Yo thanks for putting my Guitar Hero clip in the intro, I'm sorry to break this theory but I actually run sped up songs on real guitar now too 😭 it seriously means a lot to be featured by someone I've watched for so many years, you're a legend

I am eternally grateful to Adam for succinctly defining what walking is for me 😃 oh, and all the interesting musical and biological stuff too I guess

The fast tempo aesthetic existed even before this era in jazz. I used to play with Toshiko Akiyoshi, who was actually around during the bebop era, and she told me that in that style, there's a tempo where everyone just plays as fast as they can play. The drums and the bass don't really lock in, but the result is a unique kind of energy that you can't get any other way. It's too bad that in jazz education, we focus so much on the harmonic content of bebop, as if that's the main lesson to be learned from it, when there's so much more visceral rhythmic interplay that made that music what it is.

"Playing fast is for the artist " was always my feeling. If you can comfortably improvise with another being at a pace that's challenging for all parties, its almost like flying.

Wow. I had a back injury post-car accident. I used to write, dj and enjoy music around 128 bpm. The injury has lowered my walking and movement speed, and I've been drifting towards lower tempo music since. I would feel physical pain trying to write music at 128, but 96 provides enough recovery time to not feel pain with every beat. Thanks, Adam! This was super interesting - and I'm only 9:43 in!

My favourite speeding up happened to the song Hocus Pocus from the Dutch prog rock band Focus. On the album it was about 6m30 long. When they appeared on a TV show, their slot was only 4m30 long, so the show producer suggested maybe cutting out part of the song. To that they said, "what if we just play it faster", and so they did.

I think a great exemple of when going fast is serving a purpose is punk. Punk to me is just raw emotion. You play punk to express your chaotic hate and frustration, so going fast becomes a tool to make the music feel more chaotic and also disorganised as the band dosent really hold it together. Somehow that "i don't care if it's good this is how i feel!" just sounds so great to me.

This makes so much sense as an old punk rocker, the "D-beat" is one of the most simplistic intuitive rock beats but when the tempo is turned up the beat stops sounding like that same beat. It sort of sounds like random banging but everything is hitting together so you know there's structure. There's a Mars Volta drum chops video where someone is showing some of their fast beats starting real slow and progressively speeding up. They start off sounding simple then they hit a tipping point and the beat is transformed into something completely new by the blistering speed.

I think mathcore music has a lot of moments that try to force you into these sections you can’t physically feel. It’s like trapping your body in a dance you can’t do, and it’s awesome

As someone who regularly listen to audiobooks at 200% speed I find it fascinating how quickly one can get used to higher tempos, and how going back can feel so sluggish.

That 16/18 interpretation of Vital Transformation immediately felt so much more natural to me. 💜

This is interesting to me. I always wondered why I couldn’t really communicate to my friends why I’m skilled at rhythm games. “How do you not fall of tempo? How can you read all of that?” “I… good question. I don’t know? I just kinda feel it?” I don’t look at the judgement zone when I hit a note in a rhythm game I just sense when to hit the note from the song. This video explores this in a very neat way. Didn’t realize how much my body literally vibing with the music helps me.

We already basically covered the perceived minimum speed limit; “how slow can music be”. It kinda makes intuitive sense that there would be an opposite upper limit.

17:18 amazing how Adam illustrates different ways to interpret 9/8, for me it is like a miracle, converting the same phrase to something completely different every time

Adam, you’re the best. You are providing people with university-level music education blended with humor, brilliant tangents, and your inimitable style all at once. There are few programs of any kind at this level and yours is so enjoyable to watch. Bravo, 10/10 every time.

So no one's gonna talk about how this guy literally just Rickrolled us?

I remember when my friend showed me Vital Transformation. It was ADHD heaven. A perfect cacophony of complex noise. Absolutely made my day

Anecdote : Taking a beer with my cousin an uncle, I accidentally put the vinyl of Mahavishnu orchestra _The Inner Mounting Flame_ on 45 rpm instead of 33. As we were deeply involved in our conversation, no one notice! A whole side of the album at the speed of that live concert. It sounded great honestly!

I became a musician because of the Mahavishnu Orchestra. So glad you appreciate them! I went to three MO concerts. The first was great; the second was unreal - they had really hit their stride. At the third concert,though, I remember thinking they had degenerated into a “I can play faster than you” contest instead of conveying a musical message. It was also too loud, even for a teenager as I was at the time.

