A YouTube video about Adam Neely’s selective presentation on classical musicians’ rhythm, bullying of Adam Ragusea and subsequent failure to retract his fallacious claims, and potential plagiarism of Sideways.

  • lilcareed@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Looks like I’m a little late to the party (also, hey, it’s me!) but I couldn’t help but check out a post slamming Adam neely.

    That said, my specific gripe has always been that he handles classical music badly. He thinks he’s an expert on it but he really isn’t.

    This is also my primary gripe with Neely, and while the videos explicitly focusing on classical music are the most obvious offenders, that kind of attitude pervades a lot of his content, whether it’s him dismissing “academic” theorists and music, making digs at classical musicians, or committing the r/musictheory special of assuming that all music is jazz.

    His “music theory and white supremacy” video is also riddled with inaccuracies and misrepresentations any time classical music and institutions are discussed. He even frequently misrepresents or overstates Ewell’s points, which are presented more accurately (and more reasonably) by Ewell himself later in the video. It’s a shame, because it’s a video with (at present) 2.4 million views on a topic that’s worth discussing. But the thesis gets muddled because Neely can’t help but use it as an opportunity to shit on classical music, so it’s presented through that lens.

    Fully agree with your points on the second and third parts of the video.

    Finally, I wish the author had done a segment on Neely’s video about the cult of sheet music (or some such similar title). Once again Neely completely misrepresented how classical music works this time relative to sheet music.

    Oh, my. I hadn’t seen this video before, but I’m watching it now and it’s so bad. His arguments are on par with the average r/classicalmusic user decrying “modernism” and the “avant-garde.”

    Maybe the worst part of Neely’s video:

    I call this the cult of the written score, and it’s pervasive in all forms of academic and collegiate thought[1]. At its most extreme, the cult of the written score gives us music that is really boring. Extremely boring. More interested in the mathematical thought and the processes necessary to make 12-tone composition or [indiscernible] composition, people in the musical ivory tower genuinely forget to make…music[2]. Most of it’s totally boring with no sense of drama or arc or texture or anything[3]. The process of writing the music and how they can connect the dots is given way more importance than the actual act of listening to music and creating music that’s exciting or interesting[4].

    Neely goes on to discuss how he notated some electronic music so that the “entrenched elite” could understand it, and seems not to have realized that electronic music’s biggest pioneers were classical composers, that classical composers have been writing scores for electronic music (both fixed and live electronics) for decades, or that plenty of electronic music written by classical composers doesn’t have a score at all, or that the “entrenched elite” probably know what FM synthesis is. He genuinely seems to think that he invented a totally new way of notating electronic music that no one else has ever thought of before and suggests it might become mainstream in the next 10-15 years.

    I have to admit, I didn’t expect the video to be that bad.


    1. citation needed ↩︎

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    4. citation needed ↩︎

    • davethecomposer@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Looks like I’m a little late to the party

      Now the party begins!

      Oh, my. I hadn’t seen this video before, but I’m watching it now and it’s so bad. His arguments are on par with the average r/classicalmusic user decrying “modernism” and the “avant-garde.”

      I’m having a hard time finding his post in /r/classicalmusic about it where he and I got into it a bit. It was frustrating, of course.

      But most importantly, he holds classical music in such contempt while at the same time trying to appear that not only is he knowledgeable about classical music but that he likes it and is sympathetic toward it. None of that is true. As you note, many of his off-hand comments betray his ignorance as well.

      committing the r/musictheory special of assuming that all music is jazz.

      There was a weird phenomenon a number of years ago where it seemed like computer science types were positioning themselves as the top experts in every single field of study because they could dash off a Python script in an afternoon to solve the most difficult problems in all these fields. It doesn’t seem as bad anymore but back in the day, whew!, it was a sight to behold! Anyway, Neely seems to have a bit of that about him, classical music can be best explained in terms of jazz and where it can’t, it’s not worth thinking about anyway.

      seems not to have realized that electronic music’s biggest pioneers were classical composers, that classical composers have been writing scores for electronic music (both fixed and live electronics) for decades

      Yeah, it’s just some basic research or maybe even paying attention in class. Oops, he went to Berklee so who knows what he “learned” there!

      I have to admit, I didn’t expect the video to be that bad.

      Adam is always full of surprises!

    • ferniecanto@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      or committing the r/musictheory special of assuming that all music is jazz

      Wait! You plagiarised that criticism from me! I’m going to make a call out video against you right now!