Welcome back everyone! Let's talk about
mediant chords. It's something you've heard in pretty much every pop song, in every
movie soundtrack, in a lot of classical music, in other genres as well, but you'll recognize
this pretty instantly. For those of you new here, don't forget to like and subscribe,
ding the bell if you want notifications, and I'm also on "Buy me a coffee". If you want to
show your appreciation then you can do that there. So generally speaking, mediant chords are
harmonies related by a third. In theory you'll find a lot more differentiated names for it, like
diatonic mediants and chromatic mediants, altered mediant chords or sub-mediant chords, but I don't
want to make this more complicated than it is by throwing around a lot of terminology because we're
not doing rocket science here. The principle is very simple. I've laid out a couple examples
inside my digital audio workstation so you can actually see it and hear it. All right, let's take
a look at this. So I've prepped a bunch of stuff here. I'll explain it in a little bit. This is the
piano track. I've also orchestrated these a little bit with ensemble patches in the background so
you can actually hear what they sound like as, you know, orchestra sustains. But so let's zoom in.
We're gonna be in C, here we go. Just to explain the concept of what we're going to be doing: So
C is going to be our root key, that's going to be the first chord, and then the second chord is
going to be one of the ones that is a third away. So looking at this, the first one we're going
to be looking at is the relations of C to E. So a major third. Then we're going
from C to E flat, so a minor third. And then we're going from C to A,
so a third below, a minor third. And C to A flat, a major third. Right? And each of
these is going to yield four chord progressions. So let's zoom out. I've color-coded these. So
these are the first four: C to E. You can see the bass note C to E every single time but it's
going to be a different thing every single time. So this first one is going to be C
major to E major. It sounds like this. Giving very strong Radiohead vibes. So in
the next example we're keeping the C major but instead of going to E major, we're
going to E minor. Sounds like this. We've all heard this one before. But then we can
obviously also change the first chord because we can also start, instead of on C major, we can
start on C minor. So this is basically the first example again but instead of starting on C major,
we're starting on C minor. It sounds like this. Also, we've all heard this before. And then
the last example this is going to yield is basically this example but again starting on
C minor instead of C major. Sounds like this. We've also all heard this in one gazillion film
scores. So those are the examples for C to E. However, the next one we have is C to
E flat. So what can we do with that? It's these yellow ones right
here. So we're once again starting on C major but instead of going to E major,
we go to E flat major. Sounds like this. As I said before, you've heard
all of this in Lord of the Rings. I think every single one of these
is somewhere in Lord of the Rings, and in some predominant themes actually. But so
next example is, we're keeping that first chord C major but instead of going to E flat major,
we're going to E flat minor. Sounds like this. And then same thing as
before, but instead of going C major to E flat major, we're
going C minor to E flat major. And then this example is again this one.
However, we change the first chord to minor. So C minor to E flat minor. Right? So these are
all the C to E and C to E flat examples. Now what happens when we go down?
Because the next example is C to A. So we're starting again, C major to A
major. Sounds like this. And then same principle. I'm going to speed it up a little
now because we get it now. C major to A minor. All heard that before in every pop
song ever. And then C minor to A major. And C minor to A minor. And then the last one we have is
C to A flat. So the major third down. And these are the four examples you get with
that, starting again on C major to A flat major. And then C major to A flat minor. C minor to A flat major. And then the last one, C minor to A flat minor. A prominent score using mediant chords is the
Lord of the Rings trilogy by Howard Shore. But you'd be hard-pressed to find any film score
that doesn't use this at some point. And since the chords are related by a third, you can also
use it to modulate. If you look at the Davy Jones theme by Hans Zimmer, in every iteration it goes
into a different key but it's related in thirds. If you want to listen to that. Some of these
examples sound a little more outlandish because... some of them have shared chord tones so
they sound a lot more related than those that don't have any shared chord tones. You don't
have to keep the root note in the bass either. I just did that in the examples to simplify
it a little bit and give a better idea. But obviously you can play around with that as well.
And as you could see, you've heard all of these before, either in a pop song or in a Danny Elfman
score or in Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings. These all sound very familiar. I've assembled
a couple of simplified piano versions, piano reductions, of some of the Lord of the
Rings passages that use this. Obviously, I mean you can go through the entire soundtrack and,
you know, in every piece you will find this. But here are some prominent examples. I've reduced
them, simplified them so you can see what's happening. And there are also some examples
in here where the root note is not actually in the bass, which Howard Shore does a lot in
Lord of the Rings, which also gives it a more, sometimes a more otherworldly effect. I've
also transposed all of these examples to C since my examples at the beginning were
in C, just to kind of keep it simple. And as a final word, as usual I have some thoughts
on some of the comments that were left on the other videos. Something that I see a lot on the
composition videos and also on the orchestration videos is, a lot of people are very grateful that
I impart this information but they're kind of, it seems they think that this is some kind of gate
kept secret that we're not sharing with the rest of the world or something. That's not true. There
are plenty of books out there, there are plenty of courses out there. You know, you don't have to
wait for me to make a video about it is all that I want to say. I don't want this to come across
as snarky, like "oh why don't you read a book". That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying if
you're really interested in this and you really want to learn about this or, you know,
you see something you don't understand, chances are someone has written a book about it.
