How Simple Chord Progressions Work
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- Опубліковано 12 тра 2024
- It's fun to talk about s p i c y voicings and perplexing harmonies, but most music out there stays pretty simple in the chord department. Even simple chord progressions need to follow some underlying logic for what works and what doesn't, and in this video I present a way of analyzing harmony that's simple, but that I find helpful. Each example was taken from a game requested by one of my highest tier Patrons, whom I can't thank enough for their generosity and support!
0:00 - Intro
1:18 - 3 Types of Chord Movement
3:06 - Rain World Main Theme
5:56 - Kentucky Route Zero's 'Too Late to Love You'
9:37 - Ys VIII's 'Sunshine Coastline'
11:25 - For The King's 'The Burning Forest'
12:42 - Hades' 'Good Riddance'
15:15 - Evil Genius Main Theme
16:57 - Frogatto & Friends' 'Map Theme'
18:27 - Outro
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#VideoGames #Chords #MusicTheory - Ігри
I maybe only understand 20% at best when I watch one of these videos, but I feel like I'm always learning something!
Me too, plus it makes me really happy because I love music ^^
100% to both comments!
It's always nice rewatching videos and sometimes understanding more
how much more do you understand a year later tho
@@BenjaminIdle Not much XD
Seeing mine and everybody elses requests woven together here was great stuff. Getting these disparate games together all while presenting them under this umbrella of analysis is really impressive and it felt really gratifying to watch. Cheers!
(Also Rain World's the best one and I'm totally not biased in this regard since it was my request)
@@lovef1260 totally no biases here either lmao, thanks for the Rain World suggestion!
@@gamingdragon2361 Haha glad I could be of service! It's only my favourite game
8-bit is a master of his trade!
It's great to see some deeper cut indie love in these videos. Can't recommend For The King enough.
Just now I learned that the strength of a chord is not totally related to its position in the scale, but its interval with respect to neighbour chords. Why no one told me this before in music class
I KNOW RIGHT!
I actually intuitived this because when I first learned about music theory. I was always asking stuff like "but what if I don't wanna play in a scale? If I play C and G how do you know if G is the five or C is the four?" so I assume that it had something to do with what chords follow others because well that's how u gear them and that's how I kinda heard them. But all I get is the same traditional stuff and nobody could answer my questions. Other than slowly new ideas coming out from youtube gems like 12tone and this channel. Now I'm trying to put all the different ideas together to hopefully have a true bigger more diverse and explanatory theory of music!
And that´s why we should learn all music by intervals, and why major chords don´t sound happy all the time, because they only release more or less tension. Counterpoint offers a very intuitive perspective about this
Every traditional harmony course I have ever seen explains that generally movement from the first to the third is avoided, with some notable exceptions like sequences, because movement by a third is the weakest of the changes.
I think they expect you to just figure it out intuitively, just like how people need to learn mental math themselves.
Darren Corb is such a good composer especially with Hades's OST. In the first section of the track "God Of The Dead" he only swtiches between a basic ass phrgyian metal riff and a simple VI - VII - i progression in the chorus and manage to tell the story of the game with the music all by itself. The verses which contain the phrgyian riff give the feeling of oppression and rage which reflects Zagreus's situation which then turns into the chorus that contain the VI - VII - i progression which gives it a feeling of rising and hope.
Edit: Because in the choruses the guitar plays the VI and the VII chords back to back but instead of going forward stepwise he plays the i note an octave lower it gives the feeling of rise and hope but also being in a loop, like Sysphus, constantly rising and falling at the end just to try again. Reflects very well on Zagreus’ journey.
*Zagreus' situation :)
@@MarauderTwilight Yeah, sorry 'bout that lol
Korb is one of the best working today IMO, I absolutely love what he creates with Supergiant
sure he wasn't just cribbing System of a Down tho?
Don't forget the boss theme for Elysium being a callback to Doom's E1M1!
Clicked for Hades in the thumbnail. Already know it’s gonna be great
This may seem like a silly thing to cover, but bringing light to 'simple' chord progressions is SO important. Composition analysis vids tend to focus on advanced stuff, giving the impression that advanced stuff is the standard and that's how you should write your music. Giving time and effort to present the beauty of 'simple' chord progs allows beginners to explore them without feeling like a lesser writer, AND is a reminder to the experienced composer that they don't need a tritone sub every 4 bars to make something interesting. This vid is more critical than one might think :)
Thanks for putting it together!