I’ve got that mahavishnu record. Omg I love that. Thanks pop for leaving me that. Awesome record.

As a guitar fan, I find that good shredding can do two things. It can blend into a single sound, almost like the sound of heavy rain - Natural but enveloping. Or it can feel like anxiety, like 100s of plates falling from a shelf. One feels super natural but not human, whilst the other is human but unnatural. I either don't care about them individually, content to listen to the overarching feel, or I need to scramble and try to grab them, always missing some because it is an almost impossible task.

My favorite example of this concept is on the song Bubblehouse by Medeski, Martin & Wood. The main riff feels similar from bar to bar but when you skip a few seconds, the feel completely changes

I love the rep for Mahavishnu Orchestra. I want everyone to hear their wonderful music

I’ve always had a hard time keeping track of the downbeat in music even though I’m good at most of music. Then he said the part of your brain that’s involved in balance is what processes it and that just made my jaw drop. I have horrible balance and that just feels so weird that those are connected

I applaud the sneaky Rick Roll at 4:06. You won this time, Adam.

Band: *makes a recording* Band: *plays it way faster live* Adam: "Anyways, here's a 34 minute video essay" 🤣 Welcome back, hope your tour was amazing. This was utterly fascinating, as always. Reminds me of how you said "music is not a sport" in the Whiplash review.

Fabulous video! The section on Yo Yo Ma and the ways in which the same person might approach one piece of music differently over time (and how these approaches exhibit the artist's worldview in that moment) reminded me of another great example from the same sphere: Glenn Gould and his two official recordings of Bach's Goldberg Variations. One might say that the first recording (1955) is (to borrow Nietzsche's dichotomy) *Dionysian*: it's earthy, visceral, subjective, quirky -- and certainly faster in relation to the late (1981) *Apollonian* recording, which is very steady in tactus, slower overall, and generally marked by an intellectual, considered approach. Funny fact: while people have argued for ages over which is better (and hey, why need to choose?), I've been most drawn to the live recordings (1959 from Salzburg, and another one whose year eludes me), as these seem the least "labored" to me, and closest to what Renaissance Italian's called "sprezzatura" -- or what we might call "nonchalance": making something difficult look easy!

Thank you for this Adam. Long live the Mahavishnu Orchestra

I'd love to see a video going deep into Yo Yo Ma's Bach cello suites over his lifetime. It's super fascinating to see them change over time.

I gain a lot of joy from "messy" musicianship, where things are not perfectly clean or smooth and you can hear the raw effort. It's why Brian Chippendale of Lightning Bolt is one of my favorite drummers - dude sounds absolutely unhinged and iconoclastic in comparison to your Danny Careys or Bill Brufords. When you go so fast that you lose minute precision, the music can't help but imbue you with its energy. If you can't find the "walk" of the groove, it's because you're already flying.

Incredible video. That short bit at the end of an old John Mclaughlin talking about liberation gave me actual goosebumps.

Finally somebody with great talent put my favorite band (Mahavishnu) in a educational video.

I'm so glad you're highlighting this album, it's one of my desert island pics for sure. A friend of mine showed it to me when I had come over tripping on some bad acid. He handed me a djembe, put the record on, turned off the light and left me alone to enjoy to majesty of the Mahavishnu. Utterly life-changing....

Thank you Adam for talking about the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Their second album, "Birds of Fire", has really opened my eyes - and my ears - when I was a teenager. It still is my favorite jazz rock album.

The funniest thing ever is, I played this unintentionaly in 4x speed and immediately started laughing. 😂😂

I'm an english/british folk musician primarily and I was so confused when trying to feel the pulse underneath Vital Transformation's riff, because I saw 9/8 and immediately made all of the obvious assumptions. When I just let myself feel the rhythm the music is trying to tell me, it was more like 3/4 + 3/8, or a hemiola followed by three quick pulses. When you slowed it down for the 18/16 analysis I agreed, but there was no way I could notice that at tempo as a listerner.

