Music Theory: What do you emphasize? James Brown: Yes

After spending a few hours studying this song, I can tell you with some degree of certainty that the emphasis is on WAAAOOW.

This is the highest effort way to remind the world what the actual name of this song is, haha.

The 'all 3 stressed' interpretation also seems best when you consider that the vocal line is fulfilling the purpose of a drum fill, with a rhythmic pattern to match.

To me, the key is at around 10:30 in this video. He splits "feel" into two rising pitches, which build tension. The second syllable is emphasized, because it is what drives the building of tension. "Good" is similarly split, but is descending, releasing tension, which puts the emphasis on the second syllable, on the 1.

A great teacher of mine once told me: "syncopations are (usually) weak beats that are so energetic that they eat the following strong beat". Therefore, all syncopations are strong, otherwise they would "resolve" on the strong beat..... I like this idea when I play my piano

Hello! Love your content! 1. Didn't count for compression in James' vox stem. So loudness stress was probably there, but truncated. 2. I think what James Brown was thinking for the song is, "I feel good can be emphasized in different ways, but I wanna feel good in every way". That's why he sings this phrase in different ways throughout the song. So at the end of the day, you're right there is no week syllable there! (y)

As a musician with a lot of other musician friends, you talking about the emphasis of the national anthem made me laugh. We talked a lot about anthems and why a large portion of them are terrible song writing. This stressing video was amazing, very educational, and enjoyable, even to a musician who has seen all this already :D

I'm pretty sure that what Mr. Brown intended to communicate is that he feels good.

What's always puzzled me is how do speakers of tonal languages, (Chinese, Thai) where the pitch determines the meaning of the word, sing melodies without changing the meaning of the lyrics? Please look into it Mr Neely!

Leave it up to Adam to grab our full attention for almost a full 15mins with something we had no clue we were interested in

Holy.... crap....when you displaced that rhythm by a beat and it changed it in my head it literally broke my brain. I have always thought things like 'Bodysnatchers' by Radiohead have a bizarre quality by introducing a melody prior to a rhythm being established. I always thought it didn't make sense to me why, once the beat does get introduced, my perception of the melody changes. It's crazy that I am 1) not alone and 2) correctly noticing that my perception of the melody IS BASED on where it is in the rhythm. This is very neat!

To me, the "feel" always feels like the strongest syllable, and my guess is it has something to do with the 'f' sound. "I" doesn't start with a consonant, and the 'g' in "good" is very short, but the 'f' allows James Brown to lean into and build up and release more energy during the vowel. I don't know if that makes any sense, but that's how I hear it.

"I feel good" here is molossic - a trisyllable with three equal stresses. Also, vocals in published sheet music are notorious for often being simplified, perhaps because a vocalist will change them...

Amazing content, Adam! Just knowing that you came up with and created this content in roughly 3 weeks, is amazing. Truly. I don't think people understand how much effort goes into good content creating.

Love your channel and yes, I subscribed to the combo pack you offer, because I too worry about my favorite creators potentially losing thier platform. Regarding that James Brown phrase, for me, it's his super perfect and really complex pitch bends throughout each word that defines the experience I feel from listening.

The emphasis is on the Whoa.

"Why are we doing this, what is the point here?" Hey stop that.

Really interesting - the backing music is definitely the typical James Brown emphasis on the first beat thing which is always awesome, but the vocal is truly a unique creation. You have helped me appreciate James Brown on an entirely different level - he was truly one of a kind.

What a damn good video. Music theory was my favorite class in high school, but this is in many ways so beyond that. It's how music should be taught - connecting across so many fields (here was psychology, linguistics, anthropology, but obviously much more). I wish kids were able to take a class in high school, not just "music theory", but a general course on appreciating music. We need content of this quality to get children to live the joy of music and keep it throughout their lives. Adam, maybe you've clearly thought of all this already or I just don't know but have you partnered with schools?

He varies the emphasis throughout the song. “I FEEL nice, like sugar and spice” It’s what skilled singers do when you have a lyrically-repetitive song.

