How Cynthia's Theme Terrorized a Generation

[Music] Pokemon is one of the most accessible kid-friendly video game franchises out there but for such a cheerful colorful series there sure are a lot of people who suffer from pcsd post Cynthia stress disorder it's clear from the memes scattered around the internet that the battle against the champion Cynthia is the most memorable moment of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl and one of the toughest battles in the whole franchise and it's also clear from the discourse around it how much of an impact the music had on this moment from the first notes of Cynthia's theme triggering Vietnam style PTSD flashbacks to references and other games immediately letting players know they're about to get their team wiped to talk about the music of this battle against Champion Cynthia in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl we have to cover two separate tracks the theme that plays during the actual battle and and the approaching Cynthia theme that plays as you enter the Champion's chamber and talk with her just before the battle starts let's take a look at these pieces and try to figure out just how Cynthia's theme manages to strike fear into the hearts of trainers everywhere the approaching Cynthia theme is a bee henan solo piano piece the huge accented chords and dark diminished Harmony create a palpable sense of drama and the Blazing fast triplet runs evoke a virtuosity together instilling a sense of just how intimidating this trainer is supposed to be at the same time the fact that this is a solo piano piece standing in contrast to the general sound of the rest of the game's soundtrack lends Cynthia's character a sense of Elegance and Poise the opening chords of the piece immediately grab your attention the super low Bas triplets spring launching us up to these big crunchy five note chords up top we quickly cycle through a sequence that sets up the dominant chord of the key and F 7 this B minor over F chord sets up the key of B minor and then the following G6 over e to c 7 flat 9 chains together two crunchy chords that both resolve to F but the F chord we land on leaves us hanging using an augmented seventh chord sound to avoid a feeling of resolution and then we sit on this stretched out F 7 flat 9 chord to understand the sound of this piece we have to understand the dominant 7 flat 9 chord this chord carries a ton of Great Dark Energy and dissonance as the five chord in a minor key we have our classic dominant chord 1 3 5 flat 7 with the third raised up from what would naturally occur in a minor key to lead better to the tonic and give the chord that classical sound in the key of B minor this would be in FSH 7 chord adding the flat nth of the chord on top a g natural over F 7 does three things simultaneously it adds more dissonance to the chord by giving us a flat nth interval against the root which sounds pretty gross by itself it makes the resolution to the tonic B minor Stronger by Leading by half step to the fifth of the tonic chord and it adds in the color of a diminished chord because if you take out the root of this five chord you'll notice that from the third to the 9th spells an AAR diminished seven chord this is the basic harmonic sound the p uses to evoke a feeling of intimidation check out the feeling this F 7 flat 9 cord creates and how smoothly it leads into the tonic B minor chord that starts off the [Applause] melody when the Melody comes in we can see the left hand accompaniment shift from short Punchy chords to flowing triplet arpeggios contrasting the jittery Rhythm Of The Melody of above it this type of left-hand pattern is a very common pianistic thing but played at this Tempo it sounds incredibly virtuosic the melody and Harmony of the piece here are also pretty straightforward but played at this Tempo with these crunchy chord voicings give it a dramatic intensity The Melody of this approach theme actually plays into the battle theme too so let's take a look at it real quick each two bar phrase is built off of one single chord tone from the underlying chord embellished with the neighboring notes on either side of it we start on the third of our tonic B minor chord which extends itself with double neighbor motion I talked about the double neighbor embellishment at length in my recent Mario underwater theme video but suffice to say it's it's a way to extend one Melody note into four in a satisfying way we get the same kind of embellishment of the fifth of the chord in the following phrase bringing us to Four Bars of Melody with almost no creative decision- making required the piece moves to the four chord E minor and uses a similar embellishment of one chord tone that I don't think has a name but I always think of it as a run through enclosure we start on the upper neighbor A step above our targeted chord tone resolve down to the chord tone dip down one semitone below our Target chord tone and then resolve back up to that chord tone running through the targeted notes before resolving to it at the end this type of melodic embellishment always sounds great you likely already unconsciously associate it with the beautiful fairy fountain theme from The Legend of Zelda this move is used to embellish these minor chords the third of E minor and the fifth of the B minor that follows the Final Four Bars of the melody simply walk down the minor scale over the five chord and then finish off this resolution back to B minor by embellishing the tonic B with the return of the double neighbor embellishment this melody is simple in the way that all elegant Melodies are spinning out a super strong and satisfying 12 bars of Music out of the bare minimum amount of musical ideas then it's back to more crazy triplet arpeggios over an F 7 flat N9 chord [Applause] [Music] this last section uses the same melodic embellishments we saw before but they're a little obscured by the new Arrangement both the right and left hands are now giving a constant barrage of triplets trading between arpeggios of the one and five chords as we move through the Section isolating the top note of each of these right-hand arpeggios reveals the melody a double neighbor embellishment of the third of our tonic B minor and then the same embellishment of our root ending off with some simple