@@Keith_Horn*crispy beer bottle opening sound* Jerry Goldsmith. *crispy beer-pour sound* Clear as a mountain stream. *beer-pour sound finishes* A composer, with no guilt or remorse. *sound of two people going ‘aaah.’* no morality, just refreshing hops, and pure chilling music.
Just found your channel with this video. Absolutely Genius. Chords are food for my soul. ❤ This video channel is getting me back into keyboards. Thank you 🙏
Goldsmith's score reminds me a lot of Scriabin/Nemtin's Mysterium, where the harmony and orchestral timbres evoke a similar kind of cosmic Lovecraftian horror
Nice one! There are rather interesting intertextual links with beginning of Alien's score as well. The very first bars relate to Holst's Saturn: tritones in flutes oscillating between a major second - the ticking away of time in vast space for the crew & of course the 'space' connotation in previously established music. Secondly, after we see the title screen and transition to space, we hear a trumpet over static string octaves. That always sounded like a reference to Ives's Unanswered Question to me.
As a massive chord geek, I couldn’t be happier to have found your channel. Love the breakdown of the theory behind the chord, genuinely so so interesting!
The spaced outness of it (pun intended) makes me think of space. Range wise, there are many places for the ear to shift it's focus to within the harmonic structure (think vastness of space) but no matter where you direct your attention it all seems the same, in this case all m7s (being the space is almost all the same, empty. But that doesn't mean it's empty, something is bound to be out there, and when we don't know what, that's terrifying)
@@Keith_Horn Augmented Major chord has the same property - as the notes are evenly spaced, there is no root note, it feels like an unanswered question. It also appears often in some sci-fi movies to make a mysterious vibe - especially, it works perfectly when used as the crescendo!
Consider me a new subscriber. I think it’s interesting that stacked 7ths are such a horror movie staple. Obviously they’re dissonant, but also extremely versatile. The shower scene in Psycho used stacked major 7ths
My favourite film score of all time is James Horner's Wrath of Khan score. It's perfect. Then Alan Silvestri's BTTF score. Then Hans Zimmer's Inception score.
Brilliant ! The amount of classical music genres in this soundtrack is really impressive. We go from Debussy, to Stravinsky, Mahler, Penderecki to Ives. I can listen to it without watching the movie. Talking about Ives, this chords and the whole ambiance in main theme with the trumpet sounds like a mix of "Central Park in the Dark" and "The Unanswered Question" from Charles Ives. Funny then, that Goldsmith uses words like "unknown" and "questionning".
Just having a break in the middle of a long day working hard on music and I stumbled onto this. I hadn't realised that I needed inspiration, but just a simple idea about one chord has just prompted so much to play around with. Thanks.
Nice!!!! Whenever the brilliance of Alien is discussed, I seldom hear the score mentioned, and this is also the first time I hear that OLDER Goldsmith music is used. Very interesting.
👽🎶 Gotta love any video about Goldsmith! Great video, Keith! Director Ridley Scott also asked Goldsmith to make the Alien score more minimalistic so I wonder if that also might have influenced the approach to this chord.
I would suggest that it is not quite fear because fear is immediate and demands action. Its more like depression, hopelessness. the chord suggests one has given up and surrendered to darkness. A single minor 7th sounds near humorous, like a laugh. Two minor 7ths take on on the quality of a minor 6th which is a feeling of reverence, a feeling of religious certainty, the near reverse of a laugh. We do not laugh in church because amusement and reverence contradict one another. Three minor 7ths take on the quality of a tritone, a feeling of depression or defeat, a feeling of frustration and despondence which DO go with reverence and with laughter, four minor 7ths again take on the feeling of the minor 6th again, reinforcing a feeling of reverence, of absolute certainty. to cap it all off five minor 7ths again return us to amusement which as the top melody note dominates, but with the notes beneath is totally neutered. So the cumulative emotional effect is to combine emotions that do not work together, because amusement and reverence cancel each other out and that leaves the middle note, the tritone as the only unconflicted emotional state which note gives us bitter defeat,. Its like all has been lost and nether prayerful reverence nor bitter laughter can save us, pointless merciless defeat that has no resolution is the emotional state that the chord suggests, its worse than fear by far.
