Its amazing how sparse a representation of a song can be recognizable (and enjoyable!) The mapping of musical meaning is due for a new look; the way we talk and write about sound needs to be rationalized before we can progress further in understanding why and how it works.
I don't know. After watching a lot of Adam Neely videos on YouTube, I get the impression that music theory has an incredibly rich language to describe music and does have a good understanding of why certain songs sound good, why certain arrangements sound better than others, especially regarding specific emotional cues they are trying to convey. That's one of the things I love about his videos, he does an excellent job of translating that language to a lay audience. But as with anything, full mastery of the field takes significant, prolonged effort, not in any small part due to competition driving the bar ever higher and higher.
Most of Neely's stuff is just wrong or misleading. I once tried to watch his video about why minor chords sound "sad" and major chords sound "happy" and it was just laughable how unsupported his claims were.
I have never heard such a complaint about his videos. Most? There are enough musicians in the world, on YouTube, and in my family that they would have called it out. I call shenanigans and say it is you, sir, who are wrong or misleading
Most musicians are ignorant of the deeper music theory - even jazz musicians like Neely, except on a standard level (which any jazz musician does). You need a trained composer and/or musicologist for that. Neely himself is not some music theory guru, he is a Berklee alumni who plays jazz, those are a dime a dozen.
That's a bit harsh. He's the one engaging an audience on more than one front performing as both a musician and successful YouTuber which the others aren't, and doing us a service as such exposing us to stuff we'll otherwise not ever encounter. He's publicly learning, including sharing his mistakes and entertaining and tries to keep 'fun' as part of journey. You may consider him a dime a dozen, but he's very far away from where I am, and therefore valueable to someone like me.
At some point claiming the person at the top of the ivory tower is the only one that knows the worth of something is useless if you can't get them to communicate with you.
Like anything you can really deep dive and get lost in you can end up lonely places that outsiders can't fathom. I found it quite poignant in Steven Levy's 'Hackers' book where Lee Felenstein remarks on all the focus on computer progress "You're doing all that the the computer? What are you doing for the people?"
You can still participate and get a value and joy out of something whilst being ignorant of its formations and there's nothing wrong with that. We're all standing on the shoulders of giants so to speak.
Its amazing how sparse a representation of a song can be recognizable (and enjoyable!) The mapping of musical meaning is due for a new look; the way we talk and write about sound needs to be rationalized before we can progress further in understanding why and how it works.