Ludwig

Unfortunately, there's a big "boom" right on the downbeat that pretty much covers the bass note, but as the boom dissipates, there's a hint of something. It helps to hear how it moves into the next chord, which I think you agree is Am (with A in the bass). I'm actually wondering if that mystery bass note isn't F since it sounds like the resolution to the bass A is coming from a lower note. That's why I initially put Ab, but now I'm almost convinced it's F. Would you agree? I know it's really hard to discern, but try listening intently with headphones. I hear the V-I motion of E-A clearly. It's one of those unique polytonal sounds - a minor chord with a pedal on the major 7th - it sticks out. Yes, I think you're right about that. Ok, E it is. I don't hear any Db here, which I think would be more audible as a pungent dissonance. It's nice theoretically, but I hear a crystal clear major triad with F as the bass and a neighbor tone C-Bb-C motion overtop. I agree, but at least keep the Ab. There's definitely a minor/Major going on, as with the next chord - not a pure triad. I'd say F1-F2-C3-F3-G#-A-C to Bb1-Bb2-Db3-F3-A-Bb. The previous tonic-dominant bass motion transposed. There's a bit of a warble to the sound in these chords, but I don't think that's due to the way the chord is written. I'm listening with headphones, and when I turn the volume up louder than normal, the brass shines through with a pure triad. Also note the virtual sequence of these bars in mm. 13-14, which both begin with pure triads. It's not an airtight case, but fairly strong, I would say. Well said, although I'd disagree that planing first inversion chords are particularly unusual for Williams. He tends to throw them in for a darker, more sombre mood. Ok, I believe you on that. It's at least less common than the old planed root-position triads though, isn't it? What about this: M+n, where M is a major triad and n is the number of semitones above the root that the bristling note lies (regardless of octave displacement) m+n, same but for minor triads e.g., the chord ending m. 13 would be M+1.

Indeed it is. I also agree with all your additions of the lower octaves. Unfortunately, there's a big "boom" right on the downbeat that pretty much covers the bass note, but as the boom dissipates, there's a hint of something. It helps to hear how it moves into the next chord, which I think you agree is Am (with A in the bass). I'm actually wondering if that mystery bass note isn't F since it sounds like the resolution to the bass A is coming from a lower note. That's why I initially put Ab, but now I'm almost convinced it's F. Would you agree? I don't hear any Db here, which I think would be more audible as a pungent dissonance. It's nice theoretically, but I hear a crystal clear major triad with F as the bass and a neighbor tone C-Bb-C motion overtop. Yes, I think that's right. I also agree that it's hard to know if Chord 28 is consistent through that bar, or whether the dissonant A# is picked up halfway through. I'd guess it's there from the start and just inaudible in the recording. These chorale-like chords seem to articulate all the voices at once rather than stagger them. Here's a revised copy of the transcription with the above changes: I would also point out that this excerpt draws on two devices we've discussed many times before in Williams' cues. The first is minor triads in parallel motion (mm. 1-3), though here in unusual (for Williams) first inversion. The second, and more prominent of the two devices is what I've called chordal "bristling" - that is, the use of semitonal dissonance against the notes of a triad. Some may be alternatively heard as seventh chords, like the AmM7 in m. 5. But in the context of other dissonances against triads that cannot be considered seventh chords, we probably hear even these mM7 chords as instances of bristling as well. This is reinforced by the contrast with several pure triads in the passage, which stand out against the others and create a dichotomy between consonant chords on one hand, and dissonant chords on the other. A very Williams-esque treatment of triadic material.

This is what I hear from the beginning of the chorale-style chords at 1:10 up to the Vader statement (volcanic explosions not notated!). A couple of places, I couldn't hear the lower parts very well, so I put question marks there. The stemless notes are an approximation as to metric placement. There may be a few chords where there's another dissonance in there somewhere (like at the end of the second line, where there may be a full B minor chord along with the C, but maybe not). Hope this is useful!

Of course, you are all correct in saying that, taken per se, the music for ToE is good not great, nothing particularly special, etc. I imply as much in the post when I call it generic music. But I think we do a disservice to film music when we wrench it away from the film and evaluate it on its own as though that is the yardstick by which to measure a film score's worth. The same old suit can be made to look dashing on a subject in the hands of a great tailor. And this is what I feel Johannsson does with ToE. To me, it's an added bonus if the score has value outside of the film, not a requisite of worthiness. The music, for example, in the scene where Stephen tries to climb the stairs for the last time is certainly not groundbreaking or even all that original in its materials. But it is extremely fine-tuned to the emotional nuances of the scene in a way that most modern sound-designy scores are not. That's why I'd say it's worth the praise it's been getting.

