12tone

12tone

@12tone.nebula.tv

Something something music theory. they/them

6.2K followers189 following2.3K posts

DONE! Writing this script has been like pulling teeth but it's officially, finally, finished. Basically. A draft is finished, anyway. But the point is I can still organize thoughts into words, and that feels like a big win right now.

12tone@12tone.nebula.tv

As an update, things have started to move again! Probably gonna be a couple weeks still before I can wrangle this into a script I'm happy with, but it feels good to be writing.

Weird thing: All my videos have a link to the google doc script in the description. Mostly no one reads them or even notices, but in the last week I've suddenly got three different access requests from three different people for ones where I forgot to set it to public.

Only thing I can think of is someone's trying to train an AI model specifically on my scripts? Putting on my conspiracy hat for a second, it started right after I got invited onto an AI Booster podcast, so maybe my work just got shared in some AI space somehow? I dunno.

For reference, I'm pretty sure 3 requests is more than I've gotten in the entire rest of my decade+ career up to this point.

12tone reposted

Thereโ€™s this thing people do where theyโ€™re surprised that a rapper has read a book or knows any music theory or something else โ€œintelligentโ€. Anyway, I hate it. Thank you.

Sorry to Californiapost on main but this one's important, y'all.

Richard Kadrey@richardkadrey.bsky.social

Hey California! Be careful this election because the big money creeps are trying to trick you (again).

Also I just, at a deep personal level, hate how many "No on 40" ads I've had to see in the last month or so, so it would be very satisfying to watch them lose.

12tone reposted

I donโ€™t really care about the front end, but YouTube should allow me to see my actual uninflated views on the backend instead of the fake views. I shouldnโ€™t have to go to a menu; it should be the primary number I see because itโ€™s the one that matters to my career

Went to look up that Amazon "About You" thing everyone's posting about, but it turns out I've been doing too good a job remaining mysterious:

Absolutely correct take. I'd even take it a step further and start applying penalties if they reject the first appeal. At that point you should have a human reviewer, and if they're making fraudulent claims, there should be consequences.

Lindsay Ellis@lindsayellis.bsky.social

Hard agree - if a claimant files a takedown/copyright strike on however many hundreds of channels but NEVER files suit, they get their right to claim revoked. End of. If there's a strike system for us the same should apply for claimants as well.

Of course, I understand the reasons that *doesn't* happen, but that doesn't change the fact that it should.

"Every man whose brilliance supposedly makes his [...] public presence indispensable exists in a world filled with people whose brilliance we never saw because they were busy surviving the ever-present now they have been trapped into by their assault. That is also lost art. Those are also futures."

Jessie Gender@jessiegender.bsky.social

An essay on Jacob Geller, Cornell, sexual violence, and the stories we tell about menโ€™s futures (will make into a public video eventually) www.patreon.com/jessiegender...

(The [...] is just the word "continued", the full quote was unfortunately 3 characters too long to fit without editing.)

I've struggled to find the words to express it, but I've been a seething ball of rage since the news broke last week, and Lola does a much better job than I ever could explaining why.

I'm lucky to have never directly worked with him, but so many of my friends and colleagues, people I love, admire, and respect, people who did nothing wrong beyond trusting someone to be what he appeared to be, have been caught in the wake of his selfish deception and it breaks my heart.

12tone reposted

the reason these people need to be stripped of almost all of their money is so that they stop thinking that it gives them the right to nominate themselves for the "benevolent dictator" position

Gil Durรกn@gilduran.com

โ€œDemocracy has been hailed as, like, the holy grail for the last couple hundred years, but democracies are inefficient,โ€ said the crypto billionaire. โ€œIf you get a benevolent dictator, itโ€™s actually extremely efficient." Hmm, where have I heard this before? www.nytimes.com/2026/10/01/b...

A difficult thing about finally dialing in the correct antidepressant dose after almost two decades without them is now I have to relearn how to motivate myself without relying on depression.

The thing about your favorite youtubers is you don't know them. Not really. They're playing a character, and when their real-life behavior doesn't match the character, that's not a reason to downplay the seriousness of their actions. It just means there are sides of them they didn't want you to see.

12tone reposted

Two things can be true: 1) we can believe in & fight for a world in which anyone should have a path to redemption for even the most heinous shit and 2) you guys only seem to hum & haw over this shit when victims of sexual violence are tapping out their triggered feelings on social media.