That is a deep and nuanced emotional analysis. I hadn't considered the effect of interval pairs having their own emotional content and combing to form something more complex
@@Keith_Horn To me it seems surprising that there are so few attempts by theorists to assign emotional affects to relativistic interval ratios in order to explain emotional affect in music, since relativistic interval ratios are at the basis of music. Instead we strangely have many attempts to assign emotional affect to absolute key signatures, for which the emotional difference is almost impossible to discern. Why neglect to attempt to discern the obvious while making many attempts to discern what is vague? The common assumption seems to be that emotion only comes in after the assembly of intervals into chords or scales of some kind or even whole compositions such that emotion is just assumed without evidence to be what is called "emergent" To me the emergent explanation (which is nearly universal ) seems very weak because intervals clearly have their own individual character! Its as if we said that atoms consist of elements rather than elements consist of atoms. the simplest chord is 2 notes and the simplest melody is 2 notes, an interval ratio in ether case. Whats more intervals also apply to tempo and rhythm, the simplest polytempo is 2 tempos at the same time ( rhythmic harmony, for example a whole note and two half notes at the same time) while the simplest polysequence is two tempos one after the other (rhythmic melody, for example a whole note followed by two half notes), Both of these are the rhythmic equivalent of an interval (in the example an octave). If we listen we can hear that the interval of the octave has a similar mood whether its two tones at once (harmony) or one after the other (melody) or two tempos at once (harmony) or one after the other (melody) and so it is for all the other intervals! This strongly suggests that specific combinations of FREQUENCY RATIO whether in the audio range (ratios in tone ) or in the sub-audio range (ratios in tempo) and whether in sequence or in parallel evoke the SAME emotions with different emotions evoked by different ratios. We then can trace this to brain function where any two neurons communicate based on the ratios between their firing rates. If this is true then music works to create emotion because it resembles whats going on in the brain to create consciousness of emotion. The idea is simple and obvious, but simple obvious ideas are often the kind that are most resisted by the established authority in any field because counter intuitive complex ideas provide more opportunity for the sort of arguments that attract the readers that fuel publishing, as in sports a final resolution is not supportable of a sustained industry so is rejected. Science should seek final resolution however, it should not be conducted like a sport, but often is anyway because that is the better political and economic choice. They who seek final resolution impede the sustenance of the game which would explain why the attempt to identify the emotion evoked by each interval has largely not been made.
@@billwesley "surprising that there are so few attempts by theorists to assign emotional affects to relativistic interval ratios in order to explain emotional affect in music, since relativistic interval ratios are at the basis of music." Although I have a rudimentary understanding of music theory, that is a question I've always wondered. Is this really such a neglected topic?
I’ve long had a weird relationship with Alien’s music, because as a 10year old I was shown a book of stills from the film that really affected me. At that time I was listening to Dave Stewart’s OST for a Dutch film called Lily Was Here, which I’ve never seen, despite loving the music (it was one of the first albums I ever owned). So in my mind, that soundtrack strongly evokes images from Alien, which has since become one of my favourite films. For over thirty years there’s been two things I really need to do: 1. Actually watch Lily Was Here (though it’s not supposed to be very good). 2. Cut a version of Alien that replaces Horner’s (incredible) score with Stewart’s music, just to see if it even remotely works. Also, I’m sure it’s partly because of the Piano (Rhodes?) voicing you’ve chosen, but those Debussy whole tones immediately make me think of Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks scores.
I've never heard that score - I'll give it a listen. It would be a fun project to cut a different score to any of the Alien films - especially the first two films. The electric piano does give some Badalamenti vibes, doesn't it?
@ I guarantee you’ll have heard the title track from Lily Was Here. But most of the rest of the music isn’t really like that. I hope you do check it out. I do really love it - not least because it was such a formative part of my musical education.
Very interesting, I haven't really thought about the Star Trek connection before now, but I just gave the Alien main titles another listen and I think I hear some similarities.
I love that! It's very alien lol 🙃 it's like, maybe Xenomorphic music is built on 7ths instead of 3rds or 5ths! That's one of my favorite movies and I never really focused on the soundtrack like that. I think that shows how great he is that I just accepted it as part of the overall film!
There's lots of these kind of chords in Lalo Schifrin's work. Listen to the soundtrack to Enter the Dragon, there is loads of these kinds of chords and tonal inflections. Music is great isn't it? xx
the top F# to the G, since it's one octave + 1/2 step means from F#....... (F#) G makes the interval from that top F# to the next G, is actually a b9 (Flat-9): so you have stacked bottom to top: m7 m7 m7 b9 m7 .. so from what I see, the F# -> G (octave+1/2 step) is a 9th.. in this case a FLAT-9.. confirm..
I’m going to experiment with building modwave or multi/poly patches that implement this chord across oscillators. (@keithhorn, glad the algorithm threw this in front of me! Liked and subscribed!)
Being a little bit uneducated.. I thought “let me try playing that on a guitar” well yeah, that’s near impossible 😅 getting some of the notes, but not necessarily in the right order 😂 haha
Maybe a 7 string could pull it off with some RH fretting? You'd probably have to tune the 7th string to open C. Or let the bass player cover the bottom 2 or three notes? 22nd fret for the high D!
sounds as if he took phrygian mode and just spread it across octaves. just my first impression w/o trying to write down each note. Well, phrygian wasn't correct. So, it's just a circle of min 7ths instead of circle of 5ths. iiiiiinteresting. So you could do that with ANY interval. HMMMMMM...... The end result though is a bit too dissonant to really do more than make you feel uneasy and I guess that was the goal when writing for a sci fi horror movie.
Yeah maybe that was the goal - to create an unusual type of dissonance to make the audience feel uneasy. Now I'm on the lookout for a chord made of stacked MAJOR 7ths.