Dude yes. It amazes me what musicians are capable of doing with so little. Deftones manage to make entire albums full of songs with like 1 riff and 2 chords. Listen to Beauty School off of Diamond Eyes, for example. There's the intro/verse riff that repeats throughout the song and then there's the chorus and bridge sections that only have the exact same 2 chords. The biggest difference is where the changes happen and yet somehow the chorus and bridge feel ENTIRELY different from each other.
love this song
The Velvet Underground's first two records are mainly comprised of two-chord vamps (and at least one single-chord wonder) and contain some of the most iconic songs of the '60s, to name an even more extreme example.
Glad I'm not the only one who wanted to bring up Deftones, lol
@@rudeboyspodcast the kings of "less is more"
and good riddance reminds me of the chorus of let down by radiohead
I’m sure this isn’t the first time you’ve heard this, but you would make an awesome teacher. It’s not just the ability to break things down and explain them, but the insight you bring to each topic and the way you approach music by inciting curiosity and exploration. Those are powerful qualities! Great content, as always!
He is a teacher! Teaching audiences in video form is just as valid and wonderful a form of education as any other, and as an adjunct professor myself, I’m grateful there are people out here making educational content like those that I and my lack of video skills could never even dream of. 😊
i'm legally required to click on videos with hades thumbnails lmaooo
It's always a good day when a new 8-bit Music Theory video comes out.
The progression in "Sunshine Coastline" is a variant of the "four famous chords" or "axis progression" that starts on the minor chord. This is really popular and it's used in songs from Adele's Hello to Boston's Peace of Mind.
I really liked this one. I've been learning a lot about classical/jazz harmony over the last few years, but I always get frustrated trying to analyze contemporary pieces that seem simple but don't seem to fall into any typical harmonic patterns. Thinking about harmonic progressions in more elemental terms like 2nd/3rd/4th intervals feels a lot more intuitive. Thanks.
Thank you for mentioning Rain World! It's admittedly a bit obtuse but super unique and beautiful, it deserves more attention.
The voicing of the chords in this is making me wonder: Does "We're Finally Landing" by Home have an intrinsic quality of accomplishment, or has Summoning Salt just trained me to feel that way?
Darren Korb has been one of my favorite composers since the first time I played a Supergiant game! I really hope you talk about more of his music in the future
With the mention of it I would really love an indepth exploration of Hades' Good Riddence, especially looking at each version of it
oh my god im so happy you talked about 'too late to love you', ive been working on a cover of it and i have been so stunned by the progression and nuances in it
Please do more on Rain World!!!
I must say I absolutely lost it when I saw the first clip of gameplay in the video. It's a phenomenal game with way more depth in the music than when I first heard the ost playing the game, and the ending... oh boy the ending...
Would love to see how much I missed stuff myself
Great video!
How much would you recommend it?
It looks kinda interesting...
@@sherbertshortkake6649 highly recommend it but patience is key and help from the Rain World discord can be of service. The game tells you next to nothing of what you are supposed to do. If you do play it, listen to what the yellow thing shows you. Hope you enjoy the game if you do try it.
@@gamingdragon2361 I know the type, where the game doesn't teach you anything.
Looks worth a try... Final question, how gut-wrenching is the story?
On a tear rating of 1-10, how many tablespoons of tears would I cry?
@@sherbertshortkake6649 the story is very under the surface, you can't really find stuff out unless you do certain things but it is heart wrenching, even more so if you don't even know what is happening. The ending is... wow (don't spoil yourself). It's hard to describe how emotional it can be. Ranges from shock to crying tbh
@@gamingdragon2361 Gotcha. I'll look into it.
1:04
RAIN WORLD LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
3:06
WAIT THERE'S AN ENTIRE SECTION?!?!? AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
There are dozens of us! DOZENS!
@@PiercingSight I literally jumped up from my chair LMAO
I am very much a hobbyist when it comes to music theory. I know that if I really wanted to excel, I could take a course and study it, but I don't want to do that because I think I'm in a good place with not spending too much brain power on it compared to other pursuits. But I do love your videos as a way to slowly internalize more little things here and there that I can incorporate into my amateurish piano improv. But I'll admit, some things are just too complicated for me to really know how to use. This video is exactly what I needed; it feels like a look into how some of the basics work, that I can start applying right now, as a stepping stone into the more complex stuff. Thank you.
Another juicy detail of Good Riddance is that on the third phrase, what was previously the melody line sung by Ashley is now sung by Darren (the composer) and this lines goes from being the melody and top harmony to being the lower harmony of the third phrase. It's such a simple idea, but the result is so satisfying!
8Bit over here just casually looking at all these songs that make me wanna cry. Can't watch the dang video because I keep tearing up.
