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NAETE: Adam Neely is Wrong About…… A LOT

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.

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  • Thanks for posting that video. First, I do actually like a lot of Neely's videos. Many of them are very interesting and well-researched and entertaining. I even enjoy his method of presentation and his tone (which I know many people dislike).

    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.

    The first part of this video dealt with that and Neely's inability to really admit how wrong he was.

    The second part with Adam Ragusea was something I was unfamiliar with but holy shit, Neely really dropped the ball on that by not doing the five seconds of research required to verify Ragusea's qualifications for being used in the video. I know Neely can't be held 100% responsible for the living hell Ragusea suffered through because of that video but Neely most certainly contributed to making things worse for Ragusea and really hasn't done anything to fix that situation. I'm sure Neely reads tons of shit about himself online and probably feels Ragusea should have a thicker skin, but just being a decent human being means we really should temper what we say and how we say it when criticizing other people. I'm sure the professor from the first part of the video went through some similar hell because of how badly Neely misrepresented him.

    The last part of the video is trickier and I think the author of the video tried to make that clear. I think that the other music theory person would have the right to feel at least a little bothered by how amazingly similar Neely's analogy was. It's entirely possible that Neely forgot about the other person's video and thought this was something he came up with or had heard about in music schools decades ago. But when confronted with the facts, he could have handled that better. Interestingly, in the comments, Youtuber David Bennett defended Neely on this point. Have no idea if that means anything but just as some professional courtesy it's entirely ok to issue a mea culpa and take some lumps. In no way would that have hurt Neely's career.

    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. In fact, he and I got into a bit of a heated argument on the topic on Reddit. His knowledge of classical music is lacking but his confidence isn't.

    There have been a few other times where Neely has stated an opinion on certain classical composers or works that I've found suspect but aren't worth worrying about. But they do help confirm his lack of expertise when it comes to classical music.

    • Unfortunately, characters like Neely exist because of a general lack of knowledge and interest on the part of the public that also props him up. He's like any of these other TED Talk infotainment guys, circulating shallow, inaccurate, harmful ideas with absolutely no accountability.

      Occasionally he's on the money. There's a video about tritones that I really don't object to. From a musicology/history of theory perspective, there's nothing controversial about it and I appreciate that he's pushing back on a common myth.

      Other times, he says some really dubious stuff. There's that video about some modulation in a Celine Dion song that pieces together its argument from another feel-good edutainment music theory work that nobody examines critically, Harmonic Experience by W.A. Mathieu, and some idealistic embodiment stuff (vulgar though; he doesn't cite Arnie Cox or anyone like that, not that I think that would make it any better). The experienced analyst really has to suspend their disbelief. The harmonic dualism he draws from Mathieu was called out as nonsense back in the 19th century, for fuck's sake.

      Then, there's another video on that Recorder Team lady's channel where we learn that Neely has never before heard of red notation or the rhythmic craziness of Ars Subtilior/Trecento music. Do they not teach music history at Berklee?

      When I watch his videos, I get the pervasive sense that he only first encounters the concept at hand a few weeks before, and his familiarity with said topic is limited to what he researched for that specific video. He basically makes undergraduate research essays with a budget. And people pay him for it and take it for gospel.

    • 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^[citation needed]. 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^[citation needed]. Most of it's totally boring with no sense of drama or arc or texture or anything^[citation needed]. 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^[citation needed].

      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.

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