Good and Evil in the Persona 5 Soundtrack [Patron Request]

a couple of years ago I was hanging out with some of my younger cousins and we were jamming together on some Beatles songs we had just finished playing a hard day's night when my one cousin asked me isn't the song in the key of G how come there's an F major chord in it if F isn't in the key of G attempting to hide my pride at his budding theory nerdery I told him well it's called mode mixture the F chord is borrowed from the parallel minor scale G minor to which he simply replied oh okay cool I was a little taken aback by his sudden acceptance of this idea and lack of follow up questions but it wasn't until I thought about it later that I realized the reason why I was surprised because while my explanation answered the question of how there could possibly be an F major chord in a song that's in the key of G major it didn't shed any light onto why anybody would want to write a song that way it was an explanation that served to reinforce the idea of music theory as a set of rules by which to compose music rather than a system of understanding and predicting the effects of music so today I want to talk to you about borrowed chords in a slightly less traditional way using the soundtrack of persona 5 as a vehicle for the discussion this soundtrack was requested by patron Cameron gable so thanks Cameron to start off we have to talk about the concept of major and minor the major minor duality in music is one of the first bits of music theory most of us learn right up there with scales and every good boy deserves fudge we're commonly taught especially as kids just beginning to learn music that major chords are happy and minor chords are sad now I'm not pedantic enough to say that this is wrong it's certainly an easy way to distinguish the two qualities and it's useful for introducing people to the idea of there being a predictable emotional response to different musical techniques which in my opinion is what music theory is all about that being said there's no denying that this explanation is at best a gross oversimplification the truth of it is more like major and minor represent two directions of musical growth one towards a brighter tonality and the other towards a darker Adam Neely talks about this idea of musical brightness and darkness in relation to the major modes ranking the modes in order from most bright to most dark and Jacob collier's talked about the exact same idea in several interviews through the lens of the circle of fifths that is when incorporating out of key notes into a piece of music using notes found going clockwise around the circle of fifths will sound brighter while going counterclockwise will sound a darker I'm going to be using both of these metrics for gauging brightness and darkness and music so if you haven't already you should probably check out these two videos if you're having trouble following along I'll put some links in the description they're super interesting so you should just go watch them anyway so to get back to my original point let's take a look at some of the reasons why you would use this kind of mode mixture in a composition and the two general directions that mode mixture can take you in you can find a good example of what I mean by darkness and brightness in the game's main theme wake up get up get out there the song starts out very upbeat and the harmony reflects this with a flat 3 4 1 chord progression in the key of G minor using a major 4 chord rather than the minor 4 you'd find naturally in the G minor scale makes use of the e natural note or raised sixth scale degree of the key on the ranking of modes this puts us in the territory of G Dorian which is slightly brighter than regular old G minor if thinking on the circle of fifths this natural note would be borrowed from the key of D minor one step clockwise on the circle from G minor and therefore a one-step brighter the songs in a minor key but borrowing just this one note from out of key gives the song a little bit extra pep or lightness [Music] the tune takes an even brighter turn when it borrows the parallel major Keys tonic chord G major for the verse [Music] [Applause] using a major tonic in a minor key you can't get much brighter than that at this point in the song we're at an all-time high but then the piece takes a turn with the pre-chorus abruptly hitting us with a D half diminished chord this clearly implies the key of C minor which as we can see is one step darker on the circle of fifths from our home of G minor the thing is we were borrowing so heavily from G major which is way the heck over here so jumping straight to a C minor tonality is super dramatic it beautifully underscores the lyrics too with the words it's useless being given a level of poignancy with this dramatic tonal shift it totally gives you the sense that things have just taken a turn for the worse and all of the elements of the song work together to achieve the singular emotional goal this is why you should use mode mixture on the other end of the emotional spectrum let's take a look at a song that starts out dark and then takes us in a brighter direction the blooming villain theme as you may have guessed is for characters that have embraced to their dark sides and the music reflects this quality quite nicely we start off with this low gritty sinteres that borrows the flat 2nd and flat fifth from the keys parallel Locrian scale to really set the mood in our home key of c-sharp minor' this flat second and flat fifth would be borrowed from the key of B minor found two steps counterclockwise and therefore darker on the circle of fifths thinking modally the c-sharp Locrian scale from which these notes can be borrowed is two modes darker than our default c-sharp minor scale notice a pattern yet anyways this oppressive hopeless feeling keeps up until the C section where the song bounces back with this energetic riff [Music] it sounds so triumphant and dare I say major compared to what came before it but it's still completely in the key of c-sharp minor' it achieves this emotional effect simply by using the natural second and fifth we find in the key of c-sharp minor' rather than the flattened second and flattened fifth our years have gotten so used to from the intro in this case abandoning the mode mixture abruptly moves the music up two notches clockwise on the circle of fifths or two steps up on the modal scale and this is such a powerful way of creating musical growth when telling a story things always have to be either getting worse or getting better for the main characters to