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!

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.

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.

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.

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

1. A - An ostinato alternates between the root and the third of an F major chord, against the backdrop of hemiola cross-rhythms.
2. 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)
3. B - Gappetto snores with a glissando in F major
4. 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.

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.

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!

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:

1. "Remember Me" from Disney's Coco is in D major
2. But it sounds SO SAD! WHY???
3. Because it starts with a minor plagal cadence, which blends the major and minor modes
4. 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
5. But it's not actually switching to B minor - it's still in D major!

​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:

​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:

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!)

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. :-)

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.

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:

1. 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).
2. 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..."

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#):

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.

 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.)

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.

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.)

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.

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​.

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.

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. :-)