The thing about what musicians value when they play specific things reminded me of the variation that happens over the execution of Vivaldi Four Seasons that is made from different orchestras. It's fun to realize the minor differences over those executions

Absolute class as usual. You have this way of elucidating the relevance of music, the reason we're all here putting hours into listening to, studying, practicing, writing, improvising and discussing music, and for me it's just the most inspiring thing. Thank you for so much!

Definitely one of your best video essays in a while. Great job!

6:09 is exactly how my old guitar teacher has been describing music for close to 20 years, which is exactly how I've been conceiving of it since he told me.

Maaaan, I was just listening to that live version of Vital Transformation the other day and thinking how utterly insane it was, so this video is very timely for me haha. Was also a cool surprise to see you guys play it at the Glasgow show! Great show all round.

Wow...this guy is beyond words...such dexterity with his bass, piano...such musical knowledge...and now neuroscience in a nutshell. What wonderful and clear explanation about the neurological foundationss of MUSIC. A real masterclass!!!

Duuuuude thanks for informing me about Mahavishnu Orchestra, not sure how it's taken me so long to discover they exist.

I just want to say, oh my god! When I was in my mid-20s in the mid-00s, a musician coworker recommended a 70s jazz fusion album to me, which I downloaded and liked a fair bit, but I lost it when my ipod broke. In the years since, I've thought of it a number of times, but couldn't remember the name of the band for the life of me until you name dropped it in this video. It was Mahavishnu Orchestra and, after looking it up, the album was Birds of Fire. Thanks!

Inner Mounting Flame was a revelation for me. I stumbled upon it just because I was checking famous guitarists, but this turned out to be something else. I had never sat an listened to an instrumental album over and over before.

In a marching band, feeling the pulse was almost more important than watching the drum major. I wasn't marching, instead I was in the front ensemble. The sound delay from the back of the field was tiny, but still noticeable, so instead of following what the marchers were watching, we needed to feel the groove of the snare drum. When the music is supposed to be fast, we halve the tempo and the duration of the notes, so the pulse is felt on what would have been a half note instead of every quarter note. It makes marching actually possible sometimes. The craziest experience I had was the time signature changing 11 times in 20 measures, from 3/4 to 5/4 to 4/4 to 7/4 and back, not with any repetitions of pattern. If I've learned anything from coordinating with 100+ high schoolers it's that staying together is relative, and the beat goes wherever it wants. Sometimes 9/8 is felt as two sets of 7 16ths and then one set of 4 16ths, sometimes 4/4 is two groups of 6 8ths and one group of 4.

This video seems to be part of an explanation for why I absolutely love bands like Hüsker Dü, Saccharine Trust, King Crimson, Volcano Suns, Meat Puppets, some of Yes, Mahavishnu (just started not long ago), Neu, ELP, My Bloody Valentine, Dinosaur Jr, Bauhaus, Big Black, Black Flag, Bad Brains and especially Charles Mingus!!!!! The thing I adore about these is that they all share the common idea of somewhat speed in atleast one instrument or either frequent changement of tempo. I guess I translate this to apparently being very hyper or remaining hyper in creeping adulthood 😦. This also must explain why I can’t tolerate so much of the music my friends show me or stoner metal stuff, it’s just too slow!!! It’s not that I don’t understand the greatness in slower tempos and styles that incorporate them but rather that my body (specifically feet) is just too bouncy or active all the time and I just don’t have the ability to « chillllll » and music is supposed to be the most beautifully visceral experience that I can live on the daily, not a way for me to relax and sit down. I understand the appeal of relaxing music as one’s leisure activity but to me my down time is sleep!! Calm music will make me want to sleep or I don’t know lie down and not do much. Faster (though I prefer the term visceral to describe it) music just goes well with being in a GREAT mood and wanting to either read, or be on the bus, or run somewhere, or bike, or play instruments, or write down things and especially for studying. I find that the music of bands like Neu trigger the exact areas of the brain needed to understand and then note down onto paper what you are feeling in a very mentally naked fashion. It’s very much stream of consciousness music where I have much awareness as to where an album like The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady by Mingus or Earthbound by KC serve the purpose of evoking the most emotional feelings without any literary or verbally explanatory needed or even attainable. It sends you into the questioning that you must be irrational to be feeling so strongly but the assurance in your feelings is so powerful that it makes you realize nothing else could make you reach that point of rationality (at least in a controlled manner or healthy manner). It is like your amygdala is highly active but remove the flight or fight sense and you are just sitting in a pool of emotional palpitations. The beauty of this can also be felt in albums like New Day Rising by Hüsker Dü as they mix such emotion with velocity but equal it out by having the music be perhaps less complex so that it is a more visceral experience and feeling and can maybe allow or accept more freeing movement or dance, and its in those moments where you should be dizzy from such physical rambunctiousness but you realize that your Cerebellum has never before been at such ease. With all that said, it does not mean that I cannot enjoy songs that are not « heavy » or « fast » and are slow as I do. I just need them to be uncomfortably emotion ridden in their sound, queue: Oh Me on Meat Puppets’s Ii, Myself when I am real by Mingus, Faitbful by Ornette Coleman, and I’ve grown accustomed to her face by Wes Montgomery!! Needless to say, music is amazing. This is why it’s so amazing. Psychology and music go so well hand in hand and only make so much sense together and i don’t say that out of opinion but as a fortunate learner when watching Adam’s videos, as what he explains is frequently quantitative!! Thanks Adam, amazing video like usual. Sad that I missed you playing at the Jazz Fest but oh well, hopefully i can see BASS another time 😎