scalar motion up to the fifth and resolving back down to the [Music] route besides the immaculate Vibes provided by this introductory piece it also serves the very important role of providing context for the main battle theme context determines how you experience a piece of music and great pieces of music take the opportunity to set the scene properly so that the music hits the listener the way the composer intended if you're trying to write something fast and high energy and you just dive right into it The Listener is going to be hearing it in the context of Whatever music they're already familiar with the music will be perceived very differently by a lowii hip-hop fan than a speed metal head but if you use an intro that's slow and brooding only to explode into your fast high energy piece the music will be that much more impact and everyone will hear it as fast and high energy compared to the introduction the cut from the approach Quee to the two bar intro of the actual battle theme is quite jarring grabbing your attention with the sudden shift from a quick triplet field to this slower straight eighth note arpeggio this intro then speeds up into a much faster pounding disco Rhythm as it crescendos into the main groove of the tune building up your anticipation of the battle with it [Music] The Bouncing straight e offbeats feel particularly driving in contrast to the approach theme's fluid triplet feel and the introduction of low base and drums hit so much harder after being set up by solo classical piano as much as the approach theme set an intimidating tone for the battle the shift into the battle theme captures this perfect feeling that something's about to go down the piece immediately establishes a threatening Ora by using the flat second scale degree a natural in the new key of gsh minor I talk about this quality much more in-depth in my video on the frian mode but this flat 2 Note specifically is great for establishing a sense of threat and this first bar moves straight down a gsh minor arpeggio with the flat second added to capture this feeling with efficiency like I said before The Melody of Cynthia's theme Builds on The Melody of the approach theme although it might not be obvious since the two pieces do sound very different the main melodic figure is this two bar phrase starting on the tonic G Shar and then embellishing this G Shar with another run through enclosure figure only this time using the flat second scale degree above it to evoke that threatening gsh frian sound this phrase is repeated down a whole step and then the following phrase gives an interesting inversion of the same idea starting on the root of the underlying E chord we move up an e arpeggio and then get this figure winding chromatically from the fourth to the fifth of the chord you can see how it takes the first two notes of the initial melodic figure but instead of resolving chromatically to a g Shar we continue up chromatically to land on a b which ends up sounding like a much brighter version of the same Melody it's a development of the melodic idea that moves the energy from a place of hopelessness to anticipation this excitement pays off the second time through the melody where this Rising e to F progression resolves to a gsh major chord rather than a gsh minor chord Shifting the music suddenly to the parallel major key this bright shift is continued through the following eight bars as we move into an upbeat melody in the key of C major [Music] but this Ray of Hope can't last and it's after this C major bit that the music doubles down on threat with another key shift to B minor the Baseline is based sort of off the Hungarian minor scale a minor scale with a raised seventh and raised fourth and the raised fourth gives the music an unsettling Edge adding to this is the use of the flat second in the line to mix in some more threatening frian energy adding up to make a scale that I couldn't find a name for online the Hungarian frian scale sure [Music] over top of this oppressive bass figure the Melody comes in with a bright and upbeat B major line that contrasts the surrounding accompaniment in a bit of a jarring way after one statement of this melody it rises up a half step to a C major line over the same B minor base figure the two parts clashing horribly this hopeful Melody layered so dissonantly over such a dark Baseline feels like the music is mocking you in response to your hopeful anticipation Cynthia and her Garchomp are laughing right in your [Music] face this melody eventually gives way to these insane alien lines that jump all over the place in a way that sounds totally nonsensical [Music] this closing section of the loop just screams you don't know what you've gotten yourself into do you these details are draped around a skeleton that will feel very familiar to any Pokemon fan Cynthia's theme was composed by junichi masaa the composer behind the very first Pokemon soundtracks and everything from the 1 to Flat 7 to Flat 6 to Flat 7 chord progression and the Disco Baseline to these chromatic scale flurries even to the conceptual structure of starting off minor and moving to a much more upbeat major sound farther in is pulled from the vocabulary of battle music going back to the original Pokémon red and blue these elements connect Cynthia musically to the lineage of Pokémon battle music going back a decade earlier and imbued with the threatening frian flat second the merciless altered chromaticism of the altered Hungarian scale Baseline and the contrast against the classical piano approach theme that set it up we have a theme that perfectly characterizes Cynthia and primes her battle to have an impact on the player that is clearly still resonating with people to this day thank you all so much for watching head over to my patreon if you want to support the channel and pick up my full transcriptions of these themes and I'll see you all in the next one [Music]

Channel: 8-bit Music Theory

Views: 172,958

Keywords: pokemon diamond and pearl, pokemon DPPt, pokemon platinum, pokemon music, battle against cynthia, cynthia music, approaching cynthia, piano music, cynthia's theme, how to write music, pokemon battle, elite four, 8-bit Music Theory

Id: ERWkjuX86YM

Length: 15min 6sec (906 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 30 2024