*M I C R O W A V E*

"Anyone could have done it. Yeah, but Macintosh Plus did." These were the words I helped me more in music than you realize.

so, take a tune: Slow it down: vaporwave Speed it up: nightcore got it

Vaporwave is the most meta THING in existence. At this point what is vaporwave? A meme? A genre of music? A movement? An enlightened way of thinking? It’s amazing!!!

Vaporwave strikes me as the musical equivalent of pop art, with a lot of the same arguments coming from both its fans & its critics. In the end, whether it's Warhol painting Campbell's soup cans or Macintosh Plus slowing down a Diana Ross song, it may not connect with you or seem like 'real art', but it certainly leaves an impression and makes some clear statements and IMO that's what art is really about.

Your Arizona green tea turned into a Fiji water at the end...

What is vaporwave? Vaporwave is _s e x t o t h e e a r s_

I don't care if it's a joke, or if it's lazy. I love the way it makes me feel. Not all vaporwave songs are as simple as slowing a song down. The one you mentioned has other things done to it. Various parts that loop, and skip, and all kinds of things to give you that old vhs type feel. Call me ridiculous, but I take vaporwave seriously. joke or not.

To the people who keep telling me to watching this video. I AM WATCHING!

I discovered vaporwave post-meme and love it unironically.

There's a style of Japanese music called 'City Pop' which has recently had kind of a surge in popularity with western music fans because uh... the youtube algorithm started recommending Mariya Takeuchi's 'Plastic Love' to everybody??? for some reason??? regardless, a lot of vaporwave artists use city pop tracks as the basis for their plunderphonics (I know that Macaross 82-99 used a Takahashi Kadomatsu track just... completely unedited in one of their albums dfgdsf) and I think a lot of people approach it as the kind of corporate pop kinda music that vaporwave tends to make use of, and I thought that for a while when I started listening to it, but I've since come to think that - at least for a period - its project is somewhat similar to what vaporwave would be doing later. Theres this album by an artist called Hiroshi Satoh called 'This Boy' (apparently a compilation album?) and it demonstrates it really well imo: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/r6yUhrRyqNrJp30.html If you listen to it, its clearly doing western pop stuff, but its making references to all different kinds of western pop. There are bits that are close to doo-wop type stuff, american songbook type stuff, surf rock stuff, and then theres power ballads & whatever, and disco, and its all melted down into this over-the-top early 80s synth pop style. Realizing it had this very 'close reading' of western pop made me think, 'hold on... is this art?' A lot of the songs are in english, and the lyrics are a lot of the time total nonsense - really meaningless! but they lyrics are like, haphazardly assembled western pop cliches, 'c'mon baby', 'for your love', 'make you satisfied', 'the futures in your mind', etc. It's appropriating western pop in that sort of way. I can't imagine how it must have sounded to a japanese listener in the early 80s, and I imagine there was some kind of cultural dialogue that was happening which is inaccessible to me - to some extent I cannot really listen to the music Hiroshi Satoh was making, because what he was making was - as you say re: vaporwave - more than the chords & scales, but that musical meaning is lost in translation. Satoh's first album, btw, was called "Super Market"

8:09 I could taste that Arizona once you cracked it open

I love that 'literally anyone could do that' applied as a criticism to music. Literally anyone can learn to play the guitar. I could teach anyone - literally anyone - to play some guitar in a very short space of time. To play it well would be another matter. Same with sample based music. Literally anyone can do it. Doing it well is a totally different matter. (great video by the way)

ＷＥＬＣＯＭＥ Ｋ-ＭＡＲＴ ＳＨＯＰＰＥＲＳ

in the end your music was more like P R O G W A V E

4 Years late here but I've come around to thinking of Vaporwave as a modern Gothic aesthetic. Gothic took the iconography of and celebrated the downfall of the Victorian age. Vaporwave is doing the same of ultra consumerist capitalism.

Title of vid sounds like a college course at a prestigious university in the year 2030

so basically vaporwave does to music what Andy Warhol did to art?

I love how the "great artist's steal" adage is still attributed every famous artist. In Pirates of Silicon Valley it was Picaso, here it's Stavinsky, in other places it's Tennyson or Faulkner. All the above mentioned people have actually used some variation on the quote, so great artists actually have stolen that quote in particular.

