How to Listen to Music Incorrectly and find Superman in the Avengers

hey so did anybody else hear about that New Avengers movie it's finally over the decade of Avenger stuff I know they say they're making more but like come on they didn't name it endgame for nothing I mean like yeah I liked it but let's be honest with ourselves we all knew I walked into this movie knowing I was gonna like it like come on just look at that climactic scene at the end spoilers by the way but I think that that final scene with the portals is really really good controversial hot take I know and the thing that I especially liked about it is that the music is doing something really really cool notice not just say that the music and endgame isn't cool in general like we get a return of this heroic sacrifice music when Tony snaps his fingers [Music] we could the same music for Black Widow that we got for Gomorrah when they both got thrown off that cliff [Music] and the music that plays in cap dances with what's-her-face is the exact same as what he was listening to in Winter Soldier [Music] there's a ton of really cool musical moments in this film I'm not dismissing that but this scene just kind of like it feels like they turned it up to 11 you know like two things one it almost feels like this could be this generations no I am your father you know like it feels like people are gonna be referencing this for a long time and - I don't think I listen to it right as in I didn't hear what I was supposed to like I didn't music good now I know what you thinking and no I didn't have a stroke I think I mean it when I say it I don't think I heard it correctly I listened to this film wrong I was incorrectly listening to the music and your gut reaction to hearing somebody say something like that might be what are you talking about listen to music wrong music is subjective isn't beauty in the eye of the holder and all that other kind of stuff and yeah sure that's right but I'm just gonna be a pain in the butt for a little while here see I like to analyze music in a bubble in its own closed system which is fine and all sort of I mean I come from a very hard Western European music background and when you're looking at something from that very specific common practice period applying those common practice period techniques is pretty standard stuff but in truth out there in the real world no music exists in a bubble all music everywhere is constantly building on itself and developing as time goes on and as a listener whether you mean to or not as music morphs over time you're going to develop certain associations with specific patterns and music you can go as far as to say as their musical tropes or cliches but in truth there are a bunch of musical patterns that everyone's familiar with but doesn't tend to consciously think about let me give you an example why do we hear what we hear right here just name your price and now paid yeah I bet you would have you ever sat down and thought about what makes the saxophone sound so well sexual the chances are that you're probably thinking it has something to do with like Careless Whisper or something like that right [Music] okay but why did Careless Whisper feature a sax solo in the first place and why does that sax solo sound so romantic well saxophones have always existed in the popular music sphere because all popular music stemmed from rock and roll in the 1950s which itself was a response to blues so naturally you're gonna see in here jazz horns all over the place especially in anything that's even remotely adjacent to pop music but that doesn't really address the sexuality of the saxophone well in earnest to get to there you're probably gonna have to look at the 1951 film a streetcar named desire where composer Alex North used jazz to highlight urban settings as well as all the non pg-13 stuff come from its nandu it's hard to stay looking fresh and hardware the way I haven't washed it even pardon me but why did he do that well back in the 1920s basically all jazz existed in clubs and dance halls that big-band swing was just dance music more or less and if you want more detail on this you can check out one of my other videos I don't link in the description but during this time period people like Henry Ford started blaming black people and jazz and dance halls for all the problems that were arising due to rapid urban development even though all of that was really Henry Ford's fault there's a common stereotype that these dance halls led to alcohol and drugs and the devil and all that kind of stuff that makes suburbanite nervous but this stereotype was a massive component of how people perceive jazz for the next few decades so north here used that jazzy sound function as a kind of shortcut to mean any sort of urban environment and after years and years of referencing that kind of sound we've developed the collective shortcut for this kind of saxophone music to mean something well not pg-13 so that's kind of an example of how and why certain things sound a certain way and how that develops and changes over time but that's just like how tropes and cliches work people build off of common associations over time and they slowly morph and develop new meanings and this isn't exactly exclusive to music that exists everywhere in the art world it's just how things naturally develop over the years and when you're writing music for some kind of media it's a great way to convey a lot of information in a short amount of time that is assuming that you and your audience are on the same wavelength and you both have that same musical Association cuz like what happens when you the listener miss interpret the composer's message what if the composer intended one thing but you heard something completely different well let's bring it back to the Avengers one of my favorite themes in the MCU is ant-man steam but why does ant-man's theme sound the way that it does well what is ant-man in essence he's just a burglar and when you look at this film as a whole it's really just a heist film and what to heist film sound like well what are some classic heist films James Bond in Mission Impossible right James Bond has that