The 16th rhythm is just everywhere!
It's just over and over and over and over! If I had to name one thing
that beginning composers do not do enough of, it's repeat their ideas. I think a lot of people are afraid of
being boring, and they think if they repeat their ideas too much that people
are going to zone out or stop listening. But really, repetition is the
key to a better piece of music. It makes it easier to develop
and work with your ideas, your listener is able to follow what you're doing,
and you're giving your piece an overall identity. If you keep changing your ideas too quickly and too often it doesn't feel like it's
developing and reaching new exciting places. Instead it feels like it's wandering
and it's like you don't really know what the point is, or where you're trying to go. In this video I'm going to show you four
classic themes by John Williams and how he uses repetition, much more than you might even
think, to create a cohesive interesting theme. Hey guys, welcome back to my channel. My name is Ryan. I'm a composer for film, TV, and video games,
and this is where I like to talk about, and figure out, and work out how
writing music actually works. For more videos about film scoring, music theory, composition, all that good stuff,
please remember to subscribe. So the first theme I want to look at
is Hedwig's theme from Harry Potter. So the basic idea for the theme is right here. Usually we say that a theme
has a two bar basic idea. Because of the meter and the tempo, this is just expanded double that
so it's a four bar basic idea. But if you look at the overall shape,
it's still functioning the same way the basic idea for a period
or a sentence would function. And the main idea here has two licks, or
two motives, that are going to be reused. One is this [music]. And the other is the [music]. These two different parts are going to make up everything else that we see
in the rest of this theme. And if you listen to the original
track, it's going to be heard in accompaniment parts, and b themes,
and all sorts of other places. But these two licks are going to drive
pretty much everything else going forward. So the first time we hear it we have this [music]. And then we match that with what
we call a contrasting idea [music[. But if you look at it, it's
not that contrasting because although the harmony contrasts, and instead of
going up it goes down, that rhythm is identical. These bars and these bars
have the exact same rhythm. This is even copy paste the same bar. It's even the same pitches. The only thing that's different
here is instead of going up a fifth like he was
here, he's going up a third. And then down a fifth instead of
where here he went down a step. So the rhythm and the contour is exactly the same. Our ear recognizes that. We hear contour and rhythm much more
than we hear the specific intervals. So if you're keeping the overall shape the same
but changing those little pitches and those exact intervals, that's a way to be repeating without
actually just copy pasting and being too boring. So now when we come back in bar nine to
repeat the basic idea, we can see the first two bars of it are exactly the same as
how we started at the beginning of the piece. These two bars and these two bars are identical. Except in this case, because we're going
to be driving towards a cadence and driving towards some sort of ending, this time he reaches
towards a climax and a high pitch for the theme, which he then comes down from
until we reach our climax. This A# is a nice little diversion but if you
look at the top we can actually see [music]. And there's just a few little dips under,
here and there, but overall there's a pretty simple shape just going from our high point
descending back into our tonic of the E. The other thing to notice about this is
we have lick one's motive rhythm here, exactly how it was before, and
we also have this happening here. So we have it here, and then it
repeats here, and then it repeats here. So we have lick one one, two, three, four
times and we have motive two one, two, three, four, five, six times, just glancing at it. It's a lot of repetition. There's very few notes here, if any... I don't think there's any notes here
actually that don't participate in some way with either this rhythm or with this rhythm. Everything is covered under those two motives. Even when he goes off to new climaxes. Even when he has a cadence. Everything is part of repeating
those shapes and those rhythms. So let's listen to the whole theme. Next let's look at the theme from Indiana Jones. So this is a very familiar theme and
part of what makes it so familiar and catchy is this rhythm and how
often this rhythm is repeated. It really gets in our ears. So obviously this is our main opening basic
lick, and this is our whole basic idea. This here gets repeated within the
basic idea itself, just down a step. And this little dotted eighth sixteenth pattern
we have here comes back again and again and again. We can see it here, here, here,
here, here, here, here, here, here. So one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten times just in this first
statement of the theme. Then this whole eight bar theme repeats
with a slightly different ending. And the b theme even uses this lick as well. So this dotted eighth sixteenth
rhythm is just everywhere. It's just over and over and over and over. People who are afraid of
being boring by reusing things should look at this as a great example of
"No, you keep using that identifying thing." Because that's how people
know this is Indiana Jones. If you heard just the first four notes
of this lick in any other context you'd know it was a reference to
Indiana Jones and you would get it. And it's that repetition that is helping
you know that, that you can really identify "Where does this come from? Where do I know
this? Oh yeah, it's the Indiana Jones theme." So the only difference for most
of these is where it starts. So this one, this one, this one, this one, and
this one are all the rising step up step up. Exact same contour, they're just
starting on a different pitch. The only time it breaks is after
we've heard it many, many, many times is here now we're going up a sixth
and we're outlining an arpeggio. Other than that it's exactly
the same everywhere you hear it. So let's listen to the whole thing. And you don't get sick of it. Nobody is bothered or annoyed by that
rhythm happening over and over and over. It's what keeps it interesting. Kind of counter-intuitively, by having that
same lick, and in just slightly different ways, it's more interesting to listen to. If you kept changing it and changing it
and changing it we kind of disengage. We can't really follow, like, this doesn't have
anything to do with anything i've just heard. I don't know where we're going
with this and we'll tune it out. The next one I have is Princess Leia's
theme, and this is another example where he has two different motives that repeat
in different ways throughout the theme. So you can see in Princess
Leia's theme we have two licks. We have this rising sixth in the beginning, and then we have this little
kind of arch 16th figure. Everything else in this theme
is based on those two licks That's our basic idea. When we repeat that basic idea we start in
the exact same way with motive number one, and motive number two just reaches
