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Life Updates + Future of This Blog

1/6/2020

Hi friends,

I hope you're well!

As you may have noticed, I have not been very active on my blog these past few months.

There are personal reasons for this, but first and foremost, I would like to say the most important thing:

I value and appreciate your interest in this project so very much, and I look forward to resuming with regular posts when I'm able to do so. Meanwhile, I will continue to post on an as-the-muse-inspires me basis, while I figure out how to get my life in order.

OK, so, now for the personal updates that may help to explain my radio silence:

1. I got my Ph.D.!

I'm officially Dr. Zerin! In December 2019, I successfully defended my Ph.D. in historical musicology at New York University! Although it took me 8 years to complete my program, it's been 12 years since I first began researching my dissertation topic. So this is a real relief and achievement. I'll let you know when I've got a full PDF of my dissertation online for people to read. :-)

2. I came out as transgender

My Ph.D. diploma won't say "Samuel Elliot Zerin" on it, but rather "Samantha Elisheva Zerin." A few weeks ago, I came out publicly as transgender. As you can imagine, the months leading up to this announcement were both exciting and intensely stressful. But I am truly humbled by the overwhelming support I have received from my family, friends, colleagues, and community. If you would like to follow my transition/journey, I invite you to follow me on Twitter @ShuliElisheva.

3. I started a blog for my poetry and music

I have a new blog, where I've been posting my poetry and musical compositions under my pen name "Shuli Elisheva". This project began in June 2019 as a way of processing my emotions as I struggled with my gender identity and transition. With a few exceptions, I write all my poetry first in Yiddish and then translate them all into English. My musical compositions include both vocal and instrumental music. I plan to continue with this creative project on an as-the-muse-inspires-me basis; it's not only helping me continue to process my gender transition, but also to fulfill my deep craving for a creative outlet.

4. I'm looking for a day job

I'm looking for a steady day job to help pay the bills, so that I can continue my social media projects without constantly worrying about money. Ultimately, my goal is to make a living from sharing my research and teaching online. Although I have been exploring ways of doing this for a couple of years now, I've had to constantly battle a tension between (1) wanting to create an authentic and engaging presence and (2) needing money ASAP. Unfortunately, the latter has often hindered my ability to do the former. SO, I am hoping that once I have a steady day job, I'll be able to focus on truly being me in my social media work. Meanwhile, freelancing in a variety of areas is helping me piece together some income (blogging, tutoring, video editing, translation work, adjunct teaching, etc), but this has been neither sustainable nor predictable for me.

What about the blog?

I'll continue to write in this blog as I have time. In fact, having just watched the first episode of Galavant this morning (SOOOO GOOD!), I'm mulling over ideas for a post about Alan Menken's melodic style. But I don't want to pretend any more that I've got a regular blogging schedule.

Of course, I'll let you know as plans for the future settle.

Thanks again for your interest,
and all my best from Rhode Island,

Sam

Frozen 2!! Music Theory!! Let's Do This!!

11/20/2019

Frozen 2 came out last week, and the soundtrack is SOOOOOOOOOOO good!

I live-tweeted my reactions to *almost* the entire soundtrack earlier this week; I'll post it here when I've gotten through the whole thing, but meanwhile you can view the Twitter thread by clicking here.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Let's do an actual analysis of the opening song, shall we? ?

(Disclaimer: I transcribed the notes by ear, so there may be some inaccuracies. I was a little unsure of the 3rd-4th measures in the second system, but everything else seems pretty clear.)

So, what really excited me the most when I first heard "All is Found" is its folksy, fantasy-esque sound.

But what makes it sound so folksy?

Here are some thoughts, just based on the opening verse:

orchestration: breathy voice + guitar
meter: syncopated dance rhythm in the bass
mode: aeolian (with a whole step between 7 and 1)
harmony: parallel root-position chords; open fifths; non-classical progressions
production: tons of reverb = wide open landscape

What do you think? What'd I miss? What else do you like about this song, aside from its folksiness?

IF YOU HAVEN'T HEARD IT YET, you should! Here's the entire soundtrack on Spotify:

Reactions to (Almost!) the Entire Frozen 2 Soundtrack

11/18/2019

Who's seen Frozen 2???

Not me (yet!)

But the soundtrack is already up on Spotify! So I'm going to listen to the whole soundtrack now, literally for the first time in forever, and share my thoughts in real time.

Before listening to the music...

OK, first of all, this soundtrack is HUGE. 46 tracks! Some of those appear to be covers, but still. So excited to experience this.

Just glancing at the track list, I'm excited to see that Olaf (Josh Gad) gets several songs! And seriously, there's a continuation of "Reindeer(s) are better than people"?? ?

1. "All is Found"

WOAH - what a great opening! I love the folsky, fantasy-esque feel of it. It's modal (Mixolydian? Love those bVII-I cadences). There are magical chromatic mediants. It's a breathy female voice, accompanied by...what instrument is that? Some kind of dulcimer?

I also love how the piece builds up tension -- starting with a very thin orchestration, then get thicker with a wash of strings, and then even thicker... so powerful.

Listening to the first track again. The melody comes out in bursts... it's not one long melody. It's a little phrase, (breathe), a little phrase, (breathe), a little phrase... part of what makes it so folksy. (Oh, and gotta give a shout out to those magical string triplets!)

2. "Some Things Never Change"

Starting off with an ensemble number this time! (Doesn't the Frozen 1 broadway show do the same? But not the movie...) Cool to hear our favorite characters returning, one by one, before the whole chorus joins in.

The obvious thing is to write about the energy (1-7-6-5 bass ostinato, power chords, etc). BUT, what really excites me is when Elsa enters and ALL THAT GOES AWAY! Weird tonal shift, string tremolos, very soft... just like her solo in "First Time in Forever." Marks her as uncanny!

3. "Into the Unknown"

I've only just listened to the opening, but... so cool. The "destiny topic" that Jesse Kinne talked about at this year's American Musicology Society conference is so salient: the solo female voice over a hollow piano accompaniment...

Also, the piano's odd meter reminds me of "Do You Wanna Build a Snowman..." Is it just me?

Kristen Anderson-Lopez might be new favorite Disney composer... and Frozen 2 might be my new favorite Disney soundtrack. My goodness, "Into the Unknown" is soo dramatic... don't even know where to begin... But on a different note, I hear so many references to the Frozen score in "Into the Unknown" - background melodic stuff, lyrical references, even topical stuff (the destiny voice like in the troll scenes from Frozen 1, the galloping rhythms in what feels like a chase?)

4. "When I Am Older"

?????

Only just listened to the opening measures, but now I'm SO CURIOUS to see the movie! It starts off so Olaf-y, with that Broadway style... and then the sudden slashes... perfect! OK, now to listen to the rest of the song...

So, obviously, it's fun that Olaf's character is musically connected with punchy Broadway cabaret type stuff. Also cool, though, how this old musical style is mixed with digital sound effects -- echos, alien-like bleeps, heavy reverb.... so creative.

5. "Reindeer(s) Are Better Than People."

What a cool idea to have a reprise of a Frozen 1 song in Frozen 2... but it's immediately different, b/c it starts off a cappella. And then when Sven comes in with his advice, the shimmering strings make him sound like the voice of G-d...!

6. "Lost in the Woods"

OK, again, just listened to the first few measures, but..... ELECTRIC GUITAR??? Whaaaaaaaat.

It's nice how Kristoff harmonizes himself in "Lost in the Woods" (did he record each track separately, or is this just a digital effect? Either way...) (Note: later found out that Bobby Lopez asked Kristoff to sing 18 different tracks to layer over each other!)

... also, why are we back in the 80s suddenly? ? I'm really impressed by the Anderson-Lopezes' stylistic versatility in this score. Film composers generally have to know how to write in many different styles, and it's just done so well in Frozen 2.

7. "Show Yourself"

There are some cool orchestral things in here... sudden silences in the chorus, string echos, sci-fi-esque aug 7ths.... what was Christoph Beck's role in these songs? Did Anderson-Lopez write all the background texture in these songs, or did Beck? Or someone else? (Edit: later found out it was Dave Metzger who did most of the orchestration, not Beck.)

I'm curious about the Queen Iduna vocalise (3-2-3-1), which we hear not only sung by Evan Rachel Wood in this track but also weaved into the piano accompaniment. Is it a leit-motif throughout the underscoring? Again, haven't seen the movie yet. But it's just screaming LEIT-MOTIF!

8. "Next Right Thing"

So empty... such loss & solitude... there's the almost non-existent texture in the beginning with long drawn-out chord tones... background cello solos... her sobs... harp ostinati... dear G-d, does this movie have a tragic ending? Better keep listening....

Intermission

OK, I've listened to all the vocal tracks. So interesting how Elsa and Kristoff barely sang in Frozen 1, but they've got most of the singing in Frozen 2. And Anna - Anna only sings at the very beginning and the very end? And how enigmatic her final solo is - no resolution?

Taking a break for breakfast. Then I'll skip over all the cover versions and head right to the instrumental tracks. This is fun!

17-24. Karaoke Tracks

OK, listening again, now to the instrumental versions of each song. Karaoke?

When I've taught Disney music in the past, students get so caught up in lyrics that they can't listen to the actual music. These would be great for analysis, eliminating the distraction of lyrics!

To be sure, lyrics are important, too. But as a music theorist, it really irks me when people ONLY talk about lyrics, as if lyrics are the be all and end all of Disney music. So it's cool to have just the background tracks to listen to.

"Into the Unknown" without the vocal track is cool. You can really hear how stagnant the opening ostinato is, until suddenly the shimmering strings come in with new harmonies. Again, lyrics are important but can be a distraction - here I can listen distraction-free.

"When I am Older" - instrumental track. The big silences in the middle, when Olaf would be singing a cappella, are so hilarious.

Interesting that there doesn't seem to be a villain song. Is there no villain? Or does the villain just not sing (like in so many of the pre-Menken Disney films)?

Nice plagal cadence (aka "amen cadence") at the end of the last vocal track. (Disclaimer: there's a V-I cadence after the IV-I cadence. But still. Nice touch.)

28-46: Underscoring

OK, on to the underscoring by Cristoph Beck. ("Underscoring" is all the background music you hear in a movie when characters are NOT singing. In my opinion, it's sometimes the best / most interesting music in a Disney musical, but NOBODY TALKS ABOUT IT!)

28. "Introduction"

0:00 this sounds SO familiar, very wintery... like Inside Out? Home Alone?

0:07 oh cool, it's the same theme as the opening of Frozen 1

0:10 uh oh, what's this menacing low brass interruption?

0:13 oh, phew, the theme is back

0:17 whaaaaaat (low brass)

0:32 - this is flying music... wonder what the animation is like here.

0:50 - DO YOU WANNA BUILD A SNOWMAN!!!!!

29. "Northuldra"

A huldra is a Norwegian forest/water nymph. So is this gonna be like the trolls from Frozen 1?