Great topic, and excellent video! Regarding “too fast”, in various bands, I would first try to remove me being too slow as an obstacle. But then you also find, at higher speeds, that details get lost: the full sound of a muted guitar string hit hard, the bass drum head getting a chance to bounce back, things like that. I have also many times as a drummer witnessed the “walking” thing: people stop moving when it feels “too fast”. You can play with accents and help people feel a slower pulse, but at 100mph it’s hard to express those accents.

Seeing y’all live this year was seriously epic. My vestibular system was appropriately exercised.

Always cool to encounter Mahavishnu Orchestra in the wild. So underrated

Great video. I am always excited to here anyone doing deep dives into the rhythmic aspects of Mahavishnu music.

After 15 years of playing music this is the first time I’ve seen subdivisions referred to as “patterns of shorts and longs.” I wish I would’ve realized this years ago 🙃🙃🙃

Dang, hearing about how rhythm is felt with our motor system and meter is felt with our vestibular system is absolutely wild. It means we have evolved to appreciate movement by co-opting other systems in out bodies. Music is awesome

Loved the video, and was especially delighted to hear you reference Tosin Abasi and Javier Reyes in this discussion. I discovered their music during the pandemic and love how they’ve changed their style over the years. Thanks for the interesting and entertaining video

I'd like to see a study that looks for a correlation between music genre preference and how the subject interprets the words "walk," "jog," and "run." To see if people that prefer fast music also generally move a little bit faster.

This was so awesome! I love that I always learn something that makes me excited to be alive when I watch your videos. Your dry humor always makes me smile. Most of my musical experience is from singing and dancing video game tracks when nobody's watching, but I love music and I love your videos!

I am happy to finally learn what walking is. Thank you, Adam!

4:35 i couldn't walk properly before i watched this video, props to you Adam 🙏

The feeling of unfathomably fast music that's nearly impossible to groove to is actually really key in some genres of metal. Check out Archspire in particular, pushing the speed limit is their raison d'etre.

I love Mahavishnu Orchestra, and it's really awesome that this video was anchored to their music.

Just wanted to say thank you for everything you are doing! You inspired a passion in music theory for me, and now I am a music theory major at college planning to go on to be a music professor. All thanks to you

Just use the Mustaine rule: Faster = Better

I was lucky enough to see John & Dennis with Joey DeFrancesco at a jazz festival in Saskatoon decades ago. Pretty magical. It was a small ballroom venue. Such an amazing performance.

Great video! One of your best and that's saying a lot. I loved the things I learned in this and the through line of the mahavishnu song from studying it musically to transcending with it was really awesomely put together. Gonna revisit those two Maha records again

I love Mahavishnu Orchestra They were so incredibly tight as a band

12:30 This reminds me of how the swing in a jazz ride cymbal pattern gets less obvious as the tempo increases.

Punter, "I'm going to see Stargazer tonight." Adam Neely, "You are going to take part in my musical experiment tonight." What a fascinating video; especially the bit about body-augmentation potentially changing musical understanding.

Nice work Adam, thank you!