I FEEL GOOD STRONG STRONG STRONG JAMES BROWN STRONG ... ahem. ... Watch the video (and all my videos) ad-free on Nebula nebula.app/videos/adam-neely-solving-james-browns-rhythmic-puzzle

I hear it as a "2-1-3" sort of pattern, by which I mean that "good" has the most stress (it's "3"), "I" has an intermediate stress ("2") and "feel" has the least stress ("1"). But this pattern only applies to the first time he sings this line. The stress patterns change later in the song. Also... James Brown was a musical GIANT. Beyond legendary. It's impossible to overstate how much he enriched modern American music.

just wanna say i love your work, Adam, been watching all the videos for some years now!

My initial feeling was that it's obviously "feel." I realized a bit before you mentioned how musical stress is different from linguistic stress that the reason "feel" seems so obvious to me is to do with the meaning more than any kind of groove. The different linguistic stress that can happen with the phrase is all because the phrase is answering different questions. But this is a declarative statement; James Brown isn't answering a question. He's shouting how he feels with certainty, as loud as he can. He's shouting because he's FEELING it. So ultimately, the reason there's any ambiguity about where the strength is is because "I feel good" is all one concept that is all one "beat." Literally, all the beats are strong because James Brown doesn't have time for weakness. I started writing this before you said that part, I swear.

Linguist (though no longer in the field) here: I think in this case that Brown is using the words FEEL GOOD as one language chunk. So the accented word is both FEEL and GOOD- because in the phrase they are not treated as separate words but as one concept that so happens to be made up of two parts. Though I prefer the answer that all of the words are stressed.

This is an amazing premise for a video!! Bravo 👏👏👏

A couple definitions I use for my college students: 1) Even or straight rhythms - evenly spaced notes accenting strong beats and down beats. 2) Syncopation - unevenly spaced notes emphasizing weak beats and up beats. Taken with only a musical consideration, this is fairly straight forward to understand. Adding language usage and syntax brings a whole other layer of complexity and nuance to the idea. (Which Adam does mention during the video.) I also would throw out as food for thought the jazz concept of pushes and drags. The way I was taught (and the way I have used it over many years with my students) is that ultimately, syncopated lines are all just variations of evenly spaced notes that either push the rhythmic stress to arrive early or drag it to arrive late. To put it another way, it's the rag in ragtime - play with the rhythm of a straight melodic line so that the stresses happen (as Wynton Marsalis used to say) on unexpected beats. Just some thoughts. Peace!

It’s James Brown. Every word he ever sang was emphasized.

One interesting wrinkle in this whole analysis is the actual word feel. How many syllables does it have? Some people will say one and some people will say two. Feel, at least in English, is part of a group of words called sesquisyllabic - you can think of it as one and a half syllables. Many words with that ending L sound end up this way. In the music, James Brown (and other singers as well) often sing it as two syllables. So you end up with this complicated sylabbic pattern that is ambiguous in prose as well as in lyric. My inclination is, for the initial lyric at least, is to hear it as strong-strong-weak-strong. This also hints at a further analysis of the phrases where the winter syllables through accoutrement.

As always, insightful and incredibly thorough. 🤘🏻

I love how you played the audio this video is about at the very start. That's how you grab the audiences attention.

the funniest moment in my life was being in a youth choir in england with our conductor trying to get us to sing I Got You all in unison. just several dozen white 12 year olds mildly enthusiastically going "woah. i feeel good" i hated doing it but it was INCREDIBLY funny in hindsight. the actual funk band supporting us was pretty good tho

With syncopation, I often feel that you anticipate a beat, and therefore it is often the beat you anticipate that determines if it's weak or strong. Also the duration of the note.