I once found a 20-ish year old Walkman at home. It hadn’t been used for at least 15 years. I tried to turn it on, which worked to my surprise, however the Backstreet Boys tape that played was extremely slowed down to the point of unintelligibility. But I kept it on, and it sloooowly picked up speed. The result was basically vaporwave until it had reached normal playback speed after about 15 minutes. Since it was an old tape of mine, with outdated music in an outdated format, it became weirdly nostalgic to me. That experience made me embrace the _A E S T H E T I C_ in a new way. I’m guessing the original idea behind vaporwave came from a similar anecdote.

Blank Banshee does just so awesome sampling, demonstrating Vaporwave is not just slowing down songs.

great video

you had me at "f*ck you, earnestly learning about things can be really cool".

as someone who relishes in vaporwave, retrowave, synthwave and all the waves, for me it's nothing to do with the nostalgia, i was born in the uk in the mid 90s, and half of the references, especially american ones go right over my head. the thing with timbre goes so much deeper. It's almost like lofi hiphop, sure on face value a lot of it sounds so samey, but you know when it's good, you can hear the craftsmanship in sampling, mixing, various effects, all that. and the rest is just a meme. but i wish the 'purists' who love one and hate the other (referring to vapor/synth/retrowave again) would just admit they're all doing the same thing, of invoking an oversaturated impression of "nostalgia" just for different periods of music

I think all the Wikipedia descriptions of vaporwave being a serious critique on consumer culture are more or less post-hoc attributions by people trying to make it into more than it actually is. I think vaporwave is an earnest, salacious expression of the notalgia of a generation raised on TV and dial up Internet.

Something that helps identify Vaporwave is the natural vibrato that occurs from using tape cassettes etc. I often wonder if vibrato, as an effect, gains it's ability to evoke emotion through a psychological connection with the natural vibrato of a person's wavering voice while near to crying. If so wouldn't that be a potential factor in this kind of music's popularity?

It's bizarre...........I've been playing, writing, recording music for 20 years now. I'm 37 and feel a bit stuck in a rut in terms of just repeating myself too much. I need to get back to that feeling I have when I was younger and honestly...less informed in terms of theory. This video really clicked with me. And it made me delve into the whole vaporwave music terrain. Interesting journey. I think there's much to learn from it. Case in point: THIS song(the one at the end)...it's incredible. Very musically interesting. I wish more vaporwave was like this. This song doesn't simply take a song and slow it down. It takes a piece of audio that carries a certain "feeling" ....and then they warp it...and then they _expound_ on that theme and go in all sorts of interesting musical directions. Yet...there's something kinda pop about this. It's simple...but so interesting _sounding._ Honestly...Adam exploring vaporwave really fucked my brain up, in a good way. It's got me thinking about music entirely differently.

The K-Mart sampling has a brighter sound, as if tuned up. The brighter sound also comes from a possible hi-pass filter, since this was played on elevators nonetheless.

Put on the glasses, Adam, cuz now it's like Vsause all about the music.

Your Kmart song sounds like something that would play in Hell's waiting room. It scares me....

i once heard this crazy asian music while under the influence of LSD - i asked my friends what it was - turns out it was bruce springsteen's born to run! ever since then I've been thinking about music differently

"Yeah but anyone could do that" "Yeah but MACKINTOSH+ was the one who did do it" Exactly!

I just prefer the 'vaporwave' that recreates 80s Japanese pop music.

Vsauce for science 3Blue1Brown for math Adam Neely for music

Tune at the end was really interesting. Definitely didn't strike me as "vaporwave" as it normally exists, but almost a new branch off into something like vapor rock. Had a more hard-hitting sound in many parts, along with faster tempo and more vibrant, clear, uplifting notes. Very cool no matter what you call it, always glad to see new stuff touching on the genre.

Using live drums at first sound almost feels like a departure, idve been compelled to put a low pass filter on them and maybe tape emulation to flatten them, but I really like how u approached this, this is what moves a genre forward. Beautiful tunes and brilliant insight as always, dude

I was promised that you would be drinking Arizona Iced Tea, but you switched to Fiji water, I feel cheated.