Cool to see an Ys game. I’m out of touch with the series, but playing through Ys 1&2 on Duo during my teenage years yielded some of my very favorite musical memories from a game.
i tried VIII as my entry to the series, and loved the story, maybe in part because i had no precedent as to what the series usually aims for. But with the praise out of the way, i think the story does harm the replay-ability of the game a bit, as knowing where it goes makes everything leading up to that point feel slower by comparison. As the jumping on point, i also completely missed any reference to the franchise as a whole that they did not otherwise beat over your head. If a character returned from a previous entry, i only recognized it by nature of the implied relationship between protag and them.
If you’re a fan of turn based jrpgs, Falcom’s legend of heroes series has some fantastic music
I mean. A simple power chord going from one note. To a whole step down. And repeat. Super effective. Lots of freedom to then make it unique.
the Frogatto & Friends piece is beautifully melodic, 9th chords ftw 😎👍
as a beginner hobby composer without too much clue but a lot of motivation, these videos are like gold stuffed with platinum. sooo helpful , thanks a million for all your efforts!!!
Gotta say that I love this approach! I'm a private music teacher whose main emphasis/goal with students is to help them start to create their own music as soon as possible. This is LEAGUES better than teaching functional harmony, both because it's more simple, and also because it lines up way better with the sounds that a 13 year old is going to be searching for. Excited to work through this with some students of mine! Thanks a ton!
(and I'll definitely be telling them to check you out, of course)
These are awesome examples not necessarily on how less is more, but more on when enough is just perfect. Great work as always.
Ys VIII and Sunshine Coastline in particular have a special place in my heart, so I'm happy to see it get a brief spotlight here. Neat analysis of the many uses of simpler chords! That flat II in Good Riddance is so tasty
Yes! Sunshine Coastline is fantastic! The simplicity of the chords drives home the joyfulness of the track.
Fantastic analysis, as usual. I learned a lot from this video! Thanks!
I’m always amazed at how you pick out these individual notes. If it’s the same instrument type (brass, strings, winds, vocal, etc.), I have a hard time getting any more than two.
Excellent video, thank you so much for giving me another way to think about movements between chords! Each time I watch one of your videos I come away having learned something.
Man what a fantastic channel. Thanks for your great videos as always.
Your channel is golden. Learned so much!
Really good video, and I love how it incorporated analysis of so many soundtracks. I think 12Tone Music, also on UA-cam, has a really good way of framing this sort of harmony (and honestly, a lot of music used in and outside games; I was thinking about it particularly in the Kentucky Route 0 and Evil Genius sections): chord loops not as a journey but as a location. So the links between the chords may have function, but they’re not leading you anywhere so much as they are creating a shape.
Rain World's OST is absolutely breathtaking, so I appreciate the mention here. Great stuff as usual
I've watched all of your videos, and this one is my favorite
Very interesting video! Love the thoughts and the parallels to melodic analysis being used! Useful interpretation, making me think more about this! Theory Nerd appreciation!
Matthew’s editing is spot on as always! I laughed at your Db takeout 😂
Wow! This is a music tool I didn’t know I needed. Thank you
Thank you so much for your work! You've got amazing talent and knowledge and I greatly appreciate you sharing it with the rest of us!
Man I love your videos. Even though this is pretty simple stuff I still came away from this video with alternative strategies to hear these things! Thank you for your work.
hey i've been watching your videos with a musician friend of mine for a lil while now to learn about music a bit more deeply and i really adore this channel!! it's such a major help and, with someone sitting beside me to explain stuff, it's a really great way for me to learn abt this because it's in a context i know well! thanks :)
What a lightning round! There is so much cool music out there!
This channel really is one of the best out there. You are creating music lovers and composers my friend.
Great video as always!
If I may make a recommendation - Glen Stafford's work in Blizzards golden era, on games like Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3 and Starcraft is just packed full of fantastic themes and music, which would be amazing to see you cover in detail as you do! I love the music of Starcraft, but I want to particularly note Warcraft 2 and 3, since the latter borrows many themes put forth in the former, and develops them further and fleshes the arrangements out to more orchestrated versions of the tunes. It is just a wonderful experience to hear these evolve, and even moreso if you grew up listening to these tunes on repeat!
The nature of these games also lends itself to thematic development and tropes for each playable race, which provides a wealth of music theory to pull apart and examine. If you haven't ever heard these works of Glen Stafford (and team), please do yourself a favor and check them out!
Please have a look, you'd have some great content there. Cheers!
massively insightful, as ever, thanks so much for your synthesis
Just wanted to thank for all the effort you put in your videos. I’m a beginner composer and I’m gradually understanding more of what you talk about, really wanting to be able to master harmony one day.