1st and FOREMOST let me say. Adam, man you are my dude for sure! I've been a subscriber to your channel for a least 2 maybe 3 years. I have even contributed to your patreon at one time. I am a 66 year old full time musician/keyboardist, private piano and voice educator over 25 years. I wish I could speak w you directly because the mood in which I am writing this is fun, entertaining, and a little humorous( but not in a negative or derogatory way) Let me go on by saying that your channel is REQUIRED watching for some of my more advanced students. I Truly believe that you are a Music Theory Beast. Man, we're talking about James Brown here, I grew up in South La. The very 1st concert I ever attended was James Brown around 1967 or 68. My Dad took me. UNREAL and I still remember it. About 15 years ago I went to a little cafe/club a a resort area in Florida. The drummer for the house band was Jabo Starks, Man if you know anything about James Brown you'll know who Jabo is(He and Clyde Stubblefield were 2 of his greatest of all time drummers) Man Jabo came over to my table, and we talked about 1 hour. Jabo along with Fred Wesley(Trombone player and music director for the band) would probably say what I'm about to say to you. (I'm still smiling my brother) Fred was a Music Theory wiz too, not unlike yourself. Here is what I believe they would say, and for sure what I would say. James Brown knew 0 music theory. LOL. MOST EVERYTHING he did in his prime was just staight from the gut. If you put a gun to my head and forced me to say where the accent was, I would say(and you've basically said the same) the accents on all 3 words LOL. Jabo Starks told me that JB did sh*t ALL the time that didn't add up from a Music Theory point of view. However, I believe that JB was a rhythmic genius. He could just do it man. Listen to even the grunts and screams, they"re always in rhythmn. JB was not highly educated, but he was extremely intelligent. Man, back in da day who leaves the tape running while conversing with the band and talking to the engineer. Listen to "Make it Funky" Pt. 1,2 3,4. Lastly, Here's one for you. One of JB's most popular songs"There was a Time", had NO CHORD CHANGES. 1 Damn chord played over a vamp. Next time I'm in NY Im gonna try and look you up my friend and fellow musician. I hope the true spirit of how I'm writing this comes through. I promise, I'm NOT trying to be negative at all. I've always learned something new whenever I watch your vids, but when it comes to JB Now that, I know a little about. LOL to this day I've seen him in concert more times than anyone else, and I've seen most of the old school great ones. Peace my friend

This is the type of dialogue I remember having this TYPE of conversation A LOT in music school. And it was the argument that made us scrutinize the music so closely and made us better musicians. Not because we could reach an answer but because we were listening so closely. This is healthy. Great video.

I hear "feel" as accented. As you said at the end, it has the agogic and tonic accents; since the melody is syncopated, those are the most salient factors to me.

Theory: the scream at the beginning is part of the sentence. so it's more like "WOWWW I feel good"

Bro, this content is amazing! I'm gonna move to Nebula to get more. Keep killing it!

So, I never thought of this as a problem, and my first reaction was that the emphasis is on "GOOD" . Now, I'm doubting myself and can't let this go. Thanks Adam.

This video (not talking about it’s content) is SO well-made :D I couldn’t concentrate on the stuff adams says because I was overwhelmed by the smooth editing and the moving focus without losing its educational seriousness. Really great job! Cool to watch someone develop their skill set over the years But also: nice content 😄

I think it’s not just a matter of weak and strong; syncopation is about a feeling of excitement, like you’ve just discovered you’re floating in the air next to a ledge. And from that perspective, excitement is inversely proportional to strength, with the the weakest parts of the weakest beat bring the most exciting🙂

I loved this one Adam.

As a musician from South Carolina, this video just felt so close to home and on the money. So much of the SC "twang" in our accents is this drawing out of vowels that allows so many different colors and variations of single syllable sounds. I love that you cover the melismatic material because singers in the south should all learn to utilize that unique quality in so many of their voices.

My favourite example of accents seemingly shifting is the intro to the Temptations My Girl. Jamerson doesn't change his bass playing at all but it sounds completely different once the guitar and snaps join.