4:29 アダムは馬鹿です Adamu wa baka desu. _lit._ : Adam is an idiot. Very funny...

Vaporwave music makes me cry even if I’m not in a sad mood....

I, for one, enjoyed the drums in your song. It gives an "80s Rock Ballad" kinda feel, and it's very fitting. Great job!

Music Theory and Vaporwave in the same sentence. Amazing!

I don't like the idea of hearing noticeable guitars or drums. For me, vaporwave is literally like a wave, rocking you in a sensory-heavy bearing ocean of melancholy and or nostalgia. And the ticking drums and guitar are like I'm being hit by giant waves and disrupting my peace.

I’m really digging the offshoots of vaporwave . Such as Retrowave, nightdriving, and cyberpunk/darkwave. My interest definitely started from nostalgia. A lot of the music reminds me of the soundtracks to cheesy eighties and early nineties movies. Movies I grew up and loved.

as a music student, this was hella cool!! thanks for putting this together, it was obvious how much time and energy went into both your research and creation

And then you have ＳＩＭＰＳＯＮＷＡＶＥ, that coopts the genre and remixes The Simpsons clips and audio tracks to create a kind of societal commentary that not only criticises modern consumerist society, but The Simpsons itself and the whole genre as self-parody.

so it's literally just the pop art movement again then.

The progression in that song is so good. I love seeing different takes on the vw genre

This was such a great video. You made me feel how a feelings change and how they amplify like music does. I do experience the art form of this, I like it. First time I've ever heard of vapor wave but it sounds like it's every where! Life is music, music is life.

Good analysis! I love your open mindedness and ability to think creatively and insightfully about this seemingly shallow type of music. I'm fairly ignorant about Vaporwave but I do listen to a lot of Synthwave. It seems to me that they both share similar traits. Both incorporate 80's and 90's nostalgia into the music. They both have strong retro aesthetic visuals as well. Whereas Synthwave is more musically diverse and celebratory with it's nostalgia, Vaporwave seems to critique and poke fun at it's origins, like a musical form of Pop art.

Yep! It's all about memories. I like listening to vaporwave because of the nostalgic feeling it gives me. I was obsessed with technology we had in the 90s as a kid. My happiest memories were going to the shopping mall with my grandparents, hearing the slow jazz covers of popular songs over the loudspeakers and soaking up all of that visual stimulation. I think pink and teal are horrendous together but love seeing evidence of that tacky color scheme anywhere due to nostalgia.

I love watching these high so I can come back and watch for the first time again.

I thoroughly enjoyed this video, especially the performance at the end. Well done good sir.

Dream Catalogue elevated vaporwave to a whole other level where it's like metropolis ambient. I mostly listen to their take on the genre instead of most of the lulzy artists.

Funnily enough, I know the guy who made 'simpsons wave', Played loads of mario kart with him

I love that the quote "lesser artist borrow, greater artist steal" is being quoted in the name of so many different artists...

Really well done. Loved your take on the importance of timbre. That's what earned you a new follow from me. Thank you for this video. There's a Mr. Robot quality to the theory and the tune that I really liked.

What's throwing me off is that this Kmart sample is using a Yanni Sample from one of his early CD's so It's vaporwave sampling Kmart sampling Yanni ... too deep.

I can feel my mind expanding as I'm watching this

Dude. I'm so obsessed with vaporwave! I don't know why, it just speaks to me. I feel connected to it. The same with Synthwave, Mall Soft, and Cyberpunk. I just love everything about these, and the art styles. ✌️😎

I usually learn something new when I watch your videos.Thanks,Adam.

"..because fuck you, sometimes earnestly learning about things can be cool..." You sir earned yourself a subscription at that moment.

Vaporwave is honestly the closest thing to an actual musical drug I have ever found.

Adam, just started watching your videos and I gotta say: I'm surprised you're the only one on KZfaq talking about modern music with in depth analysis. Good work man. I mean it.

I'm so glad I am at an age where those old school windows is nostalgic, really sells vaprowave more when you grew up with those old systems and seen them grow into today

*ｉｍ　ｊｕｓｔ　ａ　ｋｉｄ* -ｉｍ　ｊｕｓｔ　ａ　ｋｉｄ- _ｉ　ｍ　ｊ　ｕ　ｓ　ｔ　ａ　ｋ　ｉ　ｄ_

These comments summed up: 50%: oh my god you have no idea what vaporwave is 49%: too much drums in the song to be vaporwave 1%: good video

I was not expecting this video to be so informative and technical (in a good way). Great video man.