@@Keith_Horn It does, a bit, to me. But that super-wide voicing - in m7ths rather than thirds - and the full six-tone quality definitely does give it a different sound than standard Hollywood-spooky augmented chords and whole-tone melodies. One other point: It CAN'T be played on the piano by one person, other than by holding the pedal down and arpeggiating the whole thing. So it isn't something just anybody would easily discover.
@@Keith_Horn I think I can get 0-15-0-15--16, although for that harmonic to be audible you would have to be on an electric guitar on the bridge pickup and probably have treble / presence dimed.
@@Keith_Horn In the key of a melodic minor, f#, root, g#, P ninth,a, m3rd, bP4th, c,flat 5, d flat 6,e flat 7,f#, root. It's a half diminished with a major second. One right below "the purple haze chord" of Hendrix. The good old augmented ninth chord called the super locrian for some dumb reason. Your chord ( a flat five aeolian is what I think they call it) is actually just a lydian chord with a raised root. Thinking in terms of a raised root is tough for everyone, it seems.
I spent the better part of 5 years learning music theory on a deep level. After that i almost completely abandoned it. I use it for communicating with other musicians who understand it. But beyond that i find it far too restricting for writing with. This is just another example of why. Its just a tool. but its only 1 tool.
Where is the context of the chord? What comes before it, what comes after. Many people like to proclaim nonfunctional harmony, but the overwhekming vast majority of the time the music, when the music sounds good, it is functional but misspelled so as to appear nonsensical and nonfunctional, when in reality it is functioning but due to the adventurous nature of the chord or passage and the misspelling, people wrongly declare it as nonfunctional. I noticed the composer wrote a Gb yet you spelled it with an F#. In truth these are not all minor 7ths. there is an augmented sixth between the Gb and the E. If they were all minor sevenths, the top three notes would be Gb Fb Ebb, and that is a much stranger thing than that which he wrote. That one augmented 6th between the Gb and E coupled with the other minor 7ths is quite the contrast, yet quite subtle. An augmented 6th is a very overtonal interval, whereas the minor 7th is much closer and undertonal in a chian of fifths. The augmented 6th is a wider interval from a minor 7th by a Pythagorean comma, 23.46 cents. Considering the bass note is a C, and all the notes in the chord are in the 17 note vicinity scale for C major, it suggests to me, that it could possibly have function of some kind, but the surrounding musical context must be observed to determine that. If Fb and Ebb were used instead of E and D then then those 2 notes WOULD be outside the 17 note vicinity of C major which runs from Gb-A# in a chain of fifths. That would indicatate that C is not the tonic, or maybe some nonfunctional stuff is indeed going on. But there is of course the possiblity that the composer did not know what he was doing and just thought to add minor 7ths on top of each other and did not wish to deal with Fb and Ebb in the score. But if this composer is as great as you say, he probably spelled the notes in his score intentionally the way he did. Minor 7ths tend to want to collapse, whereas augmented 6ths tend to want to exapnd up and out. The fact that the aug6th is where it is at the beginning of the upper half of the chord conveys that there is a sort of stretch in the upper part of the chord, which adds more dissonance and tension and felling of expanse and perhaps is to counter balance some of the collapsing tendency of the minor 7ths to make the chord more suspended and stable sounding. You have 3 minor 7ths, and aug mented 6th, and then one more minor 7th at the top.
Fascinating perspective. The original cue starts with this chord so nothing precedes it. It resolves to a unison C. I suppose if it were looked at as a functional chord it could be thought of as a C whole tone hexatonic that resolves to C (unison). Taking into consideration that string players don't think/hear in ET - the spelling on the score is crucial - to your point. My purpose here is to take the chord as it appears at the piano (regardless of the spelling) and understand it in terms of interval structure - a series of minor sevenths. As far as it being functional or nonfunctional, I guess it depends on what lens one uses for analysis. Whatever lens one chooses, if it leads to a deeper and fuller understanding, that's a positive thing.
Hhhh, RUclips just deleted half my comment as I was writing it. Does the chord resolve to one unison C or octaves of C? It appears to be a Gb French augmented 6th chord with a 9 and #5 added. This seemingly points to an Fm resolution which we never hear and then are just left with the dominant root C. Mysterieous, dark , alone, fearful. NOt sure if my analysis is 100% right on, but, I have found that it usually helps quite a bit to take note of spelling and thinking about each note, and subsequent chords that are formed in relation to a tonic chord (unless the music is totally atonal). Many do not give too much thought into the spelling because of 12 tet, but there is a huge wealth of music theory knowlegde to be gleaned from the spelling of notes even when playing in 12 tet. Right now I use Dynamic tonality's 2032 program to play the notes of chords in 3 limit just intonation to really hear what is going on. Sometimes when the music is very ambiguous, it helps to hear it played in tune, to better understand the thing from a theory perspective, especially in regards to spelling. Also I use Dorico and I tune in 665 ET which is essentially perfect 3 limit tuning.