12tone reposted

I think what I resent the most is that all of us, especially the women who worked with him, were a part of his rehabilitation (at least image-wise) without us ever getting to choose if that was something we wanted to participate in. He didn't let us or his audience make a choice. How ironic.

Another 80,000 Hours ad on a channel I otherwise respect, another retweet of the thread explaining how wildly unethical that is.

12tone@12tone.nebula.tv

Whenever I mention 80,000 Hours I get questions like this, so to answer it all publicly: It's actually a whole lot worse than going for a quick buck. 80,000 Hours is a reputation-laundering machine for a fringe ideology's most dangerous tendencies.

You can say no! I know it's hard out there, but you have a duty of care to your audience and if you aren't willing to take that responsibility seriously then it's unsafe for you to have an audience in the first place!

Research question: If you were to describe a song as "bad", what would you most likely mean by it? Or, put another way, which aspects of musical quality do you think are most amenable to objectivity?

(For the purposes of this project, I don't need arguments for why no such thing exists. I already have those, I'm looking to engage with other perspectives.)

Also, any academic friends who have some favorite pieces of scholarship on the subject, please shoot that my way as well. Especially interested in ones arguing for a particular objective lens, but I'll take anything you think might be relevant.

This is musicology.

eminemerald fennell@fireh9lly.bsky.social

THREAD OF EMINEM LYRICS THAT SOUND LIKE SOMETHING TAYLOR SWIFT WOULD WRITE "Your anxiety's throwing gang signs" "Even my cheap shots are overpriced" "I lay awake and I strap myself into bed with a bulletproof vest on" "You critics come to pay me a visit? Misery loves company, please stay a minute"

12tone reposted

Really glad to see this response so quickly -- no equivocating, and it does not take a long time to do the right thing here. And yes, an acknowledgement that this hurts the people who know you, work with you. It's not easy for anyone involved.

MinnMax@minnmax.com

Jacob Geller is no longer a part of MinnMax. He won't be on content moving forward and we won't be publicly airing this week's episode of The MinnMax Show. We're in shock and deeply hurt. Thank you for your patience during this sensitive time.

As an update, things have started to move again! Probably gonna be a couple weeks still before I can wrangle this into a script I'm happy with, but it feels good to be writing.

12tone@12tone.nebula.tv

Confession time: A little over a month ago, I hit a creative wall bigger than anything I've ever dealt with before. I'm not posting this to ask for advice or sympathy, I just want to explain 'cause it's been a while since my last video and it will likely be a while longer still.

The thing I most want from music is to never be able to share or discuss it with my friends and loved ones.

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For me, I think it's The Royal They's self-titled debut. (Thanks @carrarium.bsky.social for the rec!) Bouncy punk rhythms, really sharp lyricism, a wide range of compositional approaches while maintaining artistic cohesion... I've been listening to it kinda non-stop recently.

What's so cool about this technology is that sounds exactly like the sort of thing Maya Angelou would say. She was always advocating for using AI learning to get 5s on your AP tests. That was, like, her whole thing I'm pretty sure.

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Also why is Genghis Khan British? Is it because you knew your system couldn't handle a Mongolian accent without sounding super racist?

I've been seeing this screenshot float around during the ongoing Choosin' Texas discourse to imply the song's not a big deal because she's only sold 6,000 copies, but like, that's not what the word "another" means. Choosin' Texas is 6x Platinum in the US.

It's fine if you haven't heard it. I hadn't, until I looked it up last week out of curiosity. Personally, I find the whole debate intensely boring and I already regret dipping my toe into it at all. But honesty and accuracy matter and it doesn't do anyone any good to pretend it's not a popular song.

12tone reposted

we live in a world where "humanity is rotten to the core" is a more tolerable idea than "capitalism is kinda busted" but what I love about "capitalism is kinda busted" is realizing every good thing that happens is in spite of capitalism because humans are that committed to doing good things

As part of an effort to fix this, I've been going back and watching some of my favorite 12tone videos, and y'know what? I think I might be kinda good at my job. Who knew?

12tone@12tone.nebula.tv

Confession time: A little over a month ago, I hit a creative wall bigger than anything I've ever dealt with before. I'm not posting this to ask for advice or sympathy, I just want to explain 'cause it's been a while since my last video and it will likely be a while longer still.

12tone reposted

Replying to @hmsnofun.bsky.social

it just makes me sad how totalizing and inescapable market logic seems to be for people, because i don't think it's very hard at all to imagine a more stable and equitable system. but a lot of people can't or won't accept the starting premise that american capitalism has been a resounding failure.