how are you gonna say the beatles ripped off of journey? haha didn't that beatles song come out before?
deathtokoalas
that's right. these are all rip-offs of let it be.
most shocking statement of the century, said nobody: all pop music is ripped off from the beatles.
...although the dude that pointed out that it's just a basic mathematically correct chord progression is also right, even though it just obscures the reality that pop music has been stuck in tonal stasis since the 1700s. people in mozart's time frame wouldn't have insulted you for your lack of originality if you had played something with a mathematically correct structure, they would have accused you of channeling satan and destroying music if you deviated from a proper chord progression.
the mathematics of tonality underlie the primary reason that creativity and popularity go together so seldomly and are often defined more by atmospheric changes rather than tonal shifts. if you want people to react well to your music, you need to conform to the mathematics underlying harmony. it's consequently us, the consumers, that drive a lack of originality in popular media.
that's all this is really pointing out.
tomhulcelover
umm ok
deathtokoalas
the channeling of satan part is historically completely accurate. chopin is one example. and beethoven was regularly accused of trying to destroy music (and, in fact, was.). let alone, you know, ozzy.
the intervals and shifts that we interpret as acceptable are precisely the intervals and shifts that the church declared to be acceptable. that's not a coincidence.
tomhulcelover
dude, im sorry but i dont really care
deathtokoalas
seems like you do to me. whatever.
Tom Alma
Bear in mind that Waltzing Matilda was around a long time before The Beatles...
deathtokoalas
sure. and celtic folk, as we know it, came from renaissance lute music. most of the songs in the list, though, are let it be, including the journey tune. i was more drawing attention to the background that it all has in sanctioned christian tonality (itself derived from pythagorean number mysticism).
babalooey100
Cool I thought the Pythagoreans only played triangles .
deathtokoalas
except that pythagoras (who was head of a philosophical school that fused number theory and music theory into a kind of buddhist mysticism) stole his theorem about parallelism (which is actually wrong in the geometry we live in) from chaldean sages while he was stumbling through babylonia searching for wisdom, and they themselves probably ripped it off from the egyptians, who probably stole it from atlantis and/or aliens, at which point our history currently begins and we can't go back any further.
Jimmy Greer
Uhhhh, dumbass....the reason Mozart and them could be more creative is because they've got about 60 more instruments to use than your average rock n roll band.
deathtokoalas
yeah, that makes perfect sense, you illiterate nincompoop.
in terms of creativity, the beatles blow mozart out of the water, and it's precisely because they're on the other side of the abolition of a set of rules that mozart was expected to follow. nobody talks about mozart's creativity - because he was not a creative artist. rather, people hold him up as the finest example of a dullard who followed the set of proper conventions, as they were pushed down from the hierarchy above.
if you're going to bother, try and keep up. but i'd rather you just shut the fuck up.
Aussie Dave
Mozart was amazing
deathtokoalas
you could create a computer algorithm, call it "mozart" and lose nothing of value from the original. i suppose there will always be those that praise form over function, but creative is not the correct way to describe his music.
Matthew Joseph Harrington
Too many notes for you?
deathtokoalas
you don't even realize that you have no idea what you're talking about....
i mean, i'd like to produce a witty come back, but it just doesn't make any sense. it's, like, not even wrong.
BryanPiekarski
You're crazy. "All pop music is ripped off from The Beatles." Unless this statement was satirical, in which case, I retract my comment.
deathtokoalas
i don't even think it's controversial.
BryanPiekarski
The Beatles definitely did have a lasting impact on popular music, their music spawned a lot of copycat bands trying to copy their sound and success throughout the 60s, but The Beatles were pretty much gone by the 70s. Besides, The Beatles were no where near as influential to even rock n' roll as the likes of Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry.
deathtokoalas
i don't see any use in arguing with hipster revisionists about something that is not considered controversial by anybody with the slightest bit of understanding on the topic.
you probably don't realize that the beatles actually changed the rules of music theory when it comes to harmony, which is what the video is about. there was music before and after the beatles. there are very few artists that can make that sort of claim. you can talk about bach, beethoven, debussy....and the beatles are next in line. there hasn't really been a shift away from this yet, but there have been a few near misses (kurt cobain's concept of harmony was radically different, but he didn't have enough of an effect on what followed to cause a shift. reznorian tonality has been recently seeping into pop music (see the most recent avril lavigne song for an example) but it is repackaged impressionism.).
i mean, you don't even seem to realize that buddy holly and chuck berry existed about ten years before the beatles did anything worth listening to, or pushed through the changes that i'm talking about. 50s, 60s...same thing, right?
BryanPiekarski
I don't understand your last paragraph. You seem to agree with me but you're also berating me?
deathtokoalas
chuck berry and buddy holly belong to the era that existed before the beatles. they were both influential on the beatles, chuck berry moreso, but trying to compare their influence is basically a category error. it's like comparing michael jackson to kanye west.
in terms of direct influence, it's a joke to suggest either one of them even come close to the influence the beatles left. in terms of their influence on music, they are only important in terms of the artists they influenced, which would also include the rolling stones and the who and pink floyd and many others. and, if you want to play the game of stringing things backwards, you have to string it back further than the 50s, and you have to consequently conclude that neither one of them deserves more than a footnote in history - neither did much more than market traditional folk and blues arrangements that were written well before they were born.
the beatles transcended all of that, and in the process changed the very fabric of what pop music actually is.
BryanPiekarski
is 1957 to 1964 really a huge cap in time? "neither deserves more than a footnote in history" lol. What did The Beatles really change? Their impact doesn't seem to resonate today as it did throughout the 1960s.
deathtokoalas
you think that because you don't understand the changes they made.
the britpop movement aside, every time you hear a string section in a pop song ballad, that's the beatles. and, as i've mentioned they're responsible for a shift in tonality. shifting tonality is gigantic. there's only a handful of artists that can state that, and i listed them already.
you admittedly have to stretch a little to pull metal out of helter skelter, or techno out of tommorrow never knows, but the blunt reality is that these were the beginnings of those genres. and, they of course hold a central place in psychedelic and progressive music; you can hear their influence still across that spectrum, from tame impala to radiohead to the mars volta.
but, in terms of chord progressions, the key is that shift in tonality that they pushed, with the help of george martin.
speaking of michael jackson and the beatles, most people don't know that michael spent a good deal of his childhood living with paul mccartney. it's known they collaborated a bit, but paul did a lot of ghost writing and michael mostly relied on his producers so the extent of his involvement in michael's work is a bit of an open question, in my mind.
the influence of those five dudes is really just immeasurable.
...and as for lennon's work in the 70s, it's worth noting that he wrote what is probably david bowie's biggest hit (fame), amongst other things.