It's nowhere near as complex but I love seeing how crowds move to Silhouette by Thrice. It switches back and forth between 4/4 and 7/4. It's a slow, head-bangy sort of a song, which encourages you to nod on the 1 & 3 accents initially. But when the signature changes, if you don't keep up then you end up nodding on the un-accented 2 & 4 beats which feels really wrong. Luckily, the snare drum shows you the way. There's an extra snare accent on each bar, which if you move to it, sort of "resets" you back to the correct beat every time. Once you find it and move to it, it feels fantastic.

Adam's videos are honestly perfect to sit back, relax and grab some snacks

Dass sich Musik nicht gut anfühlt, kann auch zum Stilmittel werden: Die Arie "Komm süßes Kreuz" aus Bachs Matthäus-Passion enthält sehr große, sperrige Akkorde für die Viola da Gamba, was sehr mühsam zu spielen ist, und was man auch hört. Dadurch wird natürlich die Mühe, ein Kreuz zu tragen, ausgedrückt. Musste ich dran denken, weil du die Cello-Suiten erwähnt hast. Spannendes Video 😉

Excellent as always. Good to have you back.

my immediate thought is that theres two limits towards the speed of music, Practical and theorethical. practically the human body can only move so fast and for soo long and whilst you can train your body to go to extreme speeds there has to be a limit to where you simply cant go any faster. and theoretically. if we take a 8th note ostinato at 180bpm. you can write the same ostinato as 16th notes at 90bpm. but the slower the tempo the faster the note you have to write it as and at some point it will just become impracticle to write it

My favorite sped-up song is King Gizzard's The Evil River, from their 2022 live performance at Red Rocks. It's a normal version of The River for the first five or so minutes, but for the following section the song is sped up so much it's hard to keep up in your head. The whole feel of the song changes from 5/8 to 5/16. And then they keep it going at that insane pace for like eight minutes.

Good to see ya, Adam. Thanks Bra.

Great video Adam....long, complete, full of insights....a true gem! Thank you!!

Love the MO shoutout- the inner mounting flame is my favourite album :)

Part 3 probably could have been it's own video. As a viewer I wonder how much Adam cut out. One really important point that I would add is that the interpretation of speed is cultural and context dependent. So in metal or hardcore punk, fast is seen as aggressive. Meanwhile, in Bop or bluegrass, music can be exceptionally fast without ever having the connotation of being aggressive; the music is fast because that's the tradition. I think this is to say that speed can have many interpretations that might not even be related to how fast the music actually is.

such a fascinating and thought provoking video!! excellent as always Adam

That was one of the smoothest transitions to an ad I've ever seen!

My choir conductor let me teach the group Kaval Sviri today, a Bulgarian folk song that I first heard on your channel a few years ago. It took them some time to get used to the aksak in the verse/chorus, but just like you mentioned in the video, at some point it clicked for most of them and suddenly learning the tune came much easier and quicker. It was very cool to see that. Also, I stumbled across Some Skunk Funk a decade ago, and I heard the fast live versions first. I was very excited by it, I loved the tune. But then I listened to the original recording, and from that perspective it suddenly sounded glacial. It's like what the hell happened

Hey Adam, thank you for putting so much work and passion in your videos. It really shows. This video made me think about Hella. I am a massive fan of their first album "Hold Your Horse Is". As @ufoufo2788 put it so well (with your inspiration) in the comments: " I think mathcore music has a lot of moments that try to force you into these sections you can’t physically feel. It’s like trapping your body in a dance you can’t do, and it’s awesome". Hella gave me this feeling, bodily and mentally. They take me places I rarely go. I would be thrilled to hear you talk about them, and math rock / core in general.

Had to come back a few times to this one Mr Neely, there's a lot to think about here. Thanks.

Thank you for more intervals.

Adam is the messiah!! I, once, could not walk... and now I can; thanks to Adam!! Jokes aside, before starting to watch Adam's videos many years ago, I just to just hear music... now I listen.

I’ve always loved the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Larry Coryell’s 11th House, and studied for a few years with Larry, before his passing in 2017. Ever since developing heart arrhythmias in 2020, I’ve avoided those fabulous complex rhythms, because it feels so much like the skipping of my ventricles that led to a near death experience in 2021. The music feels… dangerous to me now!