It's always a good day when Mr Neely posts a video

Adam Neely's videos make me FEEEL GOOOD!

deadass ur best video by far increible ur hella smart thanks for taking the time to figure this shit out

(Concept of morae is very important here - syllables have timing units that are called morae, and this is independent of stress/tone/accent...) The thing is, the first word/syllable takes on an accent from the musical position, but the second is bimoraic, since there is a diphthong which flows into the approximant, and then the last word is also bimoraic, because the vowel is lengthened and has a syllable coda. Since all three words are monosyllabic, one would expect the short vowel function word (1ps pronominal) to be unstressed, but the musical position makes it such that it is felt as equally weighted with the other two words/syllables, even though the second is longest. Someone else noted this too, but the verb "feel" takes an adverbial argument, so the verb is a verb phrase and that also determines how the prosody falls. That is, the predicate is a single phonological unit corresponding with the verb phrase. Ordinarily we would expect this to be prosodically dominant in isolation, but because of the musical rhythm, each syllable has more or less equal weighting. Musical rhythm is like an extra phonological tier that completes the prosody... Hello, I'm a linguist who teaches rap technique.

When I was a Linguistics major a common observation was the amazing symmetry between universal patterns of linguistic stress and metricality in music (especially but not uniquely Western music).

Sent over here from your excellent conversation with Rick Beato, 'Rick Beato & Adam Neely Face Off (Dua Lipa and Jaco Controversies)'. Loved Brown since the 60's.Great intro for me to your site!

I'm with you on all three words feeling strong and equally accented, albeit in different ways. For me, option B was always "feel". The melismatic extension in the second repeat sounds to me like it's there in truncated form in the first phrase and, as you say, it's higher in pitch and longer, so it "feels" like the most stressed word in the phrase (if we ignore that all of the words are stressed, just in different ways).

I just heard the lick and then Adam post a new video

Lots of really interesting things as usual, thanks Adam! I like to think that it's "good" the first time, "feel" the second and "I" in combination with the "and", but that's just what made most sense to me after you took it apart

your vids make my brain hurt in the most beautiful way. thank you !!

Hey Adam, as always, great vid. I mean, man, you 're doing a very good job, I am so thankful.

thought: the 'I' is actually the listener feeling good about listening to this masterpiece.

What a genius James Brown was making the greatest funk hook of all time! He was probably even very concious about that stress pattern, thanks Adam for making me appreciate it!

I think this video shows that not everything can be explained precisely with theories and science. Sometimes something so random but so brilliant pops up in the artists' mind and tbh sometimes they can't even explain what they did :D Great content!

I´m not a nativ english speaker and my knowledge of musictheorie is rather limited, still was able to follow. That tells how good your teaching is . 10/10

I can't remember where I heard it, but I remembered someone saying once in an interview or something that James Brown's music isn't thought in 4/4, 3/4, 2/2 etc, but is just thought of as ONE. Which goes along with you determining that every beat is a strong beat, so I definitely agree with that lol

3:55 In the example there is another layer affecting the perception of this music. It's not just the place of the melody within pulse that's changing, it's also the place of the melody relative to the harmonic change.

The new thumbnail is better than the last one I saw. I didn't anticipate talk about linguistics from the first one!

James Brown is one of my favorite (almost godlike) live performers (I still watch various live performances from time to time). 1. The "problem" with the words roughly all hitting at the same level, and with an interesting "unnatural" rhythm (the timbres also change slightly), is a common audio artifact that a vocal channel compressor could yield if the settings aren't optimally dialed in for better audio transparency. This type of effect is used a lot in the modern age to help make a boring sentance sound more interesting. Can almost make things sound slightly wrong (slightly "alien" perhaps, like Mr.Smith in Matrix), but usually its within acceptable ranges. This is probably why its so cryptic to analyze correctly in a normal fashion. 2. Luckily, there is a definitive answer to the rhythmic puzzle! If you know what the song is about, you would understand the emphasize should be on the word GOOOD (as you would know what the reference is). But... that part is secret.

This is so unnecessary. I love it!!!!!

Funny I had the same question on my head some time ago and ended hearing "I feEL GOod" in terms of dynamics, but the pitch and qualify of his voice makes that wave like motion that sounds like a flow o feeling good. Nice analysis, much more in depth than my rearing a part lots of times and calling it, but fun seeing how theory works it ways to explain what we hear

Great video. I would say the emphasis is on beat one "Whoa!" "I feel good"

Thank you for this. I teach “singer-songwriting.” This is extremely helpful, light-bulb-over-the-head” analysis of something I’ve been working hard to communicate to my students mostly from a right-brained “feel” approach. (The backdrop of which is a current trend in songwriting that fleshes out vocal melodies with the perfect number of syllables per-line, but with little regard for stress and accent…. greatness of such artists like Taylor Swift notwithstanding.)

