Month: February 2023

Have you ever heard your grandparents tell you that “All new music just sounds the same?” Well, in part they are correct, but this trend is nothing new. Ever since the sixties, much of the music of the time has chosen to use the same chord progression. From the Beatles to Jason Derulo, the combination of chords that make up these songs has been dubbed “The Four Chords”. This set of chords is the reason that you can sing Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing while listening to Bob Marley’s No Woman No Cry.

First popularized by the Australian comedy group The Axis of Awesome, the four chords are a trend in countless songs that just seems to work. All though the order of the chords varies, the songs all use some variation of the following chords in a major key: major one, major fifth, minor sixth, and a major four.

Source: Axis of Awesome comedian Jordan Raskopoulos on Being Transgender – The Guardian

Though many offer different explanations for why the minor sixth chord has a place in this sequence of chords has, it’s quite easy to see why the other three chords appear so often. Not only do most of these chords appeal to the ear due to their major tonality, but the sequence of one, five, and four contains every note in the scale. This means that by using these four chords in a song, singers can employ a wide range of notes that will sound proper to the ear, rather than having to stay centered on only a few notes of the scale. Additionally, the inclusion of a major one chord offers resolution to the listeners, so repeating a pattern with a major one chord in a sequence appeals to the ear in this manner as well.

As for the minor six chord in the sequence, my rationale behind the inclusion in this sequence is that the one minor chord in the sequence appeals to the ear by easing tension, as well as being like a major one chord. Although I will not go into an in-depth explanation on the makeup of a minor sixth chord, the chord shared two of its three notes with a major one chord. Incorporating a minor chord in this sequence not only emulates some of the other chords which appeals to the ear by keeping a common tone between note changes but going from a more uncomfortable sounding minor chord to a pleasant major chord.

So next time you listen to a song on the radio that sounds oddly familiar to another song you know, try looking up the chord progression of the song. It’s possible that you’re onto something and may have just discovered another one of the songs built upon these four chords.

Unlike the Titanic Theme, James Horner’s work on Avatar’s music takes us to strange and fantastical worlds that only could only be made through Cameron’s masterfully crafted digital effects. In a contrary fashion to last week’s Titanic theme analysis which seemed to follow musical sense and was written to simply follow what our ears want to hear, Avatar does the unexpected.

Remember back to last week how both of Horner’s major works went from a minor six chord to a major five chord to please the ear. Following this expected chord change, the ear naturally wants to hear the change to a major fourth chord (the next in the Titanic sequence), or a one chord which will leave the listener with a satisfying end to the phrase. Instead of following either of these paths, Avatar’s music travels to the major second chord of the scale.

Stop. Wait.

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If you recall back to my second blog post where I explained the relationship between chords and scales, I said that in a major scale the second chord would be minor (ii). So why would Horner choose a different chord (II)? By doing the unexpected musically, Horner takes us to another world. Rather than take any expected path, the major second chord does not lie in the key to the song, so the listener knows something is up. Due to being a major chord, the listener’s ear is still attuned to the chord played, except something will sound notably different to them which is the chord not being fully inside of the key.

Then once again, the next and final chord transition breaks traditional rules the ear enjoys listening to. Horner chooses to take the theme back to a minor six chord, thereby ending the phrase on a minor chord rather than a major chord. As I said earlier, our ears love to hear the transition from minor chords to major chords, switching this order sometimes leaves the audience feeling unsatisfied before traveling to the next phrase of the music. This creative decision leaves a hint of uncertainty of what is yet to come musically, reflecting the uncertain safety of the Pandora wilderness in the movie.

Both of Horner’s breakthrough movie soundtracks utilize the same opening patterns, but his musical genius helps to further force the listener into the movie’s storyline by cleverly choosing to follow or break traditional music rules. Titanic brings the listener satisfaction through the music reflecting the happiness in the lover’s eyes whereas Avatar’s theme takes us on an unexpected and uncertain journey.

With the recent release of Avatar 2: The Way of the Water dominating theatres worldwide, I thought it would be interesting to explore the music of James Cameron’s most popular films, Aliens, Avatar, Avatar 2, and Titanic. All three of these films boast massive success, placing them in some of the highest grossing films in history, all under the same director, but what many may not know is that the three movies are all scored by a hidden figure, also ironically named James.

James Horner scored both Avatar and Titanic, which both employ a very similar melody to encapsulate the audience in an expansive world, or a tragic love story. His music primarily acts pleasing to the ear by following a minor chord with a major chord. This simple fact holds true in both the Titanic theme (My Heart Will Go On) and the theme from Avatar (Jake’s First Flight). Both musical sequences begin with a minor six chord at the beginning of the phrase. In Titanic, this would be where Celine Dion sings “Near”. Both musical sequences then take the minor chord and move it down to a major fifth chord, the nearest consecutive major chord (Where Dion sings “Far”).

Source: IMDB; James Horner

This transition from a major to minor chord appears pleasing to the ear since our ears tend to find major patterns in music more pleasing. Furthermore, the notes of a scale most pleasing to the ear are the first, fourth, and fifth notes, so the contrasting tone traveling from the sixth scale degree to the fifth stands out to us as a listener.

The two differ greatly after this point, but the similar introductions work to capture the attention of the audience’s ear due to its pleasing nature. Since the titanic theme is much simpler to explain musically, I will finish the song off this week and go in depth into the Avatar theme next week.

From the fifth scale degree, the titanic theme travels to the fourth chord of the major scale, which you may remember is another chord that our ears are attuned to. Once again traveling to a major chord is pleasing to the ear, so we feel attached to this melody. Afterwards, a bit more of switching between these three chords occurs before the end of the phrase happens. At this high point in the phrase where Dion sings “On and on” and the flute beautifully enters, the chord transitions to the first chord of the scale. The entire pathway the song follows to finally end the phrase on the one chord truly helps listeners find a satisfying end to the phrase, and is one of the reasons the song may be so popular.

I am hoping that by including this brief music lesson as one of my early blog posts, I can mostly explain why much of music is so pleasing to the ears. Last semester, my mistake was in attempting to teach too much theory rather than analyze music, so hopefully with this post alone I can correct that.

The foundation of most music is the scale. Whether it is the newest pop songs or the classical Entertainer, most of music follows simple rules that are pleasing to the ear based on this scale. I bet that at some point in your education, you have been taught that a scale is Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do, so I will try to use this base understanding for music theory purposes.

Imagine that each of the words on the scale had a numerical value attached to it in the order you would sing the scale. Do would be one, Re would be two, all the way until Ti would be seven, and the top Do would be eight. Both the major and minor scales in music have 8 notes, but I should not need to differentiate between the two for the purposes of this blog.

Alongside the scale numbers is the associated types of chords that go with each portion of the scale, which I will just give to you readers rather than go through countless weeks of explaining. In a major scale, the chord that goes with one is a major chord. Then a minor chord goes with two. A minor chord once again with three.  A major chord with four and five. A minor chord with six. What is referred to as a diminished chord for the seventh note of the scale, and a major chord for the eighth notes. Although the minor scale has a different pattern of chords, I do not expect this to be an issue since minor scales are much less common than major scales in popular music.

You don’t need to remember that information dump now since I will be able to reiterate much of the information as we go, but hopefully I was able to express that there is a natural relationship between a scale and the order of chords that goes with a scale. This is the primary foundation of all of music theory and is what I will use in the upcoming weeks to show the relationships found in music. Just simply try and remember that a scale is associated with numerical values and that different steps on the scale have different chords associated with them.