classic jazzy sound that we all know and love and Mission Impossible has that infectiously cashy rhythmic ostinato that repeating pattern dun dun dun [Music] but you see there's something a little more unique about the main theme for Mission Impossible it's in five four I'm not gonna get into how time signatures work in much detail just know that like 95% of all the music that you'll ever listen to is in 4/4 just one two three four like everything and then another like three percent is in three four just think of anything that sounds like a waltz and then the last two percent is in 6/8 which is basically anything that sounds like a pirate or like it should be played at a Ren Faire and yeah we could sit here all day and explain why a lot of people have those associations with those time signatures and we can spend another hour talking about which are simple or compound or duple or triple meter and don't make me break up a nine eight I'll do it I don't give a crap anyway ninety nine and a half percent of all the music most people will have listened to will be in one of these time signatures which are considered to be symmetrical but Mission Impossible is in 5/4 which is considered to be asymmetrical it isn't super balanced you can almost feel like it's falling over itself [Music] it gives this piece momentum using this kind of asymmetrical meter helps give your piece of driving motion and so when we get to ant-man composer Christophe Beck elicited that asymmetrical time signature because ant-man's theme is in seven eight one two one two one two three one two one two one two three one two one two one two three one two one two one two three so if you're really familiar with a Mission Impossible theme and it's arguably one of the most popular melodies that most people will know that's in an asymmetrical time signature then there's a good chance that you're gonna create some kind of subconscious musical shortcut between ant-man and Mission Impossible now if you add that jazzy James Bond instrumentation then BAM all of a sudden ant-man's gonna start feeling more like that heist guy without you ever knowing it but here's the thing what if you're an idiot like me and you've never really seen a James Bond or Mission Impossible movie I remember seeing one when I was a kid that had that guy from Mamma Mia in it and another one with a blonde guy in it but like it felt like he was making a lot of references that I didn't pick up on and I only ever saw Mission Impossible in fragments when ever was on TV so I'm familiar with the music in these films by reputation but I was never really exposed to it in the way those composers intended but that doesn't really matter right because Beck here isn't trying to make a single reference to a specific film or film series over the years this style of music has been referenced over and over and over again that kind of music has just become the secret-agent sound [Applause] [Music] but again that's not what I got when I listened to ant-man because when I first listened to ant-man I didn't think of secret agent I thought of The Incredibles that's because when they made the Incredibles they wanted to capture that James Bond aesthetic so they had composer Michael Giacchino emulate monty Norman's signature James Bond sound and I've spent so much time looking at akeno's work from Pixar that that's how I heard ant-man theme which in a weird kind of backdoor coincidence sort of way made the ant-man theme sound even more like a superhero theme to me which I guess is kind of convenient but at the same time I feel like Beck one and ant-man to be more like secret agent than Incredibles which if that were true would mean that I missed the intended message now I know that the answer I'm gonna get from a lot of people is gonna be some kind of death of the author well you know even if you hear something that the composer didn't intend you're creating your own subjective interpretation of the music in which yes fine that works for a lot of media but in the world of media composition and soundtrack scoring where most audiences are going to expect the music to help set the tone of a scene rather than tell its own story missing the point of the music in a scene can be totally confusing for the story at large like me hearing the Incredibles instead of James Bond making this feel more like Superman than Mission Impossible because that's the thing about analyzing music it's never in a bubble it's never cut and dry the most dogmatic draconian and some other D word the most intense musical argument in the world is still just someone saying this is what I heard when I listen to this piece this is what I thought the composer was doing and here's why but in an instance where composers trying to establish the tone of a scene by utilizing these musical associations or references or tropes or cliches whatever you want to call them what happens if you elicit one of these musical connections in your audience by accident what happens if you remind your audience of something else without meaning to let's look at captain Marvel's theme when I first heard it it immediately reminded me of something else when you look at what I'm gonna call as the most iconic segment of Captain Marvel steam you can see it rise in this opening leap of a minor seventh then we have this descending and ascending motion kinda like this valley structure right before we reach a note that is an octave above the first note and then we have this cadential structure or at least we have the ending to the motif the problem with that is that if you just take that description a minor seventh up a down and up structure a note an octave above the first note and then I guess like cadence but if you just look at that description especially when you look at just the first part of this motif that's exactly what the opening to Star Trek does issues to boldly go where no one has gone before we get this opening of a minor seventh with what I'm calling a passing tone a descending an ascending figure that finishes on a note an octave above where we began and then some kind of cadential structure now yeah I can already see all the middle schoolers