I always believed the “feel” to be the strongest because of what funk music is: emphasis change, syncopations, the surprise. But yes, it is totally subjective to one’s ears. And I hope you do not get demonetized! Education should generally protected, as you are not “performing” or “monetizing”. Sad that KZfaq thinks differently.

This actually makes me think of how words work in Japanese. Instead of using stress like we do in English, Japanese use pitch contours. One important thing about the pitch contour of a word is a drop or the absence of a drop in its contour. If you take the word 'ikimashita,' each syllable is relatively on the same level until there is a drop between the second to last and last syllable. So 'ikimashita' feels like 'I KI MA SHI ta.' At least for me, the emphasizes is the drop between the last two syllables and not any individual syllable itself. So when I hear 'I feel good' I'm feeling it like 'I FE EL GU ud.' And so for me, the emphases is where the pitch falls within the word good.

Awesome topic choice.

I think it's important to take int account the pitch movement as well. In music, the way the melody moves is one of the core ways tension is built and released, driving the emphasis on these syllables. Splitting "feel" into two rising pitches creates a tension that is then released by the falling action of "good" this very clearly puts the emphasis on good, as it is responsible for releasing the tension created by "feel" "I" doesn't do much at all to drive the melody or the rhythm, so I would see it as arguably the least stressed of the syllables.

I think the "el" in feel, being the highest pitch in the sentence, has the most stress. That makes the word "feel" have the most emphasis. The melisma in this word and enhanced in the later repetition, shows his intent. James Brown lets us know what it is to really feel the music. 😎

In the second example, the extended "feel" is an extended syllable (like the Southern Drawl) with 3 pulses, and the emphasis is on the second pulse.

I'm from the SC coast (Gullah/Geechee) and knew Mr. James Brown was emphasizing all three words since the start of the video. It was quite the exercise in patience watching you process this for 12 minutes. Many dialects from the African diaspora have kept the tonal nature of speech to emphasize intent behind words. Think about it as having an exclamation sign after each word I! Feel! Good! Indicating that I feel really! really! really! good versus just I! feel good.

Weird "the bombs bursting in air" always stood out as the most memorable part to me

Great video Adam, long time fan. This is a wonderful example of Rules are meant to be broken, which the Father of Funk did when he placed the emphasis on the first beat. He also has a tendency to treat his vocalizing like scatting or horns. To me, Good is the strong word as it hits on ONE beat. Brown's style of music shook up a lot of tired music styles which is why it was liked and hated much like Impressionism when it first came out. But as a bass player you already know all this. Again, thanks for the great mental exercise. At times it felt like a square peg was trying to be forced into a round hole.

Adam: "The stress pattern in this song is freaking me out!" James Brown: "I woke up this morning, and I heard a disturbin' sound!" *Adam Stares off into the sky* "THE BAND!" *Adam looks into the camera* "We're on a mission from Gahd." The blues brothers truly is the best lens through which the meaning if life can be discovered.

The feeling of freedom and joy is so well expressed by him singing relatively rhythmically un-tethered to the beat makes me think the word "Free" is the emphasis along with that it's the longest word in the phrase.

Adam, you are the greatest, period! Lol I thought this song was so simple but nothing is simple depending on how you look at it.

I think each of the five notes in "I feel good" has its own level of emphasis. Like the second note of "good" is definitely weak for example, but the second note of "feel" seems relatively strong to me.

I hear two stressed syllables here: "I" and "good" with primary stress being on the first one. I was surprised to find that compound words in English have only one stressed syllable (according to the rules at least). In Spanish certain compounds have two stressed syllables to preserve both words. I feel like the same is happening here if we look at the sentence as a compound word (a bit of a stretch, I know).