Part 3 of my series of analyses on the Oscar nominees for Best Score: http://www.filmmusicnotes.com/oscar-nominees-2015-best-original-score-part-3-of-6-johann-johannssons-the-theory-of-everything/ Subdued though it may be, it strikes a highly emotional chord. Enjoy!

Yes, of course. My bad. Any particular cues you had in mind? When I first heard it my mind went to Morricone's Ecstasy of Gold by way of Green Day's Boulevard of Broken Dreams. The pop influence is pretty strong here I'd say, though no more than other composers of Desplat's generation - James Newton Howard, Dario Marianelli etc. Strong tendency towards Mixolydian and Dorian harmonies. What's your take on Morricone's ostinatos? Do you hear them as derived from pop accompaniment styles or more from classical minimalism?

Ah, thank you! It happened with Grand Budapest too, it seems, so I fixed them both. Always appreciative of these things as I might never have noticed them myself. Agreed on both counts. I think Desplat probably arrived at the hexatonic thing by altering the i-bvi progression we usually get with associations of evil. It's more of a filmic way of approaching it, but results in the same thing. And that ostinato isn't your everyday fare in film, either. It does sound like the China Gates that TGP posted, but then I wonder whether it just happened that way since ostinato is so pervasive in today's film scores and wouldn't have to be drawn from a classical source. Maybe Desplat knows and loves a lot of Adams' music, but if I were to guess, I would say it was a case of coincidence. After all, besides the perpetual rhythm and similar timbre, the melodic material is quite different.

Many thanks, Karol. I try to aim the articles at a broad audience, especially for these Oscar posts. So it's good to know that you get so much out of them without feeling the need for a lot of background. Working on the Theory of Everything ideas now. Funny that it's not as melodically "theme-y" a score as most these days, even if one considers really short motifs a la Zimmer. The themes seem to be defined more by chord progression than melody.

Part two of my posts on the Best Score nominees for this year's Oscars, this one on Desplat's The Imitation Game. http://www.filmmusicnotes.com/oscar-nominees-2015-best-original-score-part-2-of-6-alexandre-desplats-the-imitation-game/ A subtly effective score.

It's back! My annual six-part series on the Oscar nominees for Best Original Score (five on the scores, one on my prediction for the win). Here's the first part: http://www.filmmusicnotes.com/oscar-nominees-2015-best-original-score-part-1-of-6-alexandre-desplats-the-grand-budapest-hotel/ Enjoy!

Lehman's also written about neo-Riemannian theory in Horner's score for A Beautiful Mind in a music theory journal. It's not a readily available article unless you're willing to pay or are connected to a university library. But still well worth reading. Funnily enough, Zimmer's music often lends itself to this kind of analysis. The four-chord Inception ostinato is one of the best examples. The chords don't relate in a traditional way, but rather transform by moving voices through very small steps, and usually retaining one of the notes from the previous chord. That particular progression retains Bb all the way through the chords of Gm - Gb/Bb - Eb - CbM7. The orchestration often keeps that Bb going in the same instruments too, which creates the effect of feeling a kind of coherence among very strange events, not a bad musical analogy for the idea of trying to make sense of the weirdness of Inception's dreamworld.

It's not really fair to say it's an autopilot score. Barry was shackled by a couple of major changes the filmmakers first implemented in a Bond film with this particular installment. One is the heavy increase in the use of diegetic jazz music, which squeezed out what would surely have been a larger non-diegetic score. Nearly a third of the roughly one-hour of music in the film is this jazzy material. Second, and more important, is something you already mentioned - the tendency toward camp and humour. The moon buggy chase is a perfect example. The filmmakers wanted a cue that was comical to play up the idea that the moon landing was a staged event. But Barry (rightly so, IMHO) wanted to score the scene in much the same style as previous Bond films in order to provide a strong contrast between a serious music and a farcical action, and thereby heighten the effectiveness of the "joke". This tendency toward levity often appears at oddly forced moments, like when Bond takes control of Blofeld's escape pod and thrashes it around, to which we hear the "007 theme", a cue that seems to hit us over the head with the comedy and render the joke unfunny. I don't know if this was Barry's idea or not, but something tells me it was the result of being told to score something funny for the scene, just like the buggy chase. After all, you don't see this kind of too-obvious scoring in the previous Bond films. BTW, the best cue in the film is the beautifully haunting "007 and Counting":

I wonder the very same thing. Sharky, you still here?