- nice opening with a folk flute/pipe, emphasizing open fourths and fifths. - oh, nice repetition a step higher!

- sudden entrance of piano timbre is so magical.

So many magical things going on in the orchestration ...

- the use of a folk instrument over a string drone
- the sudden addition of a piano timbre
- the chimes
- the quasi-tremolo 7-7-1-1-7-7-5-5 ostinato in the strings
- chromatic mediant harmonies
- harp-like broken chords

30. "Sisters"

Nice pentatonic melody on a folk pipe. But then, the orchestration changes from folk instruments to orchestral instruments. Sure, orchestration usually changes to make repetitions less repetitive, but... there MUST be something driving this folk --> orchestra shift?

31. "Exodus"

WOAH -- so amazing. I'm used to hearing these swirling arpeggios played by strings at moments of panic/tension/running. It's a cliché in film music. But to hear them on piano (and brass!) is so unusual - it's like my ears are exploding!

The clock tower chimes are a nice touch. I wonder if there's actually a bell tower in the movie, or if this is purely for timbral effect?

32. "The Mist"

The timbral palette is incredible. Forget about listening for a melody. This track is all about the interactions among so many diverse timbres.

33. "Wind"

Woah, what wind! The string whips, the woodwind/brass double-tonguing, the woodblocks, the sudden appearance of a deep, deep brass theme.

WAIT WAIT WAIT

IT'S THE FEAR MOTIF FROM FROZEN 1!!!!!!

So there are definitely leit motifs from the first film in the second film. OMG

The Frozen 2 soundtrack has a much more overall sci-fi / fantasy vibe to it than the Frozen 1 soundtrack. These slowly-unfolding aug7 chords in the second half of "Wind" are so trippy...

34. "Iduna's Scarf"

Oh hey, it's the opening vocals come back, this time a cappella in a 2-part canon. I wonder why? Will have to see the movie. The opening of this track (0:15-0:40) reminds me of Giacchino's Inside Out score. And the aug7ths after that are so alien-y...

So much cool stuff being done with high-register piano timbres in this soundtrack. I love it.

35. "Fire and Ice"

Another timbre-based track. AND...... it's the fear leit-motif from Frozen 1 again!

What about the rest of the soundtrack?????

Honestly, I was so exhausted from analyzing these couple dozen tracks that I couldn't get through the rest! But I'll certainly be writing more about this soundtrack / film in the coming weeks!

Step Aside, Beethoven! It's Time for the PJ MASKS! (aka Melodic Foreshortening in Disney Junior)

10/8/2019

OK, hear me out.

I know, I know, this is probably going to ruffle some feathers.

And the thing is, I really do love Beethoven! Really truly!

And, not only that – but I even agree with the weight of pedagogical tradition that the opening of Beethoven's 1st Piano Sonata is a GREAT example for teaching music theory students about the concept of melodic foreshortening.

But here's the thing:

I've got a 4-year-old son who is OBSESSED with a Disney Junior TV show called The PJ Masks. And not only is he obsessed with the show – he's obsessed with singing the theme song!

The PJ Masks theme song is catchy; it's fun; it's raucous; it's mysterious and spylike in the grand musical tradition of James Bond, Mission Impossible, and The Incredibles.

But let me tell you... from the moment I first heard the opening BUM BUM BA BA BUM, all I can think about is melodic foreshortening.

Every time my kid turns on the TV, that's all I'm thinking: melodic foreshortening!

Geeky, I know. (But that's a compliment, right?)

Anyway, WHAT IS MELODIC FORESHORTENING?

Melodic foreshortening, simply put, is when you repeat a musical phrase several times in a row, but each time you chop part of it off, so that it gets progressively shorter.

Have a look at the opening of the PJ Masks theme. The basic pattern is: two quarter notes on the tonic (green), a leap of a third from the dominant to the 7th (blue), and then again the two quarter notes on the tonic (green).

But look what happens each time it's repeated. First, we hear the entire phrase (all 6 notes). Then, we hear it again, but one of the quarter notes at the end is chopped off. (So we only hear 5 notes). Then, we hear it again, but the first two quarter notes are chopped off as well. (So we only get 3 notes.)

So what does this all mean?

Well, what happens when the melody gets foreshortened like this is that it builds up a lot of energy and forward momentum. Every time the melodic phrase repeats, we expected it to be repeated exactly, but it's like our breath is being cut short... again, and again. So in addition to building energy and momentum, it also builds up suspense and even anxiety, drawing the listener closer and closer into the music.

So next time you're binge-watching Disney Junior shows on Netflix, and the PJ Masks comes on, listen to the theme song with foreshortening in mind. I guarantee, you'll feel EXTREMELY NERDY, and it will also make the music SO MUCH MORE FUN and INTERESTING to listen to!

:-)

Joy=Sadness (Major 9th Chords in Disney-Pixar's "Inside Out")

9/16/2019

Michael Giacchino's score to Disney-Pixar's Inside Out is soooooo good.

In fact, when it came time to pick a movie for our family Movie Night this weekend, I requested Inside Out specifically because of the music.

But as we were watching, I began to notice something really fascinating in the visual character design, which, I think, has an interesting connection with the music.

Maybe you noticed this before?

Or maybe you hadn't - but once you see it, you really can't unsee it.

So, you know how all the emotions look totally different? They're different colors. Different shapes and sizes. They personify different stereotypes...

But take a closer look at Joy and Sadness.

Don't they have... the exact same eyes?

And the exact same nose?

And did you ever wonder why Joy has blue hair, just like sadness?

And have you ever noticed – if you look really, really, really closely – that Joy often radiates a blue-ish glow?

It's almost as if Joy and Sadness are the same emotion?

Of course, one of the main themes of the film is that you can't have joy without sadness – a theory that psychology researcher Brené Brown has widely promoted in her popular books and TED talks.

Joy and Sadness are two sides of the same coin.

~ ~ ~

So, ok, let's talk about the music!

The opening track, titled "Bundle of Joy," is one of my favorite bits of film music... ever.

It just tugs at my heart-strings:

As the track title suggests, this music is all about joy. In fact, as the music starts to play, joy is the only emotion present in Riley's head (even if, importantly, she's glowing blue).

But why, then, does the music sound so... sad to me? Or perhaps, rather, bittersweet?

To answer this question, I purchased a PDF of the sheet music from MusicNotes.com, took it to the piano, and set to work on figuring out how this works.

To my astonishment, I discovered that the entire track contains only two chords!

There's a G major 7 chord (G-B-D-F#), and an F major 7 chord (F-A-C-E), and that's it.
Just those two chords.

And yet, somehow, the music sounds so much more complex than that. It feels, to me, like it's wavering between major and minor. It feels, to me, like there are some interesting cadences going on in there. It feels, to me, like the music has discrete sections to it, like the music has a direction it's heading in, a goal that it's aiming towards.

Well that, my friends, is the beauty of major 7 chords.

If you divide a major 7 chord into two halves, the bottom half is a major triad and the top half is a minor triad.

And this is key to understanding the bittersweet nature of "Bundle of Joy" from Disney-Pixar's Inside Out.

Let's take a closer look at the melody and accompaniment:

All four of these measures have the same chord – a G major 7 chord.

And yet, there's just enough ambiguity to create the illusion that it's alternating between major and minor triads.

The accompaniment just rocks back and forth between the notes D and B, which are found in both G major and B minor chords. So if we only heard the accompaniment, we wouldn't have any way of knowing if it's major or minor.

In order to know if it's major or minor, we'd have to add either a G to that B/D (to make it G major) or an F# (to make it B minor).

And that's exactly what the melody does.

In all four measures, the note G is heavily emphasized in the melody, suggesting G major.

But at the same time, there are a few spots – at the beginnings of measures 3 and 4 – that strongly emphasize the note F#, suggesting B minor.

And of course, these Gs and F#s are part of the G major 7 chord.

So even though it's all one chord – a G major 7 chord – it feels as if it's wavering between two different chords, one major and one minor.

And not only does it do that in these first four measures, but then these four measures get repeated several times: outlining an F major 7 chord, then back to a G major 7 again (with a slightly embellished accompaniment), and then again F major 7.

Of course, I could be totally wrong. After all, who says that we have to consider those 4-measure phrases to be one single chord, one single major 7 chord? Why COULDN'T we think of them as, in fact, wavering between two entirely separate chords, one major and one minor?

Well, take a closer look at those bottom two lines, where G maj7 and F maj7 repeat with a slightly embellished accompaniment.

What's the new embellishment in the accompaniment? It's a broken major 7 chord!

And lest one think that this is still just incidental, take a look at how the next section begins, with those crystal-clear, slowly-unfolding G major 7 and F major 7 chords:

Of course, music isn't only about harmony, and there's more than just harmony making this music sound bittersweet.

There's also the orchestration: a solo piano melody, way up high at the top of the keyboard, above shimmering violins. As I wrote in an earlier blog post about the music from Toy Story, piano+violins = heightened emotion. And high registers typically signify goodness/purity, in contrast to low registers that signify villainy and anger.

And then there's the ostinato element, which film composers often use to establish, draw out, and maintain an emotional atmosphere.

And there are the metalicky sounds of someone rubbing their finger on a wine glass, which contribute to the magical feeling of the music, while also serving as little pin pricks that temporarily jerk us out of the acoustic dream-world of piano and strings.

So there's a lot going on to make this music sound bittersweet. And isn't that the whole point of the movie? That joy and sadness are one and the same?

Music Theory is Subjective - Here's Why That Matters. (Also, It's a Small World, After All!)

5/20/2019

You know what drives me BONKERS?

When people say that music theory is about "right" and "wrong" answers.

"This is the correct way to notate that measure," they say.

"This is an incorrect voice-leading pattern," they insist.

To be fair, it's not just music theory. Grade-based education rewards this sort of gooked-up thinking, especially when standardized tests are involved.

No, my friends, music theory is NOT about "right" and "wrong" answers.

And when I taught music theory to Ivy League students at Brown University, I made this clear in every. single. class.

Music theory is subjective.

And that's INCREDIBLY important to understand.

Here's a perfect illustration of what I mean.

At the beginning of the semester, I gave my students a handout much like the one shown above. (I gave them "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," but since this is a blog about Disney music, I decided to use a more appropriate example for this blog post. :-))

And I asked them:

"Which notation do you like better? #1, #2, or #3? And more importantly, WHY?"

At this point in the semester, my students had learned only the very basics of musical staff notation. They hadn't yet learned about harmony or formal structures. They hadn't yet learned about key signatures, dynamics, or scales.

So, as it happens, they were very confused when I asked them which notation of this tune they liked best. They had no idea how to answer, or how to even begin to process the question. Especially when I told them that all three of these notations, when performed, sound the same; all that differs is how they're written down. (Note the tempo markings!)

But I pushed my students.

And for the next 45 minutes, we had a lively, fascinating, and engaging discussion about the subjectivity of musical notation.

Music is all about PATTERNS... which musical notation either clarifies or obscures.

Take a look at notation #1, shown above. What patterns do you notice?