@@RememberGodHolyBible Before resolving he does have a Viennese trichord figure that starts on each successive note of the chord: C-F#-B, Bb-E-A, Ab-D-G, etc. until he reaches the high C6. Very nice writing.
Great idea - I love Schwantner. Particularly Aftertones of Infinity, ...and The Mountains Rising Nowhere, and From a Dark Millenium. Is there a particular chord known as the Schwantner chord?
It's an unusual chord with a cool effect. There is no such thing as a plebeian chord. To anyone permitting their elitism to manifest as dismissiveness, I would suggest contemplating a basic triad until they can appreciate it.
For those trying to figure out this chord - I can't lie to you about your chances but.......you have my sympathies
@@RickGraham this chord is a beast
Jerry Goldsmitrh... a composer creature ... no conscience or guilt, no remorse or delusions of moraiity....... just pure chilling music! 🙂
@ sounds like a beer commercial for Jerry Goldsmith😂
@@Keith_Horn*crispy beer bottle opening sound* Jerry Goldsmith. *crispy beer-pour sound* Clear as a mountain stream. *beer-pour sound finishes* A composer, with no guilt or remorse. *sound of two people going ‘aaah.’* no morality, just refreshing hops, and pure chilling music.
@@sub-jec-tiv Classic!😂
I heard there was an Alien chord that Jerry played and it pleased nobody because the void is dark and hostile
HAHA! (llelujah)
Just found your channel with this video. Absolutely Genius. Chords are food for my soul. ❤
This video channel is getting me back into keyboards. Thank you 🙏
So glad to hear that. Thanks for making my day!
I think that it also creates a sense of anticipation with a hanging non resolved tonic. It feels infinite.
It absolutely does
Goldsmith's score reminds me a lot of Scriabin/Nemtin's Mysterium, where the harmony and orchestral timbres evoke a similar kind of cosmic Lovecraftian horror
Great connection - I’ll give that another listen.
Exactly how find these gems....people's love of being off the beaten track but giving us directions 👍👍🥇
@@colinhamilton2217 I cannot recommend the Scriabin piece enough... although it is addictive and will leave you with an existential nightmare!
I've always loved this chord! And never bothered to find out what it actually is... fascinating, genius.
It's very unique. I'm on the lookout to see if it was used before this. Maybe in Bartok's work.
This chord literally IS Infinite ! The sound of Outer Space wrapped in 6 notes....
Maybe we should call it the space chord?
Nice one! There are rather interesting intertextual links with beginning of Alien's score as well. The very first bars relate to Holst's Saturn: tritones in flutes oscillating between a major second - the ticking away of time in vast space for the crew & of course the 'space' connotation in previously established music. Secondly, after we see the title screen and transition to space, we hear a trumpet over static string octaves. That always sounded like a reference to Ives's Unanswered Question to me.
Both very intuitive observations. You're so right about Ives.
As a massive chord geek, I couldn’t be happier to have found your channel. Love the breakdown of the theory behind the chord, genuinely so so interesting!
@@FraserBernstein thanks! It’s always nice to connect with a fellow chord geek.
Alien is my favorite film and i study music, this was very interesting, never thought about that chord before
Great film and a great score!Thank you for watching.
The spaced outness of it (pun intended) makes me think of space. Range wise, there are many places for the ear to shift it's focus to within the harmonic structure (think vastness of space) but no matter where you direct your attention it all seems the same, in this case all m7s (being the space is almost all the same, empty. But that doesn't mean it's empty, something is bound to be out there, and when we don't know what, that's terrifying)
Well said. The stacked minor 7ths have a way of creating a cold emptiness that works perfectly for this narrative.
@@Keith_Horn Augmented Major chord has the same property - as the notes are evenly spaced, there is no root note, it feels like an unanswered question. It also appears often in some sci-fi movies to make a mysterious vibe - especially, it works perfectly when used as the crescendo!
@@weneedf16 Totally. I write a lot of animation music for TV and I use augmented triads for a variety of reasons. Very versatile sound.
Love this. Thank you!
Thank you for watching!
“Chord of the week” What a great idea and love the content ! Thanks 🙏
Thanks for watching!
All it took was you covering something regarding 'Alien'. Subbed. Great vid.
@@JUNK_ZONE thanks! Classic film, classic score.
@@Keith_HornAgreed! Also very happy discovering this breakdown and subscribed. (Debussy is a favorite of mine so was happy to see him referenced. )
@@Panzer_the_Merganser thanks for the sub! I have several chords from La Mer that I’d like to feature at some point.
Fascinating subject, I'll follow this series for sure
Thank you - much appreciated
I love the idea of "Chord of the week".
Great stuff. Looking forward to more. Subbed
Much appreciated!
Consider me a new subscriber. I think it’s interesting that stacked 7ths are such a horror movie staple. Obviously they’re dissonant, but also extremely versatile.
The shower scene in Psycho used stacked major 7ths
Thanks! That's right Psycho did use Maj 7ths in the shower scene
My favourite film score of all time is James Horner's Wrath of Khan score. It's perfect. Then Alan Silvestri's BTTF score. Then Hans Zimmer's Inception score.
