Introduction
Adam Michael Neely (born 1988) is a New York City-based jazz bassist, composer, and YouTuber. His channel is a mix of musical history, theory, and popular culture videos in a format that has been described by several commentators as the "musical Vsauce". He also creates gig vlogs, which give insight into the life of a professional musician.
Career
Adam Neely began his career as a YouTuber in 2006, first uploading a video of him covering Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag on a 7-string electric bass. In 2008, he began uploading semi-regular videos discussing topics such as music theory, music cognition, jazz improvisation, musical performance technique, musicology, and internet memes. He graduated from Berklee College of Music's undergraduate program in 2009, and later graduated with an Masters of Music in Jazz Composition from the Manhattan School of Music in 2012, studying under Jim McNeely.He was awarded the Herb Alpert ASCAP Young Jazz Composer award in 2012 and 2015 as well as the Jerome Fund commission prize in 2014, for his work "Exigence."
His educational content "explores what music means, and what it means to be a musician." He has made appearances on NPR, TEDx, Vox, SiriusXM, SXSW, Ableton Loop, MAGFest, Bass Player Magazine, Electronic Musician Magazine and Ultimate Guitar. He has since worked as a bass player and educator in New York City with artists like Shubh Saran, Zac Zinger, Aberdeen, the NYChillharmonic, The 8-Bit Big Band, J-Music Ensemble and many others. Adam Neely frequently gigs with jazz/indie rock brass band Aberdeen, regularly posting 'gig vlogs' to his YouTube channel. In May of 2019, the group traveled around Central Asia on behalf of the American State Department, playing gigs and conducting educational workshops.
He is also a founding member of the electro-prog band Sungazer and regularly performs with rock band Bright and Loud, indie-soul group Sóto, his large ensemble Mass Extinction Event, and a number of up and coming singer-songwriters on the New York scene.
He sometimes creates videos for comedic effect; an example is when he streamed himself playing The Lick for five hours straight. He later explained in an episode of his "Q+A" series that he wanted to "do my version of Erik Satie's Vexations" (a piece that is typically played 840 times in succession) and wanted to make a "modern technical meme".
In December 2019, Neely earned a spot in the New Yorker's annual Christmas Poem.