Remember, my students had only just begun to learn the most basic of basics. But even with minimal knowledge, some patterns can be easily noticed.

For example, the first three measures all have the exact same rhythm.

They also have the exact same lyrics.

And, they also have the exact same melody... except that each measure starts a note higher than the measure before.

Essentially, this way of notating the music breaks up the melody into four chunks, each chunk confined to a single measure. This allows us to clearly see that, except for the ending, each chunk (measure) is virtually identical, with each successive chunk starting a step higher than the one before.

It's also a very compact notation: only four measures! That makes it relatively easy to read. On the flip side, the dotted 8ths and 16th notes can be very daunting for a beginner. So, from a practical perspective, there are reasons to both love and resent it.

Now let's move on to notation #2. What patterns do we see?

This one's twice as long as the first one: 8 measures rather than 4.

And unlike version #1, each measure does NOT have the same rhythm or melody.

Why not?

Whereas the first version encased each sentence in a single measure (repeated thrice), this version spreads each sentence over two measures. In other words, instead of chunking up the music into four parts, with each part corresponding to a full sentence in the lyrics, this version chunks it up into EIGHT parts, each corresponding to half of a sentence in the lyrics.

In doing so, it obscures the 3-fold repetition that was so clear in version #1.

But also, in doing so, it reveals a new pattern that wasn't as clear before: every measure – that is, each half of the sentence "It's a small world | after all" – begins with a dotted rhythm.

Every measure – that is, each half of the sentence "It's a small world | after all" – begins and ends on a single pitch.

What we're getting now is a more nuanced picture of the music. If version 1 shows us patterns that can be seen with the naked eye, version 2 shows us patterns that are revealed by a magnifying glass.

From a practical perspective, it also has pluses and minuses. It's much longer than version 1, which a beginning student might find daunting. On the other hand, it's got much more manageable rhythmic values – no more 16th notes!

If version 1 shows us patterns that can be seen with the naked eye, and version 2 shows us patterns that are revealed by a magnifying glass, then version 3 is like looking through a microscope.

Each sentence is now spread out over four measures, allowing us to examine its finer patterns.

Each quarter of the four-measure sentence, as we now can clearly see, consists of two notes. But they alternate straight (half note + half note) and syncopated (dotted half + quarter) rhythms.

It's an interesting pattern, isn't it? Sure, we can certainly find that pattern in versions 1 and 2, but only in version 3 is it clear as day.

From a practical perspective, again, the beginning student might find this notation both a relief and an iron curtain. It consists entirely of (dotted) half and quarter notes. No 8ths! No 16ths! Easy-peasy, right? On the other hand, it's so "zoomed-in" that the much larger patterns revealed in versions 1 and 2 are totally obscured. So the overall structure and phrasing can seem very enigmatic.

Which version do you like better?

Now let's return to the original question: which version do you like better, and why?

Well, it all depends on what your SUBJECTIVE goals and preferences are.

Do you prefer a more compact notation (4 measures) or a more spread out notation (15 measures)?

Are you cool with 16th notes? Or would you rather stick with halves and quarters?

Are you interested in seeing the larger, overall patterns? Or, like a scientist examining a fossil under a microscope, do you prefer the tiny nuances?

Again, all three of these notations, when performed, sound virtually identical. (Yes, there are tiny differences with regard to metric pulse – which I made sure to discuss with my students – but otherwise they are the same.)

None of them is objectively "the correct one," and none of them is objectively "incorrect."

They are all equally valid, because at the end of the day, musical notation is a tool. We use it to reveal patterns that we're most interested in and to obscure those patterns that we deem unimportant. And since we all have different goals and preferences, so, too, will our notational decisions sometime differ.

And that's beautiful.

Isn't it?

Heave, Ho! Using Disney's Frozen to Teach about Meter

5/13/2019

Question: what's the hardest concept to teach intro music theory students?

Well, there are all sorts of advanced harmonic concepts involving intricate voice-leading, harmonic resolution, motivic development, and so forth.

But by the time you get that far, your students have already developed a strong foundation of knowledge to help them understand these more advanced topics. They're already masters at reading and writing musical notation, which enables them to organize their ideas on paper. The advantage here cannot be understated.

I would argue that one of the hardest concepts to teach is actually one of the most basic, usually covered in the very first classes of Music Theory 101. And that concept is meter -- the idea that music is organized into beats and measures, with an underlying pulse comprised of strong beats and weak beats.

Think about it: to understand meter and how we notate it, the student has to already understand a wide range of intersecting concepts: beats, measures, pulse, rhythmic division, staff lines, bar lines, beaming, and of course all of the symbols (note heads, stems, flags, dots, rests, etc). And even once all of this information is learned, terminology soon becomes complicated: "whole notes" fill a whole measure in 4/4, but not in 5/4 or 6/4. By contrast, in 2/4, it's the half note that fills the whole measure.

It's a lot to take in all at once.

But even once the basics are well-understood, there's still one aspect of meter that – in my own experience teaching university students – continues to stump students for quite some time.

And that aspect is metric pulse.

What's the difference between 2/4 and 4/4?

Aren't 3/4 and 6/8 exactly the same?

Why use 8/8, when you could just use 4/4?

For some reason, the idea that each meter has its own unique pulse – that 3/4 feels different than 6/8 because one of them is triple and the other is duple, for instance – is really hard for students to grasp.

In the spirit of helping my fellow educators teach about meter, I'd like to offer a useful example from Disney's Frozen, which might help your students to better understand metric pulse.

The song I'll discuss is actually metrically ambiguous, but this is precisely its pedagogical value. The ambiguity forces us to listen more closely than we otherwise might. It also encourages us to tackle difficult questions about what meter is and why it matters.

And finally, it's an INTRIGUING example, because it doesn't start off with musical instruments. Rather, it begins with the sound of ice saws being thrust through the frozen waters of Norway... not what you'd expect to hear in a course on music theory!

"Frozen Heart"

(starts around the 0:42 mark in this video)

As I've written in a previous blog post, one of Disney's hallmarks is a musical technique called "Mickey-Mousing" - the close synchronization of music, sound effects, and animation. "Frozen Heart" is a great example. As the scene opens, we see the workers thrusting their saws into the ice, and we hear the sound effects that result from this labor. There's no indication, at first, that what we're hearing is music. But when the workers start singing, the sound of the ice saws continues, becoming an important part of the music's percussion section. Are the ice saws musical instruments? Well, not necessarily, but that's exactly the point: as in so many other Disney movies, this scene blurs the boundaries between music and noise.

But I digress.

Here's an unmetered notation of the song's opening, starting with the ice saws and continuing with the melody:

I have heard this song so many times, but until this weekend, I was completely stymied by its metric pulse.

See, here's the thing: I imagined hearing each of these ice saws on the strong beats of either 2/4 or 4/4. That seems logical enough, but then the melody comes in awkwardly early, on a weak beat. The pulse feels consistently "off," accenting beats that feel like they should be weaker, while glossing over beats that seem like they should be more prominent. What gives?

And then this weekend, I was driving down Cypress Avenue on my way to our local grocery store, listening to this song, and it suddenly hit me. What if the workers aren't sawing on the strong beats, but rather on the weak beats?

What if, instead of sawing on the first beat of each measure, they actually saw on the second beat? WHAT IF THE SCORE ACTUALLY BEGINS WITH A REST? Here's what that would look like:

Bingo! Now, the melody comes in strongly on beat 1, and the pulse moving forward feels totally natural. The percussive sawing on the off-beats alternates with the singers' down-beats, creating a driving "heeve-ho" effect that befits a labor song.

In fact, this alternative notation feels so natural to me, that I can't believe I never thought of it before.

But that's the thing.

Why didn't I?

Why had I misheard this, for so long, as sawing on the downbeats, if that's so clearly not what's happening?

The answer is: the complete, total, and utter lack of musical context.

When the saws begin sawing, they don't sound like music. Each crash through the ice sounds identical. There's no alternation of strong and weak. There's no melodic contour or harmonic context to help shape an underlying pulse. How, in short, could one possibly know whether they're sawing on the downbeats or upbeats, when there aren't any contrasting sounds to tells us where downbeats and upbeats lie?

It's only once the singing comes in that we can identify a musical relationship: the sawing suddenly aligns with the melody's weak beats.

When students learn about meter, it's important for them to understand that meter doesn't work in isolation. Rather, it's a system for organizing the relationships among myriad musical elements. When all we hear is the repeated sounds of ice-saws crashing through the ice, each time with the same pitch, dynamic, and articulation, and always evenly spaced one from the next, how can meter exist? It's only once we add in the melody – with its melodic contour, rhythmic diversity, harmonic implications, and so forth – that the sound of the ice saws enters into a musical system, interacting and contrasting with other musical elements.

As a metaphor, consider that you're working on a puzzle. An enormous, 5,000-piece puzzle. You know the type. It's maddening, but so addictive. Anyway. You take a few pieces out of the box and look them over. They all look exactly the same. They are all solid black, with two innies and two outies. Now ask: which part of the picture are these? It's a ridiculous question, isn't it? Where is there a picture? Where are there parts? These are just a group of identical, solid-black pieces.

It's only once you dump out all of the rest of the pieces – all 5,000 of them – and you see that they are all different that any sense of a larger whole can come into play. Eventually, it becomes evident that these black pieces are part of one section of the puzzle, while these sparkly pink pieces are part of a different section, and these other pieces go somewhere else. It's only when contrasting elements enter into a relationship with each other that any sense of a larger whole can exist.

And that's how meter works. It organizes contrasting elements, contextualizing them in relation to each other, and showing how they all add up to a larger, meaningful whole.

The great thing about discussing "Frozen Heart" with our students is that is provokes conversation. Because it's so ambiguous, the students can be easily dissuaded from thinking they can take a single "correct answer" for granted. Instead of memorizing the single "right answer," they can actually think about the material, discussing the relative merits of each interpretation with their classmates. In the process, they dive into fundamental questions of what meter is, what it does, and how it works. It also challenges us to ask difficult questions about what music even is in the first place, which, in my experience, is GUARANTEED to spark curiosity and fill an entire class period with lively, engaging discussion.

What do you think? Would discussing this song make it easier for your students to understand meter? Let me know in the comments below!

It's not just a bunch of chords! Analyzing "When She Loved Me" from Toy Story 2

5/1/2019

What an incredible song this is! So poignant, so emotional, so sad, yet so happily nostalgic... how? I mean, seriously. How does this music evoke such powerful emotions?

Over at our Facebook group, an elementary school teacher and Disney enthusiast named Darla hinted at an answer to this question: "The chords and progressions are breathtakingly beautiful."

The chords do seem like a good place to start, don't they?

And YES, in fact, there's a lot one could say about the emotional impact of the harmony in this song.

BUT, I would argue that the harmony is actually only a small part of what makes this song so emotionally stirring.

The orchestration, the vocal performance, and the silences are also REALLY IMPORTANT in establishing the mood, and yet, these are precisely the elements that are most often ignored by music theorists.

