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Vox Earworm videos

Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2019 11:30 am
by Lunkhead
Anybody watched any of the videos in this series? Somebody at work just told me about them, said they're really cool.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... C5fFLfdwW4

Video titles:
- The secret rhythm behind Radiohead's "Videotape"
- How a recording-studio mishap shaped '80s music
- Why more pop songs should end with a fade out
- How J Dilla humanized his MPC3000

Re: Vox Earworm videos

Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2019 3:38 pm
by Pigfarmer Jr
Watched a couple already.

Re: Vox Earworm videos

Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2019 4:15 pm
by jb
They are indeed really cool. A lot of work goes into them.

Re: Vox Earworm videos

Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2019 6:32 am
by Pigfarmer Jr
I'm now on episode 11.... I don't know whether to thank you or curse you for showing me these things cuz now I'm hooked.

Re: Vox Earworm videos

Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2019 6:26 pm
by Lunkhead
I'm finally starting these. To be honest this first one is kinda turning me off. All this about how the piano part is on the upbeats ... ??? Um, wtf. Seems like a mountain out of a mole hill. It's all so "this is mind blowing!" "what geniuses!" "they used this magical mystical thing called 'syncopation'!" "holy shit!!!!" BSS has done plenty of harder things. ;)

Basically what this commenter said:
As someone who plays music, playing in the half time before or after the beat has never been especially difficult beyond a bit of extra focus. Nor has it ever seemed particularly special where it crops up in music. Not putting down the band or anything, I don't understand how something that takes 30 seconds to explain is glorified as musical genius in a 10 minute video.

Re: Vox Earworm videos

Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2019 6:29 pm
by Lunkhead
OK, next one is 8:29 about gated reverb??? Then they casually say "It sort of crunches a waveform" when explaining a compressor like everybody knows what a "waveform" is even though they've just spent 10 minutes explaining counting in 4/4, syncopation, and 1/4, 1/8, and 1/16 notes?

Now a pro-fadeout episode? I feel like I'm on crazy pills.

Now an episode about triplets, "The triplet has been around forever"?!!! And then "half time feel" like it's some kind of crazy magic. WTF...?

And I think this host has shitty taste in music. :P

Re: Vox Earworm videos

Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2019 9:34 pm
by Lunkhead
OK, episode 6, the Captain Beefheart one, is good.

7 and 8 about J Dilla and the orchestra hit are good too.

Re: Vox Earworm videos

Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2019 9:19 am
by ujnhunter
I find it slightly amusing that you don't like these videos and yet you keep watching them... haha

Re: Vox Earworm videos

Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2019 8:19 pm
by Lunkhead
Haha. Yeah, my wife found that odd too. :) I really wanted to give them a chance. I'm glad I stuck with it as starting with episode 6 I generally liked them anywhere from a bit to a lot. Also I felt like they were digging in to topics that actually had some depth, vs going on at length about something that I felt like could have been explained in 30 seconds. Hopefully if the person who made them does another season the episodes will be more like the later ones from the first season.

Re: Vox Earworm videos

Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2019 12:42 pm
by josh
I don't know if it's part of this series but they have a fairly interesting episode on John Coltrane's "Giant Steps". There's a lot of fluff to it, but some interesting stories in there and the graphics are really good. Although one really dumb thing they do is play a background track throughout even when the special guests are demonstrating harmonic concepts, the result being that the demonstrations clash against the background music.

Re: Vox Earworm videos

Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2019 3:29 pm
by Pigfarmer Jr
The Captain Beefheart lead me to the source video she lists in the liner notes and I watched that and now I have the outline of a Beefheart-like track that I'm just itching to try. It won't be nearly as good and sound a lot worse, but I want to try my hand at it nonetheless. (Btw, that original video she links to makes a case for the genius and it's hard to dispute even though I think it comes down to the musicianship of the players more than anything.)

re: Tripliet, is that the one where she talks about rap music and how the triplet feel came to dominate a part of the industry? I think it's interesting to see how it affect a genre I know little to nothing about. How something can be, imo, overused. I also think that the videos are meant for non-musicians so you have to take that into account. That being said, some are better than others, but I watched the whole series, so... *shrug*