know make memes make videos and make tutorials Which is what this video Kind of isn't but sort of is so I get questions all the time about hey How do you come up with the harmony? How do you decide what chords you're gonna put with the melodies that you transcribe and the good news is that? This is true whether you're transcribing speech or whether you're just I don't know playing a bunch of notes Deciding what chords to put I mean it's it's it's a never-ending that there's not I don't know how many ways You could possibly come up with it You could possibly come up with to put different chords with the same melody probably a billion But the point is that it's an extremely flexible process that literally just involves Analyzing the different melody notes that you have available to you and figuring out okay How can I take these and make something that sounds good? That's step one and step two might even be let's make something that sounds like it Actually makes sense and connected to each other because I mean of course you can just literally just play all sorts of different All kinds of different chords even if the melody kind of is all over the place and it just doesn't matter because You can do what you want, but if we're trying to make something that might actually sound like it's I don't know Like it goes somewhere and not just you know chords dropped into the middle of the abyss then we can Do that as well, so I'm gonna use some principles that cheese I'm never gonna stop doing that. We need some principles that I've talked about before I made a video a long time ago. I will link it in the description or and or at the end of this video Called how to fit a note into Any chord Geez, I'm already saying that wrong how to fit any note into a chord in every key So if you take one single note Basically, the idea is that you can make it fit in a chord no matter what key that's it So the note is C it'll fit in a chord in C D flat D E flat E Etc. So I'm gonna kind of use that principle in that I know that harm Harmonically things are extremely flexible and I can make notes work for me first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna do this with actual notes Now I found a really cool site I just googled random note generator and I found this random note picker site built by Brett Pimentel I'm gonna get that wrong. No, I kind of didn't get it. Well, I don't know if the pronunciation is right But I know that Brett Pimentel Pimentel Pimental Piment I don't know. Here's the link So as you can see it's um, it's basically just a very simple interface now you can choose How you want the spelling to be now? I'm a jazz musician. I come from the jazz world Sharps don't exist. We just use flats because who cares about inharmonics and proper spelling I certainly don't you can choose how many notes you want it to randomize and then you can click Randomize so let's do that now boom. Okay, so we have a B D F C G B flat F What I just got done saying no sharp What the fuck why is there a sharp in my I don't know how to play that I don't know what that says All right, it's just enough sharp. We'll we'll manage. So yeah, a B D F C Well, let's how about we do this. Why don't we play it that would make more sense? Whoa weird, okay, so let's get to work So first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna look at just kind of what the smell What the shape of this melody is when first thing that we want to look for is the obvious things It's are the notes outlining any chords right off the bat. So we have Okay, so what is that well that would be I guess Like an inversion of B half diminished or B minor 7 flat 5 for those of you out there who don't think that There's any such thing as half diminished Which is a thing I guess so we have So if we take any inversion of that we get this Okay, so what can we do with that? Well, I don't think I want to just use B half diminished because Sometimes it's kind of boring just to have the notes outline whatever chord that it is You know, so you might want to try something different just to sort of change it up or just give it a more interesting sound So alternatively what other chords could we look at that these notes are sort of outlining? Well, the first one that comes to mind is some sort of G dominant chord We literally have three five and flat seven from G Just like that and then the a works in perfectly because it's just the ninth That's a very nice G dominant chord The other thing is that we don't even have to look at this as like one singular sound We could look at this as I mean we could look at it is every single note gets an individual chord And it can kind of go wherever we want. So let's look at it that way for a second since I don't know the B half G dominant I'm not really feeling that at the moment. So let's try something else. So why don't we say Oh, I got an idea. Let's make it a third. So we're gonna make it a third of F Okay, then we go to B. Why don't we stay here on F and use make it the sharp 11 Where can we go after this? So we're kind of establishing this sort of like dreamy kind of major sound like Where does that feel like it's going? If I know F The only thing I don't like about going to D there whether it's minor or dominant is that the melody is the root Sometimes that really just detracts from the effectiveness of the chord because it's just kind of boring I guess. I don't know not always but in this case I kind of think so. So why don't we try to find something somewhere else? Why don't we go to a We got something. All right, so if I go A B The next note is our C to G. Now So we're gonna stick with that and we're already kind of in that vicinity because we went one and we kind of altered the one And then we went to the four Right to like a five suspended kind of sound And then instead of releasing to the one Where you think it's kind of kind of go from the five we go back down to the four so we We're holding here and then Almost like we're going to climb, you know back down towards one So that's kind of throwing a monkey wrench into the whole progression because we're pretty safely in this sort of Uh, this sort of F major sound and then all of a sudden we come Which okay that might give us a jumping off point because we have one more note here and it's that F hashtag F F sharp and we got to do something with F sharp Uh, but F sharp here is really the only like outlier that's not doesn't really fall into sort of an easy diatonic sort of Useful Note for us. We can't do shit with it really so if we're going already sort of out of Your standard The chords that you might expect In that F major diatonic sort of sound. Well now we're here So how do we get how do we get to there? So I kind of like that that was the first try but I actually kind of dig that let's see That's kind of neat in a way. We're going flat seven to the tritone So we're resolving from the tritone. That's bizarre Uh, but also kind of cool, but you know what we're not going to stop there. We're going to keep investigating So let's try something else Oh Okay, wait, wait, wait Okay, so if we do this right we could get sort of a chromatic resolution where we're kind of doing You know something like that, uh, but obviously we need to incorporate the notes And then at the top of the phrase we have that a that the whole thing started on so if we go Now the good news about this is that the F sharp is the ninth of e Okay, so we can either make this A major chord, which I'm kind of doing like a E six nine sound Nice, but we can also make it dominant. It doesn't have to be it doesn't have to be a major seven. It could be flat seven And in this case, I'm not really getting the feeling That it's making too much of a difference In fact, I kind of like the Non-dominant sound better my favorite so far is Oh, and now that I'm hearing that in contrast, I really like Just climbing right up Chromatically easy right, you know what I'm gonna stop there because I do like it. I like that a lot So we're gonna stick with that. Okay, so let's start back in the beginning So it's a little wonky just because some of the notes are obviously a little bizarre But that is the general concept you can um, you can really just kind of make harmony out of anything And the thing about the random note picker is that really when I transcribe the notes of speech It's the same thing right because people speak and the pitches that come out of their mouths are Largely random, although i'm not entirely convinced of that, but that's a whole other topic So this weekend I flew back home to upstate new york Which is where i'm from got a chance to hang out with some of my buddies back home and do some playing Here's a clip of that Those are my buddies matt and steve we've been playing together for like more than 10 years So we really grew up like learning this music together and it's a ton of fun To be able to play with people that just know What you're gonna do. Yeah, and also uh while I was there There were some things that I carried around from place to place every time I moved and uh, haven't used them in Years, but yet somehow I don't know I still hang on to them So at the opinion of many of you who voted in my latest poll on my community's page The general consensus was set things on fire and eat them out the window I didn't want to set any buildings on fire. So instead of eating it out a window I built a catapult and set them on fire And heated them With a catapult that looks like this