You see, back in the good ol' 19th century, German Romantics like Richard Wagner and Edouard Hanslick began promoting an idea called "absolute music."

"Absolute music," in short, is the idea that a musical work is defined exclusively by its harmony and counterpoint. Everything else – orchestration, performance techniques, dynamics, articulations, extra-musical associations – everything else is just gravy.

And so, the argument goes, Bach's "Prelude in C Major" from the Well-Tempered Clavier is the same piece of music, regardless of what instrument it's played on, how fast it's played, how loud it's played, or how the notes are articulated.

Honestly, this ideology is kind of poisonous. Believe what you want about musical ontology, but the ideology of "absolute music" has led music critics, audiences, and scholars to dismiss the importance of orchestrators. "Composers compose, and orchestrators just prepare it for performance."

I actually got into a fight with someone on Twitter last year, when I suggested that Disney's orchestrators should get more credit for their work. The dude I was fighting with argued that since the orchestrators don't actually write any of the music, they shouldn't get any credit. I replied that the orchestration plays a HUGE role in shaping the musical work, which I guess was pretty cheeky, because then I got blocked.

But let's return to "When She Loved Me" from Toy Story 2. It's orchestrated for piano, solo cello, strings, and soprano. That's the same orchestration that's used in countless commercials for medications, life insurance, public safety, and more, in order to get our emotions and pocketbooks flowing. I mean, just listen to this YouTube compilation called "The Most Emotional Commercials Ever Made" -

This is important, because those of us who have grown up listening to countless commercials (and movies, TV shows, and pop songs) use piano and strings to evoke strong feelings of sadness, have learned to associate the sound of piano and strings with sadness. Of course, not all piano/orchestra music is sad; the orchestration is only one piece of the puzzle. But, nonetheless, I don't think it's really debatable that orchestration is a significant part of what music theorists might call "a sentimental topic" in commercial music.

And yet, this orchestration would be dismissed by adherents to the ideology of "absolute music" as simply artifice – as the superficial clothing in which the more significant harmony is beautified. And they'd be wrong, wouldn't they? I mean, can you imagine if this song were performed by a military band, with blaring trumpets and pounding war drums? It'd be totally different!

Another important element here is the vocal performance. If you listen closely to Sarah McLachlan's voice in this recording, you'll hear all sorts of details that strongly contribute to feelings of sentimentality. Her voice cracks, for instance, and it slides from note to note. She often switches between a full-bodied timbre and a thinner, airier timbre.

These vocal techniques are not typically notated in sheet music, in part because the ideology of absolute music – the ideology that only the harmony and counterpoint really define a work of music – is so deeply ingrained in Western musical practice that most people just haven't felt the need to develop ways of writing them down.

And yet, I would argue, the vocal techniques employed by McLachlan in this song are SO crucial in establishing the song's mood and emotional impact.

One last element that I'd mention here is SILENCE. Yes, that's right - silence! Claude Debussy famously said that "music is the silence between the notes," which seems rather odd, if you think of music as a bunch of notes.

But listen to the way this song is phrased. Almost every measure ends with a rest in the vocal part and a sustained note in the accompaniment. The music doesn't flow like a mighty stream. It comes in small sighs. She sings a few words, and then she stops. Then she sings a few more, and she stops. Think about the way people talk when they're feeling deeply sentimental: this is it!

So, in sum:

What makes this song sound so deeply sentimental? Yeah, the chords are important. But if you really want to know? Listen to the orchestration, the vocal performance, and the silences, because that's where so much of the emotion is created.

What is Music? (a.k.a Jiminy Cricket Can't Sleep!)

4/22/2019

Here's a tricky riddle:

Listen to the following scene from Disney's Pinocchio. Do you hear "music" or "sound effects?" Or both, or neither, or something altogether different?

Obviously, this is supposed to sound like chaotic noise. That's the whole point of this scene: Jiminy Cricket can't sleep, because he's too much bothered by the random ticking of countless clocks, Gappetto's disgusting snoring, and the fish's bubbly breathing. So should we refer to this audio as "a noisy mix of sound effects?"

But the ways that these sound effects and their collective, chaotic noise are created rely on well-known musical techniques, employed by composers and performed by musicians. In other words, they're not the result of randomness, but rather of a carefully constructed musical score.

So when we ask if this is "music" or not, it really depends on whose musical experience we're prioritizing: the diegetic experience of the characters in the movie, or the creative experience of the composers and performers? (Or, for that matter, our own perspectives as listeners and thinkers?)

In this blog post, I'll explore some of the ways that this scene blends the boundaries between music and sound effects. Then, I'll conclude with a famous psychological study by Dr. Diana Deutsch that shows how simply the act of reading this blog post can literally change whether you hear this as music or not.

Let's get started!

1. Rhythmic Counterpoint - or, the Art of Hemiolas

In the image above, I've tried to notate some of the clocks' rhythms to show how they're interacting in musical ways. It's really hard! Part of what's difficult about transcribing the rhythms in this scene is that they aren't all consistent: some clocks come and go, while others remain more-or-less constant. As well, they don't all seem to be in the same meter, causing some cross-bar discrepancies that are really hard to decipher.

But consider the interactions of the brown circular pendulum, the acorn pendulum, the flower pendulum, and the heart pendulum, which I've transcribed in the image above. They form, in multiple layers, what music theorists call "hemiolas" – that is, the effect of hearing one clock tick thrice in the same time that another clock ticks twice. This is a common rhythmic device that can be traced in the classical music tradition at least as far back as the Renaissance.

2. Animating the Hemiolas - or, Jiminy Rolls His Eyes

We don't just hear these hemiolas in the ticking of the clocks – we also see them in the rolling of Jiminy's eyes.

To see what I mean, check out this 15-second clip (above).

First, the eyes on the owl clock move side to side with a simple, duple rhythm.

Jiminy's eyes repeat this same motion.

Then, the pendula from two different clocks move in a likewise rhythm, but in contrary directions.

Jiminy's eyes repeat this same motion – with one eye moving to the left while the other moves to the right.

And then we get to the cool part: the ticking of two other pendula forms a hemiola (3:2) rhythm...

... and Jiminy's eyes follow the rhythm and motion of that hemiola! One eye follows the triplet clock, while the other follows the duple clock, until Jiminy is so confused that he just shakes his head in frustration.

There's a technical term for this close synchronization of sound and animation. It's called "Mickey Mousing," because it's a technique that Disney pioneered in his earliest Mickey Mouse cartoons (late 1920s), developed to an art in his Silly Symphonies (1930s), and enshrined as a standard device in basically every single Disney movie from Snow White to Ralph Breaks the Internet.

It's a technique that blurs the boundaries between music, sound effects, and choreography. On one hand, the sounds appear to be coming naturally from the actions of characters and objects; and yet, the ways that those sounds are constructed are undeniably musical.

3. Tonality - or, Gappetto Snores in F Major

Despite the apparent monotony of this scene, if you listen to the pitches of every clock, snore, and bubble, you might notice that it's entirely in the key of F major.

Some of the clocks alternate between the pitches F and A (the root and third of an F major chord). Others clack away at F, A, or C. Gappetto's snoring takes the form of a glissando from a low F to a high F and back down again. The fish's breathing glissandos up from F to C (the tonic to the dominant).

Or perhaps it's more meaningful to say that this isn't "in F major," but rather that pitches in this scene "outline an F major triad." Indeed, there aren't any other chords, which means that there aren't any progressions or cadences that could ground us in a particular key. Rather, what we have is a single chord, stretched out through an entire scene, which reinforces the scene's overall monotony, but in a distinctly musical way.

4. Binary Form: A A' B B'

If one were to create a structural map of the audio in this scene, it might look something like this:

A - An ostinato alternates between the root and the third of an F major chord, against the backdrop of hemiola cross-rhythms.
A' - Various clocks hammer away at the root, third, and fifth of an F major chord, against the backdrop of hemiola cross-rhythms (including with Jiminy's eyes)
B - Gappetto snores with a glissando in F major
B' - The fish breathes in F major.

One might further note, then, that the dynamics gradually get louder from section to section, with slight subito decreases in dynamic at the start of sections B and B'.

One could contrast the thick orchestral texture of the A sections (featuring clocks), in contrast to the thinner texture of the B sections (featuring snoring/breathing).

In other words, one could structure this scene not only in terms of the animation, but also in terms of the sound itself.

"Music" is Ontologically Fluid

What is music? If you look in a dictionary, you'll get a definition that is ontologically-fixed. That is, you'll have a definition that can be applied to any source of sound to tell you: "this is music" or "this is not music." Either the sound is music or it isn't, right?

When I played this scene from Pinocchio for my music theory students at Brown University and the Borough of Manhattan Community College, and I asked them if it's "music" or "sound effects," my students were fairly split. Some said it's music, others said it's sound effects, yet others said it's both, and, of course, there were those who just had no idea.

The same thing happened when I asked this question on Facebook and Twitter: not much agreement as to whether this is music or not!

However...

The more my students listened to it, and the closer they listened to it, and the more they shared and debated ideas, something remarkable began to happen.

Within minutes, nearly every student agreed that the audio in this scene could be called "music."

What changed their minds? Well, I don't believe that the initial nay-sayers were simply convinced by the arguments of their classmates. Nor, do I suspect, were they only trying to please their teacher. (I made it very clear from the beginning that I didn't think there was any correct answer, and that I was more interested in disagreement and debate than in blind acceptance.)

So what happened?

Dr. Diana Deutsch, a professor of psychology at the University of California, San Diego, studies the psychology of music. She is best known for her work on musical illusions, particularly the so-called "Speech to Song Illusion."

In 1995, Deutsch recorded a snippet of spoken audio, set it on loop, and made a remarkable discovery. The more she listened to this recording of her speaking voice, the more it began to sound like music. And it wasn't just her. She would play this recording of her speaking voice for group after group after group, and in every case her subjects would initially claim that it was a recording of her talking..... but after listening to it just a handful of times, her audiences would not only begin to hear it as music, but would even sing it back to her with such clarity that it could be notated with precise pitches and rhythms.

Deutsch's "Speech to Song Illusion" proved that one-and-the-same audio recording could be alternately interpreted by listeners as "music" or "speech." And not only that -- but the same listeners who were initially so convinced that it's speech needed only hear it a few times before completely changing their minds and calling it music. In other words, what makes music "music" isn't the actual sound itself, but rather the listener's experience of the sound.

As it turns out, what makes us hear music as "music" is repetition. When we hear someone talking, our brains initially latch on to the words that they're saying. But if we listen to them talk on repeat, our brain gets so used to the words that it begins listening for other details: pitch, rhythm, timbre, articulation...

The same applies to any sound. When we listen to a sound on repeat, our brain tunes in to a wide range of details that we otherwise wouldn't have noticed. Our brains try to organize and make sense of these details, and eventually, we hear them as music.