Like, if you want to learn about the instruments, there's Study of Orchestration but also a ton of
other orchestration books that you can get. You know, some people are like oh why aren't you doing
videos about counterpoint? If you really want to learn about counterpoint, there are plenty of
books and a lot of them are really cheap too. They're like 15 dollars or something,
10 dollars. So it doesn't cost you an arm and a leg to actually get this information.
Obviously you also have Google. All this to say: don't necessarily wait for me to make a video
about something because if you're really dying to know these things, that information is
already out there, written in countless books and also on other YouTube channels and in courses
and, you know, you can find PDF files of course material that you can go through. So I just don't
want you to feel like you have to wait for me to do something because you really don't. If you
really want to learn something, the information is there. You're just going to have to go and look
for it. There are also just some more complicated topics that, you know, at conservatory we go over
that in the span of like two years or four years because they are such extensive topics and they've
changed over the course of centuries. So you kind of have to learn the different iterations of it,
counterpoint being one of them. People keep asking "oh why aren't you making a video about the
elusive counterpoint". I might one day make a video about, you know, the general rules or like
the top 10 rules of counterpoint or something. But this is not something you can just put in a 10
minute or 30 minute YouTube video. This would have to be a really long series and it's completely
useless also if you don't practice it. So this is the kind of information that's
really better contained in a book, and there are books about that. Or in, you know,
a lengthy one-on-one class where you really need one-on-one coaching because this isn't just
something that you can just condense like that. It's a very involved topic. It's like trying to
condense harmonic theory of the past 600 years into a 30-minute YouYube video. You just can't
do that. But again, countless books out there, some of the books by some of our favorite
composers. I mean Tchaikovsky wrote a book for example on harmony but there's a ton of
other books about harmony out there. And you know Korsakov wrote a book on orchestration.
Just look up trusted sources and you will probably find a book that very much describes
exactly what you're looking for, or a course, a teacher, an online class, doesn't really matter.
We learn in different ways. Not everybody learns by reading books. Some people love to learn
through score analysis, that's totally valid as well. If you have an easier time analyzing music
and just kind of figuring things out that way, that's perfectly fine. That's probably
better even than reading a book. Seeing what actual composers have actually done
in the past. Something that also worked for me is taking scores that I like, classical scores...
you can go to IMSLP and find pretty much anything that is in public domain at this point which is a
lot, and just take a couple pages of your favorite pieces from the classical literature and mock
them up. Because by mocking up you have to either draw in or play in every single line and
by doing that you kind of are forced to learn how the piece was put together. I find
that super helpful and at the same time you're also learning to become better at mock-ups and
mixing and all that stuff, and orchestration, and instruments, composition technique. There's a
lot that you learn at the same time by doing that. But again this isn't for everyone. I also know
some classical composers that loved learning by transferring scores by hand. So they would look up
a score that they liked and they would transcribe every line by hand on a piece of paper which
is essentially what i'm doing with mockups. So anyway there are many ways to learn this and
this is not secret information. All the scores are out there, all the books are out there, all
the videos are out there, courses are out there, and most of it is not hidden behind a paywall
anymore. So this is not some gate kept stuff in a way. This is not some secret, you just
kind of have to look for it and kind of... that's the challenge of modern day I suppose.
The challenge of Google and the challenge of the 21st century is we have too much information.
So sifting through all of that and finding the method that works for you and kind of finding the
right information the way that you best understand it, that's kind of the hard part. And I struggle
with that too. If I want to learn something new, I usually have to click through so many YouTube
videos to actually find the video that explains it in the way that i need it explained. So
it's a normal thing. It's a challenge of our century but the nice thing is that all the
information is there. Nobody can keep it from you. You don't have to wait for me to do it. You don't
have to wait for me to make a video about it. You can always go and just learn the stuff that
you want to know. Nobody's holding you back. So with that encouragement, practice mediant
chords, try to hear them in film scores. It's actually kind of fun because all of a sudden
you find that you understand actually a lot more music than you thought you'd understand.
And yeah, like, subscribe, ding the bell, buy me coffee, whatever, comment... or
don't. It's fine, I'll see you next time!