All amazing scores. BTTF is one of desert island scores.
2:47 When you played the whole tone scale descending I was suddenly like, 'Oh, that's Blade Runner!" Hah.
Ha! funny
You combined my favorite movie series and music theory. Liked and subscribed!
thanks! Sounds like we appreciate some of the same things.
Brilliant !
The amount of classical music genres in this soundtrack is really impressive. We go from Debussy, to Stravinsky, Mahler, Penderecki to Ives.
I can listen to it without watching the movie.
Talking about Ives, this chords and the whole ambiance in main theme with the trumpet sounds like a mix of "Central Park in the Dark" and "The Unanswered Question" from Charles Ives.
Funny then, that Goldsmith uses words like "unknown" and "questionning".
So true on all points. This score alludes to some of the great modernist composers and the Ives connection is spot on.
Awesome video guy! Glad I happened across your channel (:
@@NonDewman thanks for watching!
It’s almost the mystic chord. Turn Ab into A and there it is. It’s a pure whole tone chord. The complete scale spaced in the minor seventh sound.
You're right! It's very close to the mystic chord. Nice observation
Thank you for the harmony lesson.
Thanks for watching!
Just having a break in the middle of a long day working hard on music and I stumbled onto this. I hadn't realised that I needed inspiration, but just a simple idea about one chord has just prompted so much to play around with. Thanks.
That’s so great to hear! That’s precisely why I started making these videos. To help composers and musicians explore new ideas.
@@Keith_Horn It's appreciated. Keep up the good work :)
Good job ! I love this content.
Thank you for watching!
This is excellent analysis.
@@Kev3542 thanks for watching!
Love it. You derived so much info from that chord. Thanks!!
Thank you!
Nice!!!! Whenever the brilliance of Alien is discussed, I seldom hear the score mentioned, and this is also the first time I hear that OLDER Goldsmith music is used. Very interesting.
That was news to me too. I just recently discovered his score to Freud after doing a deep dive into Bartok's music. Fascinating stuff.
Nice channel! Really looking forward checking out the other 152 vids!
Same! I just got here. Instantly subbed!
Thank a million! It might take a while but it's greatly appreciated.
@@billhicks9056 Thank you!
👽🎶 Gotta love any video about Goldsmith! Great video, Keith! Director Ridley Scott also asked Goldsmith to make the Alien score more minimalistic so I wonder if that also might have influenced the approach to this chord.
Thanks! That’s a good point. It’s a great score with an interesting backstory.
Very good, thanks!!!
Thanks for watching!
I would suggest that it is not quite fear because fear is immediate and demands action. Its more like depression, hopelessness. the chord suggests one has given up and surrendered to darkness.
A single minor 7th sounds near humorous, like a laugh.
Two minor 7ths take on on the quality of a minor 6th which is a feeling of reverence, a feeling of religious certainty, the near reverse of a laugh. We do not laugh in church because amusement and reverence contradict one another.
Three minor 7ths take on the quality of a tritone, a feeling of depression or defeat, a feeling of frustration and despondence which DO go with reverence and with laughter,
four minor 7ths again take on the feeling of the minor 6th again, reinforcing a feeling of reverence, of absolute certainty.
to cap it all off five minor 7ths again return us to amusement which as the top melody note dominates, but with the notes beneath is totally neutered.
So the cumulative emotional effect is to combine emotions that do not work together, because amusement and reverence cancel each other out and that leaves the middle note, the tritone as the only unconflicted emotional state which note gives us bitter defeat,.
Its like all has been lost and nether prayerful reverence nor bitter laughter can save us, pointless merciless defeat that has no resolution is the emotional state that the chord suggests, its worse than fear by far.
That is a deep and nuanced emotional analysis. I hadn't considered the effect of interval pairs having their own emotional content and combing to form something more complex
@@Keith_Horn To me it seems surprising that there are so few attempts by theorists to assign emotional affects to relativistic interval ratios in order to explain emotional affect in music, since relativistic interval ratios are at the basis of music.
Instead we strangely have many attempts to assign emotional affect to absolute key signatures, for which the emotional difference is almost impossible to discern. Why neglect to attempt to discern the obvious while making many attempts to discern what is vague?
The common assumption seems to be that emotion only comes in after the assembly of intervals into chords or scales of some kind or even whole compositions such that emotion is just assumed without evidence to be what is called "emergent"
To me the emergent explanation (which is nearly universal ) seems very weak because intervals clearly have their own individual character! Its as if we said that atoms consist of elements rather than elements consist of atoms.
the simplest chord is 2 notes and the simplest melody is 2 notes, an interval ratio in ether case.
Whats more intervals also apply to tempo and rhythm, the simplest polytempo is 2 tempos at the same time ( rhythmic harmony, for example a whole note and two half notes at the same time) while the simplest polysequence is two tempos one after the other (rhythmic melody, for example a whole note followed by two half notes),
Both of these are the rhythmic equivalent of an interval (in the example an octave).