So is the audio in this scene from Pinocchio "music?" Well, I don't think that we can objectively say "yes" or "no." Obviously, Jiminy Cricket experiences it as noise. But the more we listen to it, the more we analyze it, the more we discuss it, the more it will begin to sound like music... regardless of how we initially heard it.

Any sound can be music, if only are brains are open to the possibility.

Good or Evil? The "Cathedral Motif" in Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame

4/15/2019

Here's a leit motif, called the "Cathedral Motif," that weaves its way through the entire score of Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame.

We hear it, for example, in D major when Clopin sings with reverence about the bells of Notre Dame.

We also hear it, for instance, in D minor when Frollo sings about his soul descending into Hell.

What do you think?

It's well-known among film music fans that leit motifs represent certain characters, emotions, or ideas.

But so, so, so often, leit motifs are more complicated than that. As the cool kids say, leit motifs can be semantically flexible: carrying a wide array of meanings that ebb and flow over the course of a film.

This is certainly the case with the "Cathedral Motif," which perhaps shows how a Cathedral can be a place of both sanctuary and imprisonment, or how a soul (in Christian theology, at least) can ascend to Heaven or descend to Hell, or how religion can be (ab)used for both good and evil.

And it's also the case with other leit motifs in Hunchback, such as the theme from "Out There" that we also hear during Quasimodo's public humiliation, or the recitative-like melody with which both Quasimodo and Frollo sing so much of their music.

But enough of what I have to say. What do you think? I'm really curious to know!

It's D major! Wait, no, is it? Yeah, it is. Wait a minute! (aka "Adventures in Tonal Meandering," Disney-Edition)

4/12/2019

In my previous blog post, "The Chord of Death: How the Neapolitan Chord Makes 'Remember Me' from Disney's Coco Sound So Sad," I made the following argument:

"Remember Me" from Disney's Coco is in D major
But it sounds SO SAD! WHY???
Because it starts with a minor plagal cadence, which blends the major and minor modes
And also because the phrase after that uses an applied Neapolitan chord ("the chord of death") to create the illusion that the music is switching to the relative minor, B minor
But it's not actually switching to B minor - it's still in D major!

I thought this was a pretty sound argument, but, as is often the case, the harmony is pretty ambiguous and there are multiple ways of interpreting it. (And that's why this stuff is so much fun to talk about!)

When I shared this post in our Facebook group, Dr. Kati Meyer, a professor of music theory at San Jacinto College, challenged my claim that the Neapolitan passage is, in fact, in D major:

Why not just analyze it in b minor? Then it would make sense as to why it is sad. [...]

I responded that although the music seems to be switching to B minor, it only does so for a single measure, which is too short to call it a real modulation:

Because it's not really tonicizing B minor. After that one single measure that has a B minor tonic chord, it's already on to other things, including a Bb chord several measures later. The one stable tonality here is that the song begins, ends, and keeps returning to D major.

But perhaps I was oversimplifying. As Dr. Meyer went on to explain, small-scale modulations like this – "localized tonicizations" – are a fairly common phenomenon and were used extensively by Bach. By this reasoning, the music does, in fact, shift to minor, even if only for a couple of measures - and hence, it sounds sad:

That cadential formula looks like a legit small scale tonicization in b minor to me. Bach does that all the time in fugal developments, modulation to even distant lands within the span of a few measures!

So this got me thinking... if that's what's going on, then what happens in the rest of the song? Are there other small-scale tonicizations like this that take the music "to distant lands" à la Bach?

It's an interesting way of looking at this. The opening phrase is in D major-ish... ("ish," because of the modal mixture). Then it's got a solid cadence in B minor. Then it's got a solid cadence in G major. Then the second verse begins in D major-ish again, just as the first verse had done. And then we get a series of adventurous sonorities that seem to take us through a circle of fifths - B minor, to E minor, to A major - which finally resolves with a cadence in D major. (And not even D major-ish this time... legit D major!)

So the question is, how do we make sense of this all?

One way would be to say that it's all in D major, but that the second phrase prolongs a vi chord by using an applied cadential formula, and the third phrase prolongs a IV chord by using its own applied cadential formula, and that then leads back to an actual cadence in D major. In other words, the first verse is basically I - vi - IV - DomAug7 - I, and each phrase just stretches out each of those chords for added color and length.

Another way would be to say that it starts and end in D major, but in between it meanders to a variety of other tonalities: the relative minor (B minor) and a nearby major (G major). In other words, rather than stretching out each chord in a relatively straightforward progression, it's taking us on an emotional journey through related minor and major tonalities.

What do you think? It's certainly a fascinating song, and I so wish that I had time today to dive into the second half of it! (Well, there's always another day!)

The Chord of Death: How the Neapolitan Chord Makes "Remember Me" from Disney's Coco Sound So Sad

4/10/2019

How can a Disney song in D major sound so, so sad?

The emotional power behind the music of "Remember Me," a bittersweet song of farewell from a father to his daughter, is deep and complex. In this post, I'll just give a hint of what's happening in the first couple phrases. Perhaps in the future, when I have more time, I'll dive into the rest of the song, as well!

The song begins with a "minor plagal cadence," a form of modal mixture that replaces the major IV chord with a minor iv chord. It's like pulling the rug out from under the listeners' feet: we think we're in major, but suddenly it sounds like minor, and then it cadences in major again. As music theory YouTuber Jake Lizzio puts it, this is a progression "to make you cry."

But what I really want to write about is what comes next: a Neopolitan cadence in the relative minor, B minor.

In their study on music and emotions, theorists Daniela and Bernd Willimek describe the Neapolitan chord (bII) as "a symbol of death," noting its use in a song by Schubert to highlight the phrase "weinen ganz totenbleich" (weeping, and deathly pale).

In fact, the Neapolitan chord – which appears in measure 4 of "Remember Me" – has long been associated with death and destruction.

Vivaldi, for instance, used the Neapolitan chord in the second movement of his Four Seasons to evoke human suffering during the blaze of summer: "Under a hard season, fired up by the sun / Languishes man, languishes the flock and burns the pine."

Bach used the Neapolitan chord in his St. Matthew Passion No. 19 on the word "Plagen" (suffering): "What is the source of all of this suffering?"

Mendelssohn-Hensel used it in her song "Ferne," Op. 9 No. 2, on the word "ertötest" (mortify): "Why do you mortify me?"

There are so many more examples one could give – from Mozart's Requiem Mass, Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata, Wagner's opera Das Rheingold – which also utilize the Neapolitan chord in conjunction with deathly thoughts.

But the point is, the Neapolitan chord also plays a crucial role in establishing the mood of "Remember Me" from Coco, and understanding the long history of its usage in classical music can help us better appreciate its use in Disney.

OK, so what is the Neapolitan chord, anyway, and what's it doing in Coco?

Glad you asked!

The Neapolitan chord is a ii chord in minor, but lowered by a half step. For example, in C minor, a regular ii chord is a D chord, and the Neapolitan (bII) is a Db chord. That's jarring, because Db is not part of the C minor scale. In other words, it's chromatic.

But why is it associated with death?

Part of the reason, perhaps, is that lowering scale degree 2 turns the minor mode into the Phrygian mode, which, as I wrote in a previous blog post, is also associated with death.

Another possible reason is that the Neapolitan chord is generally used as part of a cadence (bII - V7 - I), and when you do that, you set up a tritone between the root of the Neapolitan chord and the root of the dominant chord. Tritones, of course, are also associated with death.

What's especially interesting about "Remember Me" is that it doesn't, in fact, use the Neapolitan of D major. Rather, it uses the Neapolitan of the relative minor key, B minor, followed by a full V7-I cadence, making us feel like the music has suddenly slipped into minor. But it hasn't gone into minor! The song really is, ultimately, in D major. This is just one of the many tricks that composers Kristen and Robert Anderson Lopez used to make the song feel like it's ever floating between major and minor, not quite happy but also not quite sad:

And it's ironic, isn't it? Coco's father wrote this song for her so that she'd remember him while he's away on his concert tour and look forward to seeing him when he gets back. But while he's away, [spoiler alert!] he gets murdered. And decades upon decades later, after waiting so long for his return, Coco has almost entirely forgotten him.

So it's appropriate that the song should hinge on a chord that Vivaldi, Bach, Hensel, and so many others have for centuries associated with death.

Let's Talk About Modal Harmony - Disney Style! (Days 4-5)

4/5/2019

Well, well, well. I had SO many ideas yesterday, that I didn't get around to posting ANY of them!

So I guess I'll just have to do a double post today. :-)

And since the last few posts have mostly discussed the Lydian mode, I figured I'd spend today writing about two other modes, which are rarely discussed in music theory classes: the major blues and the Mixolydian b6.

The Major Blues in "Carryin' the Banner" (Newsies)

One of the modes that rarely gets discussed in music theory classrooms (because racism) is the blues mode. As the name suggests, it originated with the blues genre in African-American music and then later entered the jazz repertoire along with all the other modes we've been discussing (plus even more - jazz is a galaxy of modes).

Alan Menken's score for the 1992 film Newsies uses the blues mode extensively, setting the scene in early 1900s New York City and characterizing the newspaper-selling orphans as poor, emotionally broken, and transgressive. By contrast, he used the major mode for more "innocent" characters, like mothers and nuns. It's important to acknowledge the racist underpinnings of Western musical culture, which associates a "white" mode like major with innocence and a "black" mode like the blues with transgression, even if this blog isn't the space to dive into that discussion at length. That's why modal contrasts like this are used by film composers, and it's why audiences pick up on them, even if neither the composer nor the audience is necessarily aware of the racist undercurrent driving their musical experience.

Anyway, there are two primary blues scales: the major blues and the minor blues. Since Menken used the major blues in Newsies, that's the one I'll focus on in this blog post.

The major blues scale is constructed like this:

1. Start with a major scale.
2. Grab five of those notes - 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 - to create a "major pentatonic scale."
3. Then add a sixth note - the "blue note" - which is a half-step lower than scale degree 3.

In Newsies, the opening song's verses use a D major blues scale, with a jazzy accompaniment that breaks all the rules of classical music theory. Here's the melody, with the scale degrees labeled and the "blue notes" color-coded:

Things get really interesting, though, in the bridge section. After several verses and choruses featuring the rambunctious newsies singing their energetic, syncopated blues, we suddenly hear a group of nuns solemnly singing in major about Jesus. (Hollywood is as Christian-centric as it is white-centric, but again, that's another discussion.) Then one of the kids' mothers sings the same major-mode melody about how terrible it is that her son ran away to join the newsies, WHILE AT THE SAME TIME the newsies sing their syncopated blues tunes. This contrast is especially poignant in the 2nd measure of the sheet music excerpt below, where the mother is singing F# (scale degree 3 in D Major) at exactly the same moment that the kids sing an F-natural (the "blue" note in D Major Blues):

This is an interesting moment of "polymodality" – having two different modes going simultaneously. But it's also a dramatic moment: the polymodal effect here is not just a stylistic thing, but even more so a way of dramatizing the split between a God-fearing mother and her rebellious, runaway child.