I'll look at "We Have All the Time..." soon. Right now I'll address Thunderball. The Neapolitan in root position? I suppose it's probably an outgrowth of the flat 2 scale degree in the dominant chord that ends each statement of the reference to the Bond theme at the song's opening, where we get an F(b5) of some kind. Note that the bII also comes back in the song's bridge (middle eight) in the Bb - Cb progression ("any woman he wants, he'll get"). And as a scale degree, flat 2 is also referenced in the couple of Abm chords that directly or indirectly go to Bbm. Something else that's noteworthy here: the Bond suspense theme that comes in is, surprisingly, set in the same key relationship to the tonic as that in Goldfinger: minor iii, a major 3rd above the tonic. This is true even though Thunderball is in a minor key and Goldfinger in a major key. (Minor #iii is very odd in a minor key!) I suppose Barry wanted to recreate some of the success of the Goldfinger song.

Maybe just: I bVI 3 - b6 - 3 That would work. I do use the notation "Cb6" for these things, but two problems with that are 1) it's not standard, it's just my own invention, and 2) I'm not sure it really describes what's there in Goldfinger. It's almost like a pedal from the opening riff, but being "oblivious" to the chord change. It may be one of those cases where the notation may be something simple like we're suggesting here, but the explanation of how we hear it is much more complex. Very cool. That's the kind of thing that makes this one of the best - if not the very best - of the Bond songs. That Eb major chord on "Midas touch" has interesting ripples throughout the song. In addition to what you point out, the B section in Eb minor certainly derives from these earlier Eb chords. Yes, the mode has changed from major to minor, but the root is the same, and I think that gives the song an elegant bit of subconscious unity. I just realised that now! And not only that, the Eb7 to B7 change is like a hidden variant of the I-bVI motif, just pitched a semitone lower and harmonised as dominant sevenths. Also, the minor to Major switch of Bm69->B9 or (a sort of v<->V duality) is hinted at earlier, with the Bm chord on "He's the man", only this time not interrupted by a return to the tonic. Great observations. Duly noted.

Just a few small points first. Like you must mean A major as the secondary key on "He's the man". But then, why A major? Wouldn't it just go from E major to G# minor? Perhaps we could hear the latter key coming in with the A major chord as a pivot: IV of E becomes bII of G#, which then goes to V. On "For a golden girl", you must mean either Abm or the "/iv" chords in Ebm. I'm not sure how to label the muted "wah-WAH-wah" after each of the I-bVI progressions. It's so inspired that I can't recall seeing that kind of thing before. Maybe an "addb6"? Very cool. That's the kind of thing that makes this one of the best - if not the very best - of the Bond songs. That Eb major chord on "Midas touch" has interesting ripples throughout the song. In addition to what you point out, the B section in Eb minor certainly derives from these earlier Eb chords. Yes, the mode has changed from major to minor, but the root is the same, and I think that gives the song an elegant bit of subconscious unity. That sounds like a B9. It's approached funny so is somewhat robbed of its characteristic ecstatic, floating feeling. The chord I get leading into it is Bm6/9. I think it's voiced like this (bass to top, upper 4 voices around middle C): B - G# - C# - D - F# to B - A - C# - D# - F# If you want a clearer recording of the chord at this point, check out this karaoke version, which to me sounds the same as the real song (the accompaniment is foregrounded and the amateur voice is - thankfully - backgrounded): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nShs0AvssNo from around 1:06

Sharky's right. It is D7b9. The sheet music's just wrong. In these progressions, the last chord is actually an F7 chord. You have to listen very closely because the A-natural is buried in an inner voice, but it's there. And when the electric guitar enters, the progression becomes i - VI - IV - iv the guitar playing G-Ab-A-Ab, which of course is the Bond suspense riff. That explains why there's the seemingly odd F7 chord in the intro and first verse. It's a subtle allusion to the riff before it becomes clear. It seems they wanted to write a song in the Goldfinger tradition, which was the first film to use the Bond theme within the title song (in any obvious way anyway). No doubt it was part of the 50th anniversary idea, connecting Skyfall to the film that really got the Bond franchise going in a big way.