Absolutely phenomenal video - huge respect for the way you explain this so well and ALSO put it into practice with sungazer. You're inspiring so many people to respect microrhythm

That Usain Bolt clip is an amazing representation of this argument... Especially when you compare him to the dude right next to him, who takes like three steps for every step Usain takes, and is still like a foot behind him. lmfao It's incredible. I'm not even really into athletics per se, but... You see a whole line of Olympic runners, men who would make you on your best day look like you were standing still... And even among them, Usain Bolt immediately stands out. Absolutely incredible.

I think that Vital Transformation beats could also be thought of as quarter note, quarter note, quarter note and dotted quarter note.

very interesting video. one thing that I felt was left out is discussing the context in which the fast performance happens. in the mahavishnu live album for exemple there are other tracks much lower paced which contributes to the overall experience through contrast. you can play a really fast tune in order to "break the spell" of a slow track you played previously or to enhance the slow rythm of the next track or next session in the same track. also in a live performance everything is turned up to higher levels in comparison with studio performances. it is very common to people play faster live without noticing and also to listeners enjoy a really fast song, and even dance to it, without realising exactly how fast it is. also i think that if we take an average souding music and simply accelerate it to absurd speeds it will obviously sound strange but i think fast paced music is a thing on it self. if the song is composed from scratch to be a 300bpm song, for example, it will take other creative paths than just writing a melody and playing it fast. there is certainly some tipes of rythm that can vibrate nicely with our body in that range, the polyrithm of audible frequencies being maybe the extreme example of that, meaning that a note is nothing more than a really fast rythm and a nice sounding chord a relation between two rythms (polyrithm), which you already covered in a very nice video of yours

Really cool topic. Made me think a lot more about speed and the purpose of it. Kind of reminds me of one of my favorite violin riffing songs by Diego's Umbrella called "Der Badkhen Freylakh". It starts out super slow and clear and methodical and by the end it starts falling apart and is frantic. And all it does it play the A and B parts over and over again. The whole journey lasts only a few minutes and is so satisfying to hear the transformation.

Been watching your vids for many years and I gotta say this is one of your best

"Too many notes." Rock me, Amadeus. The Brain Processing speed concept explains why I love Slow Blues. 🤠

It's weird, but I feel the Mahavishnu Orchestra rhythm in two separate ways; First style, I separate the first note from the rest almost like a pickup measure and feel the rest of the music as a regular 4 beat feel. I'll abruptly stop myself wherever I am in the rhythm to get that "POW" feeling at the beginning of the measure. If I counted it out, it'd be something like "1....1-2-3-4" with the next measure's 1 being the "e" of 4 for that POW feeling. Second style, I just feel the whole rhythm in over two measures, so I'll just bob my head on the down beat regardless of where in the music I am, so in a way I alternate between the down and up beats before actually repeating the rhythm.

This is one of my favorite videos of yours.

I'm pleasantly surpised at how much love jazz fusion is getting currently, lots of great young players. Thanks for the quality content!

Hell, I'd like to see a speedrun version of one of the first established pieces of the explosive musical genre of Balinese gong kebyar, a Indonesian gamelan genre born in early 20-century Bali, Indonesia that is characterized by its interlocking parts that are often played at breakneck speeds. This workhorse is "Kebyar Legong", a dance piece that takes about 30 minutes to perform in its entirety, even by the most skilled Balinese ensembles. Thus, the piece not only tests how quickly and precisely your ensemble can play, but also how long can your musicians endure playing those fast sections (which are interspersed by relatively slower sections).

Wow, fascinating that you feel the Vital Transformation riff as 2+2+2+1+2. I'm a conductor so my brain goes straight to trying to figure out what would be most useful to a group of musicians following my lead. If I was beating it out I'd put the last three 8ths of the measure into one long fourth beat. It comes up more often than you might expect in Western Classical repertoire (though obviously not really before the C 20th, probably the first example that comes to mind is in Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances). A potential upside of feeling the last three together is that those last six 16th notes can be one event as you desire, but that may mess with perceptions of pulse in a different way. Very cool, great video

Jan Hammer is the best possible name for a keys player. Also the way you broke down the groove of Vital Transformation kind of time signature kind of blew my mind.

The editing in this video is amazing. Thanks a lot for this work.