I've watched video probably 10 times since it was released almost three years ago. Only now did I catch that you switched from the Arizona to a bottle of Fiji in the middle of the song. Bless you, sir

So, basically Vaporwave is opposite of Nightcore?

your track is definitly prog wave but i love what you said about v a p o r w a v e . . . .

That drummer is freaking amazing. Actually playing the normally spliced skips and repeats of sample snippets must take huge skill. (I'm a drummer myself and couldn't do this if I wanted to.)

I just love vaporware, and your analysis is amazing, I found your channel recently and I cannot get enough of the content, thanks!

Sheeeeeeeit... I used to do this back in the 70's by listening to music on tape cassettes with the motors really slowed down while under the..ah...uh... influence of mind altering substances. Maybe I should be in the history book of this stuff, lol

The drumline felt too complicated

This has fast become one of my favourite places to visit on t'internet. Adam Neely imparts esoteric knowledge in a way that's almost subliminally easy to absorb. Every video is a mine of talking points. That tune at the end kind of reminded me of Tangerine Dream or Boards of Canada. The latter's edit of 'Trapped' seems to fit the vaporwave bill, just on another level of craft. Wonderful stuff Adam.

I love this sort of abstract analysis!! You watching your own song took its aesthetic to the next level. Is it weird that the more ironic something is, somehow, the more beautiful it becomes?

When you took 2 seconds to remake macintosh plus I almost cried. It was beautiful

Guys, please go give vaporwave a try. Macintosh Plus was a purely experimental project by Electronic music producer Vektroid. There are many other Vaporwave releases that aren't just slowed down music.

This track is sooo good!! You two are AMAZING

Dang love it thank you for walking us through this!

Damn... That's the drummer friend we all want. Has he eaten a metronome as a child? And dear jesus... That hi-hat is honored to serve I think :)

Kinda reminds me of Bill Wurtz's music style.

I released a plunderphonics ep yesterday, that thing about bettering the borrowed work boosted my confidence a little, thank you for this video I personally enjoyed it

I loved the video and specially what you said about phenomenology in music. Cheers!

So Adam, when I put a You Tube video on at half speed speed so I can figure out wtf the guitar player is doing, am I in V A P O R W A V E mode?

OMG he's drinking fiji water

Great video! I've been lining to vaporware for about 3 1/2 years and still love it!

That Kmart song you made is awesome, love it 🔥

I A M A S L A V E T O T H E V A P O R W A V E

man, been watching a few of your videos and it's amazing to see how you keep an open mind to everything musical, regardless of your background and knowledge in musical theory and composition. Keep doing you bro!

I FREAKING LOVE THIS VIDEO. Thank you again for make me entertaint :D

The song at the end..............is objectively really really good. I kinda love it to be honest.... I wish more vaporwave was like THIS.

No Macintosh plus definitely improved it

I don't understand why people think this is only a meme, and not worth seriously listening too. Lots of songs turn from modest to fantastic after being messed with. Same concept with chopped and screwed. Sometimes you can take already great songs, update and turn them up a notch in the same fashion, like with futurefunk.

I still like vaporwave and aesthetics. Besides, the internet literally hates everything.

I remember arriving here, back in 2016, after some random vaporwave+aesthetics Google search. I remember how impressed I was with his eloquence and the precision of his words. I kept watching his other videos from time to time, although not systematically since I am not a musician and often I don't really understand what he is saying. Anyway, almost 3 years later I find Adam Neally is sort of a star and also appears in videos of other remarkably interesting KZfaqrs I like very much (notably Rick Beato). So, good work Adam, keep it up!

I'm Finnish so I've never heard the K-mart song.. I assume I was missing a lot phenomenologically speaking.

Djentwave

I had never stumbled onto Vaporwave prior to seeing this video, but I am glad that I did. This was extremely interesting and you complimentary Kmart track is awesome.

watching this is 2019, just appreciating the Sungazer techniques used in this track, like the kick triggering the KMart sample. I see you Adam