keep things interesting it doesn't matter where the characters start off as long as where they end up is considerably better or worse depending on the type of story it is using mode mixture is just one way that composers create the same effect musically the keeper of lust theme moves us in a darker direction setting us up clearly in the key of a-minor up until the B section [Music] this darker turn is caused by borrowing from the a Locrian scale found two notches darker or moving two notches counterclockwise on the circle of fifths to the key of G minor as we borrow a flat B flat and G minor chords the contrast is made even more jolting by putting our tonic a minor right in between these borrowed chords as if to showcase just how poorly they fit into our home key what's also interesting though is that these chords being major adds another wrinkle into the piece the effect is not just infinite blackness and depression it's something more akin to a genuine smile from a genuinely evil person listen to it again and see what I mean [Music] this adds another complication to the proceedings not only do the notes you borrow from outside the key affect the level of darkness or brightness that the music moves in but how you borrow them matters two chords all have their own levels of dissonance or consonants and combining all of these different factors is how you get to more nuanced emotional territory for example combining a dissonant sounding chord voicing with notes that sound incredibly bright within the key of the piece ear and has a much more nuanced effect than just going all happy all the way it's kind of like the tone of persona 5 as a whole you play as a group of thieves infiltrating people's minds which is a pretty dark or minor idea on its own but you're working for the forces of good and this juxtaposition of just motives with typically unjust actions is inherently interesting enough to base a whole game off of persona 5 soundtrack uses these kind of musical oxymorons all the time check out the phantom theme which sounds so jolly you'd almost have a hard time realizing it's in a minor key [Music] it certainly doesn't sound like how you typically think of what minor music sounds like [Music] and that's because of how it uses mode mixture the opening four bars immediately take a step brighter than your basic minor sound by incorporating the Dorian raised sixth or D sharp in our key of F sharp minor as part of this b7 over F sharp cord already we've established a tonality that's not too dark and the bouncy bass line adds to the happy-go-lucky attitude the second section takes us in an even brighter direction by jumping to this D sharp minor nine chord D sharp minor being the relative minor to F sharp major not only includes the raised sixth of the key but also the raised seventh and even the major third this basically gets as close as you can to borrowing the parallel major tonic without actually doing it after the shift were gradually taken back to our F sharp Dorian beginnings as we move from a d sharp minor down to a C sharp minor before we go back to our tonic of F sharp minor looking on our circle of fifths you can see that the range of the song covers three notches on the circle or thinking on a modal level it covers three runs between f-sharp Dorian and f-sharp major this range of modes that the piece covers makes a huge difference to the sound the phantom theme and the blooming villain theme we heard earlier are both in minor keith's but they couldn't sound more different even compared to behind the mask which stays entirely in a typical minor key without borrowing any notes or chords you can hear a huge difference in the tone of the piece [Music] you'll notice that these pieces don't usually move more than one or two notches above or below the main key especially not all at once and there's a good reason for that we've heard just how dramatic it can be to change even this little so if a tune tried to jump to the other side of the circle of fifths all of a sudden it might strain the limits of human comprehension [Music] the most dramatic shift that you'll hear on the persona 5 soundtrack as far as I found at least is in the awakening theme [Music] this deliberate juxtaposition of our tonic G minor chord with a b-flat minor chord rapidly bounces us back and forth between our home G minor scale and notes from the G Locrian mode making for an extremely dramatic and dissonant progression to make it even more dramatic the D flat is put in the bass under each b-flat minor chord adding another level of tension as the bass outlines the infamously dissonant tritone interval this piece is really going for shock value here [Music] [Music] hopefully that shed some insight onto why you might use mode mixture in a composition or at the very least was sort of interesting to listen to if you have any questions or comments about the stuff leave them in the comments section below or tweet me at 8-bit music theory if you feel like you would need a better grasp on the basics of music theory to understand what I talked about here look forward to more tutorial level videos that I plan to be putting out very soon this next video I'm going to be putting out is gonna give a brief overview of what modes are and why you should care which might clear up some things in this video that might not have necessarily made sense for you anyways if you want to support the channel you can check out my patreon page here or just share my videos with any friends who you think would enjoy them or any enemies who you think would hate them thanks so much for watching and I'll see you guys next time question [Music] ha

Channel: 8-bit Music Theory

Views: 331,404

Rating: 4.9758582 out of 5

Keywords: 8bit Music Theory, 8-bit music theory, vgm, music theory, music analysis, musical, theory, analysis, analytical, video, Persona 5, Joker, Ryuji, Ann, Yusuke, Kamoshida, Persona 5 soundtrack, ost, Wake Up Get Up Get Out There, Phantom, Beneath the Mask, eight bit music theory, Keeper of Lust, Blooming Villain, Awakening, theme, Shoji Meguro

Id: aWxni7NiQ6M

Length: 14min 15sec (855 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 31 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/BurningToaster]

This was pretty interesting even as someone who knows next to nothing about music theory.

[u/MrLoxinator]

I could follow pretty much nothing but that was still great.

[u/Narlaw]

For those who can read or understand music theory.

[u/[deleted]]

Pretty interesting watch. Even if you don't know music theory it's still presented in a very basic way