If we listen we can hear that the interval of the octave has a similar mood whether its two tones at once (harmony) or one after the other (melody) or two tempos at once (harmony) or one after the other (melody) and so it is for all the other intervals!
This strongly suggests that specific combinations of FREQUENCY RATIO whether in the audio range (ratios in tone ) or in the sub-audio range (ratios in tempo) and whether in sequence or in parallel evoke the SAME emotions with different emotions evoked by different ratios.
We then can trace this to brain function where any two neurons communicate based on the ratios between their firing rates. If this is true then music works to create emotion because it resembles whats going on in the brain to create consciousness of emotion.
The idea is simple and obvious, but simple obvious ideas are often the kind that are most resisted by the established authority in any field because counter intuitive complex ideas provide more opportunity for the sort of arguments that attract the readers that fuel publishing, as in sports a final resolution is not supportable of a sustained industry so is rejected.
Science should seek final resolution however, it should not be conducted like a sport, but often is anyway because that is the better political and economic choice.
They who seek final resolution impede the sustenance of the game which would explain why the attempt to identify the emotion evoked by each interval has largely not been made.
@@billwesley "surprising that there are so few attempts by theorists to assign emotional affects to relativistic interval ratios in order to explain emotional affect in music, since relativistic interval ratios are at the basis of music." Although I have a rudimentary understanding of music theory, that is a question I've always wondered. Is this really such a neglected topic?
@@billwesley Thank you for that. Has the emotional effect of intervals been codified anywhere in particular? I'd love to look into it.
I’ve long had a weird relationship with Alien’s music, because as a 10year old I was shown a book of stills from the film that really affected me. At that time I was listening to Dave Stewart’s OST for a Dutch film called Lily Was Here, which I’ve never seen, despite loving the music (it was one of the first albums I ever owned). So in my mind, that soundtrack strongly evokes images from Alien, which has since become one of my favourite films. For over thirty years there’s been two things I really need to do: 1. Actually watch Lily Was Here (though it’s not supposed to be very good). 2. Cut a version of Alien that replaces Horner’s (incredible) score with Stewart’s music, just to see if it even remotely works.
Also, I’m sure it’s partly because of the Piano (Rhodes?) voicing you’ve chosen, but those Debussy whole tones immediately make me think of Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks scores.
I've never heard that score - I'll give it a listen. It would be a fun project to cut a different score to any of the Alien films - especially the first two films. The electric piano does give some Badalamenti vibes, doesn't it?
@ I guarantee you’ll have heard the title track from Lily Was Here. But most of the rest of the music isn’t really like that. I hope you do check it out. I do really love it - not least because it was such a formative part of my musical education.
HE’S BACK‼️
Awesome Video! Thank you!
Thanks for watching!
Very interesting, I haven't really thought about the Star Trek connection before now, but I just gave the Alien main titles another listen and I think I hear some similarities.
I hadn’t made that connection until recently when I gave both scores another listen.
Awesome video!
Thanks!
at 3:39 i thought i was seeing V sauce for a moment.
The Alien soundtrack was really impressive. It's now iconic.
True and true
a bit off topic but its quite fitting how Alien a film with themes about motherhood and the horror of sexuality has music from Frued.
That’s some next level meta analysis. Great observation!
Why do I feel like similar chords are used in the Simpsons for tense moments lol
That's worth looking into!
Interesting... he used notes that are adjacent but spread them out over the octaves so the dissonance is less pronounced
It's a really interesting technique that has a way of diluting the effect of dissonance
Cool, great overview.
Thank you!
Thats kind of fitting though for a movie about unknowable beasts though.
Totally
Subscribed,
Excellent stuff, subscribed despite triggering use of 'iconic"
HA! Thank you for that. You're right - using "iconic" to talk about this chord is probably the wrong choice. "Unique" is better.
Great video !
Thanks!
Very cool video, earned a sub 💙💙
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it.
There are only two possible whole tone scales, and this is one of them
Exactly right
I love that! It's very alien lol 🙃 it's like, maybe Xenomorphic music is built on 7ths instead of 3rds or 5ths! That's one of my favorite movies and I never really focused on the soundtrack like that. I think that shows how great he is that I just accepted it as part of the overall film!
Maybe! it's such a brilliant score and it flows seamlessly with the story. I think it's one of those scores that becomes a character on its own.
Cool stuff.
Thanks!
There's lots of these kind of chords in Lalo Schifrin's work. Listen to the soundtrack to Enter the Dragon, there is loads of these kinds of chords and tonal inflections. Music is great isn't it? xx
It's the greatest. Thanks for the recommendation - Schifrin is amazing!
new subscriber from Australia 👍
Thanks and welcome!
the top F# to the G, since it's one octave + 1/2 step means from F#....... (F#) G makes the interval from that top F# to the next G, is actually a b9 (Flat-9): so you have stacked bottom to top:
m7 m7 m7 b9 m7 .. so from what I see, the F# -> G (octave+1/2 step) is a 9th.. in this case a FLAT-9.. confirm..