to a slightly higher point. But it's very easy for us to hear, "Oh yeah
that's the same thing, it's just a little higher." The contour is the same, the... Even the intervals are the same as far
as going up seconds and down seconds. We really recognize it. When we get to this point where he's
going into the continuation [music]. This time he actually does an octave
instead of a sixth, but as I said before the actual interval is less important
than the shape and it's very clear to us. This is the third time we're hearing this lick. It's very familiar and now it's
just reaching to new heights. I think in some ways maybe think of
it as if you had a different actor coming in to play your character many,
many, many times throughout your movie. It would be really disturbing, and
really confusing and hard to follow. And so that's what's happening if you're taking
your lick and you're changing it too much. All of a sudden you're just giving
it to a completely different person. And sometimes people are gonna be like "Wait, who is that? Do I know them? Is
this even the main character?" It's these subtle little changes that
you're taking your main character into maybe a different costume, or maybe entering
a new scene, but it's still the main character. So in this case this [music] is still
our main character even if it's [music]. Everything about it, to that little pickup, to
the rising high leap is, oh and the repetition on that top note, tells us "OK. This is the same
character. I'm still following what this is." And it's the same thing with
the second motive as well. This is the first time it's a little different. Instead of repeating this note
on the second time it comes down, it's such a slight difference that you don't even
really notice it unless you're thinking about it. And then that becomes the new norm as
we come here on a lower pitch but it's the new way to say the thing, and then
here it's the new way to say the thing. The only thing that doesn't come directly from
these motives might be the lead in to the cadence here, this kind of repeat of that idea where
these come up, but I think it's pretty obvious. You can see that that and that have a lot in
common, its just the direction has been flipped. It's still 16th notes, it's
still stepwise movement. I don't think you could really argue that those
are not coming from the same original motive. So again, there's just so much repetition here. And then the last one I want to look
at is the Schindler's List theme. So here again we have another theme where
there's two motives that are kind of driving everything that comes after it. In some cases the variations are pushed a little further than some of the other
ones I think we've looked at. But we can see even just starting, our
first motive is these fifths right here. Which comes back exactly here. Comes back pretty close here and here and here. So one, two, three, four, five times in
our theme without doing anything more drastic than just, like, a slight
pitch higher, slight pitch lower. You know, five times just doing that. And then our second idea is this one here. Right here and we can see that
that one changes a little bit. It's descending from a high
point down to a low point. The next time we hear it it's crunched in. So the shape is still the
same, it's still going down, it's still on these eighth notes, but instead
of the wider [music] it has now become [music]. And every time after that. This one turns. I think it's pretty easy to follow that
this is a pretty close cousin to this. So I've talked about in another video where people just develop their ideas so far, so far,
so quickly away from where they started. You can see here it's much more
followable if it's much more subtle. So here we had going down [music] becomes [music]. It's so close that we get it, we can follow it. But it's also that when he does that slight
variation it's not then that he's now going to bury that one, and that's going to change
into something else into something else. He's going to come back to where he had it before. So it's repeat so... other than
this little variation ,here we get back to our descending seconds,
we get back to our descending seconds. So the variations are happening within the
piece but they're not leading us astray. They're not just helping us wander into foreign
places that we don't know how we got into. What I will look at is this lick
which I think is kind of interesting. I would argue that this is, in a lot of
ways, a variation on this lick right here. Because of the repeated note on beats
one and two and these the leap down. We don't actually get that
quite as much anywhere else. So it's it's a bit of a stretch,
it's a bit of a farther variation but is still to my ear very obviously related. Especially because of that repeated note
and because of the leap down and back up. I feel like that's still a pretty
close cousin to where we were. This one too is slightly stretched. It's slightly pushed, where the
pattern doesn't quite match. But again we're on this two beat
eighth notes the whole time, under a single bow phrasing here again. I's again that idea that it's not too far away. It is some variation. So this one, in a funny way, this
one has the most variation of all the other themes we've looked at and it
still has hardly any variation at all. It's still everything here is just
so obviously part of the same piece. It's all part of the same original ideas just
changing, you know, an interval here or there. Changing a shape slightly but not drastically. It's not like all of a sudden
this was with staccato notes and 16th notes and an arpeggio
pattern in, you know, an open voicing. Everything is still pretty darn close. DS of the whole piece I would maybe argue that,
you know, bar two and the first part of bar four are a little different and everything
else just belongs to that first bar. And like I said, saying those don't
belong is a bit of a stretch because even those are pretty close so
let's listen to this whole thing So I didn't really cherry pick
these examples or plan on using these examples when I had this idea for the video. It was pretty clearly just, you know, "Oh I
know John Williams is going to do this well. Does he do it on this theme? Yes.
Does he do it on this theme? Yes." It really wasn't hard. I could probably find you 200 more
examples of themes he's written that use this repetition idea just so tight-knit. Keeping those same ideas consistently
throughout the theme and in most cases then throughout the transitions, throughout
the B sections, the codas, the intros. Everything is just so often repeated. Someday i'll do a whole video on
Duel of the Fates from Phantom Menace because the repetition
in that thing is just crazy. Every single idea, from the ostinato
to the melody to the epic choir parts, all come from a single root source
and it's just super effective. It's an awesome track. And obviously it's not just John
Williams who does this so well, but his examples are familiar and they're
very accessible and easy to listen to. So I like to use them. So please let me know in the
comments about your writing. Do you repeat your ideas enough? Do you feel like you're afraid of being boring
and you're looking for ways to overcome that? I'd like to hear from you
and I'll see you next time!