If you'd like to hear an alternate interpretation of the modal harmony in this song, check out Hunter Farris's podcast episode about it. It's also an interesting, if very different, take on both the harmony and its dramatic implications.

Mixolydian b6 (aka "the Wonder Mode")
in Hunchback of Notre Dame

I've gotten so many requests to analyze music from Hunchback of Notre Dame, especially from a Twitter follower of mine named Jeff Wilcox. So.... this one's for you, Jeff! ;-)

Legendary music theory YouTuber Jake Lizzio has called the Mixolydian b6 scale "the wonder scale," because it's often used in popular music and film music to evoke feelings of, well, wonder. It's exactly the same as the standard Mixolydian mode, but with scale degree 6 lowered by a half step:

But what makes this "Wonder Scale" so... wondrous?

How is this scale different from all other scales?

As Lizzio explains in his YouTube video, the first half of the Mixolydian b6 scale is exactly the same as major, while the second half is exactly the same as minor. It's like if the happy major mode and the sad minor mode had a baby and exactly half of each parent mode's genes ended up in the baby. That baby would be the bittersweet Mixolydian b6 - "The Wonder Scale."

What's cool about this mode is that it has a major I chord but a minor IV chord. None of the other modes we've looked at are like this. Not the major or the minor; not the Lydian, the Phrygian, or the regular Mixolydian. Not Aeolian, not Ionian, not Dorian, not Locrian, and not the Major Blues.

The Mixolydian b6 is totally unique among all of these modes by having a major I and minor IV.

Alan Menken takes advantage of this unique characteristic in Quasimodo's dreamy I-want song, "Out There." Cooped up in the bell tower for most of his life, his physical deformations hidden from the ablist public, Quasimodo dreams of what it would be like to move from his shadowy hiding place to the bright, sunny village square, even if just for a single day. And he sings this in the bittersweet "wonder" mode, rocking back and forth between major I and minor IV, evoking both the uniqueness of this mode and the swinging of his bells:

So this concludes Modal Harmony Week over here at Disney Music Theory! I hope you enjoyed it, learned a bit, and are as excited as I am to continue diving into the magical world of Disney. :-)

Let's Talk About Modal Harmony - Disney Style! (Day 3)

4/3/2019

The Lydian Mode in "Belle" (Beauty and the Beast), Part 2

Wow, is this fun!

In yesterday's blog post, I explored the use of the Lydian mode for little bursts of pizzazz in the otherwise major-mode opening of "Belle." As I explained in that post, all of the singing in the first two verses is in major. Lydian is used ONLY by the orchestra, either to add some space between lyrics or to underscore spoken dialogue.

ALL OF THIS CHANGES AT THE END OF VERSE 2.

Yes, Belle, this is going to be nerdy! And I can't wait to share it with you. ;-)

First things first: here's a video of the song and the structural charts of the first two verses from yesterday's post. Then we'll see how things are different after verse 2.

If you compare these charts for Verse 1 and Verse 2, you might notice that the first verse ends with a spoken dialogue, and the second verse doesn't.

Well, actually, the second verse DOES end with a spoken dialogue, but it comes after a lengthy verse extension that is ENTIRELY in Lydian.

Here's how that verse extension begins:

If you examine this passage closely, you'll notice two tell-tale signs that this isn't just in Lydian, but, like, really in Lydian:

The singers keep hammering at #4 in the melody, while the orchestra holds the tonic in the bass. This highlights, over and over and over, that characteristic tritone which makes Lydian so unique. (The first 8 measures are in G Lydian, so the singers emphasize C#. This is then repeated a minor third higher, in the chromatic mediant key of Bb Lydian, before Belle breaks down into a wail of frustration with a heart-wrenching Dm7 chord).
The orchestra keeps alternating between I chords and II chords, with the tonic held in the bass, which is a classic technique for chordally emphasizing the 1-#4 tritone that makes Lydian so unique. (Although you can't always see the tonic bass in this piano reduction, the chord symbol "A/G" means that it's an A chord [II] with a G in the bass.)

After this, the verse extension continues with a spoken dialogue. As in the previous dialogue from Verse 1, we hear that playful Lydian melody in the cellos, as Belle talks shop with the bookstore owner.

HOWEVER, this time it's more complex (and the dialogue's much longer). As you can see in the sheet music below, this cello tune is played several times in D Lydian. Then, it's transposed up a minor third, to its chromatic mediant, F Lydian. After we hear it in F Lydian a few times, it then returns back down to D Lydian. These chromatic-mediant modulations mirror those in the Lydian singing just before this, where the music had modulated from G Lydian up to Bb Lydian.

Chromatic mediants, in case you don't know, often indicate some powerful emotional shift. So in the first passage, the energy of the group bursts suddenly higher with the shift from G Lydian to Bb Lydian, leading Belle to wail in misery: "There must be more than this provincial life!" Then, at the bookstore, as Belle begins talking about her favorite book, she gets emotionally carried away: with the shift from D Lydian to F Lydian, she begins to talk about why this is her favorite book, full of "far-off places, daring sword fights, magic spells, a prince in disguise..."

All of this is followed by Verse 3, which mostly follows the structure of Verse 2, and then we get to Belle's big solo -- "Ooooooohhh, isn't this AMAZING?" -- which is, you guessed it, also in Lydian. And then we get Gaston's solo, which is in Mixolydian.

But we'll save that for another day. :-)

Let's Talk About Modal Harmony - Disney Style! (Day 2)

4/2/2019

The Lydian Mode in "Belle" (Beauty and the Beast), Part 1

My dear fellow nerds!

I have a confession to make.

In yesterday's blog post, I promised that today's post would discuss the use of the Lydian mode in music from Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin.

Welllll... the thing is... this music is SO fascinating, and SO complex, that I was only able to get to ONE song from Beauty and the Beast today!

And not only that...

I only got through a 3rd of that song!

So, without further ado, I present to you the first couple verses of "Belle," that amazing opening number from Beauty and the Beast. Tomorrow, I'll continue with the middle section, and hopefully the ending, as well.

"Belle" is in the key of D Major. Pretty simple, right? But the thing about modal harmony is that, although you could certainly have an entire song in the key of D Lydian, it's often used for brief splashes of color in an otherwise major or minor piece.

For example, consider the first few verses of "Belle." Whenever someone is singing, the music is in D major (except for the brief sequences that pass through C major and Bb major).

But in between the major-key singing are all these little bursts of Lydian, which I've highlighted in purple in the map above.

There's this spunky two-measure bit, which leaps about and emphasizes the tritone between scale degrees 1 (D) and 4 (G#):

... which reappears later, inverted and foreshortened, as a two-chord sighing figure in C Lydian (C-F#) and Bb Lydian (Bb-E):

These little bits of Lydian are like mini-transitions, or mini breaths of fresh air, or little bursts of color, within the much larger framework of D major.

And then there's this playful cello solo in the background music when Belle is having spoken conversations with various villagers, which highlights the #4 (G#) in D Lydian:

Give a listen to this song, while following along with my structural map, and see if you can hear these little bursts of Lydian. Doesn't it just make the listening experience so much richer and more delightful? That's the thing about music theory. It helps us notice details of the music that we never would have noticed before. And once we notice those details, it totally changes the whole listening experience.

Whew, ok, that's the intro and first two verses! Tomorrow, I'll continue with the third verse, Belle's solo, and perhaps even (gasp) Gaston's solo in (gasp) D MIXOLYDIAN! (How earthy!)

Let's Talk About Modal Harmony - Disney Style! (Day 1)

4/1/2019

In our Facebook group, we had a great discussion about uses of the Lydian mode in Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Wall-E. But also, several people asked what modes are, how they're different from "normal theory," and how one can go about learning them.

SO..... welcome to Modal Harmony Week! Let's start from the very beginning, and talk about various ways that modal harmony is used in Disney music. Today (Monday), I'll explain the basics of what modes even are, explain some brief examples from Little Mermaid and Nightmare Before Christmas, and then the rest of the week will be devoted to exploring various other examples in the magical world of Disney music.

What are "modes"?

OK, so the first question is: what is a mode?

To answer this question, let's talk about video games.

When you play a video game, you can set it up in various modes: "practice mode," "beginner mode," "expert mode," and so forth. What does this mean? Essentially, modes define the entire system of rules in which a video game will function:

Will there be a time limit? If so, how long?
Will points be counted? If so, how?
What sort of challenges will be involved, and how difficult will they be?
How much XP will be required to kill each monster, how resilient will the monsters be to the gamer's attacks, and how much damage will they deal in return?

In music, modes work in a similar way. They tell us what notes will be used, how they will function, and how they'll combine into chords. Modes tell us what progressions to expect, which cadences to use, and what sorts of intervals will be used to make melodies. They even tell us what kinds of gestures to use.

(Disclaimer: modes are not dogmatic, and there are many ways to idiomatically "break" the rules of a mode. That's true of all music theory.)

Major and Minor

The two most famous modes are called major and minor.

"Oh yes!" you might be thinking. "I know what major and minor scales are!"

Scales tell us what notes we're likely to use.

But scales are only one tiny part of what makes the major mode "major" and the minor mode "minor."

Modes tell us way more than that. For example, in major and minor modes:

there's a perfect fifth between the first note of the scale (the "tonic") and the fifth note of the scale (the "dominant");
there's a perfect fourth between the first note of the scale and the fourth note of the scale (the "predominant");
cadences are almost always formed at the ends of phrases by following a dominant note or chord with the tonic;
the 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 7th notes of the scale are "leading tones," which often resolve by step to the 1st, 3rd, or 5th notes of the scale;
it's so strongly preferable that the V chord should be major, and that the 7th note of the scale should be a half step from 1, that the minor scale is generally altered from its natural form in order to fit these expectations.

These features are so central to the development of Western music theory that most people don't even think about them as being particular to the major and minor modes.

But they are.

Other Modes

The phrase "modal harmony" refers to music that functions within other modes, i.e. not major or minor. (Major and minor modes are called "tonal harmony," and all the rest are called "modal harmony." The reasons are fascinating but for a different conversation.)

Just like major and minor, the other modes have their own scales, which tell us what notes to expect. But also, like major and minor, the other modes have other characteristics that tell us how cadences are formed, which chord progressions to use, etc.

The most common "modal" modes are:

Ionian and Aeolian. These use the same scales as the major (Ionian) and natural minor (Aeolian) modes, but they don't necessarily follow all the rules of tonal harmony. For example, they don't have to use V-I cadences, and parallel fifths are totally cool. Unlike minor, Aeolian doesn't usually change itself to accommodate major V chords and leading tones - minor V and flat 7 for the win!
Dorian. This is like a minor scale, but with a raised 6. It sounds very folksy. (Think of D minor, but with a B natural instead of a B flat.)
Phrygian. This is like a minor scale, but with a lowered 2. It sounds very creepy. (Think of C minor, but with a D flat instead of a D natural.)
Lydian. This is like the major scale, but with a raised 4. It sounds dreamy and magical. (Think of C major, but with an F#.)
Mixolydian. This is like the major scale, but with a lowered 7. It sounds very folksy. (Think of C major, but with a Bb.)
Locrian is the wonkiest of them all. It's like a minor scale, but with lowered 2 AND 5. It sounds wonky and is rarely used. (Think of C minor, but with a Db and a Gb.)