I have it spelled C-Bb-Ab-Gb-E-D all m7s. Are you reading the E as a G, perhaps?
C9+5+11 (a C altered dominant)
@@T._Matthew_Phillips it’s also that!
This chord sounds like David Lynch's hair.
HAHAAA!!!
C7 (b5 9 b13)
That works!
if i saw i chord like that in one of my jazz harmonie exam, i would write something like C9(b13#11) is it a good way to see it?
I think so! If it helps you conceive of the harmony and remembering it - go for it!
Just seeing the physical spread of those notes.. how would you play this? Even Rachmaninoff would have a tough time with stretches that big lol
HA! Impossible to play, right? I often include harmonic exercises in my videos but I didn't even try with this one.
I’m going to experiment with building modwave or multi/poly patches that implement this chord across oscillators. (@keithhorn, glad the algorithm threw this in front of me! Liked and subscribed!)
@@kcrosley That's a fun idea - I'd like to hear that! Thanks for watching!
1:42 start of You are the sunshine of my life - Stevie Wonder?
Right- the whole tone phrase!
Thank u 😎😀
Debut. See?
Clawed debut see
Being a little bit uneducated.. I thought “let me try playing that on a guitar” well yeah, that’s near impossible 😅 getting some of the notes, but not necessarily in the right order 😂 haha
@@TheJML1975 I tried it, too! Maybe a 7 string could pull it off?
This is an amazing video- can someone please tell me how to play this chord on the guitar please 🙏
Maybe a 7 string could pull it off with some RH fretting? You'd probably have to tune the 7th string to open C. Or let the bass player cover the bottom 2 or three notes? 22nd fret for the high D!
4:50 Red Dwarf (in black and white). 🧐
It has similarities to Scriabin’s “mystic chord.” Listen to Prometheus.
@@markmason7117 funny you mention that because I was doing just that yesterday. Prepping a video for that chord soon.
You could say it evokes the unknown, or that it sounds kind otherworldly or... alien
@@sn33d_ Exactly!
sounds as if he took phrygian mode and just spread it across octaves. just my first impression w/o trying to write down each note. Well, phrygian wasn't correct. So, it's just a circle of min 7ths instead of circle of 5ths. iiiiiinteresting. So you could do that with ANY interval. HMMMMMM...... The end result though is a bit too dissonant to really do more than make you feel uneasy and I guess that was the goal when writing for a sci fi horror movie.
Yeah maybe that was the goal - to create an unusual type of dissonance to make the audience feel uneasy. Now I'm on the lookout for a chord made of stacked MAJOR 7ths.
@@Keith_Horn Next time I fire up my DAW, I want to try some of these repeating intervals. Maj 7 to maj 7 or ground control to major 7. hahahhah oops
Nice one!
So it's an entire whole-tone scale inverted.
Exactly. It’s interesting how it doesn’t sound WT based when it’s voiced like this.
@@Keith_Horn It does, a bit, to me.
But that super-wide voicing - in m7ths rather than thirds - and the full six-tone quality definitely does give it a different sound than standard Hollywood-spooky augmented chords and whole-tone melodies. One other point: It CAN'T be played on the piano by one person, other than by holding the pedal down and arpeggiating the whole thing. So it isn't something just anybody would easily discover.
@@Baribrotzer So true - it's impossible to play at the piano - which is why I didn't include any harmonic exercises in this video.
Immediate subscribe to this channel. I wonder if it's possible to play this on guitar?
Thanks! I just tried to and it's too wide of a chord to play on a 6 string. The closest version in E: 0-15-1-X-14
@@Keith_Horn I think I can get 0-15-0-15--16, although for that harmonic to be audible you would have to be on an electric guitar on the bridge pickup and probably have treble / presence dimed.
@@robertpehlman5195 Nice! That's some Holdsworth stuff right there
it's a lydian chord with the root raised.
Interesting perspective - can you elaborate?
@@Keith_Horn In the key of a melodic minor, f#, root, g#, P ninth,a, m3rd, bP4th, c,flat 5, d flat 6,e flat 7,f#, root. It's a half diminished with a major second. One right below "the purple haze chord" of Hendrix. The good old augmented ninth chord called the super locrian for some dumb reason. Your chord
( a flat five aeolian is what I think they call it) is actually just a lydian chord with a raised root. Thinking in terms of a raised root is tough for everyone, it seems.
I spent the better part of 5 years learning music theory on a deep level. After that i almost completely abandoned it. I use it for communicating with other musicians who understand it. But beyond that i find it far too restricting for writing with. This is just another example of why. Its just a tool. but its only 1 tool.
I agree. It's only a tool. I think too often music theory is treated as an end in itself rather than a means to understanding and application.
Wow I love deez chordz.
GET AWAY FROM HER, YOU Bb!
Haha! I’ll never hear that line the same again.