Certainly these jazz labels would lead you to the right individual chords (with the "/E" you've omitted), but something that jazz notation doesn't do very well is to show voice leading between chords. In other words, what do you think of showing the progression essentially as four tonic E minor chords with different added notes overtop? Like this: Em Em(b6) Em6 Em(b6) Of course, I cheat here because there is no "b6" notation in jazz. It would always be marked "C/E" like the C chord you show. And even so, any "added 6" notation always assumes a fifth is present as well - it wouldn't just be the E-G-C we get in the theme. (Then again, the 5th is a dispensable note even in jazz theory.) But to me they're better labels because they show the voice leading - from implied 5th on the first chord, up to b6, up to 6, then back down again. Figured bass with Roman numerals probably show it best though: Em Em(b6) Em6 Em(b6) i5 - 6 - #6 - 6 EDIT: Sharky, just saw your post. Looks like we're on the same page. If I could offer some alternative analyses: Maybe view the Bb as a dissonance above a still-reigning tonic chord? So: Dm: i5 - 6 Your way has the advantage of being a "chord" that's more idiomatic to jazz/pop analysis, but the Roman numeral shows the voice leading as there is still a 5th in the chord when the Bb sounds, so the Bb could be viewed as a dissonance. Same with the "Much wiser since" and "I must return" bits. How about ii7 for iv here? Sure ii and iv are basically the same thing, especially in jazz, where one can sub for the other, but the bass is E there. Depends how granular one wants to get with the analysis, I suppose.

On the notion of craft in composition, I agree 100%. To my mind, the best compositions have a structure that is made intelligible to the listener. Regardless of the kind of music one is talking about, structure is of prime importance to the communication of some sort of meaning. In a Baroque dance movement, structure usually assumes a binary form with repeated halves. In a Beethoven symphony, the enlarged ABA structure that is sonata form lends an attractive sense of narrative to the piece. In a Wagner opera, the leitmotifs form a constantly evolving musical tapestry that clarifies meaning at every turn. In a Beatles song, there is often an AABA form governing the structure. I'm a firm believer in learning how to structure music in ways such as these and taking from them what one likes to form one's own style. It all depends on what music one admires most, and for me I've always been drawn most of all to the music of the classical period. So when I was first writing full-length pieces, I found a very useful exercise was to write several sixteen-bar minuets for piano in classical style, using Beethoven's early dances as a model. It's a great way to learn because there is a focus on the essentials of composition in a miniature format. In other words, it allows one to practice writing standard harmonic progressions, working out motivic material, and writing in a rounded binary form, all without the stuffiness of workbook exercises. Once one has a sense of how to write a fairly regular sixteen-bar structure, one can then turn to the art of phrase expansions and writing more adventurously by studying minuets in more substantial classical works like symphonies, sonatas, and string quartets. Now some may think minuets to be the epitome of boring music, but remember this: rounded binary forms like these are precursors of sonata form, which is the pinnacle of musical structure in the history of Western music and is found in many of the most important concert works (especially symphonic ones) from Mozart through to Shostakovich. Although sonata form is but one type of structure one can learn how to compose with, studying examples of it teaches one how to write dramatically, as though some important narrative is being told by the music alone, without the aid of a sung text, external program, or what have you. And telling stories in a purely musical way is a skill that can be applied to just about any style of composition. For that reason, it's a damn good structure to have under your belt.

This is extremely helpful too. I take it these authors and their texts can be found online? Not sure. I ordered all mine from the publishers. Newer texts like these tend not to be found online, but they are all very good sources. An older one that's still quite good is by Aldwell and Schachter. In fact, many schools still use this over newer ones. And yes, the thing I didn't mention about obtaining the essential skills is the many hours sitting down with scores and trying to hear them mentally, which comes with having a wealth of pieces memorized and knowing what you're hearing when you're hearing it. That skill of hearing mentally goes hand in hand with all the other skills I mentioned. And it's truly an indispensable part of my understanding of music - the visual element - so much so that when studying film music, I'll often transcribe what I hear to get a better understanding of how the cue is put together. Paradoxically, it seems that seeing can help one to hear better.