I'm bored. Let's hear some music.

OK, cool! Let's take a listen and a look at some awesome bits of Disney music to see how these modes actually work in practice.

Mixolydian: "Fathoms Below" (Little Mermaid)

Alan Menken's score for The Little Mermaid (1989) begins with a sea shanty called "Fathoms Below." At first glance, you might think it's in C major, but it's actually in the folksy key of C Mixolydian.

The C Mixolydian scale is almost identical to C major, but the last note is a half step lower:

Major: C - D - E - F - G - A - B - C
Mixolydian: C - D - E - F - G - A - Bb - C

This does two things. First, it destroys the half-step leading tone between 7 and 1 that is so central in tonal (major and minor) harmony. Second, it makes the dominant V chord minor, rather than major. Take a look, for example, at the final v-I cadence in the last two bars. The dominant chord is G minor, not G major, and the melody emphasizes the whole step between Bb (7) and C (1).

"BUT WAIT!!!!!!!" you might protest. "There are B naturals in measures 3 and 11! How is that mixolydian and not major?"

Yes, it's true! But these B naturals are not part of any chords. They both appear as passing notes in an F major chord. By contrast, the final cadence uses Bb as a fundamental chord tone in the G minor dominant harmony.

This is typical of modal harmony. Although characteristic tones are often used for characteristic moments, they can be altered for less significant moments. Let's explore this particular idea in more detail with our next example, from Nightmare before Christmas.

Phrygian: "Sally's Song" (Nightmare Before Christmas)

Danny Elfman's score for Nightmare Before Christmas is honestly the best thing about the movie. (Sorry!) But seriously, it's really neat music.

Part of what makes "Sally's Song" so cool is that it cleverly takes advantage of the similarities between E minor and E Phrygian.

Minor and Phrygian use almost identical scales, except that 2 is a half step lower in Phrygian:

E minor: E - F# - G - A - B - C - D - E
E Phrygian: E - F - G - A - B - C - D - E

So to get a sense of what I mean, take a look at measures 1-2. The melody outlines an E minor triad, and – notably – does not include scale degree 2, which is the primary difference between these two modes. So if you just hear the first few measures, you'd rightfully think this is in minor. But then measure 3 comes as a total surprise: highlighting scale degree 2, F natural, it suddenly jolts us into Phrygian. Phrygian's power in this song is not just from being an unusual mode, but from interrupting the more typical minor mode.

In measures 8-9, Elfman pulls another clever trick. Measure 8 feels like it's shifted to the relative major, G major, and the melody outlines a G major triad. But then in measure 9, although we get an A in the melody, the background chord is an F natural chord -- suddenly jolting us away from major and into Phrygian.

Now, you might be wondering: if the power of E Phrygian lies in the use of F natural, then WHY are there so many measures with F#s in them? (I've highlighted them in blue in the sheet music above.) This, too, is part of the ambiguity between E minor and E Phrygian. In these blue measures, the F# is part of a dominant V (B7) chord, which establishes us in E minor. Again, rooting the song in E minor makes the revelation of E Phrygian all the more powerful.

Whew, that's a lot!

Yeah, it is! And it's SO much fun!

Let's pause here, and tomorrow I'll write about another mode – Lydian – in Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. Can't wait. :-)

Pink Elephants on Parade... Minor or Phrygian?

3/31/2019

In his fabulous book on Music in Disney's Animated Features (2017), James Bohn explains what makes Dumbo's psychedelic dream so musically unsettling. After describing the melody's rhythmic instability, Bohn turns his attention to the harmony:

"The most emphasized tone in the melody is actually scale degree six, not the tonic. There are tonal, agogic, and dynamic accents on both the high dominant as well as the leading tone to the dominant (sharp scale degree four). While they are displaced by an octave, together these three prominent melodic tones form a chromatic cluster. It is only the last note of the melody that firmly establishes the tonic." (page 98)

Bohn assumes, quite correctly, that this passage is in the key of A minor. In fact, when I googled the sheet music, every single edition that I found harmonized the melody in A minor, as shown in the sheet music below. (I've added scale degree numbers above the melody so you can clearly see Bohn's "three prominent melodic tones" - #4, 5, and 6)

But here's the thing. If you ignore the accompaniment, and just consider the melody by itself... doesn't it seem like it could be in E phrygian, rather than A minor?

Phrygian is like minor, but with one crucial difference: scale degree 2 is lowered, creating an eerie half-step between scale degrees 1 and 2 and turning the dominant V chord into some sort of mutilated diminished chord. For these reasons, the phrygian mode is often associated with creepiness and evil. (It's often used in the score for Nightmare before Christmas, for example.)

So if we go back to "Elephants on Parade," which is DEFINITELY creepy and evil, it's so easy to see this melody as being in E phrygian. Measures 1-3 emphasize the half-step between scale degrees 1 and 2, which is precisely what makes phrygian unique. Measures 4-5 play with the tension between the tonic (1) and the raised leading tone (#7). Measure 6 repeats the tonic 3 times before cascading down an arpeggio to scale degree 2, which leads straight back into a repeat of the opening alternation of 1 and 2.

The only moment that DOESN'T seem like E phrygian is the final measure, which is clearly A minor. But even Bohn agrees that the only clear moment of A minor in this tune is the very last measure.

SO, I thought, what would this sound like if I harmonized it in E phrygian, rather than A minor?

BEHOLD, friends! Here it is, my re-harmonization of "Pink Elephants on Parade" in E phrygian. Again, I've added the scale degrees above each note of the melody. Be sure, as well, to listen to the audio file under the score:

So, what do you think?

Does it sound better to your ears in A minor or E phrygian? Let me know, either way! And be sure to share this post with your friends, so we can all nerd out together. :-)

The Magic of Lydian in "Little Mermaid"

3/26/2019

What makes the underwater background music in Little Mermaid sound so magical? It's a combination of many factors, including the harmony, melody, rhythm, articulation, instrumentation, and formal structure.

One of these factors is its use of the Lydian mode, which is often associated with wonder, magic, and dreams. Part of Lydian's charm comes from the fact that, unlike major and minor, it has major chords on both I and II. It also has a tritone between 1 and 4 which has often been used to great effect (think of the Simpsons theme or "Maria" from West Side Story).

But in the case of the Little Mermaid, things are a little more complicated. The ostinato shown above can be thought of as I-II7 in Bb Lydian, but it can also be thought of as IV-V7 in F major. If you think of it as F major, then it's as if the music is wavering around the dominant without resolving. In the song "Part of Your World," this makes sense as she's spending the first part of the song talking about how unsatisfied she is. But then, when she finally puts a name to her dream – "I wanna be where the people are" – that wavering IV-V7 finally resolves to I in F major. Ah, resolution...

So the use of Lydian here is a doubly whammy. On one hand, it already comes loaded with connotations of wonder and dreams. And on the other, it serves as a dominant prolongation of the relative major, refusing to resolve until Ariel finally puts a name to her dreams.

"Do You Want to Build a... TANGO?"

3/25/2019

Music theory is not about rules! It's about conventions!

And sometimes, those conventions aren't the best way to do things.

Take the opening of "Do You Want to Build a Snowman" from Frozen. The "correct" notation in 4/4, shown above, completely blurs the meter, the counterpoint, the rhythm, and even the genre. What's more, it's hard to play! (Catch that left hand Eb on the last 16th note of beat 1!)

But when we re-beam it to fit the three unequal beats of 8/8 rather than the more conventional 4 equal beats of 4/4, a whole galaxy of details springs to life.

Why does any of this matter? Well, this passage is not just dramatic but also a huge part of both setting up the film's narrative and establishing Anna's personality.

This song comes after that heart-wrenching scene where the troll king erases Anna's memory, to spare her the trauma of her near-death experience. As the scene comes to an end, a confused Anna watches as her sister completely shuns her by locking herself up in her room. The musical background fades into a soft, slow, descending melody, orchestrated very sparsely, a perfect depiction of the loss, abandonment, confusion, loneliness, etc. felt in this scene by both sisters.

And this lonely music moves immediately into a fast, upbeat tango as a now-older Anna races to her sister's door to invite her to play together. What a dramatic contrast! It highlights how playful, giddy, and carefree Anna has become, and makes the tragedy of her memory loss and abandonment all the more poignant.

Sure, you don't need to know any theory to feel this emotional contrast between one scene and the next. But music theory -- including a sensible, if unconventional, notation -- helps us understand that contrast on a much more nuanced level, which means we can also feel it in a more nuanced way. And it also makes it easier to perform!

Polyphonic Melodies in Snow White and Cinderella

2/14/2019

Did you ever notice these bits from Snow White and Cinderella are the same?

And it's SO ACADEMIC! The green notes go up, the blue notes go down, til they blend into purple... put 'em together and what have you got? A "polyphonic melody," in the style of Bach.

History of Disney Music in 14 Minutes

2/14/2019

To pass the time during my cancer treatment, I did a live stream on Twitter about the history of Disney music. Why not, right? :-)

Alan Menken Loves 3rds!

1/9/2019

Pop quiz! What's Alan Menken's favorite interval?

Answer: I don't know, but 3rds show up ALL over his Disney soundtracks!

He uses them in ostinatos, sequences, free-flowing melodies, emphatic gestures... have a listen to the examples in this video, and then read on to learn more!

Ostinatos establish a mood and anticipate motion.

Menken uses 3rds-based ostinatos to establish moods and anticipate motion. Ostinatos, in case you don't know, are musical patterns that repeat themselves over and over and over. For this reason, they both ground us in a particular sound-world and build up suspense over when, and how, the music will change.

In Newsies, the syncopations and brass orchestration of a 3rds-based ostinato set the movie in jazzy NYC, in a bustling orphanage where the newsies long for adventure.

In The Little Mermaid, a 3rds-based ostinato is played smoothly and evenly by sweet violins, creating an aura of peace and satisfaction as Ariel lies down to sleep. What will tomorrow bring? We'll find out tomorrow; in the meantime, she basks in her happiness.

In Aladdin, the end-of-bar accents, abrupt rests, and flurries of sixteenth notes in this 3rds-based ostinato create anxiety. Trapped by the guards, unable to escape, he prepares himself to jump for his life, colorfully depicted by a falling glissando.

Here are those same examples in sheet music format:

Sequences create movement and anticipate arrival.

Menken uses 3rds-based sequences to create motion and anticipate arrival. Sequences are like ostinatos, but each time the pattern repeats it's a little bit higher or lower than the time before... like climbing on rungs in a ladder.

In Hunchback of Notre Dame, for example, the villainous Frollo sings a descending sequence of 3rds as his soul descends into Hell.