in the comment section saying stuff like they're not evening clothes you're nitpicking that doesn't prove anything [Music] please just stop just shut up that's what I heard when I sat down and watched this film I'll admit it it's pretty subtle but when I first listened to Captain Marvel's theme in the theater my immediate thought was huh that kind of smells like the opening to Star Trek to me but more importantly it sounds like the opening to the next generation instead of the original series because the next generation is the best Star Trek but they actually have the same opening these are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise its five-year mission to explore strange new world it also didn't help that this entire film took place in space and in spaceships and had aliens and lasers but I don't know how many other people heard that or even if it was pin our top rock the composer for Captain Marvel or if it was her intention to elicit that kind of sound maybe she wanted a theme that reminded her of space and so she turned to the greatest TV show ever made suck at Game of Thrones or maybe she just wrote something completely original and it happened to remind me of Star Trek or maybe even she like subconsciously turned to a Star Trek sound I don't know that's a really great example of how subjective not only music is with beauty in the eye of the beholder and all that but also how even analyzing music can be extremely subjective based on where you hear what happening when and what you think the composer was trying to do and for what reasons and here we get into the weeds on how and why you may or may not listen to a piece of music quote unquote correctly if the composer is trying to elicit a specific sound for a specific purpose in a very specific setting and you the listener hears something else is it possible that you heard that piece of music incorrectly so um with that let's get back to the portals and let's talk about this whirlwind of awesomeness and confusion so I think the first thing to address that I don't think anybody else has talked about yet is that um this is Superman or again at least to me this is Superman or I think a better way of putting it is I guess like this is proto Superman I'm serious have a seat break out the popcorn this is gonna be good okay so we get this portal double Conda and what do you hear boom this bass drum followed by what a solo trumpet I think it might actually be a cornet but hey you two you [Music] and then boom boom boom that bass drum again and we get the ensemble bass drum again and the ensembles more or less developing on what we heard the solo is playing now let's see if this sounds familiar to anyone else you start with this very specific bass drum pattern a single brass line [Music] bass drum pattern [Music] then the ensemble comes in and supports and develops the soloist which is then in a very similar way cadenced by that bass drum pattern before the rest of the ensemble comes in now here's the thing what feels like a decade and a half ago I made a video about superhero themes and in that video I talked about how this piece fanfare for the common man as well as a lot of other works by the composer Aaron Copland served as an inspiration for John Williams's theme for Superman you could hear it in the opening to the fanfare you can actually see how Silvestri emulated this exact same style back in Captain America [Music] so maybe Silvestri wanted to include proto Superman in this film maybe he wanted a very classic heroic sound in this scene either way with an audience that's arguably already familiar with that Superman sound we get this new interpretation of the music that became Superman's theme and I'd argue that looking at the arrangement of Copeland's fanfare for the common man or at the very least emulating its structure set this scene up for a really epic score now on top of that awesomeness this tune actually does something technical that I really really enjoyed it modulates well it switches key centers I don't want to get into if these are like modulations or tana cessations okay just listen the music changes keys if you want to know more about how that works and what all that means then you can check out this other video that I did on it here have I mentioned that I make other videos on this channel I don't think I mentioned that yet like comment subscribe anyway so this piece changes key signatures which is a really great way of maintaining momentum in a piece of music it's a classic songwriting technique but this piece changes Keys six times [Music] [Music] [Music] is that everyone oh gee I wonder if the number six is significant to the Marvel Cinematic Universe I wonder if the number six might have something to do with the central conflict of the scene and what's happening in this film maybe those six key changes are to represent the original six Avengers and is totally ignoring how one of them totally isn't here right now and no one really noticed or maybe it's to represent the six Infinity stones who knows but either way it's crazy cool to see that in a scene like this and through those key changes the tune builds and builds until it climaxes with that super recognizable Avengers theme and here ladies and gentlemen boys and girls and everyone in between is when all this goes off the rails see if you listen to that initial motif the central musical idea that develops into the rest of this piece it kind of sounds familiar [Music] you can almost say that it sounds like it could be a variation on that Thanos theme [Music] you can kind of see how the structures are similar or at the very least they begin the exact same way and I can tell you that there are at least two people on reddit that agree with me that this is a variation on Daniels theme so there ha which if that's the case and that's how you hear it then that's really cool because then that makes this whole scene a musical response to what happened at the end of infinity war and if that's what you hear fine or if it's just a completely brand-new piece of music to you that's fine too it actually plays at the beginning of the film and Captain Marvel saves Iron Man