Oddly enough, I'll be the third person in this thread to say I started out in science with an interest in physics who then made music my primary pursuit. I started out with years of study on the piano but was always keen on theory, so veered more towards composition. Once I decided science was not the route for me, I took private composition lessons then did a Bachelor degree in composition, taught piano and theory privately and at a community school for a couple of years, then went back to school to study music theory specifically at the graduate level. Even with my attraction to theory, however, I should say that, in my first years in music, I spent many thousands of hours doing things to develop the essential musical skills of harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic dictation by ear, playing chord progressions at the piano, singing melodies and rhythms at sight, and analyzing harmony to the point where I could see chords as immediately as words on a page. These are all skills I am very glad I have today and I wouldn't trade them for anything. They are fundamental to the way I understand music, which, as it is with TheGreyPilgrim, is like a language. In other words, my natural response to hearing music is much like the way we understand someone speak - for the overall meaning we get without having to stop and think, rather than for the theoretical grammar and syntax. For anyone aspiring to learn a higher level of music theory, I'd advocate for developing these skills to a very high degree before learning more about theory itself. For me, those were all self-taught even though I was in a degree program, so a university education is not a requisite for such a pursuit. Analyzing harmony is a skill that is usually acquired with the help of a book. You can learn an enormous amount from even a single textbook on the subject, especially one of the newer ones by authors like Laitz, Roig-Francoli, and Clendinning and Marvin. Books like these are aimed at Bachelor programs where you complete the material in four semesters, which is generally two years of study. But a keen student could easily go through it much faster. Learning harmony in this kind of detail is an essential musical skill for anyone aspiring to learn about the higher levels of theory. Beyond learning these essential skills, one may ask how one "sees" things in a piece of music - patterns, relationships, and so on - that go further than the mere chord labels we might ascribe. In other words, how does one develop the ability to analyze music in a meaningful way? In graduate school, I had a professor who always encouraged us to look for more musical relationships than we thought existed in a piece, especially those at more of a long range that involved larger swaths of music than just a few notes in a bar. "Keep going", he would always say when we were analyzing a piece in class. Maybe a short motive that appears within a bar is also used across several bars at the same time, or even across a whole section or an entire piece. I cannot tell you how many times I have been rewarded in searching for relationships in this way. After a while, one begins to expect them and it becomes a habit to seek them out by considering all kinds of possibilities. But in the end, any analysis must always agree with those intuitions we have about a piece that we formed just by listening to it without all these theoretical "blinders". That is, an analysis should always fit the music and help us to understand why it is we hear a piece the way we do, so that we may better perform, compose, listen to, teach, and learn about music. That, to me, is the single greatest benefit of music theory.

They're the planed major triads we usually get with the Fanfare, but now pitted against the sustained Db major chord. So in the brass, C major to A major a few times, then C major up to Db major to blend with the others. One interesting detail about this little passage is that the strings' "Rozsa chords", as you aptly dub them, are a slow version of the Fanfare's latter half (minus its last note), which is precisely what's missing from the Fanfare's statement in the brass. So the whole theme's essentially there even when it seems that it's not, but broken up among the parts and somewhat hidden with a slower tempo (notice also that the Rozsa chords are the same planed major chords we normally hear with the theme). Guess you can have your cake and eat it too.

I think the progression is just what you've called it - circle of 4ths. Or you could say descending 5ths. As for modulation, I would say the song remains in D major the whole way through but with a few substitute chords thrown in. That viio/iii to I7 might also be heard as planed major triads against the C#, so in jazz notation: C#/D - Dmaj7 In that sense, you could say that the first chord is like an appoggiatura resolving to the Dmaj7. The F#add9 on "Explanation" could be taken as a chromatic substitute for the tonic Dmaj7. And it is itself planed into the next chord, something like the C#/D-Dmaj7 progression, though it doesn't sound like an appoggiatura here, rather more like a dominant of G. Approach chord, I think you said in one of your posts on the Island Fanfare from JP, which does the same thing but in B-flat major.

Three responses to the excerpts Sharky posted: 1) Since Hollywood is profit-driven, it works by a kind of natural selection - whatever happens to be successful becomes widespread. And the music in film is no exception. Styles associated with successful films will inevitably be imitated and propagated. That's just the nature of the business. Barham, the article's author, seems to forget, or actively ignore, this point. 2) Barham also states that franchises tend to become more "standardized" the longer they continue, but does not mention that the very franchise he heaps scorn on - Star Wars - actually becomes more modern with each film. Music like that of "The Magic Tree" in Empire, or "Luke Confronts the Emperor" from Jedi become a more common sound in the latter two films, especially Jedi. Then there are the prequels, which rely even more heavily on a modernist style of writing that sounds quite different from the original trilogy. 3) Davis' score for The Matrix sounds like Huppertz' score for Metropolis? Um... no. I could be more sympathetic if his argument was well constructed, but from what I understand here, the pieces just don't fit together.

ROSEWOOD! Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time. A long time. An elegant score for a more civilized age. That was before the dark times... before the Prequels.