In The Little Mermaid, by contrast, Ariel sings an ascending sequence of 3rds as the sea witch, Ursula, rips her voice up and out of her throat.

Isn't Disney just lovely for children? Here are those same examples in sheet music format:

Free-flowing melodies are more flexible than ostinatos and sequences.

The challenge with ostinatos and sequences is that they're structurally very rigid. But that's precisely where they get their power: they're incredible at establishing moods and carrying the music in clear directions.

But Alan Menken also often uses thirds to create his own, free-flowing melodies, such as the following gruesome duet from Hunchback and snazzy, finger-snapping bridge from Newsies.

In the Hunchback duo, Frollo and Quasimodo sing short phrases based almost exclusively on thirds. Thirds are useful in duets, because they are very consonant, and they form the most basic building blocks of tonal chords. For these reasons, they're relatively easy to harmonize, which is a load off the shoulders when trying to blend two simultaneous melodies.

This snazzy bit from Newsies uses open thirds, omitting the middle note of each interval. Leaping around from syncopated note to syncopated note, this use of open thirds creates a feeling of lightness, joy, and happy-go-luckiness:

Of course, the happy-go-luckiness of these open thirds can be snuffed in a puff, when used for a rigid, choppy, ostinato such as that in Randy Newman's song "Friends on the Other Side" from Disney's The Princess and the Frog.

Good stuff. Here's the sheet music:

Emphatic gestures add "punch and pizzazz" (quoth the Genie...)

A lot of folks think that music is just about long, flowing melodies and longer, nerdier chord progressions. But that's missing the trees for the forest. Just as hand gestures and facial gestures add extra meaning to vocal speech, so, too, do itty-bitty musical gestures contribute to the flavor and meaning of a song.

Alan Menken is a MASTER of musical gestures, and one of these days I'll write about the multitude of juicy, delectable instrumental gestures in his background music for Aladdin. It's part of what makes the Aladdin soundtrack so expressive and engaging.

But for now, let's have a listen and look at a few 3rds-based gestures in his vocal melodies.

The choruses to "I See The Light" (Tangled) and "Go the Distance" (Hercules) are loud and exciting and triumphant and heroic... but if you want to know why that is, you have to look at the first three notes. Like a musical fist pump, each of these choruses begins with a sweeping gesture from scale degree 6 up to scale degree 1. They don't just break out into song; they leap into song.

In "Friend Like Me" (Aladdin), the Genie doesn't just sing; he laughs, he make funny sounds, he throws around little exclamations... and all these "extra" details are performed via charming musical gestures. Here are just a couple of them, which are based on the interval of a 3rd:

And here's the sheet music:

Putting it all together: "The Mob Song" from Beauty and the Beast

Ready to see something awesome? "The Mob Song" from Beauty and the Beast combines 3rds-based ostinatos, sequences, free-flowing melodies, and rhetorical gestures, all in a single verse!

- It begins with an emphatic gesture (a rising minor 3rd from scale degree 1 to 3), which immediately sets a dark and hurried tone.

- This gesture is then turned into an ostinato that wavers between two minor 3rds, one between scale degrees 1-3 and the other between scale degrees 2-4.

- The entire first phrase (emphatic gestures + ostinato) is then repeated a step higher, initiating a sequence.

- Then the same 3rds-based emphatic gesture is used as the basis for a free-flowing melody.

- The verse concludes with an ascending sequence based, again, on that same 3rds-based emphatic gesture.

Sooooooo cool!!

Putting it all together again: "Arabian Nights" from Aladdin

The opening song from "Aladdin" also combines 3rds-based ostinatos, sequences, free-flowing melodies, and rhetorical gestures. My analysis below only covers the first half of the song, but I should warn you that the second half is also heavily based on 3rds as well. My gosh, does Alan Menken LOVE to use 3rds, or what?!

Did you like this blog post? Help spread the word!

Disney Music Theory is a brand-new project, and I need YOUR help to spread the word about it! If you liked this blog post, please share it with your friends on Facebook and Twitter using the "like" and "tweet" buttons below. If you're a teacher, please share it with your students (and vice-versa!)

In fact, here's a direct link to this entire essay on Twitter - why not just retweet it? :-)

I expanded this thread about @AIMenken's love of 3rds into a full-blown blog post. It's pretty epic! And I can't wait to hear what y'all think of it. □ ❤️ □

Here's the link:https://t.co/F1uVUF5mhX #DisneyMusicTheory #musictheory #AlanMenken @Lyrikris10 @Lin_Manuel https://t.co/A3YvSfYQ4h
— Disney Music Theory (@DisneyMusTheory) January 9, 2019

Menken's Thirds (teasers / Twitter discussion)

1/1/2019

Still working on this video... gonna be great!

Hint: it has something to do with 3rds. Why does @AIMenken love 3rds so much? He uses them to start off so many melodies... he uses them as ostinati and sequences... it's a stylistic motif weaving through all of his Disney stuff! □ https://t.co/VjxOSEyr3I
— Disney Music Theory (@DisneyMusTheory) January 2, 2019

What book is Belle reading? The answer is in the background music...

12/20/2018

[THREAD]

What book is Belle reading? Some say #Aladdin; others, #SleepingBeauty.

But actually? It's #BeautyAndTheBeast - she has no idea she's reading her own future! And we know this because the BACKGROUND MUSIC tells us so.

Intrigued? Read on, my friends!#DisneyMusicTheory pic.twitter.com/ka8rvvG2qx
— Disney Music Theory (@DisneyMusTheory) December 20, 2018

[2] I love this tune. Belle sings it twice: when describing her favorite book, and later (in Something There) when realizing this book is about HER. That's why I call it her "meta theme."

But way more interesting is what happens between these 2 songs, in the background music... pic.twitter.com/qZwVowMqGw
— Disney Music Theory (@DisneyMusTheory) December 20, 2018

[3] After angrily leaving Belle to starve in her bedroom, the Beast cries to himself: "She'll never see me as anything but a monster!" What a great moment for the violins to start playing just a snippet of the Meta Theme, the first musical hint that Belle's book is coming true. pic.twitter.com/PeaMQYl7zl
— Disney Music Theory (@DisneyMusTheory) December 20, 2018

[4] After the Beast risks his life to save Belle's, she takes care of his wounds. She thanks him for saving her, and he politely says "you're welcome."

Wait, what? Are they actually being nice to each other? The violins give us a slightly longer snippet of the Meta Theme... pic.twitter.com/khrq8j95l4
— Disney Music Theory (@DisneyMusTheory) December 20, 2018

[5] LOL, see those smiles? They're becoming friends! Belle is even teaching him how to eat soup without getting it all over his beard! (A hard lesson for all bearded folk...)

Now we get most of the Meta Theme in the violins, but not the whole thing yet... not 100% in love yet... pic.twitter.com/8J53hxvjUe
— Disney Music Theory (@DisneyMusTheory) December 20, 2018

[6] Watching Belle play in the snow, the Beast has a revelation – and a desire to be generous!

"I've never felt this way about anyone. I want to do something for her!"

Someone's falling in loooooove... Belle's favorite book is becoming real life... but not 100% there yet... pic.twitter.com/qaOGYT6dsP
— Disney Music Theory (@DisneyMusTheory) December 20, 2018

[7] Here's the Meta Theme's full progression, from the 1st time Belle sings it, through the background music in various scenes, til she sings it again in Something There.

The background music isn't just there to be pretty! It foreshadows, drives, and develops the narrative! pic.twitter.com/anA2356hzX
— Disney Music Theory (@DisneyMusTheory) December 20, 2018

[8] Like and R/T this thread for all your friends who don't know (yet!) how fascinating and important the background music in Disney movies can be! It's not just there to be pretty; it's there to tell us stories, if only we're willing to pay attention! ?❤️? pic.twitter.com/4UVwSGjtGa
— Disney Music Theory (@DisneyMusTheory) December 20, 2018

Analysis Request #2: Why doesn't Hades sing?

12/17/2018

Well, I didn't intend to reply with a whole thread, but you know... things happen...

So here's a little thread about the music of Disney villains (or lack thereof)!#DisneyMusicTheory https://t.co/bx8VBFaLsn
— Disney Music Theory (@DisneyMusTheory) December 18, 2018

Before Little Mermaid (1989), no Disney villains sang their own solo. There were a few who sang bits and pieces, like Cinderella's stepsisters with their horrendous voices. Musical talent = purity / goodness, while lack of musical talent = evil. (cont...)
— Disney Music Theory (@DisneyMusTheory) December 18, 2018

Menken sort of changed this, setting a trend that lasts to the present. The villains in Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Lion King, all the way up through Princess & the Frog and Tangled have very growly voices that blend the boundaries between singing and speaking. Shows they're evil.
— Disney Music Theory (@DisneyMusTheory) December 18, 2018

This is actually an anti-Semitic trope in opera, literature, art, for 100s of years: that Jews' poor musicianship shows how evil they are and Christians' musicality shows their purity. Few connect this with Jews today, but the musical=good/non-musical=bad idea is ALL over Disney.
— Disney Music Theory (@DisneyMusTheory) December 18, 2018

If you're interested in this sort of thing, there's an amazing book called "Music Libel Against the Jews" by Dr. Ruth HaCohen which details this anti-Semitic stereotype about "evil Jews" being fundamentally unmusical in contrast to "pure Christians." So fascinating.
— Disney Music Theory (@DisneyMusTheory) December 18, 2018

@jbohn_composer mentioned this a little in his book about early Disney music, but he didn't connect it with the old anti-Semitic trope.
— Disney Music Theory (@DisneyMusTheory) December 18, 2018

I've actually got a whole YouTube series planned about this, once I make the time for it...
— Disney Music Theory (@DisneyMusTheory) December 18, 2018

In the case of Hercules & Little Mermaid, knowing this anti-Semitic history is particularly interesting, given that it's very possible to hear both Ursula and Hades as Jewish caricatures. I don't assume that the composers were even AWARE of the anti-Semitic history of this trope.
— Disney Music Theory (@DisneyMusTheory) December 18, 2018

In fact, it's REALLY interesting in the context of Little Mermaid, because there are actually people on the internet who think that Ursula is the devil, King Triton is Jesus, and Ariel is humanity: so Ursula (coded as Jewish) is like the devil tempting humanity away from Jesus.
— Disney Music Theory (@DisneyMusTheory) December 18, 2018

In that reading Ursula (coded as Jewish) is not just tempting Ariel (humanity). She's silencing Ariel's voice, b/c, according to this anti-Semitic trope, Jews hate music. It's like in the Canterbury Tales when Jews slit the throat of a Christian singer b/c they can't stand music.
— Disney Music Theory (@DisneyMusTheory) December 18, 2018

That's probably not the answer you had in mind when you asked why Hades doesn't sing... it's so fascinating and surprising. But it explains so, so much about why Disney villains either don't sing at all or else sing with a "non-musical" voice.
— Disney Music Theory (@DisneyMusTheory) December 18, 2018