A friend mentioned this video last night and I immediately said the emphasis was on the first e in "feel". Watched it today and realized I said that because that is how my grandfather spoke. Sonnie was a very hip guy in the 60s/70s. I can hear him in my head right now: deemphasis "I" (because the question would be "How are you feeling?" So obviously he is the subject... and he was ALWAYS the subject), emphasize the first half of "feel" (it grabs you in the first half so the second half is less important as you are on the edge of your seat already) and "good" is drawn out in a cool sort of way but not emphasized or deemphasized (because the cool cat already has you and you feeeeel the coolness/hipness/slickness of the person). I don't know if it was cultural (my grandfather and James Brown were both Black men born in the 1930s in the South) or my grandfather copying cool people to seem cooler.

This is very good demostration why I have baled very old music theory: You can take every song - even from classical era - and start analyzing interesting aspect of it, go deep down the rabbit hole and come to the conclusion that the theory must be wrong. Our knowledge has increased and our perspective on music has changed, why on earth you would relay on the music theory of past ages.

Really loved your aside about how strong and weak beats are culturally relative and the Thai example you showed!

Damn, James Brown was cool! Whatever he did, he made it sound good, and made US feel good!

Answering the questions no one asked. I love this channel.

Adam Neely vídeo concepts keep getting more niche

i disagree the tempo isnt "i-feel-good" , the feel is in half time "Ife-ell good" i love playingh with note position , the stress, its so fun

Does the wave form suggest that post processing compression has changed the stressed syllable? I’d be interested to hear the original audio without effects or processing.

From a lyrical standpoint I've always thought the word "feel" is the important one. He changes it to "I feel nice" later on, suggesting that the important thing is telling us that he is feeling something. Even though this isn't an explanation of the rhythmic aspect, because in my head I've added more "value" to that specific word it becomes the dominant word in other aspects as well to me. I guess it's mostly due to the fact that there are not much else to determine it, so my mind just latch on to whatever reasoning it can find and then expands it to other things, like where the accent is.

Answers to questions nobody asked is a great series

I think it's important to note how a lot of the time, artists aren't thinking deeply about things like this and instead are just focused on making good music. Another great example of this would be The Beatles' I'll Be Back, which is mostly in A major but the verse does the Andalusian cadence starting in A minor before doing a picardy third to A major so the verses can either be in A minor with a picardy third or it can be alternating between both A minor and A major. However, when The Beatles were recording the song, it's highly unlikely they were actually thinking about this kind of music theory and instead just did it because they thought it sounded cool.

During the de-syncopation around 8:08, shouldn't "I" still be an 8th note, starting on 3-and, with "feel" and "good" starting on beat 4 and 1, respectively? Then if the 'ands' are considered weak, the analysis would be weak-strong-strong.

Just the other day I was thinking about how it would sound to stress all the words in a line of lyrics, and how it would sound. Turns out all I had to do was listen to James Brown! Great video!

James Brown must have agonised for hours over this conundrum 😉 Great analysis Adam

3:56 I thought it's the intro from the song "Słodkiego miłego życia" by Kombi. Just first three notes, but the synth and the tempo are almost identical.

I'm playing in my head a version sung by Adam's deadpan voice, emphasising a different word each time. I FEEL good. I feel GOOD.

This video brought up something I experienced recently in something I was writing. What I’m taking from Adam in addition to my experience, is that the fundamental DNA of a song is extremely important. That “DNA” would be a core musical concept(s) that makes your song different, or unique, or held together. So if your song has a melody that lands differently that expected like the example of ”I Feel good” the music surrounding that melody needs to fit to that idea since it’s the foundation. This could be the case for any song that leans on a specific element of music (Rhythm, melody, Harmony, whatever) more than others to make it sound distinct. Or furthermore that element of music is fundamentally interpreted in a different way(like the case of non European music). In any case the music surrounding it generally needs to fit this mold set fourth by whatever the leading musical element is. In my experience if an initial musical idea is fully thought out then the rest of a tune should come together easily. It’s generally harder to just mix and match pieces together if you don’t let your best idea guide you forward!

WWWAAAAO I feel good:)