This one in particular was so helpful to me, maybe cause I gotta first understand simpler stuff before going in to jazz harmony, for example. So thank you again, your work is awesome!
My interpretation of the E in that Kentucky Route Zero song was completely different and I think simpler: The vamp alternates between Bb major and D minor chords, and C6/9 is native to D minor and serves a similar function in that context to the V chord. Its placement keeps it ambiguous where putting it right before the Dmin7(11) would be too directional (the backdoor cadence of bVII-i), but it's clearly there to tease at D minor to me. No shade, just thought the difference in interpretation was interesting.
Incidentally, did anyone else catch a serious Peaking Lights vibe from that song? Very cool band, worth checking out if that song's your thing.
I just want to add support to this analysis ^
I think this may be a case of over-complicating the analysis
I honestly just heard the entire thing in D minor and was surprised to hear it analyzed in G.
Add me to the list of people confused at the G minor analysis. Copypasting my comment below:
To my ears, it's clearly in Dm, and all of the asssociated chords fit neatly into that. The verses are a VI - i , and the Choruses are vi - VII - vi - i. The use of VI and VII are commonplace in minor key pop songs. The melody clearly emphasises a D pentatonic minor, with emphasis of D and A, the tonic and dominant.
I think the brief moment of Eb in the synth melody in the intro might have misled you, it's just a bit of flat 2nd spice. Doesn't really appear anywhere else.
Update: He did clarify on Twitter that his full analysis which was cut down for time took into account the use of Eb and Cm chords in the back half of the song, which suggests a mix of G minor and Bb major; while I agree that this is true overall-it's very much doing a hybrid tonality thing à la "Sweet Home Alabama" or any number of modern pop songs-I do think that that passage specifically was in fact borrowing from D minor and thus implying a different dual tonal centre from the later parts of the song.
Position of the chords would suggest Dmin too. Also jumping up a fourth in the chorus is classic pop writing. It all suggests the parent major key is F.
Nice job! 🎉 love the mix of instruments on this one.
Damn, I'm watching your channel for a while now, but this really opened my eyes, somehow I never thought that way about relationship between each chord. Thank you a thousand times 🙏
Top notch stuff here, excellent job!
I’m so glad you talked about Rain World. That game has some of my favorite esoteric music.
That Dflat, always around when you least expect it. Great vid boss 👌
I only JUST got introduced to Ys VIII's "Sunshine Coastline" when Ivan Hakštok did an OCRemix of it and it took me completely by surprise. Then again, I am a total sucker for "minor key sounding happy" songs... so this video was so neat to see right afterwards, explaining it! The 2nd-3rd-4th chord step explanation felt intuitive and useful as well. Wonderful video.
Oh hey, one of the only videos I can almost follow perfectly! This is really interesting, one of those things you know that's there but you can't find unless you're really looking.
This is super neat! As someone with a heavy foundation in common practice harmony, this is a great look into how modern pop progressions work and how you can branch out from there easily. Thanks a bunch!
MAN. This was such a cool way to include so many of our requests! Who requested KRZ?? Great idea! That song was such an incredible moment.
Putting the video game examples to the side, you really are just amazing at teaching complex concepts like these and making it simple to understand.
Gosh I was so ready to be bored by this when I saw "simple" in the title, but this really opened my eyes to the reason that some of my favorite music sounds the way that it does! I'm definitely going to come back to this video and keep the info in mind as I write now
this was the beginner bridge I needed to cross before tackling something more complicated. THANK YOU!
thx, this changed my perspective about chord movements, very helpful !
I got so excited with this video! I just finished up my undergrad Theory Thesis on Tonal Ambiguity and Pitch Centricity looking at First Steps from Celeste (which your transcriptions helped a ton). I looked at these ideas less through harmonic function and more intervallic relationships.
I love all your videos and it's what inspired me to use video game music as my main focus for my undergrad thesis! ❤️ I'm also a composition major, so your videos also help me when I'm stuck creatively.
Thank you for talking about this! I feel like this kind of stuff is too often overlooked because of its "simplicity" (as it seems). It's really important to understand how to use effectively the basic resources.
Thank you very much for this enlightening video. The expressive value of intervallic relationships between chord's roots is something that, at least in my compositional process, is too often overshadowed by the quality of chord and tonal functions. The way you presented the roots movements quality really fills the gap in Schillinger's theory of harmony (he explains how to manipulate harmony starting from the way bass moves, but without telling the criteria to choose a certain sequence of bass intervals). Thank you again
Too late to love you is written in D minor, and the cadence is bVI to i in the verse. Chorus is classical iv to bVII. So there's no chord out of scale.
