What's Going On With This Harmony, From A Music Theory Perspective?

September 5, 2024 3:56 PM

Can any of you music theory boffins tell me what's going on with the music in the video in this FPP post? I know some theory but I can't figure out what's going on there. Whatever it is, it's cool...
posted by Greg_Ace to Media & Arts (7 answers total)

I transcribed a bit of it to try and figure it out. I think what makes it so confusing is that the audio is at a low bit rate, which is causing some weird harmonics, which sometimes sound like they're part of the music and sometimes not. I also think that the lower notes are played using a sound that includes two pitches (like one oscillator tunes to an interval above the root0, but I can't figure out what it would be.
posted by jonathanhughes at 6:28 PM on September 5

It's very chromatic and deliberately ambiguous. This is done by not anchoring to any one key with strong tonics or dominants.

1 - Db Bb Ab Gb | F F* D C
2 - C Bb Ab F | Eb Eb* C Bb
3 - Bb Db Gb Bb | Bb Db Gb F
4- Gb Eb Db C | splosh

Line one starts with a Gb major triad but moves down a half tone.
Line two starts with a F minor triad, move down a whole tone.
Line three starts with Gb major triad, and stays in it a bit longer, but confounds it with the tritone (C) and subdominant (F).
Line four drops off into the splosh.
posted by dum spiro spero at 6:39 PM on September 5

Not an answer at all, but...

Harmonics are just the best. I can't respond in any way to the music theory, I just knew where to sing my part...

Much like Chemistry, I could never get the math of Music. (Base 8, Base 12, what?)

And just to continuing to post in a non-Ask acceptable comment...
No, I won't. To all those upthread that can hear those chords. Favorites incoming...
posted by Windopaene at 7:25 PM on September 5

It sounds like he's fiddling around on the left side of the keyboard where the keys are mapped to a single chord type, and doing a 12-tone melody thing on the top. Not sure what kind of chord it is, like a flat 5th or something. Reminds me of the old Casios where you had a separate tiny keyboard just for chords, and you'd make non-major chords by pressing combinations of two keys.
posted by credulous at 9:05 PM on September 5

I think there's a lot of synthy fuckery. As jonathonhughes says, there's two oscillators and the second is somewhere above the root- this is common, but usually the second is mixed quieter so that it ends up sounding like part of the timbre of a single note, rather than a dyad. Here that distinction is blurred, and additionally I think there is some detuning, where a note is played against itself but one of them
Is a few cents higher. Again, when used subtly this makes it sound nice and full and pleasant, but when it becomes more extreme, the 'note' loses its sense of pitch. Finally, that detuning I think is moving. This is known as oscillator drift, and was a bug/feature of old analog synthesizers that is now commonly emulated in digital synths.

You can pick up a free copy of Synth1 (or the different SynthOne) to mess around with different oscillator pitches and detuning.

Basically I think than in additions to music theory of notes being wonky, the music theory of the timbres is also wonky, and further messes with our sense of pitch and harmony.

Cool little song and good question, thanks for asking!
posted by SaltySalticid at 4:30 AM on September 6

I think I ended up answering my own question.

First of all, this seemed vaguely familiar to me but I was distracted by its passing resemblance to Coltrane's Giant Steps. This morning I remembered what it actually reminded me of: Michael Brecker's Original Rays. I'd read somewhere ages ago that he had his EWI (electronic wind instrument, basically a MIDI controller) hooked up to some sort of Oberheim synth to get the multiple voices. Based on that I did some searching and found this page that does a good job of explaining what's going on. So "synthy fuckery" was on the money.

Which is kind of too bad; I was hoping the snail piece was based on existing music theory that I could use to learn how to make those lovely crunchy chords on piano. I still think I'm going to grit my teeth and transpose it by ear, if for no other reason than to figure out what exactly is causing that fantastic moving dissonance. Maybe it'll be something I can use even without the help of a synth.

Does anyone have any further observations based on that info?
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:37 AM on September 6

I'm going to grit my teeth and transpose it by ear

on second thought I've decided to transcribe it instead
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:59 PM on September 6