so maybe it's like the end game theme to you or something I don't know you have to answer that question for yourself [Music] and if these two themes are variations of one another then my whole Captain Marvel seam sounds like Star Trek thing doesn't end up sounding so crazy which is gonna help me justify what I'm about to say cuz um none of that is what I heard like in his portals theme I didn't hear this as a variation on that OSes theme and it didn't sound completely new and only in rewatching it did I notice that it actually appears at the beginning of the film see when I was sitting in a theater and saw this for the first time it stuck with me not because I thought it sounded cool don't get me wrong it does it's awesome but it stuck with me because that first moment like that first little motif that [Music] it just kind of okay let me show you here are our notes and I'll play them with my busted little sample library [Music] okay great so let's say that Oh for no reason in particular I wanted to repeat this note like a bunch of times [Music] and while we're at it why don't we get rid of Santa Cruz this right here okay cool so now let's say that instead of going down here I wanted this note to go up instead of down and I wanted it to be shorter and instead of playing it in the brass I want it to be in the piano well here's what we get now I'm not saying that Silvestri is a massive Lincoln Park fan and that somehow made its way into the Avengers soundtrack and his own interpretation but it does not help that this film is called endgame and that that Lincoln Park track is called in the end and that these are the first notes you hear in that song I can't imagine that this is something that was done on purpose unless this is the most insane musical Easter Egg ever put into a film ever like was he trying to play some kind of subconscious musical connection to get the audience to think that this is at the end or if I just completely lost my mind and I've officially become a clickbait conspiracy theory youtuber I think we all know it's because I've lost my marbles maybe Silvestri's operating on a higher plane of reality than the rest of us it really sounds like Lincoln Park to me at the beginning and that's what I mean when I say I think I listen to this piece of music incorrectly and that might not be how you hear it or maybe through my back alley music analysis I might have changed how you perceive this piece of music which is a truly terrifying thought or maybe I have just completely lost my mind it completely depends on how you hear it and what you make of it again beauty is in the eye of the beholder music and music analysis is subjective but that's the kind of stuff you have to keep in mind when listening to and analysing music nothing is in a bubble it's important to keep in mind what a composer's intentions were when writing music otherwise you can completely miss the point especially when it comes to these scoring techniques that composers will utilize for films TV shows and video games so yeah - a lot of people myself included it sounds really really epic but at least the opening kinda sounds like Lincoln Park to me maybe Silvestri did that on purpose to subconsciously make his audience think of a song those about the end of something or more likely it was just a coincidence and Captain Marvel's theme reminds me of space even though I start thinking about Klingons and not the Kree and the scroll and Ant Man sounds more like a superhero to me than a secret agent because in the first film he was there to break into a building he was a burglar it was a heist movie and then I guess he was just like in the way in the second film and then I guess this theme only really shows up in this one really small part an end game because now he's the guy that pees his pants and doesn't really know what's going on but to be fair when he's in the last scene he gets giant he punches the Leviathan that's that's really cool but when it comes to establishing an argument to discuss how and why this piece of music sounds so awesome there are a few things that I can a 100% defend this piece does have a very similar structure to the piece of music that inspired Williams is Superman and he did change key signatures six times which is not only thematically significant to the story but it helps the piece build and build to the climax of the MCU and in all seriousness if I was gonna piece together an academic argument trying to explain how this motif came to be I described it as a variation on thousands theme as a musical response to what happened at the end of infinity war so here's the thing if I just went with my gut and stuck with what I thought this piece sounded like I would have completely missed out on how it was a variation in answer to fail as's theme in the end pun intended I think that Linkin Park was an interesting coincidence but nothing more but if I hadn't stepped outside my bubble I never would have seen that and never gained a better appreciation for what Silvestri did I would have listened to this music incorrectly thanks for watching I like to thank all my patrons to make these meals possible the very special thank you to F and Matt Alcoa Kowski Andrew Luke claritin-d Jana Ananda dr. will Hayden Al's Jordan Adams Karen Rosen Oh and who I am Mike I'd also like to thank everybody who requests to be talked about end game and why saxophone sound a certain way I hope YouTube doesn t monetize this video if you like what you saw here be sure to subscribe and check out my other videos follow me on Twitter and choice to have musical questions answered live and if you really like what I'm doing then consider supporting the channel on patreon but that's all I got for now thanks for watching

Channel: Sideways

Views: 1,389,768

Keywords: Avengers, Endgame, Silvestri, Ant-man, Captain, Marvel, America, Star, Trek, Star Trek, The Next Generation, James Bond, Mission Impossible, Incredibles, Giacchino, Michael Giacchino, Infinity, Thanos, Antman, Portals, Superman, Fanfare, Copland, Williams, John Williams

Id: 0mbtI4uRG9I

Length: 24min 39sec (1479 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 31 2019