Very cool! If you have anymore stuff about "simple" chord progressions, I'd love to hear/see it!
So happy you're talking about Ys VIII! The game has absolute bangers
Good video! This kind of approach to harmony really makes sense for atmospheric and ambient-focused music, which doesn’t revolve around dominant-tonic motions. This sort of discussion also dispels the misconception that simple progression = bad; clearly, in the right context, simplicity is good!
Did not expect YSVIII in here, but I’m not disappointed
I know this video is about a year old, but I just want to say, YOur videos and channel are in my top five across all of youtube right now.
I love how your videos clearly show me I absolutly have no tonal hearing, nor play an Instrument nor write music, yet am still able to enjoy these videos. Thanks 8-Bit
Edit.: After checking out Ace Combats Video again (which brought me to this channel) I think I know why. Rythm is what I understand, I feel, I get! Seems to be right since I'm more a Dancer. So yeah. That video is top notch by the way, not just because it's my favourite Video Game series of all time. KH in a close second.
Great video, thanks for doing the request!
Non Functional forms of analysis are super interesting. 12 Tone and Tagg's theory on the subject is really interesting, and yours is incredibly interesting too! Would love to see you tackle harmonic cycles like 12 bar blues or 32 bar form, that kind of fall in between functional harmony and these chord loop type progressions.
I'd be interested in hearing more about this - could you perhaps link a video or two from 12tone or tagg about this subject? I'm just not entirely sure what I'm searching for, haha. Thanks!
This video alone is what initially got me to play Kentucky Route Zero. Can't thank you enough for that.
This was great info, thank you.
I've been looking for this video for a while now. I'm too used to using big complex chords with a bunch of extensions that it can be hard when I want to write something simpler that still sounds nice. thanks
That space between Cm and Eb major (as well as Ab Lydian, G phyrgian, etc), is ,in my opinion, the most emotionally "activating" space in western tonality. I think it's no secret why Yoko Shimomura seems to milk that key for all its worth across her body of work, not to mention that emotionally intense space being occupied by some of the most "emotional" bands in metal like In Flames and Killswitch Engage.
Pretty much perfect timing here...
Just started getting into the music theory rabbit hole :D
I just noticed that if you put metal sounds in the background, like robot footsteps, the rainworld music sounds like the music from when we arrive in the future in chrono trigger.
You scared me when that Db came ahahaha!! Awesome video though, like all the others of you!!
I love this channel. Thank you.
Ahhh, Hades... what an amazing game
The tonal clashing with chromatic mediants was a little confusing, but the rest was really interesting and informative, been wondering about those 4ths 3rds and 2nds so this really cleared that up for me, thanks
As I understand it, movement by second is the strongest, as all notes in the chord change from the previous. It’s actually too strong to be the usual movement. I believe you are right about movement by third bang the weakest as fewest notes change. Movement by fourth, while not being the strongest, is the most practical because it’s not characteristic very strong or weak. It’s somewhere in between which makes it the most tolerable to hear in succession. I really love your videos. Keep up the great work.
Love this channel!
You sir have a subscription . I'm going to be listening to your videos while working a lot more
Thanks a lot seriously. This is perfect for understanding music theory!
The moment I saw the length compared to the title I knew this one'd be good.
Wasn't expecting the Kentucky Route Zero reference! I adore that game
Wow, love the surprise apparition of YS VIII in this. That game's music hase some really nice surprises.
Love these videos. Really helps with my song writing. Could you use the music of Super R-Type in some of your examples?
Also, thanks for introducing me to Kentucky route zero!
3:05 to hear Rain World in one of your videos.... i had to double check I hadn't accidentally opened the game somehow... i'm so happy...
I screamed when I heard "Kentucky Route Zero" and realized you were going to talk about "Too Late to Love You." 😭
FINALLY some love for simpler harmony. I'm a singer and composer, and honestly, I tend to just get so bored with crazy expanded harmonies and tritone substitutions and such. So much of that stuff just comes off as trying too hard (to me, at least). More complex does not inherently mean more interesting.
Dangit I clicked for the Hades thumbnail and I'm getting reminded of why I wanted to play Rain World
So excited 😭😭
10:29 I love how this song makes me cry because of how hopeful it sounds :’) Thanks for the amazing video, it really inspires me to keep making music ^^
Great video! But at 0:22 there was a note that was the same as the zoom join sound and it gave me a heart attack😂🥲
Hearing the rain world theme as I’m playing rain world and listening to this in the background was surreal lol