Haha, wrong movie tho (that's Aliens). :)
i love u to death ❤❤
Where is the context of the chord? What comes before it, what comes after. Many people like to proclaim nonfunctional harmony, but the overwhekming vast majority of the time the music, when the music sounds good, it is functional but misspelled so as to appear nonsensical and nonfunctional, when in reality it is functioning but due to the adventurous nature of the chord or passage and the misspelling, people wrongly declare it as nonfunctional.
I noticed the composer wrote a Gb yet you spelled it with an F#. In truth these are not all minor 7ths. there is an augmented sixth between the Gb and the E. If they were all minor sevenths, the top three notes would be Gb Fb Ebb, and that is a much stranger thing than that which he wrote. That one augmented 6th between the Gb and E coupled with the other minor 7ths is quite the contrast, yet quite subtle. An augmented 6th is a very overtonal interval, whereas the minor 7th is much closer and undertonal in a chian of fifths. The augmented 6th is a wider interval from a minor 7th by a Pythagorean comma, 23.46 cents.
Considering the bass note is a C, and all the notes in the chord are in the 17 note vicinity scale for C major, it suggests to me, that it could possibly have function of some kind, but the surrounding musical context must be observed to determine that. If Fb and Ebb were used instead of E and D then then those 2 notes WOULD be outside the 17 note vicinity of C major which runs from Gb-A# in a chain of fifths. That would indicatate that C is not the tonic, or maybe some nonfunctional stuff is indeed going on.
But there is of course the possiblity that the composer did not know what he was doing and just thought to add minor 7ths on top of each other and did not wish to deal with Fb and Ebb in the score. But if this composer is as great as you say, he probably spelled the notes in his score intentionally the way he did. Minor 7ths tend to want to collapse, whereas augmented 6ths tend to want to exapnd up and out. The fact that the aug6th is where it is at the beginning of the upper half of the chord conveys that there is a sort of stretch in the upper part of the chord, which adds more dissonance and tension and felling of expanse and perhaps is to counter balance some of the collapsing tendency of the minor 7ths to make the chord more suspended and stable sounding. You have 3 minor 7ths, and aug mented 6th, and then one more minor 7th at the top.
Fascinating perspective. The original cue starts with this chord so nothing precedes it. It resolves to a unison C. I suppose if it were looked at as a functional chord it could be thought of as a C whole tone hexatonic that resolves to C (unison). Taking into consideration that string players don't think/hear in ET - the spelling on the score is crucial - to your point. My purpose here is to take the chord as it appears at the piano (regardless of the spelling) and understand it in terms of interval structure - a series of minor sevenths.
As far as it being functional or nonfunctional, I guess it depends on what lens one uses for analysis. Whatever lens one chooses, if it leads to a deeper and fuller understanding, that's a positive thing.
Hhhh, RUclips just deleted half my comment as I was writing it. Does the chord resolve to one unison C or octaves of C? It appears to be a Gb French augmented 6th chord with a 9 and #5 added. This seemingly points to an Fm resolution which we never hear and then are just left with the dominant root C. Mysterieous, dark , alone, fearful.
NOt sure if my analysis is 100% right on, but, I have found that it usually helps quite a bit to take note of spelling and thinking about each note, and subsequent chords that are formed in relation to a tonic chord (unless the music is totally atonal). Many do not give too much thought into the spelling because of 12 tet, but there is a huge wealth of music theory knowlegde to be gleaned from the spelling of notes even when playing in 12 tet. Right now I use Dynamic tonality's 2032 program to play the notes of chords in 3 limit just intonation to really hear what is going on. Sometimes when the music is very ambiguous, it helps to hear it played in tune, to better understand the thing from a theory perspective, especially in regards to spelling. Also I use Dorico and I tune in 665 ET which is essentially perfect 3 limit tuning.
@@RememberGodHolyBible Three octaves of C. C4, C5, C6
@@Keith_Horn Interesting.
@@RememberGodHolyBible Before resolving he does have a Viennese trichord figure that starts on each successive note of the chord: C-F#-B, Bb-E-A, Ab-D-G, etc. until he reaches the high C6. Very nice writing.
I invented c major 😎. Haha just joking 😆
HAHA! Is that a Kristen Wiig reference?
@Keith_Horn no lol. I was just being silly 😆. Did she say something similar? I am just naturally funny I didn't copy anyone haha 😁
@@Simon0 😂It reminds me of this SNL sketch :ruclips.net/video/w4maUKzCRCk/видео.html
This video is something and nothing, really.
OK. Stacked minor sevenths. How plebeian. (BFD). Try something a little more complex and adventurous. Try analyzing the (Joseph) Schwantner chord.
Great idea - I love Schwantner. Particularly Aftertones of Infinity, ...and The Mountains Rising Nowhere, and From a Dark Millenium. Is there a particular chord known as the Schwantner chord?
It's an unusual chord with a cool effect. There is no such thing as a plebeian chord. To anyone permitting their elitism to manifest as dismissiveness, I would suggest contemplating a basic triad until they can appreciate it.
@Keith_Horn - have you noticed the use of Cma7 in the score of Alien Resurrection? That is wild...
I'll revisit that score. Thanks!